Time was never Donald Trump’s ally. From the moment that he returned to office, the clock was ticking on the term-limited president. Trump’s advisers had planned for a bombardment of policies and changes that would come so fast from all sides that critics and the American people would not be able to react quickly enough.

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That was the plan, but it hasn’t worked out that way, because in order for the plan to work, Trump had to be interested in carrying it out, but Trump has zero interest in policy, so the administration unleashed Elon Musk and DOGE, which broke a lot of stuff, but Musk also broke parts of the government that were needed for other goals of the administration when this is combined with the public protests and the lawsuits, DOGE was bust that led to Musk going back to the private sector, and being erased from the Trump administration’s memory.

It could be argued that Trump’s biggest success was deploying ICE on America’s streets, but by success, I mean that the killing of innocent Americans and the deportation of innocent immigrants has resulted in Trump’s strongest issue becoming one of his weakest and harming the Republican Party.

Republicans have been complaining for more than a year now that Trump is more interested in vandalizing the White House and painting things gold than he is in doing his job.

Trump has wasted a lot of time, and now he is facing the effective end of his presidency because the source of his power will soon be gone, as there is a difference between occupying an office and having the power of the office.

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Before Donald Trump took off to spend the weekend at his private club in New Jersey, he held an event at the White House that was supposed to be about promoting miners and the mining industry.

Trump showed how much he cared about coal miners by telling the attendees to hurry it up.

The president said, “ So I didn't know I was gonna have so many people. I'll be here all day. If you could go quickly, I would appreciate it, because we have a war to prosecute, okay? That's my excuse for getting out of here a little bit early. But I've done my thing only in the sense that we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars, and even billions of dollars, in bringing your industry.”

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Trump wasn’t eager to get out of the event because of the war in Iran. Trump wanted to get going because after a hard week of losing wars and trashing the economy, Trump wanted to get to his club for the weekend.

However, this being a Trump event, the president had to get way off track and admit that he is taking items from government buildings.

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A federal district court has blocked the construction of Trump’s ballroom because the president does not have the legal authority to change the White House and must get congressional authorization for any changes because the White House does not belong to any president and sits in a national park.

The White House and its grounds are property of the American people, and Congress must approve any changes.

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The administration tried to get the injunction lifted, but the federal DC Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s appeal.

The ballroom construction has been blocked since the original injunction was issued, which is why Trump has been frantically demanding that authorization for the ballroom project be attached to any must-pass Senate legislation.

However, in its ruling, the appeals court made it clear that the ballroom project was also about the separation of powers.

The court wrote:

The Defendants also emphasize that the ballroom project’s nearly half-a-billion-dollar price tag is being privately funded by “American patriots.” Defs.’ Opening Br. 3. The United States is blessed to be filled with many patriots. But in this case, the Executive Branch’s self-help trenches not only on Congress’s control over federal property and historic sites, but also on Congress’s power of the purse.

The amount of private donations is unprecedented. See Press Release, Nat’l Park Serv., National Park Foundation Receives Historic $100 Million Grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. (Aug. 26, 2024) (celebrating a $100 million grant as “the largest ever received by [National Park Foundation] and the largest grant benefitting national parks”). By way of comparison, the $400 million projected cost of the ballroom project amounts to approximately 8% of the Park Service’s budget for Fiscal Year 2026, see NAT’L PARK SERV., BUDGET JUSTIFICATIONS AND PERFORMANCE INFORMATION FISCAL YEAR 2027, at 4 (2026), and exceeds 1,500 times the level requiring special scrutiny by the Department of Interior for conflicts of interest, see DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, 374 DM 6.10.E(2)(b).

The private donations were a way to get around the Constitution on multiple levels.

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If there is one lesson the American people have learned over the ten years Donald Trump has been in national politics, it is that when things go wrong, someone else will always be blamed.

It is Trump 101.

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Trump decided on his own to start a war with Iran. The president didn’t consult Congress or build an international coalition. He and his buddy Bibi decided to start a new war in the Middle East.

The president’s failure in the war with Iran has embarrassed him.

Iran has made a deal with Oman to control the Strait of Hormuz, with the United States being cut out of negotiations.

Trump is looking for someone to blame for his terrible decision-making, and this time, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s number came up.

The Washington Post reported:

President Donald Trump’s frustration over the Iran war boiled over at Camp David last week, where he demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on why he had apparently been misled on extreme munitions shortages that now threaten to limit military options with Iran, two people familiar with the exchange told The Washington Post.

