ANALYSIS – Stranger than fiction. Can’t make this stuff up. The cross-dressing, ‘puppy sex role play,’ ‘non-binary’ Department of Energy (DOE) official appointed by Joe Biden, was placed on leave last month after he was reportedly caught on camera stealing an expensive suitcase at a midwestern airport terminal.
This is according to a report in the New York Post.
His criminal case is now in court.
According to court filings, Sam Brinton, the deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy was charged with felony theft after allegedly snatching a Vera Bradley suitcase reportedly worth $2,325 from baggage claim at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport on Sept. 16.
Brinton, who has a shaved head, mustache, an affinity for wearing lipstick, women’s dresses, and high heels, and uses idiotic plural ‘they/them’ pronouns, initially denied taking the expensive designer luggage.
However, Brinton was captured on surveillance video grabbing the luggage and quickly removing the real owner’s ID tag, before scurrying away.
Investigators said Brinton was later seen using the stolen Vera Bradley suitcase at least twice while traveling to Washington, DC, within weeks of snatching it.
He is one of the U.S. government’s first ‘non-binary’ (aka – openly mentally ill) officials.
Public Health Service Admiral Richard (who now goes by Rachel) Levine identifies as a woman, so he is binary, just a different gender from what his biology dictates.
Both, of course, are Biden appointees.
Brinton is also a “queer activist” who brags about his “kink” of leading other gay men who are pretending to be dogs around on leashes before having sex with them.
As one Twitter user noted:
He doesn’t care about that. But he does care that this was the reason he was picked by Biden for this senior government post.
It doesn't bother me that Biden's new Waste Disposition Deputy pick, who will be in charge of nuclear waste disposal, is a queer activist who holds seminars on 'puppy play' gimp kinks.
Brinton is charged with felony theft of movable property without consent and, if convicted, faces up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Brinton’s hearing is scheduled for December 19.
It is unknown whether he would be sent to a men’s or women’s correctional facility, or whether he would be allowed to wear dresses.
Please note – unlike too many other news writers, journalists, and outlets, I won’t confuse my readers, and enable mental illness, by also using idiotic plural pronouns to refer to a single individual.
Let’s see how this story plays out.
Hopefully, there will be no gay men ‘puppies’ involved.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – As a former Marine Corps officer and military attaché who served at several embassies overseas in the 1990s, it has infuriated me to see partisans and ideologues impose their radical agendas on our foreign embassies during Joe Biden’s tenure at the White House.
Flying extremely divisive, and to many host countries, offensive, flags representing controversial sexual agendas (LGBTQ+), which includes the extreme ‘trans’ movement, and private groups which espouse hate toward one race and law enforcement (Black Lives Matter – BLM), has been an egregious abuse pushed hard by the Biden State Department since last year.
Our embassies and consulates are official extensions of the United States. They are even considered sovereign U.S. territory.
They are there on behalf of the entire U.S. nation, as represented by our national flag, not sectarian views, or radical and controversial agendas.
This is true, even when these same radical agendas are being forced on our executive branches of government.
Thankfully, the new GOP House is proposing to quickly change that abuse.
The Old Glory Only Act, introduced Monday by South Carolina Republican Rep. Jeff Duncan would prohibit any flag other than the American flag to be flown over U.S. embassies and consulates.
“Our beautiful flag, Old Glory, should be the only flag flying and representing our country over our diplomatic and consular posts worldwide,” Duncan said in a press release announcing the bill’s introduction in the House Monday. “The American flag is a beacon of liberty, and no other flag or symbol better portrays our shared values than the Stars and Stripes. It is important to ensure that Old Glory only is flown at American embassies to represent our ideals abroad.”
The New York Times previously reported that Biden Secretary of State Antony Blinken authorized U.S. embassies to fly ‘gay pride’ flags in April 2021, prior to May 17, which is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, and to continue displaying the flag through the end of the month.
The push to fly the rainbow ‘gay pride’ flag actually began in 2014, under the Obama-Biden term. That flag has flown over U.S. embassies in more than a dozen countries since then, including Russia, Spain, Sweden and South Korea.
President Trump’s Secretary of State banned the ‘pride’ flags from being flown but his order was quickly reversed by Blinken.
In May, another cable from Blinken’s State Department authorized flying Black Lives Matter flags at U.S. diplomatic facilities worldwide, Foreign Policy reported at the time.
