Trump saying he wanted to "play down" COVID-19 isn't news. We *knew* he was. Likewise, *of course* he knew how deadly it was. Advisers told him.
You want news? How about 5 major-media reports confirming the Trump White House knew of the virus in November 2019? #ProofofCorruption
PS/ "News" is shocking—not something one previously had reason to suspect. I think this week we'll hear as "news" many things long self-evident. Trump admitting to what everyone in America already knew isn't news. The White House lying about 2019 COVID-19 intelligence *is* news.
PS2/ Media is going to do the silly and stupid things it does—but Americans needn't play along. *We* decide what's important: discovering when the White House learned about COVID-19—November 2019—or "learning" that yes, as we all *knew*, *Trump* knew he was downplaying the virus.
PS3/ When actual news comes out about Trump, I tweet it, whether it comes from ABC News, NBC News, The Times of Israel, and others—like my research on when the Trump White House learned of the virus—or Bob Woodward. But I can't pretend non-news is news just because it's "new."
PS4/ I *strongly* urge people not to adopt any new timeline for the White House's virus response that sets the beginning of Trump's recognition of the virus danger at late January. That is false—that is not what happened. But I'm afraid that's the new line that is being sold now.
PS5/ I'm glad we're hearing Trump's words. But I saw this happen with FEAR and the Trump-Russia issue—a book that seemed to be "hard" on Trump wrongly said there was no collusion. Now, a book that seems "hard" on Trump will *revise the pandemic timeline* in a way that aids Trump.
PS6/ In any event, I'll say no more—as anyone who reads Chapter 42 of Proof of Corruption and sees my sourcing will understand why this is upsetting. It's far easier than many think for a book that seems hard on Trump to in fact be doing him a much bigger solid than any critique.
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I want to mention a couple of items that lay outside this already sprawling report.
First, that this war about to become illegal under U.S. law—and long illegal under international law—is in the midst of causing a global economic collapse, energy crisis, food crisis, and more.
The UAE is leaving OPEC. Saudi Arabia is leaving LIV. Israel is annexing almost 10% of Lebanon. Gas prices are out of control, so much so that Trump stans on cable news are simply making up numbers all of us know are false. The jet fuel crisis will shortly become a travel crisis.
Everyone needs to read the 2020 bestseller Proof of Corruption, in which the man pictured below is a key antagonist trying to steal the 2020 election for Trump.
As a journalist I've spilled more words on crooked Trump lawyer Joe diGenova and his lawyer partner Victoria Toensing than any author writing in English. For years I told U.S. media to watch these two, as their specialty is Roger Stone-style election ratfuckery.
Now here we are.
The job diGenova had in the 2020 election was to regularly meet secretly at a Trump hotel restaurant with a team tasked with manufacturing fake pro-Biden foreign election interference.
Trump picking him to prosecute supposed election interference is a five-alarm national fire.
NOTE: If Kash Patel indeed brings manufactured criminal cases over the 2020 election this week—something he knows a lot about, as he sought fake evidence from Kremlin agents to steal the 2020 election for Trump—it’s *not about 2020*.
It’s about rigging elections *going forward*.
As detailed in PROOF OF COUP (2023), the 2020-born Waldron Plot—which Patel was aware of—held that an obscure DHS reg lets Trump seize voting machines and take control of elections if evidence of foreign tampering is found.
Patel is expert at faking such evidence. So stay tuned.
Patel worked as hard as anyone in America to try to steal the 2020 election—via the clandestine BLT Prime Team whose activities are detailed in the national bestseller PROOF OF CORRUPTION (2020) and would be as infamous as the Watergate plumbers if America had a functional media.
I keep saying, as a Trump biographer, that this man holds deeply deranged beliefs—on almost every subject—he cannot be talked out of by experts, to the point that it can accurately be said that he lives in his own warped reality. 25th this man immediately. theguardian.com/us-news/2026/a…
Consider the implications here.
Biden knew that finding a cure for cancer was such a difficult task that it needs a whole-of-government initiative. He started one.
Trump secretly believes he knows the cure for cancer but everyone around him has to hide it because it's *insane*.
Now consider second-level implications. Trump is president of the United States and has the largest megaphone on Earth. Cancer is one of the biggest killers known to humankind. Trump thinks he knows the cure but won't discuss it with America. Why? Because he knows he's a grifter.
1. The truth should be worked out via legal process. 2. Dems can't have anyone facing such allegations as a candidate. 3. MAGAs wouldn't care about this; that's immaterial. 4. Politics is informing how some folks are responding; that's also immaterial.
That is, it's possible to think in terms of three distinct spheres—legal, political, moral—at once. Legally, there's nothing to say till all this is resolved in court. Politically, we know that, true or false, allegations affect who's viable. Morally, MAGAs are hypocritical scum.
Who we believe is legally immaterial; it's posturing. We don't have all the facts. I'd say the same of any politician posturing morally now; don't confuse your cynical politics with morality.
But yes—Trump should have exited the race when he faced his *67* different allegations.
The torrent of lies coming from Karoline Leavitt right now is breathtaking
1 Iran has two navies; only one—the far smaller one—was destroyed
2 Half of Iran's launchers are intact
3 Iran held back its small air force—it wasn't destroyed
4 There's been no impact on Iran's nuclear capabilities
5 Only .3% of Iran's army was neutralized
6 The Strait is closed
7 There hasn't been regime change
8 U.S. casualties are over 800
9 There's no secret new 10-point Iranian peace plan, just the old one
10 Regular Iranian missile strikes continue
11 U.S. and Israeli interceptors arsenals are in a dire state
12 This war has wasted tens of billions