This Week and Next
Trump launches a new war. RFK Jr.’s Surgeon General is a fraud. Baby Ellison adds Warner Brothers to his toy box. And in New York's Hudson Valley, the Wine Wars rage on.
It’s no surprise that America is waging an illegal war against Iran. It tracks perfectly for both Trump and Netanyahu, two men who govern like cornered animals. When the politics turn criminal, the criminals drop bombs.
Trump's support is hemorrhaging, even among the faithful. Not really a shock. Eventually the veneer would rub off. Let’s be honest about what Trump actually is: the great American copycat con. Reagan coined "MAGA." Bush torched Iraq on fabricated intelligence and tanking poll numbers. Netanyahu will burn the entire Middle East down before he sees the inside of a courtroom.
These two aren't leaders. They're killers. And what are they both desperate to hide? Their corruption. There are genuinely dangerous countries with real nuclear weapons. Iran isn't one of them. I'm not saying Iran is any great shakes, but the threat is manufactured. And manufactured threats are what these men have always sold to protect their plunder, stay out of prison, and keep their families and friends fat with cash.
The Cirus Came to Town…Again
After this week’s catastrophic installment of The Trump Administration Show - from Kash Patel’s Olympic fiasco to Kristi Noem’s mile-high sexcapades to RFK Jr., charlatan unlicensed physician, auditioning for Surgeon General, to a State of the Union address that played like Molière rewritten by someone who couldn’t pass a civics exam - these were desperate times demanding desperate distractions.
And right on cue, the GOP spineless jumped into action. The minute they dusted off the Clintons to be deposed in the Epstein files - not Melania, not Donald, despite far deeper and more damning connections - you knew the walls were closing in. Less than twenty-four hours after both Clintons testified, the bombs started falling. Coincidence? Come on.
The impotent Republican members of Trump’s House of Reprehensibles once again shirked their constitutional responsibility (Article I, Section 8), the one job the founders actually gave them. Some, like the perpetually shameless Elise Stefanik, sprinted to Facebook to wave the flag while simultaneously abandoning her post. Performative patriotism is her entire brand. Then again, why wouldn’t it be? Cowardice dressed up as conviction is standard operating procedure for the whole lot of them.
Raw Milk and Expensive Cheap Wine
But war abroad isn’t the only front where the adults have left the room. I watched in horror this morning as a fourteen-year-old influencer posted his healthcare advice on Instagram, pushing steak, some berries, eggs with pale yellow yolks (a hallmark of factory farming, not that he’d know), all washed down with raw milk. A child dispensing medical guidance to millions. Where are the parents? Where is the regulation? Where are the adults?
Raw milk in the United States is responsible for sickening more than 2,600 people and hospitalizing over 225. In one of the largest recent outbreaks, 171 people were sickened by Salmonella from a single California dairy farm’s raw milk, and 70% of those cases were children and adolescents. The FDA calls raw milk one of the “riskiest” foods Americans can consume. But sure, let a teenager with a ring light tell your kids it’s a superfood.
This is what happens when you let Silicon Valley oligarchs design the information landscape and worm-addled lawyer crafts the message. A fourteen-year-old has more reach than your doctor. MAHA!
And while the federal government wages war and children cosplay as physicians, the rot closer to home keeps surfacing. The Wine Wars, my series on a plastic surgeon and a conflicted small-town leader, is gaining serious traction. Recusals. Admissions that laws weren’t followed. Now an emergency town meeting. Local corruption doesn’t have the production budget of a Pentagon press conference, but it follows the same script: people in power protecting themselves at public expense.
That script, of course, runs a lot smoother when you own the press. And as all of this unfolds, there’s the crushing, suffocating reality that most of the world is now getting its information from platforms and publications owned by a few billionaires who have already shown their cards.
All the President’s Press
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News paid $787.5 million after internal documents proved the network knowingly broadcast election lies. Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, promised editorial independence, then killed a Harris endorsement, purged dissenting voices, and ran editorials serving his own financial interests without disclosure, all while cutting checks to Trump’s inauguration. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the Los Angeles Times and ran the same playbook: killed a Harris endorsement, installed pro-Trump voices on his editorial board, and gutted his own newsroom. Elon Musk turned X into his personal propaganda machine. Mark Zuckerberg restructured Meta’s content policies to please the incoming administration before it even took office. Different names, same pattern: billionaires buying newsrooms and bending them to serve their “new” politics but really just their portfolios.
Welcome to the club David Ellison. The nepo baby son of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, bought Paramount and installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News. Weiss has never produced a minute of broadcast journalism. She ran a right-of-center Substack. Ellison bought it for $150 million and handed her the house that Cronkite built. She reports directly to Ellison, not the CBS News president. She made that a condition. Trump has privately said Larry Ellison assured him CBS would become more “conservative” under his son’s ownership.
Over 100 staffers were laid off. The entire “race and culture” unit was gutted. Weiss told remaining staff they were “free to leave” if they didn’t like her vision. They took her up on it. Eleven Evening News staffers took buyouts. Long-time 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens resigned, saying his editorial independence was being “damaged and curtailed by corporate higher-ups.” This week, 46-year CBS veteran Mary Walsh, who worked with Cronkite and reported from war zones, walked out, citing a “sweeping new vision” that broke from traditional journalism. Departing producer Alicia Hastey called it “heterodox” journalism. That’s a polite word for what’s actually happening.
Ellison just won the $110 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. CNN is about to land in the same hands. The man whose father promised Trump a more conservative CBS will soon own two of the largest news operations in the country.
If this doesn’t keep you up at night, you’re already asleep.
Why Your Subscription Matters
Independent journalism answers to readers—not advertisers, corporations, or access-hungry editors. No story gets killed because it upsets a sponsor. No punch gets pulled because someone important made a phone call.
Your support makes possible sharp commentary, fearless satire, and reporting that follows the story wherever it leads. In an era of manufactured narratives and algorithmic blandness, that independence isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity.
Subscribe to The Powell House Press. Or settle for content that tells you what someone else wants you to hear.