The BLM flag has been flown at U.S. embassies in Brazil, Greece, Spain, Bosnia, Cambodia and South Korea, according to Duncan’s office.
This, even though violent BLM rioters had spent months attacking the federal courthouse in Portland and laying siege to dozens of cities nationwide just months earlier in 2020.
The BLM riots caused over $2 billion in property damage, more than any other similar event in U.S. history, injured over 2,000 local and federal police officers, and resulted in numerous deaths of civilians.
According to the NYT, a cable from the State Department at the time gave the chiefs of missions (COMs), who lead our overseas diplomatic stations, a “blanket written authorization” to display the flags if it was “appropriate in light of local conditions.”
While the Times noted this was an “authorization, not a requirement,” few COMs will ignore the pressure to follow the boss’ lead, and the more woke embassies and consulates quickly started flying these unofficial flags.
Republicans are optimistic the new GOP leadership will hold a vote on the bill since there is broad GOP support for the idea.
But why stop there? Why not ban these divisive flags from being flown over any federal buildings, period – including all of the ones here at home?
According to the General Services Administration (GSA), More than 40 federal buildings across the country opted to raise the Pride Flag to show their support of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in the federal workforce.
What they are actually doing is flying the flags of exclusive, divisive and radical private groups on federal property paid for by the U.S. taxpayer.
This too must end.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Michael J. McCord provide testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee budget hearing, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., March 28, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)
ANALYSIS – Words matter. In a post on his Truth Social platform last Friday, former President Donald Trump suggested that outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley deserved to be executed after speaking with China’s top general during Trump’s final months in office.
Trump said Milley’s “treasonous act” was “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
Clearly, Trump wasn’t threatening to do so but saying that Milley’s actions could have been punished by death in a prior era.
I condemned Milley’s actions at the time because they seemed to give the Chinese Communist regime a promise that they would be given a warning prior to any attack under Trump.
While Milley claims his actions were a normal part of his duties, I disagree.
They appeared to be more a normal part of the mission that he took upon himself, which was to counter Trump when Milley believed the president had crossed some line only Milley could see.
Some argue that Milley’s actions were not only disloyal to the president but also borderline ‘treasonous.’
Milley contends that he was behaving appropriately to avert an accidental war. He responded to Trump’s comments on CBS:
He also assured viewers that he had adequate safety measures for himself and his family.
The two backchannel calls to China’s top general, Li Zuocheng, that Milley made, and at the center of all this, were revealed in the 2021 book “Peril.”
In October 2020, as intelligence suggested China believed the US was going to attack them, Milley sought to calm Li by reassuring him that the US was not considering a strike, according to the book. Milley called again two days after the January 6 riot at the US Capitol to tell Li that the US is “100 percent steady” even though “things may look unsteady.”
How much of this reporting in the book was accurate, is hard to say. But Trump sees things very differently.
Trump said that Milley “turned out to be a Woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the President of the United States.”
And Trump may be right. For Milley to do that could be seen as highly inappropriate, if not exactly ‘treasonous.’
Still, Trump, a former president, and current front-runner for the Republican nomination for president, is way out of line. No American political leader should be using that kind of language against any American military official or political leader.
In today’s volatile climate, it is extremely dangerous.
Yet few in the GOP will condemn Trump’s statements. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson is one of those willing to take aim at the Republican frontrunner. Politico quoted Hutchinson as saying:
To suggest that Gen. Milley should be executed is inexcusable and dangerous. While some will excuse this latest outrage as Trump just being Trump, the fact is that his statement endangers people and is an insult to those who serve in the military.
Perennial Trump critic, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, had stronger words, calling Trump an “absolute child” for the “reprehensible” remarks.
But it is part of a disturbing pattern by both sides to use dangerously inflammatory rhetoric at the highest levels against the other side.
Democrats raised the political temperature considerably against Trump, calling for, or at least condoning the calls for, his beheading and death on many occasions.
The demonization of Trump by the left and Democrat Party was more than I had ever seen in over thirty years in and around U.S. politics.
It was, and still is, outrageous.
But Trump isn’t helping things with his own dangerous rhetoric.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
ANALYSIS – In case you missed it, Joe Biden tripped again recently going down the stairs of Air Force One. And these weren’t the normal tall stairs used by proud Commanders in Chief, that rise all the way to the top of the majestic presidential aircraft, but the very short baby stairs that are used by ‘the help’ that go into the lower bowels of the plane.
