The Trump regime’s flagrant corruption and apparent irrationality beg the query, ‘Are there any rational actors in energy at present?’
Let’s begin with that corruption, as a result of this rip-off is just too apparent to proceed and but it has labored for Trump time and again.
Fact to Axios to Markets
I’d like to spare myself and my extra with it readers the tedious particulars of at present’s scammery since that is in regards to the tenth time Trump has pulled off the identical factor, however many years of running a blog expertise insist I recite the information.
Additionally this crap retains engaged on Mr Market.
Generally Trump kicks off the social gathering with a Fact social submit claiming that peace is breaking out and the spice is flowing once more, however this time ever devoted Axios “reporter” Barak Ravid was prepared, prepared and in a position to kick off the festivities with “Unique: U.S. and Iran closing in on one-page memo to finish battle, officers say” (archived).
I’m not going to cite Ravid’s nonsense as a result of it’s (or must be) self-refuting however I’ll illustrate the influence it had on the markets this morning:
BREAKING: In line with our evaluation, ~$920 million price of crude oil shorts have been taken 70 minutes earlier than an Axios report claimed the US and Iran have been close to a “14-point” deal to finish the battle.
At 3:40 AM ET at present, practically 10,000 contracts price of crude oil shorts have been taken with out… pic.twitter.com/SZafvnZHHG
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) Might 6, 2026
Oil Value faithfully reside blogged the entire thing, together with the just about prompt collapse of Axios’ “reporting” and this time did a glance again at earlier incidents (though not the obvious insider buying and selling):
7:01 am ET: Oil costs moved laborious on the information. Brent crude fell 10% to $98 a barrel Wednesday morning, whereas WTI dropped 12% to $89.
5 minutes later they have been posting this quote from Trump’s Fact Social account backing up Ravid’s story but in addition threatening MAOR WARZ and utilizing the hilarious phrase “already legendary”:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) Might 6, 2026
“Professor, do not you discover it curious {that a} new US-Iran peace deal leaks virtually each time the 10y UST yield breaks 4.4% on the upside?”
“Really, if I give it some thought, I do not discover it curious in any respect.” pic.twitter.com/aMqLenpJp8
— Luke Gromen (@LukeGromen) Might 6, 2026
Again to Oil Value’s Michael Kern who posted the next fourteen minutes later, implying he had it prepared prematurely, I’m compressing this to solely element a few the six instances this rip-off has run, readers are inspired to learn the entire thing:
Iran Has ‘Virtually’ Made a Deal With the U.S. Six Occasions.
When the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, Brent crude was buying and selling round $72 a barrel. Inside weeks it was approaching $120. Two months on, with the Strait of Hormuz nonetheless functionally closed and negotiations going nowhere quick, costs have swung wildly on each headline — and merchants are operating out of optimism to cost in.
Right here’s the way it’s performed out.
February 28: The Conflict Begins
US and Israeli strikes kill Supreme Chief Khamenei and intestine Iran’s navy infrastructure. Iran shuts the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation. Brent surges 51% in March alone — one of many largest single-month value jumps on file. The IEA calls it “the most important power safety menace in historical past.”
Early April: The First ‘Deal’
On April 1, Trump claims Iran requested for a ceasefire. Iran calls the declare “false and baseless.”
…
April 11-12: Islamabad Talks CollapseVance, Witkoff and Kushner fly to Islamabad.
…Mid-to-Late April: The Revolving Door
April 15: Trump says he needs the battle to finish “swiftly.”
April 17: Iran briefly permits industrial vessels by Hormuz throughout a Lebanon ceasefire, then reimposed restrictions when the US refuses to carry its port blockade.
April 19: Trump calls new Pakistan talks Iran’s “final probability” and threatens to focus on energy vegetation and bridges.
…
Might 1: Iran’s Proposal, Trump’s Rejection
…
Might 5-6: Mission Freedom, Then the Pause
…
The place Issues StandThe sample is evident by now: a headline drops suggesting a breakthrough, oil sells off laborious, then the small print crumble and costs creep again up. Markets have performed this loop half a dozen instances since February. Whether or not the one-page memo at the moment being negotiated breaks that cycle, or turns into the subsequent entry on the record, is the one query that issues proper now.
Thirty minutes after that submit Trump tells The New York Publish “it’s ‘too quickly’ to prep for Iran peace signing.”
The rug pull, it burns!
Watching Mr. Market fall for this time and again is like being a baby in a bar watching their father or mother wager the hire cash on a 3 card monte recreation each month of their childhood.
