The First Corruption Scandal of Trump’s Second Term Is Already Here

Justin Sun, a Chinese national accused of fraud, sent Donald Trump $18 million last week.

The newsletter Popular Information reports that Sun, most recently famous for spending $6.2 million on a banana and then eating it, paid $30 million for cryptocurrency tokens from World Liberty Financial, which is backed by Trump. In a pinned post on his X profile, Sun bragged about the purchase, saying his own blockchain start-up, TRON, was “committed to making America great again and leading innovation.”

Until Sun’s purchase, Trump’s crypto start-up appeared headed for failure with only $22 million in tokens sold, far short of its goal of $300 million in sales. The purchase not only keeps the WLF going, but also guarantees a windfall for Trump. A filing from the venture in October states that “$30 million of initial net protocol revenues” will be “held in a reserve … to cover operating expenses, indemnities, and obligations.”

After that reserve is met, a company owned by Trump is then entitled to 75 percent of WLF’s revenues from the sale of all other tokens. As of Sunday, WLF has sold $24 million in tokens, giving Trump a solid $18 million payoff. Sun’s purchase has also gotten him an advisory position in Trump’s venture, making him business partners with the president-elect.

And influence with Trump may be the only benefit to Sun’s transaction. Right now, Sun’s tokens don’t have any monetary value unless they “are unlocked through protocol governance procedures in a fashion that does not contravene applicable law.” Plus, Sun is also under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud.

In March 2023, the SEC charged Sun, as well as three of his companies, for marketing unregistered securities and “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market” for a cryptocurrency token “through extensive wash trading.” Wash trading is “the simultaneous or near-simultaneous purchase and sale of a security to make it appear actively traded without an actual change in beneficial ownership,” according to Popular Information.

Sun was also charged with “orchestrating a scheme to pay celebrities to tout” cryptocurrency “without disclosing their compensation.” Under federal law, people who endorse securities have to disclose their compensation as well as how much money they received. Sun apparently got Jake Paul, Soulja Boy, and Lindsey Lohan to endorse his crypto tokens.

The charges against Sun took place under the current SEC chair, Gary Gensler, who will be gone after Trump is sworn in next year. Trump’s new SEC chair, whoever that may be, could easily make those charges disappear. Trump stands to rake in much more money from cryptocurrency, and the industry spent a whopping $180 million on political campaigns during the 2024 election cycle. The president-elect is almost certain to help the crypto industry, his new benefactor Sun, and himself make more money in his second term as president.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has advocated to remove all fluoride from public water within the first month of Donald Trump’s presidency, once sold bottled water flush with the very stuff he imagines is toxic.

Kennedy, whom Trump nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, claims that fluoride is “an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”

In fact, fluoridation helps prevent teeth from rotting out of our heads and children from getting deadly infections in their mouths. It’s been lauded as one of the 10 great public health achievements of the twentieth century by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—which Kennedy will soon oversee! (Can probably expect that statement to disappear from its website soon.)

For as much as Kennedy seems to fear the effects of fluoridated water, he seemed to have no qualms about bottling and selling it for years, according to a story published Monday by The New Yorker.

In 1999, Kennedy co-founded Keeper Springs bottled water to help fund his Waterkeeper Alliance—a strangely hypocritical venture, as his plastic-packaged product was meant to aid the preservation of public clean water.

In any case, Keeper Springs bottled water contained up to 1.3 milligrams of fluoride per liter, according to a 2009 chemical analysis. That’s a significantly higher concentration of the mineral than what’s found in most tap water—for example, New York City’s tap water contains only 0.2 milligrams of fluoride per liter. Keeper Springs stopped production in 2013.

Chris Bartle, a Keeper Springs co-founder, told The New Yorker that Kennedy wasn’t always the fluoride skeptic he is now, and that he’d “never heard it mentioned.” Bartle said that the fact that there was so much fluoride in their bottled water was “hilarious.”

Texas Senator Ted Cruz had a crude image in mind while thinking about Morning Joe anchors Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who—after spending years accusing Donald Trump of being a fascist and comparing him to Hitler—jointly travelled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the president-elect last month.

During a discussion on Fox News Monday night about the MSNBC duo’s trip, Cruz joked that their stunning reversal was less akin to bending the knee than it was to a full-blown sexual favor.

“You have Joe and Mika go to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring and suck up to Donald Trump, you can’t make that story up,” said Fox’s Sean Hannity.

“Well, I’m not even sure they were kissing the ring. I think they were kissing a little bit lower than that,” Cruz tossed back.

