Mary Trump Media

Nine people have been killed by ICE agents since Trump took office. Two shot in their cars this week. Trump just told ICE to keep going. What word do you reach for?

19 hours ago | [YT] | 6,045

Mary Trump Media

Last night in the Oval Office, Donald signed proclamations stripping federal protections from millions of acres surrounding Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments in Utah. The move clears the way for expanded drilling, mining, grazing, and commercial development across landscapes rich in archaeological sites, fossils, and lands sacred to Native American tribes.

This is what Donald said:

We’re terminating certain monuments. They call it monuments, not the ones we have outside, but these are large thousands of acres. It’s a total of almost three million acres and we’re going to be discussing it. But in fact, I think we’ll start discussing it right now before I sign. After that, we’re going to be signing two documents that are close to a million and a half acres each.

This decision will have an enormous deleterious effect on this country, especially on the wildlife and the people who have long treasured these extraordinary public lands.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this is exactly what happens when we continue empowering people who value nothing if it gets in the way of their ability to make a buck.

Having, with the stroke of a pen, put at risk wildlife and landscapes that had, until now, been protected, Donald’s press conference quickly turned to his illegal and unconstitutional war of choice against Iran.

He was asked how long he expected the war to continue.

His answer was revealing.

Donald: Well, I think it’s going very fast. We’ve demolished their military. We’re hitting them very hard. We had a deal yesterday or the day before yesterday. It was all done. And then they broke up that deal immediately because they found out there was something in the deal they didn’t like. And they’re wired differently and we’re not going to put up with it. We are just going forward. We’re attacking them tonight. We’re taking out all of their capability for anything having to do with the strait, with the Hormuz Strait. And I think in the end, we will end up controlling the whole thing.

So which is it exactly?

According to Donald, we have completely annihilated Iran’s military capabilities.

At the very same time, he insists we must continue bombing Iran in order to destroy those same military capabilities. Both things cannot be true. Then there is the matter of the Strait of Hormuz itself.

The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway. The United States has no sovereign claim to it whatsoever. Donald talks about “controlling the whole thing” as though the United States can simply declare ownership over one of the world’s most strategically important shipping lanes. It cannot.


What Donald is really trying to do is restore the situation that existed before he launched this illegal and unconstitutional war of choice.

He was then asked whether a negotiated settlement with Iran was still possible.

Donald: We’re hitting them very heavy tonight as you know. We’re hitting them. We have tremendous amounts of ammunition. We have numbers that we haven’t had in years and we’re hitting them very hard and it’ll continue and we’ll see what happens. But we’re knocking out all of their offensive capability and we’re controlling the straits. We’re putting the blockade back. And it’s a blockade not for anybody but Iran. In other words, anybody doing business with Iran can’t go through. Everyone else will be able to go through. So it’s a blockade. It’s a very strong blockade. The blockade was probably more effective even than hitting them, but I think the combination is the thing that really does.


Iran, meanwhile, has only become stronger strategically.

Why?

Because years ago Donald ripped up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the JCPOA, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, and has done nothing to replace it with an agreement that actually prevents Iran from enriching uranium or developing nuclear weapons.

Donald continued defending his bombing campaign by insisting previous presidents should have attacked Iran years ago.

Donald: This should have been done by Bush and Obama and Biden and people before them, frankly. It’s 47 years they’ve been ripping off everybody and really hurt again, killing thousands of people. So they killed 52,000 protestors, but they killed many, many people with Soleimani who I killed in the first term. Soleimani killed many people, many, many people. And not only killed. When you see a young former soldier walking around with no legs, no arms, a face that’s been horribly, horribly hurt, that was done by Iran.

This war is no longer being justified by any coherent strategy. Every time Donald speaks, the rationale changes. One day it is about nuclear weapons. The next day it is about controlling shipping lanes. Then it becomes protecting allies or exacting revenge.

The objectives continue shifting because reality keeps exposing the failures of the previous ones.

And that is precisely what makes this conflict so dangerous.

Donald also seems to believe the United States should be reimbursed for guarding the Strait of Hormuz. Except that is not what is happening. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, and the United States responded by attempting to blockade that closure, which makes very little strategic sense. Then again, this is Donald Trump we’re talking about.

