At 11:49 AM this morning, eleven minutes before their scheduled start time, the President of the United States’ entire traveling press corps was sent away, cutting off all access to Donald Trump for the entire day, and ensuring he would not have to face any cameras and would not have to answer any questions. Just 41 minutes before this abrupt decision, the President had posted the first of many social media posts, starting with a reminder to the world of just how much he admires and considers himself friendly with dictators. This morning, his dictator of choice was from North Korea. Along with a picture of himself and Kim Jong Un standing side by side, their hands practically touching, Donald Trump added the caption, “Despite the unfriendly look on this particular picture, there are many where we’re smiling, Kim Jong Un and I get along GREAT! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
That was just the beginning. The President of the United States spent his Saturday away from cameras once again this weekend at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, posting AI-generated images of himself and other rage-bait pictures. At 4:22 PM, he shared an image of himself and George Washington sitting side by side, both holding quill pens, signing documents together as equals. As if these were the two men responsible for drafting the future of the nation and signing their names to our founding documents. This is how he truly sees himself. Whether it is from pure ego and delusion or a deteriorating mind, he feels his place in this country and our history is at the same level as, or higher than, our first president. Three minutes later, at 4:25 PM, he posted another image, this time with him and Washington riding horseback together through golden fields at sunset. Just two founders, side by side, riding into history. And in between those two, at 4:24 PM, he posted a black-and-white photo of himself wearing a “Trump 2028” baseball hat, looking over his rain-covered shoulder, with the words “we are going to win” across the bottom.
What Trump always gets wrong when he posts about George Washington is that he is the opposite of everything Donald Trump wants us to think he is. He could have been king and chose not to be. He voluntarily gave up power when he walked away from the presidency because he believed no one man should hold that amount of power for too long. He set the precedent that made peaceful transfers of power possible for over two centuries. Trump, on the other hand, said just this past January, “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.” He already tried to overturn an election so he could stay in power even after his humiliating loss in 2020. He incited an insurrection and sent his rabid supporters to storm the Capitol to keep him in power. And now he is posting images trying to align himself and his personal and professional failure with George Washington.
These are the moments when past presidents would have been stopped. Their administration would have stepped in. For love of country and for survival, they would have been forced to make some very difficult decisions, but they would have done it. The people around Trump never will. They do not care about what is happening to our country or to the world. They just need him to stay in power long enough to finish what they are building, so they can remain in power even when their figurehead is no longer in control of the government.
Because the people closest to him are doing something far more dangerous that will outlive Trump and his hold on us. They are buying the country.
They are acquiring the infrastructure of not just daily American life, but outside the US too. They are acquiring targets sector by sector, and deal by deal, in transactions both large and small, all interconnected, but not overly obvious so that by the time most people notice, it will already be done. And no election will be able to undo it or the damage it will cause.
Last night, Trump’s own administration, through the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which is part of the Treasury Department and run by a Trump appointee, granted a preliminary approval for World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture, to become a federally chartered bank. The Trump family has already made more than $ 1.6 billion from this venture alone. A UAE sovereign wealth fund, Abu Dhabi’s MGX, owns 49 percent. The son of Trump’s own Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, is running it. The sitting president’s family is building a bank that was approved by the president’s own administration, and it is being funded by a foreign government. The level of corruption coming from within this government cannot be adequately put into words.
And then there are the sports teams. Josh Kushner, Jared’s brother and the son of Charles Kushner, Trump’s ambassador to France who was pardoned by Trump, is buying the Los Angeles Lakers for 12.5 billion dollars with Bob Iger, who stepped down in March after his second stint as CEO of Disney. Iger was a long-term Democrat until switching his party affiliation to independent in 2016 when Trump took office. The deal still needs NBA Board of Governors approval. Jeff Bezos has also been shopping for a new athletic acquisition and just bought roughly 30 percent of Liverpool FC through a consortium, with an option to become majority owner within a year.
Neither of these are just business investments. Sports are where people go to feel something together. They are the last spaces where millions of people from different backgrounds and different politics come together to share the same moment. They are buying community and people’s identity. When you own the team, you do not just own a franchise. You own the platform itself. You reach an audience that would never follow you on social media, read your news outlet, or subscribe to your streaming service. You reach them through something many of them have loved since childhood, something that feels like it belongs to them. And now even that is being commandeered into Trump’s inner circle of enablers.
There is also Larry Ellison’s son David, who is in the process of acquiring Warner Bros through Skydance Paramount. If it goes through, which it most likely will, one family will control CBS News, CNN, HBO, and 28 local television stations. Democratic senators have raised concerns about Saudi, Qatari, and Emirati sovereign wealth fund money financing the acquisition. Those are the same sovereign wealth funds that appear in the Trump bank deal and in Jared Kushner’s investment firm. Larry Ellison, one of Trump’s biggest campaign donors, already placed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News. He also controls TikTok’s U.S. data infrastructure through Oracle. Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, has forced out many of its long-standing and respected journalists since he took over, leaving the Post a shell of what it once was.
