All posts tagged "rick wilson"

DOJ whistleblower torches 'staggering' Trump move that gave fraudster a 'second chance'

A Justice department whistleblower on Saturday tore into President Donald Trump for what she described as a "staggering" decision to give a fraudster a "second chance."

During an episode of The Lincoln Project Podcast, former DOJ pardon attorney Liz Oyer argued that Trump's pardons were "fundamentally different" from others made in the past.

"He has pardoned quite a few individuals who committed fraud involving government programs, including Medicare and Medicaid," Oyer said. "He's also pardoned all manner of white collar frauds, including those that involve stealing money from investors."

Host and former GOP strategist Rick Wilson described the beneficiaries of Trump's "pay-to-play" pardons as "assertively terrible people who have exploited Americans."

Oyer went on to say, "The most staggering example is this man named Trevor Milton," the former Nikola Motors CEO, who defrauded investors with a clean energy truck that didn't work.

"Trevor Milton's investors lost almost $700 million in the process," Oyer explained. "And Milton got a full pardon from Donald Trump at the start of his second term in office after making a couple million dollars in political donations."

Milton is "already back in business" since his pardon, according to Oyer, who said the convicted fraudster has "now got a new startup in which he's trying to build autonomous aircraft." Milton's return to business is "really galling," Oyer added.

"This is a scam artist who's gotten a second chance at life thanks to Donald Trump," Oyer said. "One of the things that Milton has told the media that Trump said to him is, 'Trevor, you're cleaner than a baby's bottom now.' It just sounds insane, absurd, but this is the caliber of person that Donald Trump is pardoning."

Oyer, who was fired from the DOJ after refusing to recommend the reinstatement of actor Mel Gibson's rights to gun ownership, suggested that Trump "sees something of himself in these rich folks who have been prosecuted for committing frauds."

Trump made enemy whose revenge is 'going to be quite, quite sweet': ex-GOP strategist

A former GOP operative described how he is looking forward to the revenge of an enemy President Donald Trump made in the Senate.

During an episode of The Lincoln Project Podcast, Rick Wilson spoke about the feuds Trump started with senators, but in particular, he relished the revenge plot that Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) is suggesting.

"If you follow his Twitter feed lately, you know he is planning a beautiful set of 'F— yous' for Trump," Wilson said, sharing screenshots of posts by Cornyn.

The posts Wilson showed in his video mentioned the filibuster and anti-terrorism bills. According to Wilson, the posts hint that "the revenge is going to be quite, quite sweet."

Cornyn lost the Republican runoff in May to keep his seat in the Senate after Trump backed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton shortly before the election. However, Cornyn isn't alone, as Wilson noted that Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) reportedly got into a shouting match with Trump during a closed-door meeting.

"I would pay so much money for a video of that," Wilson said about Cassidy and Trump's fight. "Glorious."

Wilson described a Republican caucus in the Senate featuring both Cornyn and Cassidy who "hate" Trump "with the fire of a billion suns." He included Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in that caucus as well.

"Not one of these Republican senators can go home and look their voters in the eye and say, 'I'm fighting for you every day trying to do something about this inflation, trying to do something about these fuel prices, trying to do something about grocery prices, trying to do something about corruption in Washington,'" Wilson said. "They can't do it. He has boxed them. They have bought this entire package. And you don't just get to wear the hat. You got to wear the whole clown suit if you're with Trump."

Noem's husband chased 'one last hoo-ha' with mistress as bombshell story broke: report

The husband of former Trump cabinet secretary Kristi Noem asked his dominatrix for "one last hoo-ha" as stories about his scandal broke, the model said.

The Daily Mail reported earlier this year that Bryon Noem carried on a years-long relationship with dominatrix Shy Sotomayor, who performs under the name Raelynn Riley. In a recent interview with former GOP strategist Rick Wilson, Sotomayor spilled more tea about her relationship with Bryon and how he reacted after their secret relationship was exposed.

The bombshell report published photos and messages detailing how Bryon enjoyed "bimbofication" at the hands of highly paid sex workers while his wife was the head of the Department of Homeland Security and the South Dakota governor before that. Bryon didn't deny messaging models and sending photos when The Mail reached out to him while his wife's spokesperson said she was "blindsided."