The encounter took place on the sidelines of his Cabinet meeting at Camp David on Friday where Trump vented at Hegseth that he thought the munitions issue “had been fixed,” according to both people familiar with the conversation, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.

Hegseth responded by blaming his deputy, which is how it works in the Trump administration. No one takes responsibility, and everyone passes the blame to someone else.

Trump was so upset by this reporting that he felt the need to defend Hegseth, which is the Trump kiss of death.

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Some in the media are starting to wake up to the reality that the daily breaks from reality the country is witnessing are not just Trump being Trump, which seems to be the common mentality among the mainstream media as they have figured out that Trump is the cash cow and ratings boon that they hoped for in 2024.

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The biggest corporations in media have gone from breathlessly following Trump’s every move and word to desensitizing the country to the president’s behavior by downplaying it, or in most cases, ignoring it.

Not everything is Trump being Trump.

Sometimes, there are warning signs that something is wrong or the situation is getting worse.

The president’s reaction to the criminal charges being dropped in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool case should have been a major red flag.

Even after his own administration dropped the case and admitted that it wasn’t vandalism that caused the Reflecting Pool damage, but Trump's own handpicked contractor, the president has for days continued to insist that vandals caused the damage.

The reason for this, according to new reporting, is that Trump is feeling constant pressure and embarrassment over the Iran war.

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The Republican plan to flip the current Democratic-held Michigan US Senate seat was to make the election about Abdul El-Sayed instead of Donald Trump, and hope beyond hope that the bruising primary would leave Democrats divided.

The odds of Michigan voters being more concerned about El-Sayed than Donald Trump setting the economy on fire were already slim.

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It also looks like the Democratic division that Republicans needed in the state isn’t going to happen either.

The first clue of Democratic unity came from the statement of the Schumer-run Senate Majority PAC after El-Sayed’s victory:

Abdul El-Sayed's vision for a healthier, more affordable future has energized voters, and he's giving Michiganders exactly what they've been asking for - a real fighter who shows up for working families instead of Republican dysfunction and corruption.

Mike Rogers, meanwhile, has spent his career proving he'll say and do anything to win. Since leaving Congress, he's tied himself to Trump at every turn - cheering tariffs that are gutting Michigan's economy, pocketing donations from the very companies he once swore to regulate, and backing a war in Iran while Michigan families get crushed by gas prices and grocery bills. This isn't public service. It's self-service.

Michigan deserves a senator who fights for them, not a career politician chasing his next title. This November, they'll choose El-Sayed.

That doesn’t sound like a party divided, but Democrats also immediately put their money and endorsements behind boosting El-Sayed.

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To understand how much power Trump has lost, it helps to take a look at the agendas of the White House and the Republican Senate majority. Last week, Donald Trump demanded that Senate Majority Leader Thune cancel the August recess and stay in session until his election rigging legislation, which has been misleadingly named the SAVE America Act, was passed.

The Senate responded by moving forward with an attempt to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded until December 11, trying to move forward on the late Lindsey Graham’s bill to sanction Russia, and a cryptocurrency reform bill.

Not only will the Senate leave when its work is done for a five-week recess, but it will also leave without passing Trump’s desperate gambit to rig the midterm election and keep himself relevant for the final two years of his term.

Republicans in the Senate keep telling Trump that the SAVE America Act is dead in the water, but the president keeps trying to push for it to be passed.

The legislation Senate Republicans are working on doesn’t address inflation and affordability, but it shows the majority has no interest in Trump’s pet legislation.

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Donald Trump botched the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation. The Washington D.C., U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote as much in the legal filing that requested the dismissal of the criminal charges against Olympian David Hearn.

Trump still stuck to his vandalism tale over the weekend on Truth Social, and claimed that he disagreed with the government that his contractor botched the Reflecting Pool renovation.

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On Monday, the delusion continued and spiraled out of control, as Trump was asked about the Reflecting Pool at the White House, and proceeded to go off on a deranged rant:

 We sandblasted the stone outside. It was granite, so it has a long life. We, uh, did a great job. We got very expensive material to put on top of the surface that always leaked because it was stone. It was a stone surface. Always leaked. And we put it on, and it was beautiful.

Now, we have photographs or tapes, like moving cameras, right? We have them where people are on the side cutting it with a box knife. Was it... So the... Now, I'm not saying I was a hundred percent thrilled with, uh, the contractor, but the contractor was rushing.