Should you’re one of many fortunate ones, dad one way or the other retains profitable these seemingly silly bets within the mounted on line casino:
BREAKING: A number of whistleblowers say that Axios coordinated information with market insiders, leaking CME order info by way of telephone calls as much as half-hour earlier than market open and shut prints. Crude oil quick positions have been additionally taken simply earlier than at present’s Axios report on a “US-Iran…
— The Hormuz Letter (@HormuzLetter) Might 6, 2026
Full textual content:
BREAKING: A number of whistleblowers say that Axios coordinated information with market insiders, leaking CME order info by way of telephone calls as much as half-hour earlier than market open and shut prints. Crude oil quick positions have been additionally taken simply earlier than at present’s Axios report on a “US-Iran deal” and “14-point deal,” gaining considerably as oil dropped sharply on the information.
Iranian political analyst Mohammad Marandi additionally says Trump, Witkoff, Kushner, and their shut associates profited closely up to now hours from pretend information offered to Axios.
Sufficient blow by blow of the each day rip-off, let’s have a look at a few of the deeper patterns.
Holy Sample Recognition Batman, There’s a Case for Corruption!
Isaac Saul at Tangle made a decent effort at documenting the proof for a unified subject principle of the physics and follow of Trumpian corruption final week.
Listed below are some highlights:
in April, The New York Occasions broke the story that President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law are negotiating a luxurious resort with Syrian billionaires who’re concurrently lobbying the president to carry financial sanctions on their nation. I’ll write that sentence once more simply in case it didn’t land the primary time: President Donald Trump’s youngsters are negotiating a luxurious resort with Syrian billionaires who’re concurrently lobbying the president to carry financial sanctions on their nation.
I can’t clarify why that story doesn’t have fairly the identical punch as, “In line with The New York Occasions, Hunter Biden is negotiating a Biden-branded luxurious resort with Syrian billionaires; these Syrian billionaires are additionally lobbying President Joe Biden to carry financial sanctions on their nation.” But I do know that, for some cause, the actual story we’re residing by proper now — the one the place Trump’s children are funneling cash on to their household fortune whereas the U.S. authorities arms out favors in return — simply doesn’t appear to get any traction with the general public.
After linking to his intensive protection of the assorted Hunter Biden scandals of the earlier administration and emphasizing his disgust at similar, Saul then makes the inevitable comparability between protection of the Trumps and the Bidens:
I’m disheartened and annoyed now to see that right-wing writers, Trump voters, and Republican politicians who cheered me on once I was investigating potential Biden corruption at the moment are simply ignoring the comparably gargantuan scandals of (alleged) corruption we’re witnessing now.
…After reviewing the proof of the primary 15 months of President Trump’s second time period, I consider the president is profiting off the workplace and making overseas coverage selections based mostly on enterprise pursuits to a degree we’ve by no means seen and even conceived of earlier than, and apparently nothing is being performed to cease it.
I can’t degree that declare straight and unambiguously as a result of we haven’t actually had the essential information adjudicated, since Republicans in Congress have opted for full and utter fealty to Trump in each method conceivable. There is no such thing as a oversight, or accountability, and even the slightest inclination to ask about these actions within the majority social gathering. The Trump administration has additionally dismantled most of the federal watchdogs liable for prosecuting fraud, grift and corruption, so few of its actions have been probed in any significant approach.
As an alternative of indictments, congressional investigations, or public hearings, the very best we’re left with is nice reporting from journalists, the occasional leak from the administration, a right-wing author right here or there prepared to say the actual factor out loud, after which an entire lot of “Occam’s razor” questions like, “Which is likelier, that the one that made an enormous monetary wager on oil costs 20 minutes earlier than Trump introduced a ceasefire knew about it or simply obtained terribly fortunate?”
Saul goes on to element the most important scams and self-dealing capers run by the Trump household throughout his second regime and I extremely encourage everybody to learn the entire thing, take hand written notes on flash playing cards and pin them to a bodily billboard with polaroids of the key suspects and join key nodes with string.
Now, if I could whip out Occam’s razor myself, I believe the magnitude of the self-dealing forces observers to conclude that Trump is primarily motivated in his official actions by a want for rapid private revenue.
Due to this fact if his actions are furthering the type of grand imperial plans so ably documented by Richard Medhurst and Brian Berletic, that means that somebody is manipulating Trump to take actions that not solely serve his private pursuits but in addition these of the empire writ giant.
