GOVERNED BY FRAUD, LED BY LIARS
By Cash Michaels
If you’ve been paying attention to the headlines from Washington, D.C. of late, there’s no getting around the overwhelming feeling that we’re being governed by a bunch of phonies and frauds.
Not a nice thing to say about anybody for sure, but facts are facts. And quite frankly, ever since Donald Trump won reelection, it was inevitable that he would put a select group of secondhand wannabes in important positions of power whose only outstanding skill in life is expressing unvarnished loyalty to our disgraceful convict-in-chief.
Go online to the White House account on Youtube and see how Trump begins each of his Cabinet meetings. His agency secretaries around the table, in glowing, sickening terms, start off praising him, with news media cameras rolling, touting how great he is and how lucky America and the planet is to have him.
Trump wants the entire world to be his presidential cabinet, and lavish him with unceasing praise. Mind you, this is the same guy who was just awarded a phony “peace prize” by FIFA; had the Institute of Peace building in Washington renamed “the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace;” and incredibly, just replaced the MLK and Juneteenth federal holidays with his June 14th birthday, which is NOT a holiday, on the National Park Service list for free admission days.
There hasn’t been this much -ss kissing since Taylor Swift last attended a Kansas City Chiefs football game. But with this malarkey about Trump comes dangerous incompetence from people who have no damn business in government. They could start a war, or hurt innocent people, and NOT take responsibility for any of it.
Let’s start with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino.
A tough guy, right-wing former podcaster/radio host who made a name for himself as part of the Fox News stable of certified loudmouths, he was up there last week grinning from ear to ear with Atty General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and US. Attorney Jeanne Pirro during their press conference to announce the capture of the 2021 suspect who planted pipe bombs outside the RNC and DNC headquarters in Washington the night before the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
After months of headlines detailing their individual monumental screwups (Bondi was caught lying about having the Epstein files “on her desk” ready for release; Patel fought off damning headlines about using an FBI private jet to go see his country music singing girlfriend and having an FBI SWAT team guard her; and prosecutor Pirro lost several high-profile cases, including “the sandwich man,” who got off after assaulting an ICE agent with a hero sandwich), Trump’s Justice Dept. stooges were proud as pigs in political slop that after almost five years, they were able to identify and capture a suspect in the attempted bombings.
Gee, the way they were all grinning, grabbing credit and throwing shade on the Biden Administration, you’d think the bombs actually went off, and it was the biggest manhunt in FBI history. But the bombs didn’t go off, and the manhunt wasn’t the biggest. The Trump-inspired U.S. Capitol insurrection was the larger crime that federal authorities had to probe as priority, but of course, none of Trump’s Justice Dept. wing-nuts touched that reality with a ten-foot pole.
What was also weird was Bongino taking credit for some of the many years of “police work” that went into the FBI finally getting their man, when that same Dan Bongino, in 2024, pointedly told his podcast audience that the FBI actually knew who the attempted bomber was, but “just doesn’t want to tell us, because it was an inside job.”
In other words, he falsely threw deep state shade on his own law enforcement agency just to run his conspiratorial mouth.
When asked if he still believed that load of bull after the FBI he’s now second-in-command of reportedly caught the suspect, Bongino sheepishly said, “Listen I was paid in the past…for my opinions. That’s clear. And one day I will be back in that space, but that’s not what I’m paid for now. I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.”
So let me get this straight, Mr. FBI Deputy Director. You admit that years ago you were proud to be a paid lying loudmouth who made up stuff about serious issues just to keep the checks coming in.
Now that you work for the very government agency you felt free to crap all over at will in 2024, you think that now requires you to be “honorable” for the time being. But you make clear that after you’re out of office, you’ll go right back to taking a buck to lie your right-wing butt off again in a heartbeat.
Hey, call Dan “Bongo” Bongino a lot things, but a pillar of high noble integrity should NOT be one of them.
The only reason why this admitted fraud is working at the FBI now playing cops and robbers with Director Patel, whose greatest accomplishment on the job, so far, is proving he has no damn business in it, is because Bongino is extremely loyal to their mutual boss, DJT.
Just like “Dept. of War” Secretary Pete Hegeseth, who has already had his hand officially slapped for putting classified attack information out on an unsecured online commercial social media platform ( to his wife, brother, and mistakenly, a journalist) endangering the pilots on a secret bombing mission, and did a rhetorical Fred Astaire last week passing the buck for illegally bombing a suspected drug boat on Sept. 2nd at least twice, allegedly with orders to “kill everybody,” even when there were just two survivors helplessly hanging on for dear life.
Reportedly, at least 87 people on 23 alleged drug boats have been killed without due process, and this particular Sept. 2nd double strike was on a vessel that was confirmed headed towards Europe and Africa, NOT the United States. That means survivors were illegally wiped out for nothing. There's a bi-partisan effort in Congress now to force Hegeseth to publicly release that "double-tap" boat video. Guess they've gotten tired of his Trump-backed B.S.!
This clown, who Trump has the unmitigated gall to say "is doing a great job," is a liar AND a fraud, and has no business leading the Defense Dept., but again, Hegespeth, like Bongino, Pirro, Bondi and Patel, kisses the DJT ring with pride.
Now I would be remiss at this point if I didn't invoke the name of four-star Admiral Alvin Holsey, former head of the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), but for a different reason.
Admiral Holsey was the naval Joint Special Operations Commander responsible for all U.S. military operations in the Central, South America and Caribbean regions when Trump came into office last January. Holsey reportedly refused to go along with Sec. Hegeseth’s orders to illegally bomb boats coming from Venezuela in international waters simply on the notion that they were carrying illegal drugs to the U.S..