Donald: Because they’re stone cold crazy. They are crazy. We can get reimbursed. And we’re not going to put it up. Yeah, I want to be reimbursed because we’re protecting a very rich portion of the world. We’re spending money. And so what we’ve done is we are going to be reimbursed for protection by the countries that we’re helping. For instance, you look at the five countries. You have Saudi Arabia, you have UAE, you have Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others. They will do very well. But we think it’s appropriate. We don’t need them. We have more oil than any other country in the world.

So now we have yet another justification for this war. Apparently, it no longer has anything to do with preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It no longer has anything to do with protecting the Iranian people from their authoritarian regime. Instead, Donald now says the purpose is to protect wealthy allies and then send them the bill afterward. That is not how alliances work, and it certainly is not how international law works. You do not get reimbursed for the costs of a war you chose to start. You admit you made a catastrophic mistake, accept responsibility for the consequences, and work to end the conflict. Of course, Donald is incapable of doing any of those things.

It is worth noting what other members of the Trump regime had to say about Donald’s proposal to impose tolls and fees on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Rubio: It’s an international waterway. No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law. We believe international waterways should be free of tolls. I know of no country on the planet that supports tolling or fees for the use of the straits. Trying to impose a tolling system is a form of international extortion. There is zero support among the Gulf countries for any sort of toll or fee for the use of international waters.

It should surprise absolutely nobody that Donald’s claim that he would impose a twenty percent toll on ships using the Strait of Hormuz quietly disappeared. Did he abandon the idea because his own Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense explained that it violated international law? No. He abandoned it because he spoke with kings, emirs, and other leaders he happens to like, and they asked him not to do it. Once again, American foreign policy appears to be dictated not by strategy or law, but by whichever conversation Donald had most recently.

Donald ended the press conference by returning to one of his favorite obsessions. He called CNN “fake news,” claimed the network’s reporting was treasonous, and insisted that Iran desperately wanted to make a deal.

Donald: Their leadership is all gone. Their first-tier leaders are all dead. Their second-tier leaders are all dead. Their third-tier leaders, who we’re dealing with more or less, some of them are already gone. And then you read fake news like your network, CNN. You have them say, “Well, actually, aren’t they doing quite well?” Let me just tell you, they have inflation of over 300 percent. They don’t have any military. There’s not a thing they can do about it. All they have is fake news because the fake news would rather see us lose the war than win the war, which is really treasonous. We’re doing another very major attack tonight.

Nobody has been reckless enough to launch this kind of military campaign because, from every available indication, it is not going well for the United States. It certainly is not going well for the Iranian people, although Donald has demonstrated repeatedly that their suffering is of little concern to him. And the idea that CNN is somehow committing treason by reporting verifiable facts tells us everything we need to know about how Donald views a free press.

What actually sounds treasonous? Inciting an insurrection against your own government. Stealing highly classified documents. Potentially exposing those documents to unauthorized people. Those sound considerably more like acts of treason than journalism ever could. But Donald has always projected onto others the very conduct of which he himself stands accused.

The bottom line is remarkably simple. If we have completely obliterated Iran’s military capabilities, as Donald repeatedly claims, then this war should already be over. If Iran is desperate to make a deal, and if a deal supposedly existed just two days ago, then why is there still no agreement? Donald will never answer those questions because doing so would require him to admit failure.

21 hours ago | [YT] | 899

Mary Trump Media

Jessica Yellin: I want to start with what’s happened this week at the NATO summit. There’s so much we could discuss, but just yesterday Donald appeared to call Volodymyr Zelenskyy “Putin.” He referred to the Islamic Republic of Japan. For months we’ve consistently seen bruising on his hands, reports of swelling in his legs, and he frequently appears to be falling asleep in public.

As a psychologist, and as someone who knows him personally, how do you assess his current mental and physical state?

Mary Trump: I think the most important way to understand where Donald is emotionally, psychologically, physically, and cognitively is to recognize that we’re looking at a perfect storm.

He’s somebody who has lived for decades with longstanding, undiagnosed, and untreated psychiatric disorders. As with many illnesses, including psychiatric illnesses, when they’re left untreated, they worsen over time.

We also know, from Donald himself, that he is continually being asked to take cognitive assessments, which suggests there may be concerns about cognitive decline. Alzheimer’s disease runs in my family. I’m desperately hoping it skips my generation, but there is a very strong genetic component. There are many moments when I see striking similarities between Donald’s behavior and my grandfather’s behavior as Alzheimer’s progressed.

