On today’s BradCast: Maybe the $1.8 billion slush fund for felons was the final straw. Still too early to know for sure. But, between that, the billion dollar ballroom and his recent electoral victories against fellow Republicans, members of his own party in Congress couldn’t run fast enough enough to the exits on Thursday for an early start to next week’s holiday recess. [Audio to full show follows below this summary.]
Republicans were supposed to pass a simple reconciliation bill to fund ICE and CPB since Democrats refused to do so under regular order unless guardrails were placed on the outlaws at both agencies now terrorizing America. All they needed was a simple majority in both houses. Under reconciliation rules in the Senate, they didn’t even need 60 votes to get over a filibuster.
But then someone added the $1 billion ballroom. Then, amid amid spiking costs for gas and groceries amid Trump’s no-way-out war with Iran, Donald Trump and his defense attorney Todd Blanche (who now runs the Dept. of Justice) announced a $1.8 billion fund to pay off supporters of Trump, including violent felons who attacked police at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. They dreamt it up out of nowhere. No Congressional funding. No court oversight. And, oh yeah, that scheme would also completely indemnify Trump, his family members, and his companies from any and all IRS audits or legal claims.
And all of this in the middle of the critical 2026 midterm election primary season, when Republicans are already up against it, with Trump’s approval ratings in the low 30s, and Senators like Bill Cassidy (R-LA), having been primaried out by Trump last week, now ready to vote in kind against Trump.
But on Thursday, the Senate gave up. They couldn’t even get 50 votes. Then the House bailed out without passing the funding bill Trump demanded they pass by June 1. After House Republicans discovered they no longer had the votes to hold off a War Powers Resolution to stop the Iran War, as passed by the Senate earlier this week (thanks to Cassidy now voting in favor), they just called off all scheduled votes and everyone headed for the airport.
After Trump’s electoral revenge tour of recent weeks, against members of his own party, allies say the supposed “victories” were “just a mirage. They are self-owns,” Politico reports a “senior Senate Republican operative” as telling them. “Gerrymandering isn’t enough” to save the GOP, Karl Rove warned at WSJ today. Republicans are revolting, reports CNN.
Following weeks of corporate media outlets reporting Trump successfully turfing out elected Republican lawmakers as some sort of victory; after many of the same outlets misreporting Trump’s slush fund for insurrectionists as some sort of “legal settlement”, we’re happy to be joined today by a couple of old friends in the independent media who have a two-decade track record of getting this stuff right in advance.
We’re joined for our monthlyish roundtable today by OG bloggers HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo and the man known only as ‘DRIFTGLASS’ (for the most part) of The Professional Left Podcast.
We discuss, among other things….
- The primaries.
- The ballroom.
- The slush fund.
- The revolting Republicans.
- The endless Iran war.
- The next war on Cuba.
- The media.
- Stephen Colbert.
- Endorsements in both next week’s GOP Texas Primary runoff (between four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and the Trump-endorsed, scandal plagued TX A.G. Ken Paxton), and in the 71-candidate, all-party, top-two-go-to-the-general, no-one-knows-who-will-win California gubernatorial primary on June 2.
“If the perspective is that it’s a ‘great victory’ for Trump maintaining control over the MAGA portion of the party, he’s doing pretty well with that. But it doesn’t bode really well for the future,” Digby explains. Younger voters, according to new reporting, are turning away because “they cannot abide this Iran War. So, yes, he is maintaining his grip on the old Fox News viewer — and there are a lot of them — and they are coming out to vote in primaries. Unfortunately for him, the rest of the country is absolutely apoplectic about what he’s doing.”
“He’s an old man. He’s much nearer the end than he is the beginning. His priority is hurting his enemies and looting as much as he possibly can,” argues Driftglass. “If you think of him as a President who cares about his party, this is obviously insane, none of this makes any sense at all. But if you think of him as an Emperor, who just dissolved Parliament because he doesn’t need them anymore, and is building a massive war chest for when he has to escape the country, and building himself defense-in-depth against anyone trying to reach him — he’s got his ballroom with a bunker, he thought he would have his brown shirts all paid off and ready with their million dollars in their pocket, ready to die on his hill — he is not a President anymore. He is an Emperor who is planning to defend himself, and his loyal stooges are planning to be buried with him under the pyramid.”
Much more where that came from today, before we close with one more Green News Report before standing down for a brief holiday from both GNR and The BradCast next week.
Tune in, won’t you?…