How The Fox Information Neo Con Acquired Again in Trump’s Head
Semafor paperwork who’s doing it and the way it occurred:
Donald Trump has more and more, improbably turned to a former Bush speechwriter greatest recognized for defending the least standard components of Bush’s overseas coverage, the Iraq Conflict and CIA torture: The Washington Publish’s Marc Thiessen.
The rise of Thiessen, 59, displays 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 world wide, and towards advisers linked to the wars that outlined the Bush years. Trump has infuriated some anti-interventionist allies by more and more boosting prowar figures like Fox Information radio host Mark Levin, whom he defended in opposition to criticism from different conservative media figures.
And Thiessen’s rise started effectively earlier than this yr’s assault on Iran (which Thiessen wholeheartedly backed). Final yr, Trump invited him to have dinner with their respective wives on the White Home. Thiessen has instructed individuals on the Publish that after one telephone name with Trump, the president complimented the attractiveness of Thiessen’s spouse.
I’ve obtained to touch upon that final sentence which illustrates one other sort of private curiosity that motivates the 80-year-old Trump as repulsive because the thought could also be to delicate readers.
Additionally I must remind readers that Thiessen is identical Washington Publish columnist who known as for the assassination of members of Iran’s negotiating group.
Waders on individuals, we’re muckraking right here.
Again to Semafor, which factors out a significant oligarch whose private pursuits are very a lot concerned:
Having a author on employees with the ear of the president has been seen as a power for the Publish’s revamped opinion web page. Since proprietor Jeff Bezos laid out the opinion part’s new organizing ideas final yr, the paper has regarded to redefine itself as a extra centrist, pro-free-market outlet with an typically friendlier view of the president.
However even now, some contained in the paper have rolled their eyes at Thiessen columns they really feel are pandering. Throughout the workplace, one Publish insider mentioned, some employees would groan that Thiessen’s columns have been being written not for readers broadly, however for one reader specifically.
…it’s additionally revealing of one other Trump trait: the disproportionate worth he locations on the legacy retailers that represent a lot of his media eating regimen.
Folks at NBC consider the community has benefited from the significance Trump locations on its signature political program, Meet The Press. Trump’s obsession with 60 Minutes has been a legal responsibility for CBS’ father or mother firm, however it’s rooted in Trump’s perception that the present is a uniquely necessary media establishment.
Thiessen, Levin, and Keane have been featured more and more because the battle started on Fox Information, understanding that Trump is probably going watching. The president has certainly been happy {that a} pleasant new Publish opinion web page has written columns so commonly praising his overseas coverage acumen…
I’m going to change away from Trump right here as a result of the sordid private motivations of two different conservative architects of our present horrible second have surfaced.
Reactionary Prophet’s Pederasty Revealed
As readers must be conscious, nearly all of zionists are neither Jewish nor Israeli. Reasonably they’re American protestants, primarily within the south.
The three-way alliance between evangelicals, the GOP, and Israel was sealed within the George W. Bush years and stays a driving affect over the social gathering and the actions of its presidents.
Evangelical zionists are additionally Donald Trump’s most loyal voting block.
There’s a money-go-round concerned, one instance is illustrated by at present’s piece from Drop Web site Information titled “Distinguished Christian Zionist Group Is Lobbying U.S. Lawmakers on Israel—With out Revealing It’s Funded by Israel.”
However I wish to zero in on one extremely highly effective Christian zionist and the way his deeply private motivations have exerted an unholy gravitational pull on one of the crucial highly effective congregations of all: The Southern Baptist Conference.
Texas Month-to-month’s Robert Downen tells the entire sordid story, “He Remade the Southern Baptist Conference in His Picture. Then Got here the Abuse Allegations.” (archived).
Some lowlights:
Paul Pressler helped ordain the wedding between white evangelicals and the Republican Social gathering, all whereas accusations of sexual abuse piled up. Proper-wing teams are nonetheless utilizing his political playbook.
Chronicle colleagues and I in the end wrote multiple hundred tales detailing the SBC’s widespread sex-abuse downside, prompting worldwide headlines, unprecedented calls for for accountability, and a Division of Justice investigation. Lesser recognized, nonetheless, is the brutal energy battle that broke out consequently—an ongoing struggle that has pitted a brand new era of leaders in opposition to the SBC’s previous guard, pushed out a few of its most outstanding figures, and killed momentum towards main reforms.