Sotomayor said that after she tried cutting off contact with Bryon, she "never heard from him," until the scandalous story broke.

"A day later, the news pops up. So he was still talking to me as people were like reporting on him and submitting like screenshots," Sotomayor told Wilson. "I think he was trying to get one last hoo-ha, you know, out of it."

She estimated that her contact with Bryon dropped off around "early May, April."

The Daily Mail exposé came out in late March. Noem was ousted as DHS secretary in March.

White House's silence on Trump's health disturbs ex-GOP analyst: 'Hiding something'

The White House still has not released the results of President Donald Trump's three-hour medical and dental exam this week at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, as political and medical experts have raised questions about whether the Trump administration has concealed information about his current health, according to NBC News.

Trump, 79, was scheduled for the appointment on Tuesday, and a White House official anticipated "a readout in the next day or so." This was his third visit to the medical center since his inauguration, NBC reported.

Questions were raised over the length of time he was with medical professionals amid skepticism over the president's claims that he was in "perfect" health. He also canceled a rare trip to Camp David on Tuesday after returning from the exam, with bad weather cited as the reason for the last-minute change.

After the visit, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

"Just finished my 6-month physical at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. Everything checked out PERFECTLY. Thank you to the great Doctors and Staff! Heading back to the White House," Trump wrote.

Past administrations have shared the results of medical exams, according to NBC.

"There’s no constitutional or legal requirement that a president release his medical records, but it’s been a consistent practice for most modern presidents, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan," NBC reported.

Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, suggested Wednesday that it "looks like he's hiding something." He suggested in a Substack post this week that White House insiders have been trying to conceal Trump's declining health.

Raw Story reached out to Wilson for comment.

""The reason they’re not releasing anything is that every statement about Trump's health is a screaming lie from top to bottom," Wilson told Raw Story.

Stephen Miller dealt 'hard punch in the mouth' by uncensored Dems: Ex-GOP operative

Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson described how a social post knocked down one of President Donald Trump's longest and closest advisers — and sent MAGA into a rage this week.

The co-founder of the anti-Trump group, The Lincoln Project, revealed in a Substack post Thursday that, after Miller delivered a bigoted attack on Democratic Texas Senate hopeful Rep. James Talarico, the Democrats swung back.

The moment stung for Trump's MAGA coalition — and Miller — becoming a "hard punch in the mouth that that soft-handed sadist Stephen Miller has obviously needed since middle school."

"The official Democratic Party account looked at Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, the architect of ICE thugs murdering American citizens in our streets, the Grima Wormtongue of the Trump White House immigration policy, the majordomo of white nat modern apartheid fantasies, and told him, in five tidy words: 'shut up, you ugly ----,'" Wilson wrote.

"That’s it. That’s the tweet. Five words. No policy. No nuance. No 14-part thread with a land acknowledgment quote bolted onto the front, nothing soft or nurturing or politically correct," Wilson wrote.

He called the Democrat's clapback moment "the sight of a man who built an entire political religion around the public performance of cruelty to others discovering through the glorious avenue of social media that cruelty has a return address."

"And reader, I want you to enjoy the rich, full-bodied irony of what happened next, because it is a clarifying moment in American politics, one on par with the invention of the hot mic," Wilson added. "Stephen Miller’s feelings got hurt."

Miller might be used to just firing off insults or brutal comments, Wilson said, but this time it was different.

"For once, the Democrats brought a gun to the gunfight," Wilson wrote.

White House insiders just made a staggering 'confession' about Trump's health: analyst

Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson warned on Tuesday that President Donald Trump's health has been declining and claimed that White House insiders have been trying to hide it.

In his Substack post on Tuesday, Wilson responded to Trump's scheduled visit to Walter Reed Medical Center — his third visit in the last 13 months of his second term in office. The founder of the anti-Trump organization The Lincoln Project identified that Trump's hospital visit could signal what's ahead, despite Trump's comments that his visit with doctors went "perfectly."

