Donald Trump and his family's illegal insider trading

Echo letter to the editor published Scranton, Pennsylvania, The Times-Tribune: 

Ever pushing the boundaries of corruption, Trump’s newest endeavor is offering access to his social media company charging traders and investors ❗💲💵100,000 per month for faster access to his posts on his Truth (FakeNews❗) Social platform.

Trump also touted specific stocks, complimenting companies such as Nvidia and Apple, rallying their share prices. Insider trading is still illegal. Trump’s Media & Technology Group is majority owned by Trump and his family and controls social media. In April, Trump posted, “This Is a Great Time to Buy.” 🙄😒

Since returning to office, Trump and his family and high-ranking members of his cabinet have💲💲 💰benefited personally. 

Trump gave a no-bid contract to a long-time supporter to clean the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a continuing embarrassment. 

It’s not surprising that taxpayers are now funding half the costs of the White House ballroom. Peter Navarro intervened to secure a 💲620 million Pentagon loan tied to Donald Trump, Jr. Trump’s sons stand to benefit from a 💲1.6 billion Kazakhstan mining deal after the Trump administration helped broker the deal.

Jared Kushner sought to raise 💲5 billion for his private equity firm from Saudi Arabia. Blatant corruption on this scale should not be normalized yet where are the Republicans principled and willing to speak out❓

From: Rose Ann (Valleri) Bivinetto,  Palm Desert, California, former Hazleton Pennsylvania resident

Donald Trump and his evil obsession with Hitlerism

Donald Trump’s expansionism is a direct parallel to Adolf Hitler’s playbook. Trump floated the idea of expanding our country by making Canada the 51st state — not to mention his views on Greenland and Venezuela.

Echo opinion letter published in Lancaster Online:

This is exactly how Hitler kicked off World War II when he attempted to expand Germany’s territory by invading Poland. Anyone who thinks that these are empty threats by Trump should remember that his gross lack of sound judgment, coupled with the incompetent advisers he appointed, resulted in a senseless war with Iran without congressional approval.

Germany was a total one-party dictatorship under Hitler and Nazism.  

In my view, we now have more in common with Hitler’s dictatorship than we ever have had under any other U.S. president in my lifetime. Trump loves dictators and I believe that he would love to be a dictator. 

Trump hates and frequently attacks freedom of speech and the press and is doing everything possible to control our elections. That includes his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attempt to overthrow the free and fair election that he lost.

Trump essentially imposes (illegal❗) taxes on Americans through his tariffs, again without congressional approval. These were all characteristics of the Hitler regime, and most Republicans in Congress refuse to intervene.

To protect our democracy, it is absolutely essential that we vote Trump’s Republican cult loyalists out of office in the midterm elections.

From George Bliss in West Lampeter Township, Pennsylvania

"So Long Dearie" the White House press secretary wants to spend quality time with her growing family

Trump’s Constant Calls to Karoline Leavitt Really Backfired
Echo report published in New York Magazine Intelligencer by Margaret Hartman

When White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced on Wednesday that she will leave her job by the end of the month, there was a lot of speculation about her motivations. In a lengthy statement posted to social media, the 28-year-old mother of two, who just returned from maternity leave on July 16, said she wanted to focus her attention on her kids.

Being a mother and welcoming a new baby while working in one of the most demanding jobs in the world has been the most rewarding yet challenging season of my life, to say the least. The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary — and that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life.

But is that just cover for drama within the Trump administration? Or is Leavitt, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2022, plotting to enter politics like former White House press secretary turned Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders❓

New reporting suggests Leavitt’s stated explanation is broadly accurate and not unique to the Trump administration. 

People often exit White House roles after just a few years as they are incredibly demanding jobs that leave little time for family life. 

But there is a Trumpy twist to the story that explains why Leavitt came back from maternity leave only to quit less than a month later, leaving the administration with no clear successor just a few months before the midterms.

Sources told The Daily Mail that Trump really wanted Leavitt to stay on as press secretary, and it sounds as though his aggressive effort to communicate this might have backfired. Rather than letting her recharge during her leave, he kept pestering her about when she was coming back:

One source close to Leavitt — the youngest ever White House press secretary — reveals she had been strongly weighing whether to quit during maternity leave, as the president would contact her often and repeatedly ask when she was coming back.

