"We have a president who loves cheats. They are his tribe, his confreres, his soulmates. In his second term, he has pardoned them with abandon. Among those he has proudly exonerated are crypto king Changpeng Zhao (currently worth $108 billion) whose Binance platform was an open house for money laundering by Hamas, Houthis, Russian oligarchs, take your pick. Clemency was also showered upon pornography payment mogul Jason Galanis, sentenced for swindling the Oglala Sioux Nation and other investors out of $60 million; former reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, convicted of scamming banks for over $30 million in fraudulent loans,; Julio Herrera Velutini, the Italian-Venezuelan billionaire banker accused of bribing Puerto Rico’s then-governor, and whose daughter donated a total of $3.5 million to MAGA Inc.; and South Florida health care fraudster Paul Walczak, who pled guilty to multi-million dollar tax fraud, and whose pardon was bestowed three weeks after his mother Elizabeth Fago attended a $1 million-a-head Mar-a-Lago fundraiser.

(Picture: Ratings Bomb: Trump’s prime time address on July 16)

Bafflingly, these travesties of justice never seem to penetrate the American consciousness with more than a shrug. MAGA devotees may still cheer, but there is a new loser mood swirling around Trump, a boredom with his bloated act. His prime time address to the nation on “election integrity” last week sank like a stone. Three networks – ABC, NBC, and CNN – declined to air it. Why should networks take his stale reruns when they have plenty of stale reruns of their own? The morning after, even the faithful Fox & Friends couldn’t face the ennui of pretending the Chinese may be to blame for Trump’s 2020 election loss and gave his speech a hard pass. According to a poll released today, 67% of registered voters disapprove of how Trump is handling his job. And as the pocketbook economy refuses to respond to his hype with the same enthusiasm as Wall Street, something new and dark is taking hold. Casualties from the Iran war, previously a bang-bang video game rampant with explosive special effects, are now fallen, relatable individuals." —Tina Brown