As you mentioned, there’s the hypersomnolence. He simply cannot stay awake during the day unless people are talking about him. That appears to be the only thing capable of keeping him alert.

We also see increasing impulsivity, which can be another symptom of cognitive decline. My perspective comes partly from my background as a clinical psychologist and partly from having watched what happened to Donald’s father.

Then there are the obvious physical symptoms: the swelling in his hands and ankles, the bruising, and his growing difficulty walking normally. There is so much happening simultaneously that it shouldn’t surprise us he’s becoming increasingly erratic, belligerent, and violent.

Jessica Yellin: Violent.

Mary Trump: Yes. Just listen to his rhetoric about Iran. It’s completely unhinged.

Jessica Yellin: There’s a bloodlust to it that’s deeply unnerving.

I’m curious what you think the public most misunderstands about Donald Trump.

Mary Trump: I think part of the misunderstanding comes from the fact that people are being encouraged to misunderstand him.

Donald is an extraordinarily weak person. One of the reasons he’s been allowed to continue behaving this way for so long is that people confuse the enormous power of the office he occupies with personal strength. Those are two entirely different things.

He possesses tremendous institutional power, but as an individual, he is profoundly weak. Unfortunately, too many people have been intimidated by the office and, as a result, missed countless opportunities to challenge him directly.

His vindictiveness is actually one of the clearest signs of that weakness.

Jessica Yellin: You’ve often said that if we understand Donald’s psychology, we’ll understand how to deal with him. How does what you’ve just described explain the election lies, the loyalty demands, the rage whenever he’s criticized, the constant lying, and the greed?

Mary Trump: It’s a really important question.

The explanation sounds almost too simple, but I genuinely believe it’s the truth.

Donald has always been, and remains today, a terrified little boy.

As an adult, the thing he fears most is being exposed as a loser, being seen for who he truly believes himself to be.

So Donald spends every waking moment trying to avoid being exposed as the failure he believes himself to be.

More fundamentally, however, Donald is what I’ve long described as a black hole of need.

The tragedy for him, and for the rest of us, is that the thing he has always wanted most is to be loved. Because of the way he was raised by a sociopathic father and a deeply dysfunctional family, he became incapable of accepting genuine love.

That leaves him endlessly trying to fill the void with more money, more power, more praise, more threats, and more violence.

None of it is ever enough.

Take the military parade he staged for his birthday, that astonishingly expensive spectacle on the White House lawn. That was another attempt to fill the emptiness inside him.

He probably woke up the next morning feeling exactly as empty as he did before.

Jessica Yellin: Today he’s covering part of the North Portico with construction while redesigning the White House yet again. It’s almost as though he can’t stop changing something that belongs to the American people.

If someone understands narcissism, they know it can’t simply be fixed. But it can sometimes be managed. We’ve seen Donald react strongly to ridicule and to having his incompetence exposed.

Why do those approaches work better than ordinary criticism?

Mary Trump: That’s such an important question because so many people have fundamentally misunderstood how to deal with him, and that misunderstanding has only increased both his power and the damage he’s capable of causing.

The worst mistake you can make is allowing Donald to believe you think he’s strong.

Calling him a criminal, a thug, or even a rapist doesn’t necessarily affect him because he often interprets those labels as evidence that he’s tough.

We’ve seen that repeatedly. Every time he escaped accountability, portions of his political base became even more devoted to him.

At the same time, we’ve watched universities, prestigious law firms, NATO allies, and major media organizations capitulate.

Every capitulation teaches him he can push farther.

One thing Donald has always been remarkably good at is testing boundaries. He keeps pushing until somebody finally says no. Unfortunately, far too few people have done that.

Whenever a reporter asks a factual question he doesn’t like, especially if it’s a woman asking it, he loses control.

We need more of that.

I’ve often wondered why White House reporters didn’t coordinate their efforts. If he refused to answer one question, why didn’t the next reporter ask exactly the same question, and then the next?

He’s the President of the United States, not a king.

He owes the American people answers.

For far too long, he’s been allowed to avoid giving them.

The other tool we have is ridicule.

Donald is eminently mockable. He’s incompetent. He’s frequently out of his depth.

Whenever someone holds up a mirror and forces him to confront reality, he falls apart.