That is the new normal for our aging and decrepit occupant of the White House. That and tennis shoes worn with business suits and seeing a physical therapist. All to avoid tripping, slipping, or falling, and not being able to get back up.
This latest slip occurred just hours after Axios reported Biden’s campaign is “working on a critical project for his re-election bid: Make sure he doesn’t trip.”
‘Operation Don’t Let Biden Fall’ would be laughable if it weren’t so sad. But as Axios notes: “Biden’s team is betting that any mockery he receives over using the shorter Air Force One steps and wearing tennis shoes will be worth it to avoid another public stumble.”
Many Democrats worry about Biden having a bad fall like Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole, 73 at the time, had in September 1996, when he fell off a stage at a rally weeks before the election.
Democrats already had been knocking Dole about his age compared to the 50-year-old Bill Clinton running for re-election.
Biden has repeatedly stumbled and tripped in public, including, most dramatically on stage at the Air Force’s graduation in June.
Biden’s physician has diagnosed Biden’s stumbles as likely caused by “a combination of significant spinal arthritis” and “mild post-fracture foot arthritis.”
Folksy old Biden might just say he is getting long in the tooth.
Biden, the oldest-ever serving U.S. president, turns 81 in less than two months. Three-fourths of Americans see Biden as too old for office, according to an AP-NORC poll last month.
Another poll from the Washington Post and ABC News in late September found that 3 out of 5 Democrats would prefer someone else be the party’s 2024 nominee.
The president’s doctor has recommended special exercises for balance, which he called “proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers.”
Unfortunately, Axios noted, no one has ever heard of these “maneuvers.”
“I have never heard the term ‘proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers.’ It is not a clinical term in standard use,” said Professor James Gordon, associate dean and chair of the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California.
Biden’s doctor is just as good as Biden at using made up words or as good as the White House Press secretary is at blowing smoke.
As bad as his obvious physical frailty is, Americans should be just as concerned, or more so, about Biden’s severe mental decline.
And it must be bad, when even the establishment media has noticed. NBC News reported in July:
Apparent to anyone paying attention is that the Biden they may remember from the Robert Bork Supreme Court confirmation hearings of 1987, or the vice presidential debate with Sarah Palin in 2008, is a different man today. His gait is less steady, his speech not as fluid. He has confused Iraq with Ukraine and Rolling Fork, Mississippi, with “Rolling Stone.” At a conference last year, he looked out at the audience and called for a congresswoman who had recently died in a car crash.
The outlet added that Biden is “relying on “extra-large font on his teleprompter and note cards to remind him of the points he wants to make in meetings.”
I must note that I’ve seen the extra-large font on his teleprompter, and it is embarrassingly HUGE.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported in June that Biden’s “staff schedules most of his public appearances between noon and 4 p.m. and leave him alone on weekends as much as possible.”
But there is only so much you can do to hide the fact that this man should be in a rocking chair with his grandkids, not leading the free world.
It is doubtful that Team Biden can keep their man from falling during the camapign, it is even more doubtful that – barring keeping him isolated in a soundproof bubble – they can keep him from babbling incoherently.
Either way, we definitely don’t want Biden answering what Hillary Clinton in 2008 called “the 3am phone call” to the White House in a major crisis. And I can see a lot of those calls coming in over the next four years.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Marine One lifts-off after returning President Donald J. Trump to Mar-a-Lago Friday, March 29, 2019, following his visit to the 143-mile Herbert Hoover Dike near Canal Point, Fla., that surrounds Lake Okeechobee. The visit was part of an infrastructure inspection of the dike, which is part of the Kissimmee-Okeechobee Everglades system, and reduces impacts of flooding for areas of south Florida. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian) [Photo Credit: The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
A flurry of emails between Justice Department figures reveal the Federal Bureau of Investigation asked former President Donald Trump’s attorneys to shut off Mar-A-Lago’s security cameras to prevent any recording of agents searching for classified documents, fearful that Trump would release the footage to his supporters.
The non-profit public interest law firm Judicial Watch reports it received 477 pages of records pages from the Justice Department revealing top officials within the National Security Division “discussing the political implications of Trump allowing CNN to use closed-circuit TV (CCTV) footage of the raid on his Mar-a-Lago home. The documents confirm that the Justice Department had asked that Mar-a-Lago CCTV be turned off before the raid.”
