Wealthy criminals seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump are running into a brutal surprise, according to the New York Post.Not only have convicted criminals with deep pockets been confronted with "staggering" seven-figure prices for a bid at a Trump pardon, but some of them aren't even being pardoned despite paying up, the Post reported Saturday."The majority of the people paying big bucks are not getting what they want," Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas, told the Post. "A lot of them are scammers being scammed."According to the Post, Louisiana rapper Boosie BadAzz, whose real name is Torence Hatch Jr., "learned that lesson the hard way." He paid lobbyists $600,000 to help him obtain clemency from Trump for his felony gun possession charge. However, his pardon never came, and Hatch Jr. sued the lobbyists, the Post reported.Another example mentioned in the Post's reporting is Fred Daibes, who was convicted in 2024 of bribing former Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife with gold bars in exchange for Menendez's assistance with a bank fraud case. Daibes paid $1 million to a lobbying firm run by Keith Schiller, a former Trump bodyguard, but a pardon for Daibes has not materialized since he was sentenced to seven years in federal prison in January 2025, per the Post."They say don't play a player," Osler said. "A lot of them seem to be getting played right now."According to the Post, lobbying firms are charging large sums for help obtaining "executive relief."
President Donald Trump bombed at the White House Correspondents' Dinner Friday night. He knew he was bombing, too, and he even tried to meta-joke his way out of it.
MS NOW anchor Katy Tur and panelists tried to puzzle through President Donald Trump’s tone-deaf reaction to voters’ economic suffering, but the conclusion they reached was that Trump doesn’t care to please voters. Instead, he has other plans.New Yorker writer Susan Glasser pointed out that Trump appears criminally unaware of polls and incapable of adjusting his behavior on expensive tariffs or the inflationary results of his Iran war to help either himself or his party in November.“… Trump's policies are extremely unpopular,” said Glasser on a Friday’s “Moment with Katy Tur,” explaining that his historic lows are worse going into the midterm elections than in his first term. “Even in Trump's first term, he was personally polarizing and unpopular. But a lot of people had the view that this former businessman was somehow going to be good for the economy. And consistently people would say, ‘well, maybe I don't like him, or I'm not sure, but he's been good for the economy,’ and that helped to float him through … a politically problematic moment of his first presidency. This time, what you have is a situation where, again, he's very unpopular. Over 60 percent of voters in many polls right now are saying they don't approve of his job as president, but even more of them don't approve of the job he's doing on the economy.” This includes more than Democrats and Republican leaning independents, Glasser added. Even Republicans are softening on the president on the crucial question of the economy.“And trump is giving them almost nothing,” Glasser said. “Not only is he raising prices, in effect with his policies, he has taken to saying affordability is a made-up hoax. He says the Democrats invented this word and it's not even true. It doesn't mean anything. And, you know, it's not a very good way to get the voters empathy if you're saying basically ‘stop whining.’”“I get you on that,” said Tur. “It's not just that … he doesn't want to admit that affordability is a problem or is something that Americans have been concerned about for a long time. It's the optics of what he's focused on and what he's doing physically in some spaces as well.”Tur then played video of Trump’s gilded Oval Office, taken by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino.“It's like Louis XIV vomited all over the Oval Office,” said Tur. “I mean, I honestly think … Louis the 14th would look at this and say, ‘this is too much.’ There is so much gold in this room that that I don't know who he thinks he's impressing by this because the American public, if they're telling everybody that their top concern is affordability, if they're being asked to pay more for Donald Trump's war, they're being asked to pay more for his … tariffs, etc. Everything is going up. And they look at the White House and this man is obsessed with pasting gold medallions to everything, optically I don't understand that.”“Why do it,” demanded Tur. “If you say he believes he just has this faith in tariffs, fine. But then why add to all of that by turning the Oval Office into a gilded mausoleum, and then also telling everybody that affordability is a hoax?To this, Glasser said Trump has no cause to win votes of popularity among American voters because he plans to snatch power through other means.“Trump has become very expert over his decade in power in the Republican Party, at repeating lies over and over again. And the fact that he's ceding the ground now so far in advance of the election this fall and already saying ‘it's rigged’ before anyone's ever cast any vote, I think that's what we need to pay attention to, frankly,” said Glasser. - YouTube youtu.be