Scarborough and Brzezinski’s decision to visit Trump has drawn widespread condemnation, including from their core audience. Viewership for their show plummeted by 12 percent after the pair revealed on air that they had made the trek to Trump’s Florida estate, according to Nielsen. The MSNBC journalists cited a growing national disinterest with Trump’s misconduct—including election denialism and January 6—as the reason to “do something different” and meet with the MAGA leader. Trump, for his part, said the meeting went well.

But even on-air analysts at the network couldn’t hold their tongue on the issue. Former lawmaker and MSNBC analyst David Jolly slammed the pair on Tuesday, torching them for wavering on their values now that Trump is set to imminently return to the White House.

“We didn’t wake up after the election and think, I’m upset because I was wrong. We’re upset because we know we’re right, but we’re on the losing side of this battle. And so what does that mean for a responsible media, for a responsible electorate, for a responsible Democratic Party in this environment?” Jolly said. “Don’t just say we’re going to give equity to Donald Trump, which some people are doing in the Democratic Party, in media, among the electorate.”

Cruz is, however, possibly the last person who should be making jokes about spineless behavior. The unpopular Texan has backtracked several times on his own criticisms of Trump, enthusiastically endorsing him even after Trump called Cruz’s wife ugly and mocked his height on the national stage, claiming to millions of Americans that Cruz needed heels in order to reach the podium.

Donald Trump responded to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s warning that both Canadians and Americans might seriously suffer from the president-elect’s tariffs with respect and seriousness—just kidding: Trump actually responded by cracking a joke.

Trudeau dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago Friday, and warned the president-elect that his plan to impose a 25 percent tariff on goods imported into the United States from Canada would be disastrous for both countries, echoing similar warnings from economists.

Fox News’s Peter Doocy reported Monday that destroying global economies is just one big joke to Trump.

“When Trudeau told President-elect Trump that new tariffs would ‘kill’ the Canadian economy, Trump joked to him that if Canada can’t survive without ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion a year, then maybe Canada should become the fifty-first state and Trudeau should become its governor,” Doocy said.

Sources told Fox News that when someone at the table reminded Trump that Canada would be a liberal state, the president-elect conceded that Canada could be split into two states: a liberal one and a conservative one.

Trudeau had traveled to Mar-a-Lago in the hopes of getting Trump to back off his tariff plan for Canada by reminding the president-elect that the U.S. border with Canada is very different from its one with Mexico. Such sentiments didn’t please Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who responded by insisting that Mexico “must be respected, especially by its trading partners.”

If implemented, Trump’s plan to impose 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada would result in an estimated loss of $250.6 billion in annual U.S. gross domestic product and approximately 1.97 million jobs, according to Ray Perryman, the CEO of the financial analysis firm the Perryman Group. The tariffs would also disproportionately affect border states with more integrated economies—such as Texas.

Donald Trump’s choice to run the FBI, Kash Patel, has already put together a list of “deep state” officials whom he thinks need to be targeted.

In his 2023 book Government Gangsters, Patel calls out a long list of villains, which he calls “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State,” in an appendix. These villains are not restricted to Democrats or  even Biden administration officials, and in fact include several Republicans as well as Trump appointees, like Bill Barr, Rod Rosenstein, Pat Cipollone, Patrick Philbin, and special counsel Robert Hur.

Not surprisingly, Patel also includes FBI Director Christopher Wray, whom Trump wants him to replace, as well as Democrats ranging from White House adviser John Podesta to Vice President Kamala Harris. It seems to back up assertions that the choice of Patel is part of clear “authoritarian takeover,” in the words of The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols.

An FBI director having an enemies list undermines the law enforcement purpose of the position, but is exactly what Trump is looking for, since he has repeatedly stated his desire to take revenge for the grievances of his first term. Trump’s team, however, is already souring on Patel—maybe because they don’t want to end up in the enemies list of his next book.

If Trump goes ahead with nominating Patel, this latest revelation will not help his confirmation hearings, especially considering that Republicans and Democrats support Wray staying on. FBI directors are supposed to serve a single 10-year term, but Patel’s appointment would make him the third FBI director in seven years thanks to Trump, who fired James Comey in 2017 after only four years in the post.

Patel’s job at the FBI will basically be to act as Trump’s hatchet man and upend the rule of law. The underqualified MAGA loyalist has only three years working in the Department of Justice as his law enforcement experience, and is likely to butt heads with more experienced law enforcement officers. If Patel gets past the Senate, will he face resistance or cooperation from the rank-and-file FBI?

The GOP is already fighting about just how far to go with Trump’s draconian vision for immigration. 

