The Trump regime’s flagrant corruption and obvious irrationality beg the question, ‘Are there any rational actors in power today?’
Let’s start with that corruption, because this scam is too obvious to continue and yet it has worked for Trump over and over again.
Truth to Axios to Markets
I’d love to spare myself and my more with it readers the tedious details of today’s scammery since this is about the 10th time Trump has pulled off the same thing, but decades of blogging experience insist I recite the facts.
Also this crap keeps working on Mr Market.
Sometimes Trump kicks off the party with a Truth social post claiming that peace is breaking out and the spice is flowing again, but this time ever faithful Axios “reporter” Barak Ravid was ready, willing and able to kick off the festivities with “Exclusive: U.S. and Iran closing in on one-page memo to end war, officials say” (archived).
I’m not going to quote Ravid’s nonsense because it’s (or should be) self-refuting but I will illustrate the impact it had on the markets this morning:
BREAKING: According to our analysis, ~$920 million worth of crude oil shorts were taken 70 minutes before an Axios report claimed the US and Iran were near a “14-point” deal to end the war.
At 3:40 AM ET today, nearly 10,000 contracts worth of crude oil shorts were taken without… pic.twitter.com/SZafvnZHHG
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) May 6, 2026
Oil Price faithfully live blogged the whole thing, including the almost instant collapse of Axios’ “reporting” and this time did a look back at previous incidents (although not the apparent insider trading):
7:01 am ET: Oil prices moved hard on the news. Brent crude fell 10% to $98 a barrel Wednesday morning, while WTI dropped 12% to $89.
Five minutes later they were posting this quote from Trump’s Truth Social account backing up Ravid’s tale but also threatening MAOR WARZ and using the hilarious phrase “already legendary”:
pic.twitter.com/I4znnUZHaq
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) May 6, 2026
“Professor, don’t you find it curious that a new US-Iran peace deal leaks almost every time the 10y UST yield breaks 4.4% on the upside?”
“Actually, if I think about it, I don’t find it curious at all.” pic.twitter.com/aMqLenpJp8
— Luke Gromen (@LukeGromen) May 6, 2026
Back to Oil Price’s Michael Kern who posted the following fourteen minutes later, implying he had it ready in advance, I’m compressing this to only detail a couple of the six times this scam has run, readers are encouraged to read the whole thing:
Iran Has ‘Almost’ Made a Deal With the U.S. Six Times.
When the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, Brent crude was trading around $72 a barrel. Within weeks it was approaching $120. Two months on, with the Strait of Hormuz still functionally closed and negotiations going nowhere fast, prices have swung wildly on every headline — and traders are running out of optimism to price in.
Here’s how it’s played out.
February 28: The War Starts
US and Israeli strikes kill Supreme Leader Khamenei and gut Iran’s military infrastructure. Iran shuts the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation. Brent surges 51% in March alone — one of the largest single-month price jumps on record. The IEA calls it “the biggest energy security threat in history.”
Early April: The First ‘Deal’
On April 1, Trump claims Iran asked for a ceasefire. Iran calls the claim “false and baseless.”…April 11-12: Islamabad Talks Collapse
Vance, Witkoff and Kushner fly to Islamabad.…
Mid-to-Late April: The Revolving Door
April 15: Trump says he wants the war to end “swiftly.”
April 17: Iran briefly allows commercial vessels through Hormuz during a Lebanon ceasefire, then reimposed restrictions when the US refuses to lift its port blockade.
April 19: Trump calls new Pakistan talks Iran’s “last chance” and threatens to target power plants and bridges.…May 1: Iran’s Proposal, Trump’s Rejection…May 5-6: Project Freedom, Then the Pause…Where Things Stand
The pattern is clear by now: a headline drops suggesting a breakthrough, oil sells off hard, then the details fall apart and prices creep back up. Markets have done this loop half a dozen times since February. Whether the one-page memo currently being negotiated breaks that cycle, or becomes the next entry on the list, is the only question that matters right now.
Thirty minutes after that post Trump tells The New York Post “it’s ‘too soon’ to prep for Iran peace signing.”
The rug pull, it burns!
Watching Mr. Market fall for this over and over again is like being a child in a bar watching their parent bet the rent money on a three card monte game every month of their childhood.