The records were released to Judicial Watch in response to a September 2022 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed after the Justice Department failed to respond to an August 2022 request for records about the August 8, 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid.
An August 17, 2022, email exchange, with the subject “CNN – Mar-a-Lago CCTV Footage,” reveals officials discussing efforts to shut off Trump’s security cameras to prevent him releasing footage of any searches.
“I just received a call from our case agents at FBI, and apparently the Bureau has been given a heads-up by CNN that CNN has CCTV [closed circuit television] footage from Mar-a-Lago (presumably of agents executing the search) that they may air as soon as tonight [Redacted],” writes an attorney, whose name is redacted, with the Justice Department’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section of the National Security Division.
“I have no further info on what, specifically, CNN has. But [redacted],” he or she adds.
“CNN is saying FPOTUS [former president] is still weighing whether to release the footage,” Jay Bratt, chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section adds.
“Got a call from Evan [likely then-Trump attorney Evan Corcoran]. As Jay says, Trump team is still weighing the release. Per Evan, some say it will energize base, others say not a good look for FPOTUS to have it out there” writes Communications Advisor Luis Rossello.
“CNN is working on a story that Jay requested Trump team to turn off the cameras and they refused,” Rossello continues.
Justice Department official George Toscas replies, “We’re waiting to hear back from FBIHQ on their recommended approach.”
Bratt writes, “We did. This was in the call [redacted] and I had with Evan Corcoran before the search. It is standard for [redacted].”
At one point, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Marshall Miller forwards the email exchange to a personal email account of Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco.
It is generally not recommended for government officials to use personal email addresses, which can evade public disclosure.
Miller’s comment is entirely redacted, Judicial Watch reports, “to which a Justice Department National Security Division official, whose name is redacted, responds, ‘Kelsey/Luis: Will we also plan to communicate to CNN the law enforcement safety need to blur agent faces if footage ends up being released?’”
Anthony Coley, Director of the DOJ Public Affairs Office, replies, “Done.”
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
ANALYSIS – Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse with Joe Biden, he goes and has a chummy sideline meeting with China’s communist leader-for-life, Xi Jinping, at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.
While his partisan spinmeisters in the media dutifully reported the White House line that Biden was firm with Xi, the three-and-a-half-hour private meeting was muddled, absurdly naïve and dangerous.
At the summit, Biden stated that the U.S. aims to manage competition with China “responsibly” and that there is no need for a new Cold War.
Biden also strongly and foolishly reaffirmed China’s ‘One China’ policy regarding Taiwan, adding (against warnings from NATO and his own national security officials) that he didn’t foresee any Chinese military action against Taiwan any time soon.
Fox News reported Biden said during a press conference ahead of the G20 summit in Bali:
“[Xi] was clear and I was clear that we’ll defend American interests and values, promote universal human rights and stand up for the international order and work in lockstep with our allies and partners…”
“We’re going to compete vigorously but I’m not looking for conflict. I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly,” Biden said. “And I want to make sure that every country abides by the international rules of the road. We discussed that.”
Biden’s messaging was clear in one area though.
He believes climate change is more of a threat than a revisionist, expansionist, power-hungry, communist dictatorship with an economy almost the size of the U.S.
And Biden is willing to risk America’s sovereignty, independence, security and freedom to get China’s faux help with his extreme climate agenda.
GOP Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was rightfully livid over Biden’s meeting and statements.
President Biden’s claim that ‘there need not be a new Cold War’ between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party proves that this administration dangerously misunderstands the CCP, which openly pushes for conflict with the United States and its allies…
Last week, while Xi appeared in a military uniform and called on the People’s Liberation Army [PLA] to prepare for war, Biden’s Department of Defense pulled an entire squadron of American fighter jets out of the Indo-Pacific. Not only is the United States unprepared to defend Taiwan against a PLA invasion, President Biden is now downplaying its likelihood.
This meeting should have held the CCP accountable for its rampant human rights abuses, ongoing theft of American intellectual property, and its refusal to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
Rubio added: “Instead, President Biden demonstrated that he is willing to sacrifice everything — including our national security and the security of our allies — for the sake of pursuing ill-fated climate talks with our nation’s greatest adversary.”
Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen told Fox News on Monday that Biden’s diplomacy with China is “strategic insanity” that may only help the autocratic communist state accumulate power and global influence.
Fox News adds that “Biden reportedly has been pressuring China to essentially join him in his Green New Deal-style vision of non-petroleum power sources, which Thiessen said is one of the key areas the United States can apply pressure to Beijing if they invade their peaceable neighbor Taiwan.”