Another source added that Leavitt has been experiencing extreme “burnout.”

“It was a very stressful job to do with her children. She never got any sleep, and she didn’t want her performance to slip either, so she decided to stay as long as she could and do the job well,” the source told the Mail. “The president did everything he could to keep her.”

Everything except letting her fully detach from work, apparently.

Insiders said Leavitt has been telling people for two months that she felt ready to leave but she had to figure out how to exit without infuriating her boss.

“She was just trying to figure out how to politely step down with [Trump’s] blessing,” one source said.

It looks like Leavitt pulled it off. While Trump is known for berating staffers on their way out, he said on Truth Social that Leavitt quitting to focus on her family is “a decision I totally understand and respect”.

But any parent applying to fill Leavitt’s role should be clear on the fact that Donald “She Takes Care of the Baby” Trump doesn’t really “totally understand and respect” the sanctity of parental leave.

P.S. Maine Writer: Although I respect Karoline Leavitt's resignation decision, she will not be missed. Nevertheless, being around Trump too long is just dangerous. Trump is haunted by thwarted assassination attempts, real or manufactured and his assorted paramours, whoever they are, get in the way of working with him. 

Enjoy Barbara Streisand's terrific performance in Hello Dolly: "So Long Dearie❗"

Donald Trump cannot understand artificial intelligence because the "A. part" and the "I. part" are too complicated for him to understand

 A.I. Is Now a Major Election Issue- Published in The New Yorker

(So, will Artificial Intelligence be able to outsmart its opponents?)

As Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s newly elected Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, put it, “People really effing hate data centers.”
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

This summer, as the ideologically fractious Democratic primaries begin to recede and the politically pivotal midterm elections edge nearer, candidates and voters alike have had their attention drawn by vast, humming edifices newly constructed on the outskirts of towns. Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former public-health official who finished a deft insurgent campaign by becoming Michigan’s Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, sounded a theme that helped decide primaries in his state and in Kansas last week. “People really effing hate data centers,” he said.

That kind of consensus is rare in politics right now. About seventy per cent of Americans, including sixty-three per cent of Republicans, oppose building the hyper-scale centers that power the A.I. boom in their area, according to Gallup, but more than four thousand centers have been built across the country, and about four thousand more are planned. Politicians, first from the left and then from the center and the right, have spent the past few months hastily distancing themselves from them. 

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed a federal moratorium on new data centers in March, and the pragmatic Governor Kathy Hochul enacted the first statewide one in New York in July. The rallying cries against A.I. can themselves sound a bit as if ChatGPT wrote them. “It’s time to press control-alt-delete to put a stop to this A.I.-data-center crisis,” a closing ad for Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist who is the front-runner in this Tuesday’s primary for Wisconsin governor, announced. Still, when something is this unpopular, blunt talk can work.

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, always on high alert for political opportunity, set conditions on new data centers in his state in May. But the surprise in recent weeks has been a reversal on the issue by business conservatives who not long ago were touting A.I. projects as the cornerstone of a new prosperous age. 

Just eight months ago, Governor Greg Abbott, at a news conference with the Google C.E.O., Sundar Pichai, bragged, “Texas will be the centerpiece for A.I. data centers for Google in the entire world.”

Then, last week, Abbott abruptly announced that all such projects would be suspended, pending an “audit” of their costs and potential benefits. Even the brashest, most pro-tech Republicans are sounding defensive. Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Presidential candidate and DOGE co-chair, who is now the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, insisted that “despite my opponent’s claims, I’m not ‘pro-data center.’ ”

Part of the issue is simply that the facilities are so huge and tend not to provide many jobs once construction is complete. 

Microsoft’s announcement of a new site in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, enumerated “46.6 miles of deep foundation piles, 26.5 million pounds of structural steel, 120 miles of medium-voltage underground cable and 72.6 miles of mechanical piping.” The tech journalist Jasmine Sun noted, about a center being built for OpenAI and Oracle in the same state, “Opponents time how long it takes to drive past one at highway speed (1 minute 42 seconds for the Port Washington site).” The resources required for such facilities—electricity for power and water for cooling—have sometimes stressed local systems: after two recent data-center-related electrical surges in northern Virginia, an expert from the Union of Concerned Scientists said that utility companies had fielded “complaints about flickering lights and strange noises coming from refrigerators.” 