If you’re one of the lucky ones, dad somehow keeps winning these seemingly stupid bets in the fixed casino:
BREAKING: Several whistleblowers say that Axios coordinated news with market insiders, leaking CME order information via phone calls up to 30 minutes before market open and close prints. Crude oil short positions were also taken just before today’s Axios report on a “US-Iran…
— The Hormuz Letter (@HormuzLetter) May 6, 2026
Full text:
BREAKING: Several whistleblowers say that Axios coordinated news with market insiders, leaking CME order information via phone calls up to 30 minutes before market open and close prints. Crude oil short positions were also taken just before today’s Axios report on a “US-Iran deal” and “14-point deal,” gaining substantially as oil dropped sharply on the news.
Iranian political analyst Mohammad Marandi also says Trump, Witkoff, Kushner, and their close associates profited heavily in the past hours from fake news provided to Axios.
Enough blow by blow of the daily scam, let’s look at some of the deeper patterns.
Holy Pattern Recognition Batman, There’s a Case for Corruption!
Isaac Saul at Tangle made a respectable effort at documenting the evidence for a unified field theory of the physics and practice of Trumpian corruption last week.
Here are some highlights:
in April, The New York Times broke the story that President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law are negotiating a luxury hotel with Syrian billionaires who are simultaneously lobbying the president to lift economic sanctions on their country. I’ll write that sentence again just in case it didn’t land the first time: President Donald Trump’s children are negotiating a luxury hotel with Syrian billionaires who are simultaneously lobbying the president to lift economic sanctions on their country.
I can’t explain why that story doesn’t have quite the same punch as, “According to The New York Times, Hunter Biden is negotiating a Biden-branded luxury hotel with Syrian billionaires; those Syrian billionaires are also lobbying President Joe Biden to lift economic sanctions on their country.” Yet I know that, for some reason, the real story we’re living through right now — the one where Trump’s kids are funneling money directly to their family fortune while the U.S. government hands out favors in return — just doesn’t seem to get any traction with the public.
After linking to his extensive coverage of the various Hunter Biden scandals of the previous administration and emphasizing his disgust at same, Saul then makes the inevitable comparison between coverage of the Trumps and the Bidens:
I’m disheartened and frustrated now to see that right-wing writers, Trump voters, and Republican politicians who cheered me on when I was investigating potential Biden corruption are now just ignoring the comparably gargantuan scandals of (alleged) corruption we’re witnessing now.…
After reviewing the evidence of the first 15 months of President Trump’s second term, I believe the president is profiting off the office and making foreign policy decisions based on business interests to a level we’ve never seen or even conceived of before, and apparently nothing is being done to stop it.
I can’t level that claim directly and unambiguously because we haven’t really had the basic facts adjudicated, since Republicans in Congress have opted for complete and utter fealty to Trump in every manner imaginable. There is no oversight, or accountability, or even the slightest inclination to ask about these actions in the majority party. The Trump administration has also dismantled many of the federal watchdogs responsible for prosecuting fraud, grift and corruption, so few of its actions have been probed in any meaningful way.
Instead of indictments, congressional investigations, or public hearings, the best we are left with is great reporting from journalists, the occasional leak from the administration, a right-wing writer here or there willing to say the real thing out loud, and then a whole lot of “Occam’s razor” questions like, “Which is likelier, that the person who made a massive financial bet on oil prices 20 minutes before Trump announced a ceasefire knew about it or just got extraordinarily lucky?”
Saul goes on to detail the biggest scams and self-dealing capers run by the Trump family during his second regime and I highly encourage everyone to read the whole thing, take hand written notes on flash cards and pin them to a physical billboard with polaroids of the major suspects and connect key nodes with string.
Now, if I may whip out Occam’s razor myself, I think the magnitude of the self-dealing forces observers to conclude that Trump is primarily motivated in his official actions by a desire for immediate personal profit.
Therefore if his actions are furthering the kind of grand imperial plans so ably documented by Richard Medhurst and Brian Berletic, that implies that someone is manipulating Trump to take actions that not only serve his personal interests but also those of the empire writ large.
How The Fox News Neo Con Got Back in Trump’s Head
Semafor documents who’s doing it and how it happened:
Donald Trump has increasingly, improbably turned to a former Bush speechwriter best known for defending the least popular elements of Bush’s foreign policy, the Iraq War and CIA torture: The Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen.
