Please watch the video below where MS NOW Economic Correspondent Steve Rattner shows how Donald Trump is giving his devoted followers the hosing of a lifetime with the latest economic fad bubble: cryptocurrency.
With the power of the Presidency and the influence that goes with it, this latest scam rivals Trump's other efforts to defraud his customers, like Trump University, Trump Steaks, the USFL, and his casinos.
Must watch.
These are the proposals contained in the Progressive Caucus's New Affordability Agenda, unveiled yesterday to show the American People that Democrats have proposals designed to make their lives better while also combatting corporate and MAGA Republican greed and the top one percent first policies.
Speaking at the Wednesday unveiling of this new affordability agenda, which will take the form of ten separate legislative bills, Arizona Congressional District Three Yassamin Ansari, fresh off helping to pressure Congressional Republicans to get Pam Bondi to appear before them, and proposing legislation, along with fellow Arizona Representatives Adelita Grijalva and Greg Stanton, designed to restore the 12-hour maximum holding process for detainees, said:
"As we all well know, while Donald Trump is using or trying to use taxpayer dollars to build his ridiculous 400 million dollar ballroom and abuses his office every single day to enrich himself and his family to the tune of billions of dollars, the people in my district and across the country are suffering, forced to decide between paying for groceries or their rent. As the Congressional Progressive Caucus's Lowering Costs Task Force Chair, I am having conversations about costs with real Americans in communities all across the country. And what I am hearing is exactly what the polling that we released today shows.
On our Affordability Across America tour, I'm hearing from people on all sides of the political spectrum and across zip codes about the actual policy changes that they want to see that would lower prices. And what we have heard so far that I really want to emphasize is that people want to see bold, decisive, and quick action, not endless deliberation or perfection. They see that the Trump administration has worked on overdrive to make their lives worse.
We as Democrats, and especially as progressives, need to be just as quick but to improve lives for every single American, not wait for the broadest possible consensus or for legislative perfection. On the first stop of the tour, Congressman Horsford and I heard from service workers in Las Vegas about how ever-rising prices are changing their lives from the inside out and the shame that they associate with no longer being able to afford their basic necessities. But this is a crisis of Donald Trump's making, not a personal failure.
It is he who should be ashamed. The people that we spoke to have worked for decades and often forced to work multiple jobs only to be unable to make rent, pay their car insurance, or God forbid, afford quality health care. People of all backgrounds and ages.
One man said that he saw his rent go up from $900 a month to $1,400 a month. That should never happen. And as the youngest woman in Congress, I know that young people are feeling the affordability crisis in a distinctly hopeless way, wondering if they will ever be able to afford a home, let alone how they will be able to pay for health care or future child care or ever be out from under the thumb of student debt.
We want Americans to thrive, not just to survive. Besides being able to literally make ends meet, when was the last time you or your family could afford to take a real vacation, to celebrate at a dinner or to buy new clothes or spend on anything that wasn't an absolute necessity? This year is America's 250th anniversary, and I know that there is a knee-jerk association that is not necessarily overtly positive during these especially difficult times. But we should want to renew patriotism in this country, to rebuild systems for people that work for people who are not billionaires or the ultra wealthy or massive corporations, to live in an America where your enjoyment of life is not only tied to your income, an America that my parents sought out when they immigrated here to build a better life for me and my brother.
This new affordability agenda includes the bills that we know can build broad support to pass as soon as Democrats take the majority in Congress. This Lowering Cost Task Force is working on a bold suite of bills to put money back in Americans' wallets. We heard this from folks on this tour as well.
We have multiple stops to go, but people are asking us to be specific. They want caps on rent. They want opportunities for home ownership.
They want Medicare for all. They want public free transportation, free child care, and an economy that works for all of us. And as progressives, we need to be the ones to not just think big, but act big.
Not sit around for endless vetting. We know what the solutions are. Change is needed, and we are the ones leading it."
There is a lot to like about the New Affordability Agenda.
Vice President Kamala Harris, for those who were not paying attention during the 2024 campaign, proposed aspects of this agenda along with other items like newborn financial assistance and paid apprenticeship programs.
While some, like Jim Kessler's Third Way, may rightly quibble that the proposals do not address other items like getting rid of the Trump tariffs or regulation reform to make the home-buying process quicker and more affordable while others may wonder why the agenda did not include proposals to raise the national minimum wage, provide paid family and medical leave, making the tax cuts on tips and overtime permanent, and restore clean energy and electric vehicle tax credits, this agenda is a good starting place to provide much needed relief to working and middle class Americans and should attract needd voters in 2026 and 2028.
What Nerve!
It did not take long after the horrific attempt by a deranged gunman to attack the White House Correspondence Dinner on April 25, 2026, for Donald Trump and his allies, including his Press Secretary and his wife, to blame the attack on the media and the Left's factual denunciations of the words and acts of their Dear Leader and his White Nationalist cronies.
They have also used this as an Orwellian opportunity, in the name of National Security, to have, while people are paying higher gas prices, going hungry, and losing their health insurance thanks to Trump and MAGA Republicans' Big Billionaires First Bill and war of choice against Iran, fund $400 million for the construction of the White House Ballroom.
