Another member of Donald Trump’s inner circle has gotten away with everything. Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has officially dropped his legal case against billionaire Trump confidant Elon Musk and his America PAC.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Musk’s America PAC offered swing state residents a chance to win a $1 million “lottery” in exchange for their signature on a “pro-Constitution” petition, with special focus on the First and Second Amendments. Many of the “winners” ended up being from Pennsylvania.
Krasner initially filed the civil lawsuit against Musk and his PAC before the election, on the grounds that they broke state law by operating an illegal, unregulated lottery in Pennsylvania, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Though several legal experts and the Justice Department have sounded the alarm, Krasner’s lawsuit was the first legal challenge that Musk faced for his $1 million bribe.
When Musk’s lawyer admitted that the so-called “lottery” winners were specifically chosen and not randomly selected, Krasner’s office doubled down. “This was all a political marketing masquerading as a lottery, that’s what it is. A grift,” said Krasner. “[Voters] were scammed for their information,” Krasner said. “It has almost unlimited use.”
But now the fight is over, as Krasner requested that the case be “Discontinued and Ended as to all parties without prejudice, with all parties bearing their own costs.” The filing came just days before Jack Smith’s cases against Trump also collapsed.
Donald Trump is reportedly considering removing traditional media journalists from the White House press briefing room, making way for friendlier figures in “the podcast world,” according to the president-elect’s son Donald Trump Jr.
In Monday’s episode of the Triggered With Don Jr. podcast, Trump Jr. told conservative commentator Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire that he and his father discussed the idea last week.
Around the 13-minute mark, Knowles suggested that, as incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt “is looking at the new press briefing room chart, maybe it’s time to reorder that chart, maybe take away some people’s seats.”
Trump Jr. replied that such discussions were already underway. “So, we’re gonna break some news here,” the president-elect’s son said, revealing that he had “literally had this conversation” with his father, “I think it was coming back from the SpaceX launch with Elon [Musk] last week.
“I was sitting there, and we were talking about, like, the podcast world, and some of our friends, and [Joe] Rogan, and guys like you, and me to a lesser extent—I wouldn’t be able to get a seat, that would be nepotism or whatever the hell,” Trump Jr. said. “But we had the conversation about opening up the press room to a lot of these independent journalists.”
“If The New York Times has lied, they’ve been adverse to everything, they’re functioning as the marketing arm of the Democrat Party,” Trump Jr. continued, “why not open it up to people who have larger viewerships, stronger followings?”
The president-elect’s son seemed to suggest that the idea was well received: “We’ve had that conversation, like, ‘That’s a great idea, Don.’ I was like, ‘I think we should do this.’ And so that may be in the works.”
Replacing mainstream journalists with “some of our friends” would allow Trump—whose demonization of the press as “the enemy of the people” has been a trademark of his political brand—to avoid tough grilling and adversarial questioning, and instead receive favorable treatment from the same figures whose fawning coverage helped him win the presidency earlier this month.
As The New York Times reported, Trump’s embrace of the podcast world during the 2024 campaign allowed him “to sidestep more confrontational interviews with professional journalists, where he might face tough questions, fact-checks and detailed policy debates. The influencers he met with rarely challenged Mr. Trump, and often lavished him with praise.”
Mexico has fired back at Donald Trump’s new threat to institute tariffs against the country, warning that it would respond with tariffs of its own.
“To one tariff will come another and so on, until we put our common businesses at risk,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said in a press conference Tuesday, adding that she would send a letter to Trump urging dialogue and cooperation.
Justifying his tariff threat, which came in a Truth Social post Monday evening, Trump complained that “thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before.” Sheinbaum directly contradicted the president-elect, noting that migrant apprehensions at the border are down and that caravans haven’t been arriving at the Mexican border recently. She pointed out that gangs in Mexico are getting guns from the United States and actually contributing to crime south of the border.
“We do not produce weapons, we do not consume the synthetic drugs. Unfortunately we have the people who are being killed by crime that is responding to the demand in your country,” Sheinbaum said, referencing fentanyl, which Trump complained about on Truth Social Monday. She also criticized U.S. spending priorities.
“If a percentage of what the........