The rise of Thiessen, 59, reflects a broader shift in Trump’s orbit away from media figures like Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson, who celebrated his efforts to withdraw American forces from conflicts around the world, and toward advisers linked to the wars that defined the Bush years. Trump has infuriated some anti-interventionist allies by increasingly boosting prowar figures like Fox News radio host Mark Levin, whom he defended against criticism from other conservative media figures.
And Thiessen’s rise began well before this year’s attack on Iran (which Thiessen wholeheartedly backed). Last year, Trump invited him to have dinner with their respective wives at the White House. Thiessen has told people at the Post that after one phone call with Trump, the president complimented the attractiveness of Thiessen’s wife.
I’ve got to comment on that last sentence which illustrates another type of personal interest that motivates the 80-year-old Trump as repulsive as the thought may be to sensitive readers.
Also I need to remind readers that Thiessen is the same Washington Post columnist who called for the assassination of members of Iran’s negotiating team.
Waders on people, we’re muckraking here.
Back to Semafor, which points out a major oligarch whose personal interests are very much involved:
Having a writer on staff with the ear of the president has been seen as a strength for the Post’s revamped opinion page. Since owner Jeff Bezos laid out the opinion section’s new organizing principles last year, the paper has looked to redefine itself as a more centrist, pro-free-market outlet with an often friendlier view of the president.
But even now, some inside the paper have rolled their eyes at Thiessen columns they feel are pandering. Within the office, one Post insider said, some staff would groan that Thiessen’s columns were being written not for readers broadly, but for one reader in particular.
…it’s also revealing of another Trump trait: the disproportionate value he places on the legacy outlets that constitute much of his media diet.
People at NBC believe the network has benefited from the importance Trump places on its signature political program, Meet The Press. Trump’s obsession with 60 Minutes has been a liability for CBS’ parent company, but it is rooted in Trump’s belief that the show is a uniquely important media institution.
Thiessen, Levin, and Keane have been featured increasingly since the war began on Fox News, knowing that Trump is likely watching. The president has surely been pleased that a friendly new Post opinion page has written columns so regularly praising his foreign policy acumen…
I’m going to switch away from Trump here because the sordid personal motivations of two other conservative architects of our current horrible moment have surfaced.
Reactionary Prophet’s Pederasty Revealed
As readers should be aware, the majority of zionists are neither Jewish nor Israeli. Rather they are American protestants, primarily in the south.
The three-way alliance between evangelicals, the GOP, and Israel was sealed in the George W. Bush years and remains a driving influence over the party and the actions of its presidents.
Evangelical zionists are also Donald Trump’s most loyal voting block.
There’s a money-go-round involved, one example is illustrated by today’s piece from Drop Site News titled “Prominent Christian Zionist Group Is Lobbying U.S. Lawmakers on Israel—Without Revealing It’s Funded by Israel.”
But I want to zero in on one incredibly powerful Christian zionist and how his deeply personal motivations have exerted an unholy gravitational pull on one of the most powerful congregations of all: The Southern Baptist Convention.
Texas Monthly’s Robert Downen tells the whole sordid story, “He Remade the Southern Baptist Convention in His Image. Then Came the Abuse Allegations.” (archived).
Some lowlights:
Paul Pressler helped ordain the marriage between white evangelicals and the Republican Party, all while accusations of sexual abuse piled up. Right-wing groups are still using his political playbook.
Chronicle colleagues and I ultimately wrote more than one hundred stories detailing the SBC’s widespread sex-abuse problem, prompting international headlines, unprecedented demands for accountability, and a Department of Justice investigation. Lesser known, however, is the brutal power struggle that broke out as a result—an ongoing fight that has pitted a new generation of leaders against the SBC’s old guard, pushed out some of its most prominent figures, and killed momentum toward major reforms.
For the past eight years, I have been ensconced in Southern Baptist life, with an inside view of SBC leadership and a community of abuse survivors as they’ve dealt with fallout from the crisis. I’ve interviewed countless SBC members, attended their meetings, and reviewed hundreds of thousands of pages of letters contained in Pressler’s archives. What follows is a story of one man’s rise, rule, and downfall, and of two prolonged battles for control of a massive faith group. It’s a story about power and what those who want it will do for it. More than anything, it is the story of what happens to those left in their wake.