Jessica Yellin: I’ve often thought if I ever interviewed him, I’d simply ask the same question over and over with slight variations. Eventually he wouldn’t be able to escape it.

Why can’t he answer?

Mary Trump: Because so much of what drives Donald exists outside his conscious awareness.

If he were forced to confront the truth about himself, I genuinely don’t think he’d be psychologically capable of functioning.

He’s built extraordinarily powerful defense mechanisms to protect himself from that reality.

When somebody else points out the truth, he experiences it as an existential threat.

The missed opportunity came years ago, long before he became president.

Back in the 1980s, and again during the 2015 and 2016 campaign, journalists could have pressed him much harder because he couldn’t yet hide behind the presidency.

Nobody demanded evidence when he claimed to know more than military generals or insisted he substantiate his endless exaggerations.

Today, when he doesn’t like a question, he simply removes the microphone, walks away, and throws a temper tantrum.

Jessica Yellin: According to recent reporting, only a very small group of people are effectively running the government around him.

Has his inner circle become smaller?

Mary Trump: Donald has never evolved.

My grandfather created the myth that Donald was a brilliant, self-made businessman, then spent decades protecting him from the consequences of his own incompetence.

Once my grandfather decided Donald, rather than my father, would inherit the family business, Donald became completely insulated from failure. During my grandfather’s lifetime, he received more than $410 million through gifts, loans, and forgiven loans.

He’s never had to function independently.

In many ways, Donald has always been institutionalized.

He moved from the protection of Trump Management to the Trump Organization and ultimately to the White House.

He requires a tiny group of people to satisfy not only his material needs but also his emotional needs by constantly reassuring him that he’s wonderful, brilliant, popular, and successful.

The danger is that those people acquire enormous power in return.

When people say someone like Stephen Miller is effectively running much of the government, I think there’s truth in that.

That’s a frightening reality.

Jessica Yellin: Why do Republicans remain so obedient?

Mary Trump: I think there are several different groups.

Some people are simply cynical. They understand that if they donate enough money or remain loyal, they’ll receive enormous financial rewards through government contracts or political influence.

Others are genuinely afraid of Donald.

Personally, I’ve never understood that because I don’t see him as frightening. But fear clearly motivates some people.

Then there are the true believers.

Those are the people who genuinely embrace the cruelty, the racism, the misogyny, the anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the authoritarianism.

They’re helping build exactly the country they want.

Those groups present different dangers, but together they’ve made Donald far more powerful than he ever could have become alone.

Jessica Yellin: As we approach the election, what should Americans focus on?

Mary Trump: Donald desperately needs Republicans to win because he knows losing could finally expose him to accountability.

Ironically, his efforts to rig the system demonstrate weakness, not strength.

2 days ago | [YT] | 1,985

Mary Trump Media

Former President Barack Obama negotiated a deal that kept Iran's nuclear program frozen and the Strait of Hormuz open. Trump killed it. Now the strait is once again blockaded and US strikes on Iran are in their third round this week. What do you call that?

2 days ago | [YT] | 7,243

Mary Trump Media

Donald promised the biggest fireworks display in human history to celebrate our country’s 250th birthday, which, as you probably know, was on July 4. Well, there were just a couple of problems. The fireworks did not technically happen until July 5 because, like most people on the planet, Mother Nature hates Donald and sent some truly awful weather. Then there was another problem.

As you can see, those are actually fireworks, but you cannot really tell because, pro tip, do not set off fireworks during a heat dome. Otherwise, all you get is one enormous cloud of smoke and a whole lot of asthma attacks. It looked less like a celebration of America and more like the apocalypse because that is exactly what living through the Trump regime feels like.

Of course, this is also exactly what we have come to expect from Donald: a complete disaster. An expensive and unnecessary disaster entirely of his own making. So, as always, credit where credit is due. Donald, well done.

Welcome to this week’s episode of Trump Trolls Trump. It has now been 537 days since Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025. Thank you once again to the 78 million people who voted for him. And thank you to the more than 80 million eligible voters who could not even be bothered to vote. Truly.

Now, we do know that at least one person was extraordinarily proud of the fireworks display. In fact, he seemed so overwhelmed by the spectacle that he could barely contain his excitement. Yes, Donald was doing what he does best: sleeping through very loud, very bright fireworks. Actually, no. That was not sleeping. That was loss of consciousness brought on by overwhelming humiliation. There he was exercising perhaps the only genuine superpower he possesses, the remarkable ability to sleep sitting upright under the loudest and brightest conditions imaginable.