Thought all the money for that project was supposed to come from private donations.
This is a game play they have used before, most recently after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, where MAGA Alternative Reality- White Nationalist-Fascist World blamed Democrats and late-night comedians like Jimmy Kimmel for pointing out all the actual vitriolic rhetoric and policy positions held by Kirk as the reason he was shot.
Again, what nerve.
These social media memes from the Other 98 Percent are a great reminder of some of the vile words and policy choices coming from Trump and his allies.
Below are two segments from MS NOW that remind people of Trump's heinous words and acts, like calling the Press the Enemy of the People, indicting the Southern Poverty Law Center for exposing hate groups, and pardoning the January 6 Domestic Terrorists who stormed Congress in his name.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries gave an excellent response to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt's disconnected and divorced-from-reality view that the media and Democrats were to blame for the Correspondence Dinner attacker, saying:
"I think that what's interesting to me, as you pointed out, is that the so-called White House press secretary, who's a disgrace. She's a stone-cold liar. Had the nerve to stand up there and read talking points being critical of statements all taken out of context that Democrats have made, and didn't have a word to say about anything that MAGA extremists have said or done, including providing aid and comfort to violent insurrectionists here at this capital on January Sixth, who brutally beat police officers.
The President then pardoned those violent rioters, many of whom have gone back into communities across the country to reoffend. And as you pointed out, one of whom threatened to kill me, he said, kill the terrorist. Where did that language come from? What Republicans use that language? Why did that pardon MAGA extremist violent insurrectionists choose to use the language of terrorism directed at me when he threatened to kill me at an event? And so how can we take them seriously when they raise these partisan attacks and completely ignore the fact that a lot of folks, including Governor Shapiro, his home was attacked by an arsonist when he and his kids and wife were there.
And this so called White House press secretary wants to lecture America and lecture us about civility. Get lost. Clean up your own house before you have anything to say to us about the language that we use."
Donald Trump has not been...surprise surprise Presidential in his reaction to the attempted assassination attempt.
Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a person Trump called to be hanged for correctly pointing out that soldiers should not obey illegal orders, has posted what a President should say when something horrific like Saturday night is tried.
Earlier today (April 28,) Senator Kelly wrote:
"An attempt on the President’s life is an awful thing for our Democracy. I’m thankful Secret Service and law enforcement responded as quickly as they did before this gunman made it any closer to the President, many of his cabinet members, the press corps, and everyone else in that room.
Political violence is a growing problem in our country. It has led to violent acts against Americans and elected officials across the political spectrum. I refuse to accept that this is normal, or that we can’t do anything about it.
We have serious disagreements as a country. Some of those disagreements are passionate and personal. For 250 years, we have solved those differences at the ballot box. It’s a big part of what’s great and unique about our form of government.
That doesn’t mean we can’t be loud and clear when we think someone has a really bad idea, especially someone with power. That’s what a healthy democracy looks like. We all have the right to speak out about our government.
We also all have a moral and patriotic obligation to condemn political violence, no matter if the target is President Donald Trump, State Legislator Melissa Hortman in Minnesota, Charlie Kirk, or anyone else.
Here’s how we can turn this around. We talk to each other—in person, away from the social media algorithms that are designed to make us angry and divided. And that’s not just the job of elected officials. Frankly, Washington has a way of making this worse. These conversations start in our neighborhoods, in schools, and at the dinner table.
The other thing that has stayed with me is hearing the stories from journalists who were in the room, lying on the ground, texting their loved ones, and fearing for their lives, not yet knowing that the attacker had been stopped. That same experience isn’t unfamiliar to a whole generation of Americans. Far too often, kids are the ones sending those texts to their parents as they hide on the ground in their classrooms during lockdowns because of report of an active shooter, or in the worst instances, a gunman down the hall from or in their classroom. I’ve talked to parents who lost their children to gun violence and will never fully recover, and to kids who are traumatized from losing their friends or witnessing something in a school hallway that I might have seen in war. I know something about that phone call that changes everything. I’ll never forget when my wife, Gabby’s, chief of staff called me on January 8th, 2011, to say Gabby had been shot in the head. That act of violence flipped our world upside down.
A week ago, it was family members in Shreveport, Louisiana whose worlds were flipped upside down when eight children were murdered and two others were injured in a shocking act of domestic violence. This was the deadliest mass shooting since January 2024.
Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children and teens in America. The lax firearms laws that allow criminals, domestic abusers, and the dangerously mentally ill to get access to guns makes all of us less safe. It’s just wrong.
I refuse to accept that this should be normal in America and can’t be changed. Since Gabby was shot, I’ve already seen change start to happen. We know the steps we can take to strengthen gun laws while protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. If we do that, and we reject the forces that are trying to divide us, everyone, from the president to our kids, will be safer.
These are challenging times, but we’re up for the challenge if we all work on it together."
That is how a President should speak.
Mr. Trump and his people could learn something from this post.
I miss Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
I miss their steadiness and competence.
I miss their economy.
