- The Pentagon Press Corps;
- Trump’s pardons;
- Charlie Kirk;
- The East Wing and the new ballroom, with an analysis that suggests the proposed ballroom is not real;
- Short items.
What’s new?
\
Propaganda, not news.
Slate, Molly Olmstead, 24 Oct 2025: The New Pentagon Press Corps Is … Really Something, subtitled “Legitimate journalists declined to agree to absurd eligibility rules for Pentagon press passes. Trump’s team is very excited about their replacements.”
The Gateway Pundit, RedState, LindellTV, OAN, and The Epoch Times, among others.
The reporters who refused to agree to Hegseth’s terms have reported and will continue to report on Defense Department news using sourcing these reporters have already developed and leaning on honest, traditional tools of journalism. But their jobs will be harder, while the members of the new press corps will inevitably benefit from a veneer of legitimacy from the credentialing and from the “scoops” they’re given.
\\\
Pardons.
NY Times, 23 Oct 2025: Trump Pardons Founder of the Crypto Exchange Binance, subtitled “Changpeng Zhao, the richest man in crypto, had admitted to money-laundering violations that allowed terrorists and other criminals to move money on Binance.”
The underlying theme here is that the Biden administration was investigating various crypto firms for evidence of fraud, but Trump is canceling those investigations, because he’s getting rich off crypto.
Also:
Slate, Alex Kirshner, 24 Oct 2025: Why Trump Pardoned a Crypto Bro Who Helped Launder Billions, subtitled “It’s the latest step in the president’s legalization of financial crimes—as long as the criminals are enriching him.”
(The title on the homepage for this is “Trump Has a Favorite Type of Criminal to Pardon. It’s Obvious Once You See It.”)
Acknowledging the crypto angle. Then:
Of course, Zhao’s pardon is actually another thing: the latest step in Trump’s legalization of financial crimes if the people committing them are either fans of his or, more ideally, enriching him.
\\
About Charlie Kirk.
Salon, Russell Payne, 23 Oct 2025: Efforts to avenge Charlie Kirk’s death have fallen apart everywhere — except where it counts, subtitled “Organizations that cropped up in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, promising to dox his critics, have evaporated”
The biggest of these would-be organizations is the Charlie Kirk Data Foundation, an anonymously operated social media account and website that claims to have collected tens of thousands of entries on supposed critics of Kirk.
Today, however, the site is down, and it has been for weeks. It’s not the only organization ostensibly created to help right-wingers punish their critics that has flopped in the past month.
Where does it count?
The only place where the effort to punish Kirk’s critics lives is in the one place it matters most: the federal government.
The Trump administration has launched a widespread effort to attack its perceived political opponents while downplaying violence from right-wing groups and Trump’s own supporters. These efforts have spanned multiple agencies, including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS, and have included the revocation of visas for those who criticized the far-right commentator, the firing of military personnel who criticized Kirk and attacks from the president himself.
I don’t have any off-the-cuff speculation for why the Charlie Kirk fan clubs, so to speak, have evaporated. But it’s significant that the federal government apparently endorses Kirk’s ideas.
\
And this.
Robert Reich, 22 Oct 2025: Senate Republicans Find the Bottom
Comparing the defense of “those kids” with anything but adulation for Charlie Kirk.
When it comes to becoming part of the Trump regime, there’s been only one litmus test, at least until now: total loyalty to Trump. Pass that test and nothing else matters.
But Senate Republicans have now set a limit to how low Trump loyalists can go if they want to be confirmed.
At least five Senate Republicans just opposed the nomination of Paul Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel — enough to block his confirmation.
Because Ingrassia was one of “those kids.”
Senate Republicans apparently don’t share Vance’s hypocritical tolerance for racist, sexist, and Nazi-loving comments by people Trump wants to confirm for positions in his regime.
Unlike Vance and the GOP operatives who feel that their loyalty to Trump allows them to promote the sickest and most hateful views imaginable, Senate Republicans have a bottom below which they won’t sink.
It’s low but, hey, it’s a bottom.
\\
The East Wing and the new ballroom.
NY Times, 25 Oct 2025: A Pile of Rubble: After 123 Years, the East Wing Is Gone, subtitled “Critics are outraged over President Trump’s demolition of the East Wing to make way for his $300 million ballroom. Others say it was time for change.”