In other words, Admiral Holsey refused to illegally kill people just on Trump’s and Hegeseth's say-so, so he was forced to resign two years early from a post he had only held for a year, replaced by Admiral Frank Bradley, who carried out those orders, including on Sept. 2nd when two survivors of a bombed vessel, reportedly seen waving for help, were blown to smithereens. Legal experts say that action was undeniably a war crime, and Hegeseth and Trump know it. And could care less!
Some critics disagree that the boat strikes fall under that classification, however.
“We are not in a war, and so any discussion of these illegal strikes as war crimes is inaccurate," Jeffrey Stein, attorney for the ACLU, one of the advocacy groups suing for the documents authorizing the boat strikes, told NBC News. "The law of armed conflict does not apply to these strikes. They are premeditated killings outside of the context of armed conflict, and we have a legal concept for that conduct. It’s [called] murder.”
I think Brother Stein has a point!
Admiral Holsey officially retires this week from the service after 37 years of service to this country. I salute this principled man of duty, service and high honor, who is no fraud, no liar, and no murderer. I eagerly await Admiral Holsey telling his story to “60 Minutes,” and a Congressional committee. He reportedly spoke with the head Republicans and Democrats on the Senate and House Armed Services committees Tuesday.
Meanwhile insurance attorney Lindsey Halligan, on the other hand, is anything but principled. Trump installed this jetset Barbie-girl as an interim U.S. attorney with absolutely no prosecutorial experience, an idiot stunt that proved fatal to Trump’s attempt to have his sworn nemesis, former FBI Director James Comey, indicted on B.S. charges.
Same with NY Attorney General Letitia James, who once dragged Trump’s butt into a New York courtroom and successfully sued him, his sons and his company for $450 million for fraud. In retribution, she was indicted on a flimsy charge of bank fraud, also by Halligan. But Trump’s handpicked clownster Halligan was declared by a federal judge “unlawfully appointed,” meaning she had no damn business even trying to get a ham sandwich indicted, something an experienced federal prosector could have done with her eyes closed.
And just this week, another Trump fraud, his former attorney Alina Habba, was forced to resign from serving as top federal prosecutor in New Jersey, after a federal appeals court ruled that she had also been serving in that post “unlawfully."
So why is it so important to rail against Trump’s frauds in office? Simple, because they’re doing damage to their respective agencies and institutions, and trying to hurt people for him.
Let’s add Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to that list, shall we?
Here’s a certified nut who is supposed to diligently look out for the health and welfare of all Americans, and instead, RFK Jr. is a notorious anti-vaxxer who will not rest until he puts a dagger in the heart of the established scientific and medical communities.
From leading the charge to deny children vaccinations for Hepatitis B, to trying to convince pregnant women that Tylenol is bad for them, to demanding that teeth-saving fluoride be removed from our water, Kennedy is at war with the medical an scientific establishment, and is as unhinged as they come, thanks to his warped personal and political agenda. A House Democrat already has filed articles of impeachment against him.
This is government by fraud, folks, and it’s only a matter of time before a lot of people are seriously hurt by these phonies. And when that happens, no one will take the ultimate responsibility. Certainly won’t be Trump, who personally chose these and other losers to serve in his administration because he saw them on television. Fox News, no less. He thinks government should be run like reality TV, like his old show, "The Apprentice."
No one can tell me that appointing the founder of the World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. as the U.S. Education Dept. secretary has been a discernible boon for the advancement of our nation’s public schools. Hell, the woman’s actual job is not to improve national education policy, but to shut the entire agency down!
Haven’t you noticed that anyone who had even an once of integrity in the the first Trump Administration was promptly shown the door, especially if they stood up to him? For Trump 2.0 however, he hasn’t made that same mistake. He’s recruited incompetent, but loyal sycophants who would lie, cheat, steal and yes, it turns out, even kill for him.
Our country deserves better. It’s not too early to work towards restoring the high standard of competence we’re used to having in our government. Where all we wanted from the cabinet members who served the president was at least some accomplished background we could all point to with confidence. We knew in the past that most cabinet secretaries were chosen because of their expertise in their areas, and devotion to serving the American people. If someone proved not worthy, past presidents made it their responsibility to dump that person, and find someone else just as qualified.
But now, this governing by fraud and leading with lies mantra from the Trump Administration is corruption at best! Add that to his incessant lying, and clearly we’re in deep bullcrap!
Whether it’s Trump’s constant rant about grocery prices going down, or major foreign investment in the United States going up because of his unconstitutional tariffs, the lies this convicted con man trots out everyday are willful and embarrassing, and not worthy of the office of the American presidency. It's amazing how they were able to fit all 36% of Americans polled who say they approve of Trump's handling of the economy into that Mt. Pocono, Pa. resort "affordability rally" Tuesday night to hear him lie his behind off, because the other 64% of us damn sure are buying it!
During that Tuesday night diatribe, by the way, Trump finally admitted something that he vehemently denied before - that he called countries like Haiti and Somalia “sh-tholes.” The man is a disgusting liar! There’s no getting around it!
And it’s good to see former Trump bubblehead Marjorie Taylor Greene - who will resign from Congress next month - get on national television and renounce her former MAGA master, making the media rounds now calling him a liar, among other unkind, but truer than true things. It’s a tremendous sign of things to come.
I hope and pray voters have had enough by the 2026 midterm elections, and literally clean out the U.S. House, and maybe even a significant portion of the U.S. Senate, of Republicans that tolerate this fraudulent standard of government we have to put up with.
Doing so would remove any backstops Trump current enjoys.
You and I deserve much, much better!
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