Just before the fireworks began, Donald took the stage. He claimed that there had originally been 375,000 people in attendance before storms forced everyone to leave. Then, according to Donald, he told somebody to “bring my people back,” and somehow another 150,000 people returned simply to hear him speak. Did they? That seems more than a little unlikely, especially judging by the photographs and video footage we have all seen.

Donald: Tonight we come together for one of the most joyous and glorious milestones of all time. And you know what that is? The 250th anniversary. And I do have to say this, one of my very brilliant people backstage said, “Don’t worry. Backstage, there’s plenty of seating out front.”

Apparently there was.

Just to remind us once again what an extraordinary student of American history Donald is, let’s hear what he had to say about the Civil War during his rambling speech.

Donald: Few heroes remind us of these truths more than William Carney, who escaped slavery to become a Union soldier in the Civil War, which was a very big, big deal at the time.

Was it?

No way.

The Civil War was a big deal at the time?

I honestly never knew that.

I truly do not know what to say.

Because we all deserve to stay informed about Donald’s latest grifts, he also hosted a Trump Accounts launch event inside the Oval Office this week, allegedly celebrating a new federal investment program for American children. Personally, I think we should just start children gambling as early as possible. Why stop there? Let’s get every kid a Polymarket account and a Kalshi account while we’re at it.

Anyway. Here is Donald attempting to explain something.

Donald: There’s a thing called TikTok. Have you heard of it? I was watching Maria Bartiromo this morning. She’s fantastic. They were talking about the dangers of TikTok because it’s Chinese and all the spying. Well, except the new numbers just came out. You know who’s number one on TikTac by far? Trump. Me. I’m number one. Taylor Swift was number eleven. I’m number one by far. They sent me the list. Number one, number two. I was number one by a lot. I think it helped me win the election in a landslide.

There is apparently somebody working inside the White House whose full-time job consists of inventing statistics, printing them on official-looking paper, and handing them to Donald so he can confidently repeat them in public. He is not number one on TikTok. But even if he were, apparently national security concerns cease to matter the moment Donald personally benefits from them.

Later in the week, Donald spoke to reporters from the Rose Garden and decided to lecture the country about a subject with which he is intimately familiar: criminals.

This is what Donald said:

Ninety-one percent of the crime in Washington, D.C., as an example, was caused by 2.1 percent of the population. These are career criminals. Sick people. Mental problems.

Donald really should stop looking into mirrors while giving speeches. When he talks about career criminals and deeply disturbed people, he is speaking from extensive personal experience. He has spent his entire adult life committing crimes. The only meaningful difference between Donald and most career criminals is that he has never experienced the consequences. He has never gone to prison. As a result, he simply continues committing more crimes.

There were also significant political developments this week. Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner withdrew from the race after serious and, I have to say, highly credible allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman. Platner, who proved himself to be exactly what many of us feared from the very beginning, a deeply depraved narcissist, finally dropped out on Thursday, leaving Democrats only a few weeks to find a new candidate capable of taking on Susan Collins.

That, however, did not stop Republicans from lecturing everybody else about character, integrity, and the importance of holding bad candidates accountable. So when Fox State TV rolled out former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy this week, he was more than happy to deliver exactly that message because, apparently, somebody is still paying him to say these absolutely insane things.

McCarthy: The one thing I know about Republicans, when we had a very bad candidate and found out, we didn’t vote for that person. We walked away. For better or for worse. When Matt Gaetz came forward, we got rid of him.

Well, they did it once. Congratulations.

Let’s see. George Santos. David Vitter. Dennis Hastert. Newt Gingrich. The list is remarkably long. But I’m trying to think of a Republican politician whose name might resonate with even more people so we can fully appreciate just how breathtaking this hypocrisy really is.

Let’s see.

He was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

He has been credibly accused of sexual assault by more than two dozen women.

He stole highly classified government documents.

What on earth was his name?

Donald Trump.

That’s right.

So tell me again, Kevin, how Republicans always get rid of bad candidates?

Tell me how the same Republican Party that rallied behind Donald after January 6th is somehow the party of character and integrity.