Even with control of the House and Senate, Republicans will still have to fight tooth and nail to actually pass the majority of president-elect Trump’s immigration platform, a huge part of his campaign.  

MAGA Republicans and more moderate Republicans currently disagree about how cruel they should be regarding the southern border. “We’re going to need a little time to figure out what shakes out,” said the more moderate Texas Republican Tony Gonzalez.  “What does a conference in the House want? What does the conference in the Senate want? What does President Trump want? And then that’s when we have a short window to be able to jam that all through.”

Even more troubling for Republicans is that Trump loyalists like Jim Jordan want to slide the most extreme parts of Trump’s immigration plan into the reconciliation package, which could violate the budgetary rules that moderate Republicans prefer to abide by. Jordan said that he wants the Remain in Mexico policy—which requires migrants seeking asylum to remain outside of the United States while their claims are processed—to be included in this.

“We get sworn in on Jan. 3,” Jordan said. “We should pass H.R. 2 as a stand-alone bill or [break] it up into pieces—I’m open to either one—but pass all of that to show that we’re ready to go. Then see what parts of it … can be put into reconciliation.” This conflict is set to define the earliest days of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Donald Trump’s tariffs will likely take the biggest toll on Texas, multiple economics experts told Newsweek.

Last week, the president-elect announced plans to impose 25 percent tariffs on all goods imported from China, Canada, and Mexico “until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”

While Trump’s tariffs on Mexico are expected to cause consumer prices to soar for a number of imported products, they would have far wider adverse effects on the U.S. economy. Specifically, they will make life tough in Texas, where a majority of the residents voted for the tariff-touting incoming president.

Ray Perryman, the CEO of the financial analysis firm the Perryman Group, told Newsweek that the negative effects of Trump’s tariffs will likely hurt the Lone Star State the most “because of its proximity to and integration of supply chains with Mexico.”

“Texas would see a disproportionate impact, which we estimate to be about $46.9 billion in yearly gross state product (about 1.7 percent of the total) and approximately 370,000 jobs,” Perryman said.

Perryman warned that, if implemented, 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada would result in an estimated loss of $250.6 billion in annual national gross domestic product and approximately 1.97 million jobs, amounting to nearly 1 percent of the U.S. GDP.

Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Newsweek that he agreed that the proposed tariffs would “severely impact” Texas.

“Not only all those avocados, mangos, beer, tequila etc. becoming more expensive to Texas consumers, but the decline in cross-border truck and rail traffic will throw a lot of Texans out of work,” he said. “Then there is the loss of Texas sales of consumer goods, cattle, gas, petroleum and electricity to Mexico. Thrown in a decline in Mexican tourism in Texas.”

Tony Payan, the director for the Center for the U.S. and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, told Texas Standard that the “stakes could be high for both Texas and Mexico” when it came to Trump’s proposed tariffs.

“The amount of trade between the two countries is $800 billion a year. Half of that—$400 billion—is essentially what we could call intra-firm trade,” Payan said. “That is, trade that occurs between manufacturing firms—the parts that come from Mexico or come from the United States into Mexico to complete the cars and to complete the goods that are traded.”

Payan added that he wasn’t sure Trump would “make good” on his promise to impose tariffs and ultimately he believed the president-elect would realize just how “integrated” the two economies had become.

Maxwell Marlow, director of research at the Adam Smith Institute, voiced similar concerns to Newsweek, explaining that Trump’s tariffs would “be particularly devastating for areas such as Texas, where goods cross borders multiple times during their production.”

Marlow added that the U.S. should expect retaliatory tariffs from Mexico, which would also disproportionately hurt Texas.

Part of why retaliatory tariffs would be so damaging is because Mexico receives a whopping 29 percent of Texas’s exports, Professor Dennis Jansen, head of the economics department at Texas A&M University, explained to Newsweek.

“If there is retaliation from abroad—say if Mexico follows through on the threat to raise tariffs on goods exported from the U.S. to Mexico—this will further reduce the demand for Texas (and overall U.S.) exports,” Jansen said.

With nationwide abortion access off the table thanks to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Republican Party is setting its sights on a new civil rights target: recriminalizing gay marriage.

The sentiment is apparently popular enough among those on the right that Michigan state Representative Josh Schriver unwarily shared his opinion on the topic Monday, writing in a late-morning post that he believed same-sex unions should be made “illegal again.”

“This is not remotely controversial, nor extreme,” Schriver posted on X.

Gay marriage was effectively legalized in 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that keeping marriage licenses from same-sex couples was discriminatory. The decision mandated all states to issue licenses to gay and lesbian couples and required them to recognize marriages performed in other jurisdictions as well.