The article chronicles the role of Pressler as a “a clearinghouse for the cause of biblical inerrancy” who worked relentlessly over decades to drive the SBC relentlessly to the right.
He was equally relentless as a sexual predator and the piece chronicles “four decades’ worth of sexual abuse and misconduct allegations against Pressler.”
Given that Downen has carved out a worthy journalistic career covering sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, Pressler obviously wasn’t a unique animal.
https://t.co/mSj7oAa3xo pic.twitter.com/uw8T5T1WZJ
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) May 6, 2026
Obviously, this sort of conduct isn’t unique to any religious organization, or any organization at all for that matter, but organized and protected sexual predation is certainly a mainstay of the Epstein class and a commonality that unites Southern evangelicals with their fellow zionists in New York and Tel Aviv.
The Cosmopolitan Criminal Cabal
And as Dr. Aaron Good has argued, predators like former GOP Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert seem to be preferred by the power structure that has made unquestioning support for zionism, its wars and its war crimes a mainstay of American political conduct.
In fact, Good has recently expanded his arguments to claim that America is essentially ruled by a “nazified” criminal cabal.
Dr. Aaron Good: It’s the depravity of the class and their predilection for sex with underage children is very disturbing and it’s hard to quite know where that fits into the symbolic order that they accept.
That’s probably the key here since we’re just spectators in a system that rests on kind of exploitation and social hierarchy and you have to sort of enure yourself to empathy and compassion for those whose suffering makes your status possible.
That’s the sort of grim part of civilization in in general is that it’s hierarchical and based on exploitation. But if you don’t have those things, you don’t have the other good things in civilization.
But it also creates a dark aspect of not accepting the full humanity or co-equality of everyone else in this system especially those who are below you on the hierarchy and the higher up you go and the more power that you have and the more powerful a system is the more and the more exploitative it is in general then the top is necessarily going to be that much more depraved, corrupted and debased…
As Nick Corbishley ably covered yesterday at NC, the geo-politics of the western hemisphere are deeply intertwined with criminality at the highest levels as well as zionism:
The latest revelations of the Hondurasgate scandal suggest that Argentina’s Milei is now conspiring with the recently pardoned Honduran narco-president Juan Orlando Hernández, whom the US and Israel apparently want to return to power, to spread propaganda online to “eliminate the left” in Latin America, targeting Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and the left-wing opposition in Honduras — all apparently paid for with US and Israeli funds
And while the governments of the left are implicated as well, at the moment it is the forces of the right who seem more likely to be getting high on their own supply as they say.
Let’s look at the tragic example of a certain weepy right-wing influencer and a former mainstay of “the intellectual dark web” that helped drive Trump to power in 2016.
Say It Ain’t So Dr. Jordan Peterson
The New York Post has the scoop on the drug-related downfall of a man who shaped the thinking of millions in the nascent manosphere.
pic.twitter.com/GuMmHzOuLu
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) May 6, 2026
Tammy Peterson says her husband, author and podcast superstar Dr. Jordan Peterson, is suffering a “neurological injury,” which has taken him out of the spotlight.
The clinical psychologist and young man whisperer stepped away from recording his popular YouTube show and podcast recently, prompting questions from fans.
His family told The Post he is primarily suffering from a “neurological injury,” from previously taking psychiatric medications.
Peterson had been taking the benzodiazepine Klonopin when his wife, Tammy, was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2019. Getting off the medication caused nightmarish withdrawal symptoms.
According to Tammy, Dr. Peterson developed tardive akathisia — a chronic movement disorder characterized by intense restlessness and a compulsive need to move, a known side effect of stopping dopamine antagonist medications.
“The damage done from psych medications from over six years ago takes patience, time and loving attention,” Tammy, 65, said.
My point is, just as it’s wise to have some awareness of the median intoxication levels of one’s fellow drivers on a crowded New Year’s Eve freeway at 2am, we should attempt to be cognizant of the sometimes sordid personal motivations, delusional but deeply held beliefs, and likely drug and alcohol intakes of those whose decisions drive the events that shape our collective destiny.
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