If Kevin McCarthy had possessed even one ounce of integrity and stood by what he initially said after January 6th, we might not be living through this second Trump occupation today. Instead, only days after Donald almost got him killed by a violent mob, Kevin climbed aboard a plane, flew to Mar-a-Lago, and kissed Donald’s ring.

So please, spare me the lectures about Republicans holding their own accountable.

Speaking of bad candidates, that brings us, finally, to Baby J.D. Vance, who traveled to Milwaukee this week to promote the Trump regime’s anti-fraud initiative.

Actually...

No.

That doesn’t sound quite right.

Their pro-fraud initiative.

Yes, that feels much more accurate.

Officially, the White House insisted the event was about combating government waste, fraud, and abuse, which apparently has now become one very long word: wastefraudabuse.

Curiously absent from the discussion were subjects such as flying two Air Force Ones to Europe at the same time or the countless other examples of government waste generated by the Trump regime itself.

In reality, this was simply another midterm campaign stop in the battleground state of Wisconsin, where J.D. Vance attempted to do what he always attempts to do: energize Republican voters.

Baby J.D.: So I ask you a very simple question. When you come to vote in November, are you going to vote for the pro-fraud party? Are you going to vote for the party who is sending your tax money to the fraudsters? No, we’re going to support the party that is sending the fraudsters to jail and is protecting your money. We’re going to vote for Derrick Van Orden and for Bryan Steil.

So...

The eleven people in the audience are apparently voting for Democrats?

Is that what just happened?

Honestly, J.D. Vance should quit his day job and become a motivational speaker because I don’t know about you, but after watching his performance, I feel considerably better about Democratic chances in the midterm elections.

I have to say, I have never seen someone work so hard to generate so little enthusiasm.

Perhaps that’s his real political gift.

Well, thank you so much for joining me for another episode of Trump Trolls Trump.

Remember, mockery is one of our greatest superpowers. Authoritarians desperately want to be feared. They want to be treated as powerful, untouchable, and inevitable. Ridicule reminds them that they are none of those things.

We’ll be back next week to continue ridiculing this inept, corrupt, and profoundly misguided administration because, as always, they simply cannot help themselves.

They keep giving us more material than we could ever ask for.

2 days ago | [YT] | 1,065

Mary Trump Media

Todd Blanche, Donald’s former and current personal defense attorney, has served as Acting Attorney General of the United States since April 2. In that time, he has helped create a slush fund benefiting Donald’s allies and January 6 insurrectionists. He has shielded Donald and his family from IRS scrutiny, reportedly helping Donald avoid a $100 million tax bill. He has pursued a second indictment of James Comey based on an Instagram post featuring seashells on a beach. And, of course, he continues refusing to release the Epstein files.

On July 7, the Department of Justice alumni group Justice Connection sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee. More than 1,200 former DOJ employees signed it, representing fourteen presidential administrations spanning both Republican and Democratic administrations.

The letter itself runs fifty-nine pages, and those pages contain nothing but signatures.

Its central message was unmistakable: the culture of fear Todd Blanche has created inside the Department of Justice must end.

It is not just former Justice Department lawyers raising the alarm.

On June 22, 101 former judges filed a seventy-three-page ethics complaint accusing Blanche of conflicts of interest, incompetence, and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.

The Department of Justice dismissed the complaint as a “pathetic stunt,” which is a curious response given that it made little effort to refute the substance of the allegations.

The consequences inside the department have been staggering.

Roughly 16,000 of the Department of Justice’s more than 100,000 employees have left since Blanche assumed leadership. That includes more than one-quarter of the department’s career attorneys.

Former colleagues and members of the judiciary have described Blanche’s tenure as unprecedented.

They do not mean that as praise.

On April 7, Blanche was asked whether he hoped to become Attorney General permanently.

Blanche: I love working for President Trump. It’s the greatest honor of a lifetime. And if President Trump chooses to keep me as acting, that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate me, that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and I go back to being the DAG, that’s an honor. If he chooses to nominate somebody else and asks me to go do something else, I will say, thank you very much. I love you, sir. So I don’t have any goals or aspirations beyond that.

I often wonder whether people like Todd Blanche realize just how pathetic they sound.

“Thank you, sir. May I please have another?”

That was all I could think while listening to the ghost of Heinrich Himmler answer reporters’ questions.