Marriage equality was further protected at the federal level in 2022, when the Respect for Marriage Act became law, requiring all 50 states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. It did not, however, formally legalize gay marriage, so if the Supreme Court were ever to overturn Obergefell, gay marriage rights would fall with it.

And Schriver has at least one ally on the nation’s high court: conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. In his concurring Dobbs opinion, Thomas urged the Supreme Court to revisit cases ruling on same-sex marriage and contraception.

If Schriver’s loud-mouthed opinion on the intimate issue is any indicator, then conservative politics in the country have considerably regressed in the seven years since the Supreme Court ruled on Obergefell. But his opinion would also be wrong when blown out on a national scale. Roughly 69 percent of Americans support same-sex marriages, according to a 2024 Gallup poll. Republican support for gay couples’ equal rights has dipped in recent years, however, dropping from a record high of 55 percent in favor of it in 2021 to 46 percent in 2024.

Donald Trump promised “HELL TO PAY” in the Middle East if hostages held by Hamas in Gaza aren’t released by his inauguration on January 20, 2025.

In a Truth Social post on Monday afternoon, Trump promised consequences “for those who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity,” saying those responsible “will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

Trump’s comments came after Hamas issued a video statement saying 33 of its captives have been killed during Israel’s brutal war on Gaza dating back to October last year, when Hamas attacked Israel and took more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel has killed more than 44,000 people, including 17,492 children, in its war on Gaza.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister and accused war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly promised Trump a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon before Trump’s inauguration. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire was agreed upon last week, although it is already showing signs of unraveling.

Now Trump seems to want the release of hostages before his presidency begins but made no mention of a Gaza ceasefire as a prerequisite. The president-elect has remarked that Israel should “finish the job” in Gaza, basically endorsing the country’s yearlong campaign that has resulted in a humanitarian crisis and war crimes charges.

Trump’s latest comments raise the question of what “hell to pay” would mean for Gaza, whose infrastructure has been reduced to rubble. Is Trump threatening to use the U.S. military in airstrikes in the Middle East against Hamas’s allies in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran? If so, that would very much set off the regional war that Trump has claimed he doesn’t want.

Elon Musk is butting his head into the auction of Alex Jones’s InfoWars.

Satirical outlet The Onion purchased InfoWars’ parent company last month for $1.75 million in conjunction with the families of children murdered during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, to whom Jones lost a $1.5 billion lawsuit for repeatedly claiming that the mass shooting was a hoax.

That sale included InfoWars’ websites, its studio equipment, its dietary supplements, its branding—as well as its heavily trafficked social media accounts.

The deal appeared to be cut-and-dried, but on Monday, Musk alerted the court that he would not accept the ownership transfer of InfoWars’ X accounts. In filings with a Texas bankruptcy court, X argued that the sale violated its terms of service, which prevent the sale of its accounts, writing that the company objects “to any proposed sale or other purported transfer of any account used by Jones or FSS that is maintained on the X platform (‘X’).”

“Elon Musk, hands down, is a hero,” Jones previously said in a video message posted to his account, praising the world’s richest man for lending him a hand in maintaining his connection to the brand.

It is, nonetheless, a stark reversal of how Musk felt about Jones’s social media presence in the wake of his court judgments. In 2022, shortly after Jones lost his lawsuit to the Sandy Hook families, Musk said he wouldn’t allow Jones back on his social media platform, paraphrasing the Bible in his explanation that Jones deserved “no mercy” for using the “deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”

Meanwhile, social media attorneys have been stunned by the intervention, noting that this appears to be the first instance in which a social media company has gotten involved in a legal dispute over account ownership.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a social media platform arguing to a court that no one can transfer ownership during a dispute over who owns an account because they will just switch it off,” Toby Butterfield, a professor of social media law at Columbia University Law School, told CNN.

Jones repeatedly claimed that the 2012 shooting that left 20 first graders and six teachers dead was a front to lure voters toward gun control policies.

In the run-up to the auction last month, Jones had appeared to be under the impression that “good guys” on the right would buy his fringe network, though he did not reveal who they were. Several groups expressed interest in InfoWars assets, including a coalition of liberal and anti-disinformation watchdog groups, according to The Daily Beast, as well as some of Jones’s own supporters, such as Donald Trump ally Roger Stone. The sale, however, has effectively crushed what was arguably Jones’s most successful endeavor while marking the beginning of his descent into irrelevancy.

Jones is currently working to appeal the sale.