“The last thing we want China to do, quite frankly, is to start weaning itself off of oil,” Thiessen said.
“If they follow Biden’s advice and wean themselves off of oil and start embracing clean energy, we lose that leverage,” Thiessen said.
“So, you know, it’s not only a sign of weakness, it’s strategic insanity.”
As I recently reported, Xi has been increasingly adamant that so-called ‘reunification’ with Taiwan can no longer wait and China will use force if necessary to control the independent democratic nation.
Top U.S. commanders and senior intelligence officials have warned that China could take forceful action against Taiwan as early as next year, and increasingly likely by 2025 or 2027, at the latest.
Meanwhile, Biden is playing footsies with Xi, hoping China will join his radical green global agenda.
Because that is all he, and his leftist puppeteers, care about. GAND
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)
ANALYSIS – Even as the world obsesses over Donald Trump’s latest legal dangers, the walls are slowly closing in on the Biden crime family. And I don’t use the phrase ‘crime family’ often.
But it’s becoming increasingly clear that Joe Biden used his time as Vice President as a golden opportunity to unlawfully enrich his entire family, often flying his son Hunter on Air Force Two abroad to seal deals.
In one well-known instance, VP Biden leveraged a billion dollars in U.S. aid to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the energy firm that employed Hunter.
In their ongoing investigation into alleged influence peddling involving Biden, members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee have asked the National Archives and Records Administration for unrestricted access to Biden’s travel aboard the vice-presidential jet, known as Air Force Two, and the VP’s official helicopter, known as Marine Two.
They want to determine whether the trips aided his son Hunter’s shady foreign business deals.
House GOP investigators believe Biden, while vice president under Barack Obama, used his power and influence to help his family and a group of associates with foreign business deals involving China, Russia, Ukraine and other countries, worth tens of millions of dollars.
And there is more evidence to back up their beliefs. Last month, Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business partner, told House investigators the foreign deals were secured by selling the Biden “brand,” essentially, Joe Biden’s position as vice president of the United States.
“Then-Vice President Joe Biden abused Air Force Two by allowing his son to jet set around the world to sell ‘The Brand’ to enrich the Biden family,” said House Oversight Chairman James Comer.
“This is yet another example of then-Vice President Biden abusing his public office for his family’s financial gain.”
More specifically, the Washington Times reported that:
Lawmakers on the Oversight panel said the president’s son Hunter Biden may have traveled to 15 countries with his father while he was vice president and that during that time, Mr. Biden met in Beijing with his son’s business associate, a Chinese national, while he was on official business.
“Then Vice-President Biden’s misuse of Air Force Two and Marine Two is indicative of yet another way in which the President has abused his various offices of public trust and wasted taxpayer money to benefit his family’s enterprise, which consisted of nothing more than access to Joe Biden himself,” Oversight lawmakers wrote to U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan.
House investigators also believe Biden used numerous aliases to hide his participation in his son’s shady deals. The Times added:
…Comer also is seeking more than 5,000 White House emails that used aliases for then-Vice President Joseph R. Biden. The National Archives said it is awaiting approval from Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama before handing them over to Mr. Comer, according to an aide to Mr. Comer.
White House records show that Mr. Biden used the name Robert L. Peters while serving as vice president. Mr. Biden also disguised his name on emails using the pseudonyms Robin Ware and JRB Ware, a play on his middle name and initials paired with his home state of Delaware.
Critically, investigators noted a May 26, 2016, White House scheduling email sent to VP Biden ahead of a call with the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko that was also inexplicably sent to his ‘private citizen’ son, Hunter.
At the same time, the drug-addicted, unqualified Hunter was earning $100,000 a month as a board member of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, which was under investigation for corruption. The U.S. State Department had said Burisma engaged in bribery.
And in a typical moment of braggadocio, a clueless Biden senior bragged about it. The New York Post reported:
In a 2018 interview at the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden bragged that he unilaterally withheld a billion dollars in US aid from the Ukrainians to force them to fire Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin.
The Ukrainians balked, but Biden gave them an ultimatum: “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.”
Tough guy, that Biden.
Biden has claimed he demanded Ukraine fire its equivalent of Attorney General because he was corrupt, but we now know the State Department had found that Ukraine had made great strides in dealing with corruption, and Shokin, specifically, was praised in private correspondence.
