Everything Is Borked Up (The Opposition Report #15)

Some of the more interesting and important stories in June were the glimpses the public was given into how the Trump White House actually functions: twin New York Times features on how the admin has tried to drum up a Democratic conspiracy against Trump and how it sought to obscure Trump’s links to Jeffrey Epstein. (Both stories, by the way, were excerpts from forthcoming books written by Times reporters, which isn’t exactly a phenomenal sign for the state of traditional journalism).

Each story showed just how much members of the administration, even or especially the top advisers and cabinet members, structure their lives around catering to Trump’s needs. The cover-up of Trump’s Epstein ties took place in the famed Situation Room and was all-hands-on-deck. Kash Patel’s campaign to charge Democrats with being mean to the president has led to U.S. attorneys being fired and traditional barriers between nominally independent agencies being torn down. As Texas Senator John Cornyn, freshly freed from his hopes of re-election, told the New York Times, “there’s never going to be good enough for [Trump], other than 100 percent, you know, slavish adherence to whatever he wants.”

While Patel’s crusade and the Epstein cover-up both went rather poorly, they have begun to make some progress after firing everyone who still had some basic scruples. (Acting director of national intelligence Bill Pulte’s first question upon walking into the office was reportedly who he could fire.) The FBI raided the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a nonprofit that helps register people to vote, in the first couple weeks of June. And in Texas, the anti-ICE “Prairieland” protestors were each sentenced to decades in prison. Of course, whether any new Epstein files tied to the president will be released after a recent court order is still yet to be seen.