As Deputy Attorney General, Blanche also oversaw the questioning of Ghislaine Maxwell in 2025 after she had been transferred to a minimum-security prison, a move that ran contrary to Bureau of Prisons policy governing convicted sex offenders.

Let’s remember exactly who Ghislaine Maxwell is.

She was Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator.

She is a convicted sex trafficker.

She is a convicted predator who abused girls and young women.

And yet Todd Blanche apparently believed she deserved special treatment.

A federal court later cited Blanche’s own public statements from that same period as evidence supporting its May 22 finding that the Department of Justice could not overcome the presumption of vindictive prosecution in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident who was wrongfully deported to a prison in El Salvador before being returned to the United States to face criminal charges the government has yet to prove.

The pattern extends well beyond those cases.

Blanche initiated a leak investigation targeting reporters at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal after Donald reportedly handed him a stack of newspaper articles marked “treason” in his trademark Sharpie.

In the Broadview Six case, the Department of Justice agreed to pay the defendants’ attorneys’ fees while simultaneously attempting to block discovery, a move legal experts argue was designed to prevent scrutiny of Blanche’s own conduct.

Nor has Blanche demonstrated any meaningful commitment to transparency regarding the Epstein investigation.

His Justice Department has released millions of pages connected to Jeffrey Epstein, but more than three million additional pages remain either withheld entirely or so heavily redacted as to be virtually unreadable.

A federal judge is now demanding that the department explain why so much material continues to be concealed.

The obvious question is also the unavoidable one.

Do we honestly believe that the documents already released contain the most damaging evidence while the remaining three million pages contain nothing of consequence?

Of course not.

We still do not have the full story.

The Epstein files remain incomplete because somebody inside the Department of Justice has decided the American people should not see everything.

Todd Blanche is protecting somebody.

The judges are not alone in sounding the alarm.

On July 2, Special Counsel Jack Smith gave his first televised interview since resigning after leading the two federal prosecutions against Donald before they were ultimately dismissed.

Smith: Well, as I said earlier, I, from my perspective, have seen a number of cases. James Comey, Letitia James, Jerome Powell. I mean, right? There’s not criminality here. I mean, seashells. I mean, so the only reasonable explanation is the president has it out for these people and he has people who are his former personal lawyers who are going to do what he says regardless of the facts or law. Again, just to juxtapose it, I didn’t have people on my team resigning because they refused to go along with a scheme to go after somebody. That was not what happened. You see that in all these cases. Imagine if I had been told, “Jack, wherever you think the facts and law dictate, that’s what we’ll do.” That’s what happened then. Can you imagine that happening now if there were allegations of corruption inside this administration? They would never appoint an outside independent person to investigate. We all know that. That’s the difference between following process, following the facts, and preserving independence.

Smith later told Nicole Wallace that the United States is facing an attack on the rule of law that is, in his words, “different in kind and scope to anything I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

He went on to explain that the Department of Justice can no longer perform the basic functions necessary to represent the American people in court because judges increasingly no longer trust federal prosecutors.

It is difficult to overstate how devastating that assessment is.

The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice once represented the gold standard of federal law enforcement. Career attorneys built cases carefully. They pursued prosecutions only after assembling overwhelming evidence. Their credibility before the courts was among the department’s greatest assets.

Today, many DOJ attorneys walk into federal court carrying exactly the opposite presumption.

Instead of assuming competence and integrity, judges increasingly approach them with skepticism, doubting not only the strength of the government’s evidence but also the motives behind its prosecutions.

That collapse of institutional credibility did not happen accidentally. It was built.

Blanche’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled for July 15 and 16. Assuming every Democrat votes against his nomination, all twelve Republican members of the committee would have to support him in order to advance his confirmation.

By the time Jack Smith sat down for that interview, he had already spent months under direct pressure from the very administration he once investigated.

He had been subpoenaed before the House Judiciary Committee, participated in a closed-door deposition, and later testified publicly for hours.

Then, one month later, U.S. District and Donalds pocket Judge Aileen Cannon, the same judge who dismissed Donald’s classified documents case, ruled that the remaining volume of Smith’s final report could not be released.

She continues, much like Todd Blanche, to function less like an independent public servant than as another member of Donald’s legal defense team.

During the interview, Smith acknowledged that he believes it is entirely plausible the Department of Justice could eventually indict him as well, joining former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James on the ever-growing list of Donald’s perceived enemies now facing criminal investigations.