Trump both blamed the contractor and claimed that it was also vandalism at the same time.

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The hype about a deal to end the war with Iran didn’t even last long enough for the mainstream media to write stories promoting it.

It seems that the mainstream media will never learn. When Donald Trump posts something late at night on a weekend, there is a very high probability that the president is making things up again.

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At that moment, the media should proceed with skepticism and caution. This is a man who has lied to the country hundreds of thousands of times, so when Trump posted out of nowhere that Iran wants to end the war, red flags should have been everywhere.

Trump posted:

The U.S.A. is locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran, at levels of Military Terror, Strength, and Power not seen since World War II. Despite this, we have just been asked by Iran, and other Middle Eastern Countries, to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to. This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.

Based on this request, I have agreed, for the future benefit of the WORLD and, likewise, the survival of a successful and prosperous Iran, to cancel the attack, subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL. The Country of Israel joins me in this commitment. Get to work, everybody, and get it DONE. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

This post was Trump trying to play his The Apprentice character and act like he is the boss.

The charade quickly collapsed by Monday and showed how pathetic and weak Trump is.

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The Trump administration has broken the US military to the point where it could expand the war in Iran, as Trump threatened to do, because the US is running out of munitions and equipment.

Only Donald Trump could try to expand a war and fail because he has wrecked the military to the point where it is having to cut back.

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The Pentagon has never passed a full financial audit, and Trump was trying to shake Congress down for $1.15 trillion in additional military funding.

One of the reasons why Israel under Netanyahu has been able to carry out what many consider to be a genocide in Gaza and start a war with Iran is because the United States has protected Israel.

Netanyahu has made Israel historically unpopular in the United States. Many Americans want Israel under Netanyahu to fight its own wars and stand on its own.

Thanks to Donald Trump’s ineptitude, the day when Israel no longer has the US to protect is reportedly quickly approaching.

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The Trump presidency isn’t about making America great. The real point of Donald Trump’s second administration is to make the president as much money as possible by abusing the office of the presidency.

At least some of Trump’s other scams, such as the no-bid government contracts to his kids, pump-and-dump meme coins, constant self-dealing, and the accepting of gifts from foreign countries, at least tried to maintain a minimum of pretense that they were not undertaken for corrupt self-enrichment purposes, but Trump’s latest scheme is the open selling of insider access to his administration.

Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts can shift the stock market and prediction markets. Trump has been accused, going back to his first administration, of using his social media posts to manipulate the markets.

Now, Trump is turning his market manipulation for personal gain into a subscription service for insider trading.

House Judiciary Committee Democrats, led by Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) have taken notice of Trump’s scheme and have launched an investigation.

Trump is going to sell early access to his posts to hedge fund managers and traders for $100,000 a month.

Rep. Raskin wrote to the Interim Chief Executive Officer of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp notifying him of the investigation.

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In Minnesota, 30 water systems were impacted, and municipalities had to switch to manual mode to keep them running.

Suspicion has fallen on Iran, especially since the Iranians have well-known cyber capabilities and Donald Trump has been threatening to destroy the nation’s water infrastructure for months.

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It makes sense that Iran would carry out such an attack.

Well, it makes sense to everyone who isn’t Donald Trump.

Trump was asked, “ Can you rule out that Iran is behind the water attacks? Can you rule out that Iran is behind that cyber attack? You know who's behind it?”

The president said:

 Minnesota, because they grossly incompetent. I think the governor is behind it. You guys can follow- I don't think there was a, an Iranian cyber attack. I think that, uh, Minnesota ought to get its act together. It's one of the worst run states. JD will tell you, he found tremendous corruption in Minnesota. And by the way, just gave me a report, massive, massive future things having to do with corruption in Minnesota are happening right now.

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Trump’s own government is investigating Iran, but Trump is blaming one of the states that he is supposed to be protecting.

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It might have seemed impossible, but the Trump administration has come up with a policy that will make it even less popular.

The Trump administration wants to roll back and weaken regulations to allow sellers to avoid licensing and background check requirements.

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Reps. Lucy McBath and Jamie Raskin wrote to the ATF Director and registered their objections:

Congress has repeatedly acted—on both a bipartisan and bicameral basis—to strengthen background checks, combat illegal gun trafficking, support crime gun tracing, improve firearms dealer accountability, and prevent firearms from reaching dangerous individuals.