For the previous eight years, I’ve been ensconced in Southern Baptist life, with an inside view of SBC management and a neighborhood of abuse survivors as they’ve handled fallout from the disaster. I’ve interviewed numerous SBC members, attended their conferences, and reviewed a whole bunch of hundreds of pages of letters contained in Pressler’s archives. What follows is a narrative of 1 man’s rise, rule, and downfall, and of two extended battles for management of an enormous religion group. It’s a narrative about energy and what those that need it’s going to do for it. Greater than something, it’s the story of what occurs to these left of their wake.
The article chronicles the position of Pressler as a “a clearinghouse for the reason for biblical inerrancy” who labored relentlessly over many years to drive the SBC relentlessly to the fitting.
He was equally relentless as a sexual predator and the piece chronicles “4 many years’ price of sexual abuse and misconduct allegations in opposition to Pressler.”
Provided that Downen has carved out a worthy journalistic profession protecting sexual abuse within the Southern Baptist Conference, Pressler clearly wasn’t a singular animal.
https://t.co/mSj7oAa3xo pic.twitter.com/uw8T5T1WZJ
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) Might 6, 2026
Clearly, this form of conduct isn’t distinctive to any non secular group, or any group in any respect for that matter, however organized and guarded sexual predation is actually 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 Prison Cabal
And as Dr. Aaron Good has argued, predators like former GOP Speaker of the Home Dennis Hastert appear to be most popular by the facility construction that has made unquestioning assist for zionism, its wars and its battle crimes a mainstay of American political conduct.
Actually, Good has lately expanded his arguments to assert that America is basically dominated by a “nazified” legal cabal.
Dr. Aaron Good: It’s the depravity of the category and their predilection for intercourse with underage youngsters may be very disturbing and it’s laborious to fairly know the place that matches into the symbolic order that they settle for.
That’s in all probability the important thing right here since we’re simply spectators in a system that rests on type of exploitation and social hierarchy and you need to form of enure your self to empathy and compassion for these whose struggling makes your standing potential.
That’s the form of grim a part of civilization in on the whole is that it’s hierarchical and based mostly on exploitation. However when you don’t have these issues, you don’t have the opposite good issues in civilization.
But it surely additionally creates a darkish facet of not accepting the total humanity or co-equality of everybody else on this system particularly those that are beneath you on the hierarchy and the upper up you go and the extra energy that you’ve got and the extra highly effective a system is the extra and the extra exploitative it is normally then the highest is essentially going to be that rather more wicked, corrupted and debased…
As Nick Corbishley ably lined yesterday at NC, the geo-politics of the western hemisphere are deeply intertwined with criminality on the highest ranges in addition to zionism:
The most recent revelations of the Hondurasgate scandal counsel that Argentina’s Milei is now conspiring with the lately pardoned Honduran narco-president Juan Orlando Hernández, whom the US and Israel apparently wish to return to energy, to unfold propaganda on-line to “remove the left” in Latin America, concentrating on Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and the left-wing opposition in Honduras — all apparently paid for with US and Israeli funds
And whereas the governments of the left are implicated as effectively, in the intervening time it’s the forces of the fitting who appear extra more likely to be getting excessive on their very own provide as they are saying.
Let’s have a look at the tragic instance of a sure weepy right-wing influencer and a former mainstay of “the mental darkish internet” that helped drive Trump to energy in 2016.
Say It Ain’t So Dr. Jordan Peterson
The New York Publish has the inside track on the drug-related downfall of a person who formed the pondering of thousands and thousands within the nascent manosphere.
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) Might 6, 2026
Tammy Peterson says her husband, writer and podcast celebrity Dr. Jordan Peterson, is struggling a “neurological harm,” which has taken him out of the highlight.
The scientific psychologist and younger man whisperer stepped away from recording his standard YouTube present and podcast lately, prompting questions from followers.
His household instructed The Publish he’s primarily affected by a “neurological harm,” from beforehand taking psychiatric drugs.
Peterson had been taking the benzodiazepine Klonopin when his spouse, Tammy, was identified with kidney most cancers in 2019. Getting off the remedy prompted nightmarish withdrawal signs.
In line with Tammy, Dr. Peterson developed tardive akathisia — a continual motion dysfunction characterised by intense restlessness and a compulsive want to maneuver, a recognized aspect impact of stopping dopamine antagonist drugs.
“The injury performed from psych drugs from over six years in the past takes persistence, time and loving consideration,” Tammy, 65, mentioned.
My level is, simply because it’s smart to have some consciousness of the median intoxication ranges of 1’s fellow drivers on a crowded New 12 months’s Eve freeway at 2am, we must always try to be cognizant of the typically sordid private motivations, delusional however deeply held beliefs, and sure drug and alcohol intakes of these whose selections drive the occasions that form our collective future.
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