Protests spread, and, according to Data Center Watch, at least seventy-five data-center projects, whose costs totaled roughly a hundred and thirty billion dollars, were stopped in the first three months of 2026, alone.

But this summer, some politicians detected a deeper unease, and  began asking more basic questions about whether A.I. infrastructure will benefit ordinary people, or just the billionaires behind the technology, and why it has taken mass protest to force public consideration of these issues. 

As El-Sayed put it during a campaign stop at a data center in Saline, Michigan, “Unless and until we protect local communities from the power of corrupting money and politics, we’re going to continue to see projects like this get pushed onto local communities despite themselves.”

What makes data centers interesting not just as a local issue but as a national one is that they might allow Democrats to highlight the duplicity of Donald Trump’s politics of populism and his embrace of futuristic tech billionaires. Whereas the President’s 2016, run focussed on Rust Belt themes of economic decline, his 2024, campaign featured the presence of Elon Musk, who brought with him a roster of Silicon Valley allies—one of whom, David Sacks, became the President’s A.I. and crypto czar—and the promise of a transformed future. But, as the A.I. boom and the data-center build-out have accumulated momentum, the statements from the tech industry about widespread job displacement have grown increasingly dystopian. In May, Microsoft’s A.I. C.E.O., Mustafa Suleyman, said that the technology would be able to automate most white-collar tasks within twelve to eighteen months. Even if that’s an overstatement, or corporate hype—there’s little evidence of job loss so far, and Suleyman later walked back his remarks—it should have been obvious that the public might need some reassurance that the economy would still require human beings.

But Musk and Sacks have become less visible in Washington, and although A.I. has been the major business and social topic of the past year and a half, the President has barely addressed it. The White House’s most memorable foray into the A.I. debate is still the very weird press conference that Melania Trump held in March where she walked onstage side by side with a white-plated, faintly Stormtrooper-looking robot called Figure 03, which said in a mechanical female voice that it was grateful to play a part in revolutionizing education. For the Trump Administration, the A.I. backlash is at once a source of political trouble and an expression of its second-term rudderlessness, in that the Donald Trump has helped unleash a future that he does not seem to understand.

The moratoriums themselves may not be particularly consequential to the advance of artificial intelligence—many data centers have already been built, and others can be constructed in friendlier jurisdictions, or even overseas. In May, the Anthropic C.E.O., Dario Amodei, waved away the political challenges. He said, “We’re going to find that ideology will not survive the nature of this technology. It won’t survive reality.” The things he was talking about, he added, “are gonna become bipartisan and universal because everyone will recognize the necessity of it.” On the campaign trail, in Michigan and elsewhere, something like the opposite is happening. ♦

Published in the print edition of the August 17, 2026, issue, with the headline “Reading the Data.”

Donald Trump is pointing wasted ammunition in the wrong direction. Like how about at North Korea, for example?

Echo letter to the editor: Trump, the world’s tough guy Published in TribLive #TribuneReview. 

Since January 20, 2025, Donald Trump has threatened a military takeover of Greenland, referred to Canada as the 51st state, bombed alleged drug boats, without evidence, in the Pacific and Caribbean, invaded Venezuela and arrested its president, and placed an economic stranglehold on Cuba, hoping to collapse its government and pave the way for a Trump takeover.

In February 2026, Trump initiated a war of his own choice on Iran for the purpose of causing the overthrow of its government and obliterating its offensive nuclear capacity. Six months later, the Trump/Iran war continues and has spread to other nations in the Middle East.

If the incompetent Donald Trump really wants to burnish his reputation as the world’s tough guy, he might want to consider bombing North Korea, a country with missiles and actual nuclear weapons that are now or soon will be capable of reaching Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast. The exchange of love letters with Kim Jong Un has thus far proven ineffective. I wonder if Trump will again campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize❓

From Philip S. Kift in Ligonier, Pennsylvania

Republicans obsessed trying to discredit public health hero Dr. Anthony Fauci but do nothing to challenge ignorant Donald Trump

Senate GOP witch hunt ignores the Constitution. Protect Dr. Fauc!