And while this small group of extraordinarily wealthy men is accumulating more money and influence than most of us could ever imagine, we need to see it for what it really is and stop treating each one as a separate story. They believe too much of this country’s wealth has been flowing to ordinary people, and they want even more of it flowing upward to them.
Like so much of what we are watching happen in America right now, none of this is new. The names are different, and the methods have changed. But we have seen this playbook before. In Russia in the 1990s, some of the country’s most valuable state assets were sold to politically connected businessmen through notoriously corrupt and rigged auctions. A small group of oligarchs accumulated extraordinary wealth and political power, gaining influence over banks, industry, media, and even the government itself. Then Putin came to power, and the arrangement changed. The oligarchs who remained powerful learned that their fortunes depended on remaining loyal to him. Independent media outlets were taken over, shut down, or brought under the control of the state and Kremlin allies. Business, government, media, and political power became increasingly intertwined. Elections still happen, but they no longer provide a meaningful democratic check on that power. The same network surrounding Putin remains in control regardless of what ordinary Russians want. That is where we are headed.
Trump and his enablers’ version is uniquely American. But the outcome is the same. Trump wants a small and permanent ownership class with the rest of us silenced into a permanent underclass. He envisions a country where the people who funded the regime own so much of daily life that it does not matter what the voters decide, because the real power never changes hands again.
If it feels like this is accelerating and that they are moving fast, know that you are right. They know they are losing support and that November will be a devastating defeat for the GOP.
CNN reported today, August 15, that Trump’s top campaign advisers privately acknowledge that Republicans’ chances of keeping control of both the House and the Senate are “dwindling.” One source told CNN, “There is a path where we keep the House and the Senate. I’m not in a place today where I’m prepared to say we’re cautiously optimistic about that.” An adviser close to Trump acknowledged that with the president’s approval ratings scraping new lows, there is “little expectation he can win over large numbers of independents and swing voters.” Their entire midterm strategy now rests on turning out millions of MAGA voters who typically do not show up for midterm elections. And even Trump’s own commitment to the effort is uncertain. An adviser told CNN, “Once he’s traveling, he’s like: ‘Why am I doing this? I want to be doing other things.’” Lawmakers and operatives have “privately agonized for months” over his reluctance to commit the vast sums, estimated at over 400 million, in his MAGA Inc. super PAC to helping elect Republican candidates across the country.
They are not buying the country because they think they are going to keep Congress. They are buying it because they know there is a very real possibility that they won’t. Every deal and acquisition is an insurance policy and a permanent power structure that is completely independent of elections and whoever might occupy the White House.
But what they forget is that the oligarch model only works if the money keeps flowing up to them, and we are the ones who decide if it does.
This is an opportunity that has gone largely untouched. I try to mention this often, because it is one of the most powerful tools we have right in front of us. I think of it as strategic economic spending and being ultra deliberate about where our money goes. It’s not perfect, and there are no purity tests here. It’s about paying attention to our spending and making changes where we can.
I have been working through every penny our household spends to make sure our money is not going to companies that have aligned themselves with this administration. It is tedious and time-consuming, and again, it is imperfect, because sometimes there are simply no other options. But it matters. It has also freed up more money to support causes and people that matter to me.
And as soon as these primaries are over, all of our energy needs to go to supporting our candidates. Because this is the deciding factor for our country for decades to come, if not longer. We absolutely have to take back both chambers of Congress. We have a very real shot at the House, and to a slightly lesser degree, the Senate. We have 80 days. That is how long we have. And everything we do between now and then counts.
We need to remember that they can start a bank. They can buy our sports teams, and they can influence the news. But they can never buy us. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
PS. You can make a significant difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. Your support helps me cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in this country.
This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: Just another day thankful we live on a planet with pups!
Sources used in the writing of this post:
https://us.cnn.com/2026/08/15/politics/trump-midterms-campaign-strategy
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/14/world-liberty-trump-occ-bank-charter-stablecoin.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-over-1-billion-on-crypto-ventures-financial-disclosures/
https://thehill.com/business/6031421-trump-family-crypto-firm-bank-charter/
This post was edited at 10:38 AM PST to correct a few typos that got past me last night, including a capitalization error, a date that read 2026 when it should have been 2016, and a spelling correction.
We cancelled all of our premium TV channels which included HBO and are saving money by doing so. We stopped watching CBS after the last episode of Stephen Colbert. We spend less time watching TV and more time reading. We cancelled the Washington Post long ago and avoid shopping at Amazon. Crypto is a scam.
George Washington - “I cannot tell a lie” vs. Donald Trump - “ I always tell a lie.”