I miss that they left the country better off when they founded it.
I miss their following the Constitution and Pro Democracy leadership.
I miss them working for the American People and not themselves.
I am fairly sure most people around the world, including groups that thought he did not care enough about them and gullibly believed his predecessor and successor's serial lying about bringing down prices and ending wars, miss them now, too.
When Mr. Trump is not dozing off in the White House for all the press and the American People to see, he continually lies his ass off about negotiations with Iran, saying the war is won, he and the Israellis changed the regime, and they have agreed to all his terms.
That was all before extending the ceasefire, with Trump claiming Iran's leaders need time to consider his terms and "he wants to take time" in coming to a deal with the Persian government.
Dizzy from all the head spinning, yet trying to organize all the lies and misinformation coming from the Mad King.
That is a far cry from Mr. Trump, who said that this war would take only five weeks and the people of Iran would rise up and overthrow their government.
However, this recent act does help one family in this country.
Trump's.
As numerous outlets have reported, including MSNOW, Trump's two oldest sons (Donald Jr. and Eric) and son-in-law (Jared Kushner) are reaping the benefits of this war, securing defense contracts in drone weaponry and robotics, along with making billions from financial deals with Trump's Arabian soulmates who run countries on the other side of the Persian Gulf.
When Trump talked in an Orwellian fashion about ushering in a new Golden Age, he was not talking about one for the average working and middle-class American who is being shafted and hosed at the gas pump and the grocery store every day.
He was talking about his family and all his donors in the fossil fuel industry who are seeing record profits.
It is gratifying that the mainstream press is finally giving more attention to Trump's mental decline and his corruption.
When the Mad King dozes off in front of the White House Press Corps, they can not really avoid it.
Imagine if Biden did that. No one would ever hear the end of it.
And Trump's family bilking the government for as much money as it can makes Hunter Biden's paint sales look like a child shoplifting Cracker Jacks.
The Biden family did not start a war so they could increase the worth of their financial portfolios.
Affordability and Accountability.
Those are the issues Hillary Clinton recommended Democrats, after seeing how the Hungarian opposition prevailed over Orban, run on.
Running on that and a campaign to expand and lift up the Middle Class while bringing the corrupt Trumpists Epstein Class/Mara Largo Mafia, the justice they deserve should be winning issues that will bring public servants who actually care about the American People back into power, and hopefully start to steer the country in the right direction again
On Earth Day yesterday, one of Arizona's Representatives and Senators, Yassamin Ansari and Mark Kelly, condemned corporatist Donald Trump and MAGA Congressional Republicans for instituting anti-environmental and anti-sustainability policies designed to turn the clock back on clean energy projects while exploiting and ravaging the resources on public lands and national parks.
In a video released by the Congressional Group, Natural Resource Democrats, Representative Ansari, along with fellow Committee members Maxine Dexter, Val Hoyle, Teresa Leger Fernández, and Jared Huffman, showcased how the Trump/Vance Pro Polluter and Land Exploiting Regime is harming the American People.
In 1952, with Dwight Eisenhower at the head of the ticket and McCarthyism in its popular phase, Republicans ran on a simple slogan attacking the Truman Administration on three words: Korea (while the war was going on and Truman had fired conservative darling Douglas MacArthur), Communism, and Corruption.
While most historians concede that the popular Eisenhower would have won that election no matter what slogan he and his campaign employed, Democrats should use that concise marketing strategy to channel voter discontent with the current Donald Trump regime in order to drive them to the polls this November.
There are many interesting ideas with many examples of Trump and his team's incompetence, fascist mindset, public corruption, with his family and allies enriching themselves, and poor economic, immigration, and policy choices.
Appearing on Morning Joe after the Hungarian Elections that saw the defeat of Viktor Orban, 2016 Presidential Popular Vote Winner, Hillary Clinton proposed that Democrats emulate the messaging of Péter Magyar running on a simple slogan of Affordability and Accountability.
Clinton had already penned an op-ed suggesting how Democrats could run on the affordability issue.
Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff has given spirited speeches in Georgia in his re-election (and Presidential???) campaign, calling for the people to rise up against the corruption of the Mara Largo Mafia and the Epstein Class led by Donald Trump, his sons, his son-in-law, and Steven Wyckoff.
Joe Scarborough on his MSNOW show said the Democrats should run on Costs, Corruption, and Chaos.
Arizona Legislative Democrats are running on a slogan, "An Arizona we can afford."
Personally, I think they should add Expanding the Middle Class to that.
Also, looking at the 1952 Republican Slogan, it would be fairly easy to substitute the words Iran for Korea, Fascism for Communism, add Stupidity and Affordability, and run on two slogans.
The first would be campaigning against the Trump regime with:
Iran, Fascism, Corruption, Stupidity, and Affordability.
The other would embody what the Democrats are running for:
Lift People Up and Expand the Middle Class.
Another potential slogan one that plays on the World War One Slogan of Hang the Kaiser, would be Arrest the Epstein Class.
Please watch the video below where MS NOW Economic Correspondent Steve Rattner shows how Donald Trump is giving his devoted followers the ho...