Dr. Anthony Fauci is a hero❗

Echo opinion published in The Mercury News
Re: “Senate panel OKs plan to charge Fauci”
Frankly, IMO, I believe Dr. (Senator) Rand Paul, Rep. Kentucky,  is jealous about Dr. Anthony Fauci. Although Dr. Rand Paul has a medical degree, he has very little understanding about public health or about the prevention of infectious diseases.  

Also, obviously, Senator Rad Paul does not understand the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which clearly states that “No person…shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” Since Paul had repeatedly said he believes Dr. Fauci should end up “behind bars,” is it any surprise that Fauci, on the advice of his attorney, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at the July 29,  Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing examining his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic❓

And now, Paul and his fellow Republicans on the committee have decided to hold the 85-year-old Fauci, who is a public health hero, in contempt of Congress for exercising his legal rights under the Fifth Amendment. You have to wonder what happened to due process in this administration. 

Are they merely grandstanding or just looking for someone to blame❓

From Judy Hammon in Orinda, California

Donald Trump obviously is not well. He is mentally and physically unfit to finish his term. Does Senator Susan Collins know this?

Echo report published in The New York Times by Dr. James Reiner a professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University.

Dick Cheney’s Cardiologist. Trump Has Not Looked Well. 

We Should Know Why❓

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s heart problems were never a national secret.  (b. January 30, 1941- d. November 3, 2025)

I was Mr. Cheney’s cardiologist for 27 years, including his two terms as vice president. During his time in the White House, he needed stents, a defibrillator and medical treatment for an arrhythmia and a blood clot in his leg. After the defibrillator was implanted in his chest in 2001, he would frequently show visitors to his West Wing office a sample device provided to him by the manufacturer.

Mr. Cheney’s candor about his health was an anomaly for an American politician. Grover Cleveland underwent secret cancer surgery while he was president (on board a yacht for maximum privacy). Franklin Delano Roosevelt hid his use of a wheelchair from the public. Ahead of his campaign for a fourth term, he struggled with severe hypertension and congestive heart failure, but the public was told that the president’s health was “excellent in all respects.” 

President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance raised concerns that the White House had attempted to conceal the president’s decline. For weeks after his hospitalization this summer, Senator Mitch McConnell shared almost no details about why he was absent from office.

In June, Donald Trump turned 80 years old, and at the end of this term he will be the oldest person ever to serve as this nation’s leader. After Trump’s medical evaluation in May, Dr. Sean Barbabella, the physician to the president, wrote that Mr. Trump “remains in excellent health” and that his “demanding daily schedule, including multiple high-level meetings, public engagements and regular physical activity, continues to support his overall well-being.”

Despite reassurances from the White House to the contrary, at times over the past year, Trump has not looked well.

I am not Trump’s doctor, and have only reviewed his records that have been made public.  

But Trump is probably the most photographed president in American history, and a variety of physical ailments are easy to see. He’s had large bruises on both hands, swelling in his legs and episodes when it appears that he is struggling to stay awake.

Also, Trump had advanced imaging performed for unclear reasons. The public is again left to wonder whether the nation’s leader is OK.

Despite the unparalleled power afforded to the president of the United States, there is no formal requirement for the commander in chief to certify his fitness for duty. That’s a mistake. Members of the military, Secret Service agents, commercial pilots, school bus drivers and air traffic controllers all must periodically demonstrate that they are well enough to perform their work. The current practice of reporting the results of a yearly medical examination for the president began in the Nixon administration, but it’s only a custom, not a formal obligation. And, as history has shown, it can be unreliable.

This does not mean that every detail about a president’s health must be disclosed. It’s appropriate to withhold elements of a medical history that could be exploited by an adversary. 

For example, in 2007, when we replaced Mr. Cheney’s defibrillator, we didn’t share information about a new wireless feature of the device that I considered a security threat to the vice president. (We ultimately were able to get the manufacturer to disable that capacity.)