Most recently, Congress enacted the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to enhance our nation’s background checks system, close gaps that allow firearms to be acquired without appropriate scrutiny, reduce gun violence, and expand access to mental health services. 2 These bipartisan policy changes contributed to a historic drop in violent crime, including a 44% drop in homicide that began in 2022—two years before President Donald Trump began his second term—and continues to this day.3 Your proposed rules would move our country in the opposite direction. ATF’s proposed rules would increase opportunities for prohibited purchasers to obtain firearms. They make it harder for law enforcement to investigate gun crimes and trace crime guns. They weaken standards governing who must become a federally licensed firearms dealer.

The supposedly tough-on-crime president is going to make it easier for criminals to get guns, but the kicker is that one of the people who will financially benefit from these changes is Donald Trump Jr.

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Republican Senators Cornyn and Tillis aren’t heroes. What they are seeking from Trump is the bare minimum that should exist in any democratic society.

The GOP senators don’t think that a president, his family, and his business should get a forever exemption from IRS oversight, and that a slush fund of taxpayer money should not exist to pay off Trump allies who helped him try to overturn an election.

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That’s it.

This isn’t about high-stakes, groundbreaking policy.

Presidents shouldn’t be above the law.

Trump said no, and then threatened to pull Blanche’s nomination until the next Congress.

Trump posted on Truth Social:

Todd Blanche is a STAR, and everyone knows it! He has the potential to go down as one of the Greatest Attorney Generals of All Time. However, John Cornyn, of Texas, and Thom Tillis, of North Carolina, both of whom I refused to Endorse, and whose political careers have been ended by my action, are refusing to vote for this Great Nominee, who will remain, in any event, as Acting.

Remember, both Cornyn and Tillis voted for Merrick Garland, and others, too numerous to mention. I have no objection to temporarily withdrawing Todd’s name, if they do not do the right thing, and putting him back after Cornyn and Tillis are out of office.

Trump is threatening to punish the Republican objectors by giving them what they want?

How is this a threat?

Republicans can’t figure out why Trump is doing this, but it is not difficult to understand why.

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Todd Blanche is Trump’s nominee to be the next Attorney General. Todd Blanche is the acting Attorney General and Trump’s former defense lawyer. The Blanche nomination is caught up in an increasingly tense civil war between Senate Republicans and the president.

Here is where Blanche’s nomination currently stands, according to NBC News’s Sahil Kapur:

Todd Blanche’s AG committee vote is tomorrow morning — he still doesn’t have the votes. CORNYN & TILLIS are demanding a written change to Trump’s IRS settlement that led to the weaponization fund. Without that, Tillis tells me he’ll deny quorum & force delay. Rs need every vote.

Remember that 1/6 insurrectionist trust fund that Trump tried to make a reality?

Sen. John Cornyn wants it gone. Cornyn wants it put in writing that the 1/6 slush fund is dead and won’t be coming back.

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So far, the Trump administration has refused to put anything in writing, so Cornyn is holding out and refusing to vote for Blanche.

Senate Republicans are set to leave Washington for a month after this week, so if the Blanche confirmation doesn’t happen this week, it gets even closer to not happening at all.

But there is much, much more to this bad blood than the Blanche nomination.

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Senate Republicans seem like they have had about enough of Trump’s obsession with the SAVE America Act. Trump appears to have really ticked off a group of Republican senators by demanding that the August recess be canceled until his election-rigging bill is passed.

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John Bresnahan of Punchbowl News posted on X:

NEWS: GOP senators push back hard on OMB Director Russ Vought & WH aides on including SAVE Act in reconciliation. It would open possible votes on Social Security & other issues. Thune led the pushback, but other GOP raised objections too.

A lot of the discussion centered around the use of federal records for SAVE, including Social Security records. This would lead to reconciliation instructions to at least a dozen cmtes. That opens up possible Democratic amendments.

The problem is that, unlike what Trump thinks, the Senate can’t just pass the election rigging bill through reconciliation.

The reconciliation process to pass the SAVE Act would turn into the ultimate cluster because it would open the door to Democrats tying up the Senate for the rest of the year with endless amendments and vote-a-ramas.

If Republicans even tried to pass this legislation through the reconciliation process, Democrats would hijack it and lock the Senate down. The bill would never get to a final vote before this Congress ended.

Republicans also expressed their frustration over Trump’s obsession with doomed legislation.