(The print paper today framed this — on the front page — as an “obituary” with the headline “The East Wing, 1902-2025: A Door to the White House for Generations of Americans”)
The East Wing, the entrance to the White House for millions of Americans on official tours, the site of offices for every first lady for nearly a half century and the home of calligraphers who prepared thousands of invitations for White House state dinners, disappeared into a pile of rubble on Thursday. It had stood for 123 years.
And there are plenty of before and after photos of the site, around the web.
\
Paul Krugman, 24 Oct 2025: Trump’s Gilded Ballroom and the Fall of the American Republic, subtitled “Tackiness and tyranny go hand in hand”
I assume that everyone reading this newsletter knows that Donald Trump is in the process of destroying a large part of the White House so he can construct a 90,000 square foot gold-encrusted ballroom. And this is being done without any historical or architectural review, treating a national treasure that belongs to the people as if it were his own personal property. In true Trumpian style, this act of vandalism is being paid for by large corporate donors — mostly tech and crypto companies — seeking to buy Trump’s favor. I am sure there will be a Trump meme-coin dispenser installed on every table.
And he goes on with why tackiness and tyranny go hand in hand.
For the excess and ugliness serve a political purpose: to humiliate and intimidate. The tawdry grandiosity serves not only to glorify Trump’s fragile ego, but also to send the message that resistance is futile.
Going on with discussion of a design authority about the choices of various despots around the world. Shown photos of Donald Trump’s apartment without knowing whose it was:
I know Manhattan and its sophisticated style pretty well, and at first glance, you would think the place didn’t belong to an American but to a Russian oligarch, or possibly a Saudi prince with a second home in the United States. There were overscaled rooms, and obviously incorrect-looking historical detailing and proportions. The home had lots of gilded French furniture and the strange impersonal look of a hotel lobby, with chairs and sofas placed uncomfortably far from one another. There were masses of gold …
\
One more on this topic, a Facebook post by one Andrew Kerr, who says he’s a licensed architect with experience doing “multiple Federal projects…” Trump has not released official plans for his new ballroom, and his plans for the East Wing changed day to day.
Andrew Kerr, Facebook, 23 Oct 2025: Here’s why the new White House ballroom project is not real.
1. With a projected size of 90,000sf and a newly revised budget of $300M, the cost per square foot would be $3,333. No building costs anywhere near that. $1,000/sf is astronomical.
2. Let’s assume, since we are drawing in the classical, style, that the proportions of the building adhere to the Golden Ratio. A 90,000sf would be a building with a footprint roughly 380′ x 235′. Longer than a football field and 1.5x as wide.
2. [3] The building is projected to accommodate 999 people. 15sf/person is required for a banquet area; 20sf/person is pretty comfortable. What you see in the rendering below is closer to 20sf/person. That’s only 20,000sf, or a space that is 200’x100′. It’s supposed to be a ballroom, so let’s be extraordinarily generous and provide 10,000sf for the ballroom support functions, and another 10,000sf for pre-function. Extraordinarily generous. That’s STILL only 40,000sf, not even half of the supposed building.
3. [4] There are no drawings for the building. The renderings are poorly coordinated – exterior views do not match the interior views. See below – the White House is 70 feet tall, to the roof. The interior renderings show a room that is roughly 100′ x 200′, with a ~20 foot ceiling. The exterior renderings show a building footprint of 4.5x that amount.
Those are renderings that could be produced by young staff in a week or two, at most. Nothing else exists.
He’s referring to this image.
I can’t vouch for his figures, but clearly something is not adding up, as we always suspect about Trump. I’m not so sure it’s deliberate fraud, as that Trump makes haphazard decisions without checking if they make any sense or not. And he’s getting lots of “donations” for the ballroom, even speculating he might use some of those funds to build a grandiose arch nearby.
\\\
Two more, briefly.
Salon, Sophia Tesfaye, 25 Oct 2025: Donald Trump’s wrecking ball hits his own movement, subtitled “The entire East Wing of the White House is gone — and people are angry”
LGBTQNation, Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld, 25 Oct 2025: A president who creates anything like Trump’s feces video has no respect for this country, subtitled “Posting that video takes a president who believes he is above the people and the law, and a president who has something terribly wrong in the head.”
