President Donald Trump has seen no shortage of high-profile defections in recent months, and another came on Monday, this time from a former friend who referred to the Commander in Chief as a "mob boss."Media personality Geraldo Rivera spent decades as a close personal friend of Trump’s, having met him in the 1970s. While the two have had their ups and downs over the years, last week’s announcement that a “slush fund” would be created for the likely benefit of convicted J6 rioters seems to have been a bridge too far for Rivera, who has taken to social media to share his thoughts on the matter. “President Trump notoriously believes that what goes around comes around, or in his words, ‘When people treat me unfairly, I don't let them forget,’” posted Rivera. “Spoken like a true mob boss.”He went on to explain that while he does think that Trump has himself been the target of politically motivated prosecution in the past, for alleged crimes like colluding with Russia and mishandling classified documents, “these examples are a far cry from rewarding a gang of thugs who after trashing the Capitol dare call themselves patriots.”The $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund was announced as part of a settlement in the president’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, and also included language that would bar the IRS from auditing Trump or his family “forever.” Supposedly created to reimburse those who were “harmed” by the Biden administration, it has been broadly interpreted as a means of rewarding those arrested for crimes during the January 6th insurrection. Many J6ers have already declared their intentions to file for as much as $30 million. This was too much for Rivera, who wrote, “To compensate those convicted and punished by the government for their actions on that dark day, he is in effect proposing a slush fund… President Trump apparently intends to reward everyone who stormed the Capitol, including those who crawled their way up the exterior, busted out windows and doors, assaulted cops and defaced our nearly 250-year legacy of constitutional democracy. Trump believes those vandals are the real victims of what he believes the weaponization of the legal system.”While Rivera supported much of Trump’s actions during his first term, the latter’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election caused the former to ditch the president, prompting him to endorse Kamala Harris in 2024. Over the course of Trump’s second term, however, Rivera has been hesitantly supportive of much of what he’s done. But the slush fund appears to have caused him to reject Trump once again.“Hopefully it's not going to happen,” Rivera said of the fund. “For the first time since Trump was elected to his second term, to begin what even his friends believe to be an imperial presidency, Republicans in Congress are standing up to him. They adjourned Congress and fled the capital before Memorial Day to escape having to ratify this noxious ploy.”
