Money Trail

Multimillionaire Mehmet Oz, Trump’s Medicare administrator, says the subsidy that lowered Medicare drug premiums “is no longer needed.” (Photo: White House) We’ve all heard Donald Trump’s “affordability” shtick, that higher prices are a “hoax” invented by Democrats to make him look bad. Pay no attention to the data showing that many items cost more now than they did when he returned to the White House.

Amazon now has more than 40,000 Rivian electric vans delivering packages across the country. (Photo: Amazon) These days the news media are filled with doom-and-gloom stories about the U.S. electric-vehicle (EV) market.

California’s proposed one-time wealth tax would still leave Los Angeles-based Peter Thiel, cofounder of Palantir and the venture capital firm Founders Fund, plenty of money. As of today, his net worth is $27 billion.

Donald Trump went to Georgia this week to whip up opposition to incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff, who he said reminded him of “Pinky Herman.” (Photo: John Ramspott) Donald Trump went down to Georgia Wednesday and hit the midterm trifecta: He played the “He’s no manly man” card, a favorite snipe against Democrat James Talarico in Texas, only this time the target was Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff.

On March 27, Donald Trump thanked the farmers, ranchers and agribusiness executives gathered at the White House profusely for their votes.

Illustration: Elliott Negin/ChatGPT As we all know, Donald Trump likes to play the tough guy. Unfortunately, he often does it in really foolish ways, and this time I’m not talking about his war against Iran. I’m talking about Trump’s tariffs. From the way he talks, he apparently believes that foreign countries are sending us checks to cover the tariffs he has slapped on their exports to the United States.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche inadvertently conceded that he is still Donald Trump’s lawyer during his testimony before Congress this week. (Photo: PBS News) There’s usually a high level of theatrics at Capitol Hill hearings as members of Congress and witnesses try to score points and produce good video clips. Wednesday was no exception when Democratic senators took turns trying to trip up two critical White House nominees.

Revival Ministries, which links the founding of America to the “Great Awakening” religious revival of the mid-1700s, wants to start another one. (Photo: Elliott Negin) Now that it’s over, it is safe to say that Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair was a bust. It was a sterile, soulless event that attracted relatively meager crowds compared to other Washington, D.C., Semiquincentennial festivities, even on the July 4th weekend.

Illustration: Elliott Negin/ChatGPT People across the political spectrum are now singing the praises of a proposal embraced by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, who both want the U.S. government to take ownership stakes in major artificial intelligence (AI) companies. Just last month, Sen. Sanders introduced a bill creating a $7 trillion AI sovereign wealth fund that would give the public a 50-percent ownership in them. It’s not just a bad idea, it’s a seriously bad idea.

When NATO leaders had a laugh at the alliance’s summit in Turkey this week, Donald Trump apparently was not in on the joke. (Photo: NATO) It was just another day in topsy-turvy world of Donald Trump. During a session with reporters in Turkey on Wednesday, the president said, “Inflation is way down (it’s not), that “prices are coming down” (they’re not), that Democrats “made up a phony word, ‘affordability’” (they didn’t), and that “oil is coming down very big” (it jumped 6 percent Wednesday).