"This is the most dishonest White House about the President’s physical condition since Edith Wilson was forging her stricken husband’s signature behind the curtains in 1919," Wilson wrote. "The parallel is not casual. The memos, the 'excellent health,' the 'sharpest president in American history,' the careful staging…the cover-up of Trump’s diminished physical and mental capacity isn’t coming."

"The cover-up is already running. Karoline Leavitt, Stephen Chung, and the rest of the White House noise machine have lied to the media for years about Trump’s condition, and never once been held to account," Wilson explained.

Wilson also argued that the media has been "flinching" from covering the reality behind Trump's health — and that it could be only a matter of time before that changes.

"Genuine power doesn’t need to be advertised this loudly," Wilson wrote. "The frantic, escalating, almost pornographic self-celebration is the tell. It’s a confession in plain sight. The man building his mausoleum while he’s still alive is the man who knows he’s running out of road."

And although the White House has tried to offer explanations for Trump's bruised hands, it hasn't stopped the growing questions surrounding his health.

"So here we are. A 79-year-old man, swollen of extremity and bruised of hand, looking like the victim of a zombie bite by denying it until he turns, shuffling between Walter Reed and a half-built ballroom nobody asked for, with an approval rating in free fall, a base finally asking quiet questions about grocery prices, a press corps too cowed to say out loud what they all know, and a clock, biological, cultural, and political, that he cannot bully into stopping," Wilson wrote.

"He is not coming back from this," Wilson added. "There is no third act. There is only the long, undignified, makeup-smeared decline of a man and a movement whose moment has passed, narrating itself ever more loudly into an ever emptier hall, a frowzy barfly of a man, replaying past glories that never happened and hoping you won’t notice the bad wig."

Ex-Republican operative pinpoints GOP's most crushing weakness: 'Terminal blind spot'

Former GOP strategist Rick Wilson described a major shortcoming that Republicans have missed — and have been ignoring — since President Donald Trump entered the White House.

The co-founder of The Lincoln Project wrote in his Substack on Monday how Sen. Bill Cassidy's (R-LA) "original sin" against Trump in his vote to impeach the president during his first administration was what drove Trump's revenge campaign to unseat Cassidy in his race for re-election.

"Because here’s what Cassidy did next, and this is the part that elevates the story from tragedy to Trumpian farce," Wilson wrote. "Having committed the unforgivable, he spent the next several years frantically trying to be forgiven. He didn’t double down on the principle. He didn’t go full Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger and welcome political martyrdom in the name of principle."

"He negotiated. He tried to split the difference with a movement that does not do nuance, does not do partial credit, does not grade on a curve," Wilson wrote.

Despite Cassidy's best efforts, it did not work in his favor, Wilson explained. The former physician even voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services as a way to signal loyalty to Trump, "apparently believing this act of submission would buy him a permission slip back into the tribe."

"It bought him nothing. It was always going to buy him nothing. That is the part Cassidy and the entire cowering remnant of the institutional GOP cannot, will not, are constitutionally incapable of internalizing," Wilson wrote.

"There is no appeasement price that satisfies Trump’s hunger," Wilson wrote. "The bill is never paid, because the debt isn’t financial; it’s a loyalty oath sworn in blood, and there are no installment plans. You cannot impeach the man and then confirm his cabinet and net out even. The ledger doesn’t work that way. The ledger only records the betrayal."

Republicans have missed this signal from Trump, he explained.

"This is the GOP’s terminal blind spot, and it’s worth naming precisely: they keep believing they can transact a deal with Trump, that somehow he won’t turn on them if they ever betray the slightest tendency to principle," Wilson wrote.

"They think there’s a deal in there somewhere, a position, a vote, a sufficiently groveling Fox hit that squares the account. There is not, and will never be," he added.

Trump 'dumped' too much 'poison' into critical US alliance to save it: ex-GOP strategist

An ex-Republican strategist warned that a critical United States military alliance has already been so damaged by President Donald Trump that it's too late to save it.

"NATO's on the clock," Rick Wilson said in the latest episode of his podcast. "It's got three, two years left, tops. Even when Trump dies, even when he's gone, the poison he dumped into the system is so profound, I don't know how you reverse it."