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When Trump and his party cut Affordable Care Act subsidies and cost millions their coverage while increasing costs for tens of millions of others, it was only the beginning of Trump’s war against affordable healthcare.

The Affordable Care Act subsidy cuts raised the cost of coverage for 20 million Americans, but Trump is now targeting the 25 million American seniors who have a Medicare prescription drug plan to help pay for the cost of medications.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

The Trump administration plans to end a subsidy program that helped hold down premiums for Medicare drug plans, a move that could leave many seniors facing higher rates for their prescription coverage next year.

The move will eliminate a program that is giving insurance companies an estimated $3.6 billion in subsidies this year to blunt increases in premiums for the Medicare prescription plans, known as Part D. The program will end after 2026, according to administration officials.

…

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a federal watchdog agency, estimates the subsidy program, which was supposed to stabilize Part D, reduced the average Part D plan premium by about 40% in 2025. This year, it cut the average rate by an estimated 27%.

The administration claims that people will still have choices and the premiums will decrease, but this is the last thing that Republicans need before the midterm election.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell’s staff and family have continued to refuse to provide a real update on the Senator’s health after he was reportedly found unconscious in his home and taken to the hospital.

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The updates have been scant, as there has been no specific information released on McConnell’s health and status. There has been no proof, other than AI-generated content, that Mitch McConnell is even alive.

It seems that Republicans are trying to keep McConnell’s health status a secret until after the August 3 deadline passes for a special election to be called to fill McConnell’s seat. Gov. Beshear has ordered that McConnell provide him a full health update, but there is little hope that his demand will be complied with.

Beshear was asked on Bloomberg News, “Well, do I understand it correctly that August 3rd is a key deadline here, that if Mitch McConnell continues in this capacity through the 3rd, then you will not have an opportunity to name a replacement until the actual election is held. Is that right?”

The Governor responded by turning the tables on Republicans and pointing out the many benefits to the seat being vacant.

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Trump went to Michigan on Monday to tout his economic success, but this is what the American people are saying about the economy:

Roughly 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, whereas 65% disapprove, per a CBS News/YouGov poll of 2,193 adults conducted July 22-24.

• About 29% approve of Trump’s handling of inflation, while 71% disapprove.

• Only 24% of Americans view the economy as excellent or good under the Trump administration this year, down 8 percentage points from July 2025, when 32% viewed the economy as good, according to a Fox News poll conducted July 17-20.

Those are some pretty stiff headwinds on the economy, so what do you think Trump’s message was to voters in Michigan?

Trump said, “We’re having the single greatest year we’ve ever had as a country. We’re not going to let these people destroy it.”

Donald Trump’s refusal to admit the reality of his terrible economy is sentencing every candidate who appeases him and repeats his delusions to at best a very tough election, and at worst a blistering defeat in November.

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Trump sounds crazy to anyone who is trying to afford gas to get to work or groceries.

But the real craziness came later in the speech, when Trump talked about what really mattered to him.

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FIFA and corruption go together like peanut butter and jelly. You don’t have to be a fan of soccer to be aware of the 2015 FIFA corruption scandal that involved top officials taking $150 million in bribes to influence the awarding of the World Cup.

FIFA has earned a reputation as one of the most corrupt organizations on earth, which is why it was no surprise that Donald Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino were thick as thieves.

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Trump magically made the FIFA convictions disappear, and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin has launched a corruption investigation.

Raskin wrote to Infantino and laid out what looks like a bribery scheme:

DOJ’s puzzling capitulation makes a lot more sense when we reflect on FIFA’s brazen campaign to curry favor with Donald Trump since his re-election—a campaign that has now paid rich dividends for FIFA just as North America hosted its first joint World Cup. Over the past 18 months, you invented a hilariously fake “FIFA Peace Prize” to award to President Trump, who has made no secret of the fact that he covets the Nobel Peace Prize. You leased an office space on the 17th floor of Trump Tower—a space that might retail for $600,000 a year—even though it; would only be used during the 39-day period of the World Cup. That comes to more than $15,000 a day.

These actions appear designed to induce President Trump and his Administration to make decisions in FIFA’s favor. Even your predecessor, Sepp Blatter (himself suspended from world soccer in the wake of the bribery scandal) noted that your “yearslong campaign to curry favor” was aimed at influencing the President, wryly noting that “Infantino thinks he’s the leader in the relationship.” This strategy of outright bribery is not new to your organization.

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