The Dealmaker is Rolling in Money

US President Donald Trump is a businessperson. He once boasted, “deals are my art form”. 

Well, the dealmaker is back in the White House, and corporations and their billionaire owners and executives are doling out millions. So far companies have paid about $80 million to the Trump family and the Trump presidential library that he hopes to build, according to the Wall Street Journal. That only represents settlements and business ventures, not the millions donated for his inauguration or crypto pursuits. And some deals were made before the president even stepped in the Oval Office, back when he stayed at Mar-a-Lago. 

Ty Cobb, who served as a White House lawyer in Trump’s first administration, told WSJ: “Everything he does is either to be vengeful or to accumulate wealth, power and adulation”. Trump knows “all these people want a piece of him”, Cobb said. 

Here's a sample of 4 cases about some of the money the Trump family has coming in since the president made his political comeback:

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sánchez had dinner with Trump and his wife Melania at Mar-a-Lago in December. He was the president-elect then. Two weeks later Amazon agreed to pay $40 million to license a documentary about Melania; it is the most Amazon has ever spent on a documentary, and a lot more than the $14 million Disney offered, according to WSJ. People familiar affirmed that the first lady’s cut is more than 70%. 

Four years ago, Trump sued Meta for locking his Facebook account after the January 06 attack on the Capitol. Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg visited Mar-a-Lago in November, and at that dinner, according to WSJ which cited a person familiar with the conversation, Trump told Zuckerberg the lawsuit needed to be settled if he wanted peace. Meta settled a couple months later and agreed to pay Trump $25 million: $22 million would go to a fund for his presidential library and the rest to legal fees.

Last week, Elon Musk’s X reportedly agreed to pay about $10 million to settle a lawsuit against the social media site and their prior chief executive after Trump sued what was then Twitter for de-platforming him after the January 06 riot, people familiar told WSJ. And it has been claimed that the money is expected to go directly to him rather than his presidential library, per sources familiar with the matter.

In December, Disney reached a settlement with Trump in his defamation case against ABC News and their anchor George Stephanopoulos after he said that Trump had been found civilly liable for rape – but really, Trump had been found liable for sexual abuse. The company agreed to donate $15 million to Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum and an additional $1 million for his legal fees.

Trump is rolling in money! Aiseh, I envy him!

US Wages Covert Anti-vaccine Propaganda Campaign

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The US military waged a covert social media campaign at the height of the pandemic to smear the Chinese Covid vaccine, Reuters reported yesterday. 

 

The Pentagon’s campaign to disparage the Chinese vaccine ran between the spring of 2020 and mid-2021, focusing on the Philippines before spreading to other parts of Asia and the Middle East. They relied on fake social media accounts impersonating Filipino users to disseminate claims that China’s Sinovac vaccine, as well test kits and face masks produced by the country, was of poor quality. Sinovac, which began being rolled out in March 2021, became the first jab available to the Philippines during the pandemic. 

 

“COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don’t trust China!” a typical post as part of the campaign, which centered on the #ChinaAngVirus (Tagalog for "China is the virus") slogan, read, according to Reuters. Another commonly encountered post claimed: “From China – PPE, Face Mask, Vaccine: FAKE. But the Coronavirus is real”. 

 

Furthermore, the Pentagon tried to convey to Muslim users in Asia and the Middle East that due to the fact that vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s jab should be forbidden under Islamic law, the report read. 

 

Reuters said that their investigation found at least 300 accounts on Twitter, which had since been re-branded as X, that matched the descriptions provided by the former US military officials who told journalists about the campaign. 

 

The news agency said that they had contacted X about the accounts and that the Elon Musk-owned platform had determined – based on activity patterns and internal data – that the profiles in question were part of a coordinated bot campaign. The accounts have been deleted, they added. 

 

The military program started under former President Donald Trump and continued months into Joe Biden’s presidency, Reuters found – even after alarmed social media executives warned the new administration that the Pentagon had been trafficking in Covid misinformation.

 

A senior US Defense Department official confirmed to Reuters that a clandestine social media campaign against Sinovac did take place, but declined to reveal further details. Spokespeople for Trump and Biden did not respond to requests for comment about the undercover program.

 

Meanwhile, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stressed in an e-mailed response that Beijing has long maintained that the US government manipulate social media and spread disinformation.

 

Academic research published recently has shown that, when individuals develop skepticism toward a single vaccine, those doubts often lead to uncertainty about other inoculations. 

 

Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and other health experts say they saw such a scenario play out in Pakistan, where the Central Intelligence Agency used a fake hepatitis vaccination program in Abbottabad as cover to hunt for Osama bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001. Discovery of the ruse led to a backlash against an unrelated polio vaccination campaign, including attacks on healthcare workers, contributing to the reemergence of the deadly disease in the country. 

 

Now, you know!

Osama bin Laden's Letter to America Goes Viral on TikTok

TikTok removed the hashtag #lettertoamerica from their search function after videos about Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to America” went viral on the platform and were re-uploaded to the social media platform X. 

Some social media users suggested that the Al Qaeda founder’s document gives an alternative perspective about the US’ involvement in conflicts in the Middle East. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Throughout the week, TikTok users had been sharing the link to The Guardian’s transcript of Osama's letter, which was written about a year after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and which killed nearly 3,000 people in the US. The Guardian took the letter down from their website Wednesday. 

In the letter, Osama addressed the American people and sought to answer the following questions: “Why are we fighting and opposing you?” and “What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?” 

The letter condemns US support for Israel and accuses Americans of aiding the oppression of Palestinian people as well as denouncing US interventions in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Lebanon.

People online have used Osama's words as a springboard for discussion about American foreign policy in the Middle East. Many have said it caused them to re-evaluate their beliefs around the US wars of intervention. Still, while people were critical of US involvement in global conflicts, many clarified that they were not praising or defending Osama's orchestration of the 9/11 attacks.

It has been claimed that references to Osama bin Laden on X jumped more than 4,300%, from Tuesday to Thursday, from just over 5,000 to more than 230,000. References to “Letter to America” jumped more than 1,800%, from just over 4,800 to 100,000, with 719 million impressions across the platform. On YouTube, searches for Osama also jumped 400% from Tuesday to Thursday, according to Google Trends. Instagram’s autosuggest function in search assisted users in finding “Letter to America”, listing it as a “popular search”.

I saw this Facebook post by Morgan on "Understanding China" three days ago.

"China should give her more tender love. 

She's been behaving like an insecure bitch". 😂😂😂

Methinks, China should just leave her alone and pretty much let her sulk. Really, she's not worth it! Besides, a bitch is a bitch is a bitch!