Trump's most recent moves include withdrawing troops from Germany and Poland with little heads up to the U.S. allies. Wilson played a video of Trump trashing NATO because he was able to "blast the hell out of Iran" without their help.

"We've had some very bad allies in NATO," Trump is shown saying. "We spend trillions of dollars on NATO, and when we need them, which we never do, we didn't need them here either.

In the video, Trump also called the European-U.S. super alliance a "paper tiger" and said "the last thing I needed was NATO stepping in our way" with Iran.

The way Wilson saw it, Trump went to "our allies in the Gulf, we said, 'Hey, we're going to go do this war for Bibi [Netanyahu] and for Donald Trump's ego." Trump also went to war with Iran so that Defense Secretary "Pete Hegseth can get a war boner," Wilson added.

"Donald Trump has poured so much poison into so many parts of the global economy and the global military alliances that once protected us," Wilson said. "All those countries now are reassessing how they view our relationship."

Dark lesson as Republican reality TV star floods voters with 'Gotham-grade dystopia'

A former Republican strategist admitted that a GOP mayoral candidate and former reality TV star might not win his election, but the "AI-generated Gotham-grade dystopia" he's created has "changed the game" for future political ads.

Rick Wilson, co-founder of the anti-Trump organization The Lincoln Project, described in his Substack on Friday how Spencer Pratt's decision to specifically message around crime during his Los Angeles mayoral campaign is something Democrats should pay attention to.

"Pratt’s message, delivered with a comic, postmodern AI flourish, is…and I cannot believe I’m typing this about a Hills alum…quite frankly very well done. It’s not an endorsement; it’s an observation," Wilson wrote.

"For a man who has no business being in a close second place, Pratt is doing something politically that Democrats should learn from once they’re done pretending that campaigns will stay the same, forever," Wilson explained.

Pratt, who announced his candidacy for Los Angeles mayor in 2026 as a political newcomer, has sought to bring attention to homelessness and other city issues. His campaign has garnered significant media attention due to his celebrity status and reality television past, though he faced skepticism from political observers regarding his lack of prior political experience and specific policy proposals.

"What’s the message? Crime makes the city unlivable. Filth makes the city unlivable. Bureaucracy makes the city unlivable. Kids are unsafe. You are unsafe. Decline is a choice. The ads themselves are the campaign. There is no campaign apart from the ads," Wilson added.

Blundering Trump just gave China what it always wanted: ex-GOP strategist

Trump has already delivered China's ambitions with "self-inflicted" wounds, an ex-GOP strategist warned ahead of the president's visit with the country's leader, Xi Jinping.

"China's ambitions, whether they are military or economic, have been delivered up by Donald Trump," Rick Wilson said on a Tuesday episode of his podcast. Trump was set to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping from May 12-15 with business leaders like Elon Musk, and Wilson noted he's going in with "cataclysmically low poll ratings" and "tremendous political weakness" amid the war in Iran.

However, while "we've lost the war in Iran," Trump started delivering "self-inflicted" wounds that benefit China's ambitions well before that, Wilson said.

"Trump starts a trade war. Almost every nation in South America is on the wrong side of Trump's trade war," Wilson explained. "What happens in South America? They cut deals with China. They're selling their products to China."

Looking at Trump's government cutbacks, Wilson said that the DOGE decision to dismantle USAID is also helping China's global standing rise above that of the United States.

"If you had gone into any African country two years ago, where there's a famine, where there's sickness, where there's poverty, where there's disease, where there's misery, you would have seen USAID workers," Wilson said. "You know what you'd see now? China. Because Elon and DOGE cut USAID and killed the program. So now those bags of food don't say, 'A gift from the people of the United States.' Now those bags of food say 'A gift from the people of the People's Republic of China.'"

Wilson predicted that as people watch Trump's visit to China, they'll see him "with a sense of discomfort, with a sense of embarrassment," even though Trump will "bluster and yell and try to pretend that he's got the strong hand here. He does not. Xi Jinping has the strong hand."