The 25th Amendment to the Constitution allows for the best solution to this problem: It permits Congress to establish a panel outside the executive branch to assess the health and fitness of the president. In April of this year, Representative Jamie Raskin introduced a bill to create a congressional commission that would do just that.

Ideally, such a panel would be empowered to review data from routine presidential physical examinations, as well as assessments performed when medical concerns emerge.

If such a commission were in place today, these are some of the medical questions it could clarify concerning Trump’s health. The American public deserves answers to all of them.

1. Dr. Barbabella’s recent report states that the president was evaluated by 22 consultants, an extraordinary number of specialists for even the most extensive executive health evaluation. Why were so many physicians summoned, and what were their specialties❓

2. Trump often shows prominent bruising on his hands, which the White House attributes to frequent handshaking and frequent use of aspirin. Trauma from handshaking has never seemed plausible, and it doesn’t explain why the president’s left hand is often similarly discolored. Also, why would the president take a dose of aspirin four times as high as the dose typically recommended by doctors?

3. Swelling in the president’s legs last summer led to an unscheduled medical evaluation. The president’s physician described the problem as “chronic venous insufficiency,” a condition common in older people, that results from leaky valves in the veins of the legs. It usually develops gradually over a long period. But during Mr. Trump’s comprehensive physical examination just a few months earlier, Dr. Barbabella documented no swelling in the president’s legs. If that’s true, his swelling would be by definition acute, not chronic. Acute leg swelling is a potentially much more consequential finding that can be caused by issues such as heart and kidney disease. What’s the reason for this discrepancy❓

4. Donald Trmp  often appears to struggle to stay awake, signs of a condition doctors refer to as excessive daytime somnolence. This problem, which is sometimes evident during Oval Office events, was not addressed in the report after Trump’s comprehensive physical exam in May. Although Trump is a renowned night owl, his sleepiness seems relatively new. There are several possible causes for the president’s symptoms, some of which could have serious complications if left untreated. Has the president’s medical team identified the source of this issue❓ And how are they addressing it?

5. In October 2025, Trump underwent advanced imaging of his heart and abdomen at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The president’s physician offered a vague description of the reason for the tests: “to identify issues early, confirm overall health and ensure he maintains long-term vitality and function.” He said the tests did not reveal any abnormalities. Was there a specific symptom or clinical event that prompted this testing❓

6. Past Trump medical reports have disclosed the president’s use of the drug finasteride, which prevents hair loss. The drug was not mentioned in the report after Trump’s most recent medical examination. In response to a query from The Washington Post about its absence, the White House responded, “The current report reflects all medications deemed clinically relevant to disclose at this time.” It does not matter, in any material way, if the president is or isn’t taking a hair-loss drug. The more important question is, what medications prescribed for Trump, if any, has the White House decided to withhold from the public❓

7. Donald Trump has spoken about how well he performs on cognitive testing. However, the exam that Trump describes, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, is a brief and basic screening tool, with simple questions (draw a clock, identify a camel), often performed in response to a concern from the patient or a member of the family. Why has the president undergone this test numerous times, and have there been more sophisticated neurocognitive assessments performed❓(I am a registered nurse. In my opinion, Donald Trump continues to agree taking the Montreal Cognitive Assessment screening tool because he memorized the answers.  As a television actor, he is accustomed to memorizing the lines he was given to say during his media performances, so he taught himself  how to memorize simple pictures and short sentences.)

Some people would argue that these personal medical details are more than the public deserves to know: After all, Buckingham Palace has not revealed many details about King Charles’s cancer or his treatment.

But the United States does not have a king. In a representative democracy, the people must have confidence in the health of their leader, and in the leader’s capacity to guide the nation. We have been kept in the dark too long.

Comment in the NYTimes:  

I 

Entirely agree with this essay. As a physician it is extraordinarily important that the public be able to assess the fitness of the president in an objective fashion. I do not believe that requires revelation of every gory detail of the president‘s health, but there must be a process that is fair, non-partisan, evidence based, and will allow the public to have appropriate information about the physical and cognitive fitness of a president. From caduceus

Note: Will some literate person please read this New York Times opinion to Senator Susan Collins? She is obviously unable to process anything with truth since her maga conversion.