Editor’s Note: Welcome to The TNR Blue Book. It’s our new daily newsletter that covers Congress and much more, but with a distinctly TNR twist: Our focus will be strictly on Democrats, liberal and progressive groups, and the fight to take back power and save democracy. Every morning, you’ll get a rundown of late-breaking news, what Democrats on Capitol Hill are thinking, quick hits on what you need to know nationally, the latest on what’s coming out of the think tanks and activist groups, short interviews with progressive newsmakers and authors, and more (including some humor and political trivia!). There’s nothing else out there like it. Sign up and get this newsletter for free. Inside WashingtonInstead of tariffs, maybe help Canada put out wildfires?Democratic lawmakers don’t merely think Trump’s newly announced 50 percent tariffs on Canada are a bad idea from an economic standpoint. They also want to see the U.S. actively helping Canadians fight the Ontario wildfires currently sending smoke into the U.S., and fear for the future of the two countries’ relationship.Trump has told reporters that the tariffs he announced Monday aren’t in response to the wildfires, but the timing is highly suspicious. The announcement came just days after Trump said, “Maybe they should pay us some damages or something, or we should do some tariffs.”To some, the arbitrary nature of Trump’s decision is the biggest affront. “There’s no question that Trump thinks he’s a king and he can use these tariffs to execute whatever he wants,” said Senator Ron Wyden, who on Wednesday unveiled a bill to reassert congressional authority over tariffs.Others are worried about the economic impact in their own states. “Canada is a friend, one of our closest allies,” said Michigan Senator Gary Peters. “In Michigan, where we have close trading relations with Canadians, they’re a vital part of our economy, and it’s an important friendship.”Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota is similarly concerned about her home state. “Minnesota has a good relationship with Canada. Clearly, the hostile and reckless approach of the Trump administration towards Canada makes those relationships hard to maintain.”But beyond the typical condemnation of tariffs, several politicians are also suggesting that with wildfires in particular, the U.S. might be better served by collaborating more closely with its northern neighbor. Some would even like to see direct aid. “I was on a call this morning with Secretary [of Agriculture Brooke] Rollins and leaders from the Forest Service talking about the fires in northern Minnesota, and I know that the Forest Service and Canadian officials are working closely and well together. So I think at the operating level, the relationships continue to be effective,” Smith told me.On Saturday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford criticized the “short memory” of American politicians who have blamed Canada for Ontario’s wildfire smoke drifting southward. “We had the water bombers and everyone going over to California [last year],” he said. “That’s what neighbors do.”Californian Senator Alex Padilla hasn’t forgotten that. “They’re there for us in our time of need,” he said, “and we should be there for them.”—Emma Janssen Full-time workers increasingly need SNAP and Medicaid to make ends meetThe number of Americans who rely on SNAP and Medicaid despite working full-time for major companies has shot up, according to a report the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, released Wednesday. The number of Amazon workers who receive anti-poverty benefits nearly tripled between February 2020 and September 2025, the report found. Gig-based companies like Uber, Lyft, Grubhub, Instacart, and DoorDash also employ high numbers of Medicaid and SNAP recipients, the report found, a major change from 2020. Meanwhile, Walmart was the top employer of Medicaid recipients in both 2020 and 2025.The report confirms what anti-poverty advocates have been saying for years: It’s becoming harder to be a working American, and working full-time does not guarantee financial security. It also shows that some of the country’s most successful companies don’t pay their workers a living wage, according to Senator Bernie Sanders, who requested the GAO produce the report.“American taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the starvation wages of large corporations like Walmart and Amazon,” said Sanders in a statement.Between 2020 and 2025, Walmart increased its profits from nearly $15 billion to nearly $22 billion. Meanwhile, the number of Walmart employees relying on Medicaid in the 11 states sampled in the GAO report increased by 55 percent.Life has probably gotten harder for these employees in the months since the data was collected.