This is all happening in plain sight.

The Department of Justice has become a profoundly corrupted institution under Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche because Donald has completely erased the wall that traditionally separated the White House from the Department of Justice.

As I warned this would happen, the Department of Justice has become Donald Trump’s personal law firm. Its mission is no longer to pursue justice impartially.

Its mission is to protect Donald, punish his enemies, and advance his political agenda.

That is not how constitutional democracies function.

It is how authoritarian regimes do.

2 days ago | [YT] | 2,343

Mary Trump Media

I stopped by Jacob Soboroff’s new show to discuss the unprecedented, gobsmacking corruption of Donald and his immediate family, and the ways I believe their grift endangers American national security. I hope you enjoy.

Jacob Soboroff: Joining me now is Mary Trump, the president’s niece. She is the host of Mary Trump Media on YouTube and author of The Good in Us on Substack. She is also the author of multiple books, including Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

Mary, it’s so good to talk to you.

Mary Trump: Hey, Jacob. It’s great to be here.

Jacob Soboroff: My guess is you weren’t surprised, but when you heard the amount of money the president has made during his first year back in office, I wondered how all of that landed with you.

Mary Trump: It doesn’t land well, and it shouldn’t land well with any of us. Once again, Donald has positioned himself to benefit from a position he neither deserves nor earned. Even more alarming is, once again, the number of people willing either to look the other way or actively enable him.

It should infuriate every American. We’re looking at a situation in which Donald and his useless children are enriching themselves by leveraging the power of the presidency and doing so off the backs of the American people. At the same time, many of the people who placed their trust and faith in Donald Trump have lost significant amounts of money. Nearly one million people have reportedly lost more than $3.8 billion, averaging roughly $3,800 per person.

That is absolutely despicable.

Jacob Soboroff: During his interview with CNBC on Thursday, the president said the Oval Office serves a much bigger purpose than whether or not he makes money.

This is what Donald Trump said:

You know why I don’t care? Because I have a much bigger purpose. This is the Oval Office. It’s a much bigger purpose than whether or not I make money. As an example, the president’s the highest paid person in government and by some standards he gets a lot of money. I’m the only president, they say, that’s ever given up my salary. I gave up my salary.

What’s it like for you to hear that?

Mary Trump: It’s appalling.

Yes, the president earns a substantial salary by the standards of most Americans. I don’t know the exact figure, but it’s somewhere around $450,000 a year. Donald refusing that salary is nothing more than a fig leaf designed to distract from the extraordinary grift and the potentially criminal conduct he’s engaged in to enrich himself.

We also can’t overlook another part of his financial disclosures. They revealed that he received tens of millions of dollars that were, in effect, bribes from social media platforms and corporate media companies. Those same companies later received billions of dollars in government contracts.

The grift is comprehensive.

More importantly, I believe that when the President of the United States openly signals that he doesn’t care about enriching himself through his office, expects the public simply to accept it, and demonstrates that he is effectively for sale, that poses a genuine threat to American national security.

Jacob Soboroff: It’s not just the president. It’s Melania, Eric, and Donald Trump Jr. as well. You’ve written extensively about your cousins. They’re making money in ways we simply haven’t seen from previous first families.

How does the broader Trump family fit into all of this?

Mary Trump: I think it’s all of a piece.

The Trump family has engaged in this kind of potentially illicit conduct for decades. It began with my grandfather, who accepted tens of millions of dollars in financing from the Federal Housing Administration to build rental housing in Brooklyn and Queens. He then turned around and significantly undervalued those same properties to reduce his tax burden.

This has been the family business model for generations: enriching themselves at other people’s expense.

I suppose you could say Donald’s children come by it honestly.

But in the end, it’s an appalling reflection on the United States. What’s even more disturbing is that no one currently in a position of power seems willing to do anything about it.

To me, that underscores what must happen if people who actually believe in accountability return to government.

If we once again have leaders who understand that presidents and their families should not be permitted to enrich themselves by exploiting the presidency, one of the very first priorities must be to clearly define the Emoluments Clauses and establish meaningful penalties for presidents who engage in this kind of corruption.

Jacob Soboroff: Mary Trump, it’s so good to have you with us on Connect. Mary is the host of Mary Trump Media on YouTube and the niece of President Donald Trump.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Mary Trump: Thank you.

2 days ago | [YT] | 603

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