An indicted Chinese businessman pumped millions of ill-gotten dollars into the bank accounts of some of the most influential figures in MAGA World—including former Trump aides Steve Bannon and Jason Miller—according to a raft of documents filed in federal court in February.
Chinese Mogul Funneled Millions to Bannon, Fox, Gettr, Docs Show (archived)
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The story surrounding the president’s grandchild in Arkansas, who has not yet met her father or her grandfather, is about money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright.
Hunter Biden’s Daughter and a Tale of Two Families
Video: On The E-Girl Army Psyop Phenomenon via Justin Taylor
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Weaponizing e-girls: How the US military uses YouTube and TikTok to improve its image
How E-girl influencers are trying to get Gen Z into the military
But Haylujan isn’t the only E-girl using Sanrio sex appeal to lure the internet’s SIMPs into the armed forces. There’s Bailey Crespo and Kayla Salinas, not to mention countless #miltok gunfluencers cropping up online. While she didn’t document her military career, influencer Bella Poarch also served in the US Navy for four years before going viral on TikTok in 2020, and is arguably the blueprint for this kind of kawaii commodified fetishism in the military. An adjacent figure, Natalia Fadeev, also known as Gun Waifu, is an Israeli influencer and IDF soldier who uses waifu aesthetics and catgirl cosplay to pedal pro-Israel propaganda to her 756k followers. She poses to camera, ahegao-style, with freshly manicured nails wrapped neatly around a glock, the uWu-ification of military functioning as a cutesy distraction from the shadowy colonial context: “when they try and destroy your nation,” she writes in one caption.
Re-energized this election cycle, the tech entrepreneur joins other mega-donors apparently out to undercut the political system
Peter Thiel’s midterm bet: the billionaire seeking to disrupt America’s democracy
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The Right’s Would-Be Kingmaker (archived, as it’s behind a paywall)
Anti-Globalist?! He invests in businesses, worldwide!? I doubt that it would be possible without globalization! 🤷🏼♀️
Did Russian government trolls really drive a pro-Israel, anti-Muslim campaign targeting Palestinian American Democratic Party activist Linda Sarsour?
NY Times claim that Russia drove attacks on Linda Sarsour is nonsense
H/T: Katie Halper
As much as I’m enjoying the January 6th committee’s careful assembly of evidence proving former President Trump is a [douchebag]. I wasn’t seeing much in the way of a criminal offense until this week’s underreported story about how Trump used his “STOP THE STEAL” fundraising appeals to grift his supporters out of $250 million, none of which was, in fact, used to fight election fraud.
Ann Coulter: Trump swindles the deplorables
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But there was also this, from the New York Times account, which bears closer scrutiny:
Investigators went further on Monday, detailing how the Trump campaign and its Republican allies used claims of a rigged election that they knew were false to mislead small donors and raise as much as $250 million for an entity they called the Official Election Defense Fund, which top campaign aides testified never existed.
“Not only was there the big lie,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who played a key role in the hearing, “there was the big rip-off.”
Money ostensibly raised to “stop the steal” instead went to Mr. Trump and his allies, including, the investigation found, $1 million for a charitable foundation run by Mark Meadows, his chief of staff; $1 million to a political group run by several of his former staff members, including Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda; more than $200,000 to Trump hotels; and $5 million to Event Strategies Inc., which ran the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the Capitol riot.
Aides said Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., was paid $60,000 to speak at that event, a speech that lasted less than three minutes.
“It is clear that he intentionally misled his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that didn’t exist and used the money raised for something other than what he said,” Ms. Lofgren said of Mr. Trump.
Peter Thiel helped build big tech. Now he wants to tear it all down.
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Not mentioned—Luke Thompson was involved with Protect Ohio Values Super PAC:
A mole hunt, a secret website and Peter Thiel’s big risk: How J.D. Vance won his primary
J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel Accused of ‘Secret Website’ Shenanigans
More About Strive Asset Management:
New ‘excellence capitalism’ movement is challenging woke investors
Peter Thiel is full of contradictions—a libertarian who founded a company that aids government surveillance, a critic of tech who supports Facebook’s mission for world domination, and a defender of free speech who helped to kill a media outlet.
The Dungeon Master
Peter Thiel, one of Donald J. Trump’s biggest donors in 2016, has re-emerged as a prime financier of the Make America Great Again movement.
The Right’s Would-Be Kingmaker
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Conservative dating app to launch this summer, backed by Peter Thiel with $1.5 million investment
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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