The Post added that Devon Archer’s testimony revealed that Burisma executives made the removal of Shokin a top priority and raised it with their hired gun, Hunter.
Archer reportedly described how Burisma officials told Hunter of the importance of neutralizing Shokin, and how “a call to Washington” was made in response. The call was of course to Dad.
And that’s what House investigators are hoping to prove. The Obama-Biden White House call logs, emails, and flight schedules are all part of the mounting evidence against Joe Biden.
Americans have been getting ripped off. That is not hyperbole, nor a populist refrain, but a blunt statement of economic reality. The average American pays more for prescription drugs than any other patient in the developed world. This is not a function of greater access, higher quality, or more innovation. It is a product of a system that has, for decades, allowed foreign governments to underpay for medicine while forcing Americans to pick up the tab.
How did we arrive here? The answer is simple, if depressing: the United States accounts for less than five percent of the global population, yet pharmaceutical companies derive nearly three-quarters of their global profits from the American market. Foreign nations, through centralized health systems and price controls, bargain down the price of medicines. Drug manufacturers accept those lower prices because they know they can make up the shortfall in the United States. That is, in effect, a transfer of wealth from the American sick to the foreign healthy.
President Trump has had enough. On May 12, 2025, he signed an Executive Order resurrecting and expanding upon a policy initiative from his first term: the Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) pricing model. In his first term, the MFN model focused on Medicare Part B drugs, those administered in clinical settings, and proposed that the US would pay no more than the lowest price paid by a comparable country. That version was blocked by the courts in 2021 due to procedural issues and was quickly abandoned by the Biden administration. The 2025 version not only revives the core concept but also broadens its scope significantly. It retains the pricing benchmark based on peer nations while adding a novel direct-to-consumer purchasing mechanism. This allows patients to bypass pharmacy benefit managers entirely and buy drugs directly from manufacturers at MFN prices. The new policy thus marries institutional price reform with individual consumer empowerment, expanding the ambition and reach of Trump’s original plan.
Critics, as always, are quick to object. They warn that drug manufacturers will simply stop selling in the US or that research and development will dry up. Some even suggest that international reference pricing is a form of price-fixing by another name. These concerns deserve serious consideration. But they do not outweigh the manifest injustice of the status quo, nor do they erase the practical and moral urgency of reform.
First, consider the structure of the order itself. The MFN model applies immediately to Medicare Part B drugs, those administered in doctors’ offices, often the most expensive and specialized. Trump has instructed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to set price targets within 30 days and deliver measurable results within six months. If pharmaceutical companies fail to comply, the administration will take further action: drug importation from allied nations, penalties on noncompliant firms, and antitrust enforcement through the FTC targeting anti-competitive practices like patent abuse.
Second, the Executive Order proposes a direct-to-consumer mechanism, allowing American patients to buy drugs from manufacturers at international prices, bypassing the profit-hungry middlemen known as pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). This proposal reflects an economic reality too long ignored: the price of a drug is not set by market forces but by negotiated distortions, rebates, and arbitrage. By cutting out the layers of rent-seeking intermediaries, the Trump administration aims to restore both transparency and affordability.
On this point, perhaps the most surprising endorsement came from Mark Cuban who actively campaigned against the president supporting Kamala Harris’s failed White House bid. Cuban has emerged in recent years as one of the fiercest critics of PBMs in the pharmaceutical supply chain. Through his Cost Plus Drug Company, Cuban has championed a model that eliminates PBMs entirely, selling generic drugs directly to consumers at a fixed markup. He sees PBMs not as neutral facilitators, but as parasites, entities that profit not from creating value, but from distorting it.
In an X post on April 16, 2025, Cuban praised Trump’s Executive Order on healthcare and in particular, drug pricing by explaining how it could save hundreds of billions of dollars. His enthusiasm was not just theoretical. He outlined six specific reforms targeting PBM practices and emphasized that the EO’s direct-to-consumer mechanism aligns with the very business model he has built. For Cuban, this is not about politics, but principle. If Americans can bypass PBMs and purchase drugs at MFN prices, the savings could be transformative.
Gotta be honest. The @realDonaldTrump EO on healthcare and in particular, drug pricing could save hundreds of billions.
Here is how: 1. Divorce formularies from PBMs. Require them to come from independent organizations with no economic incentive from the formulary Make them…
Cuban has long called for transparency in PBM contracts, elimination of specialty tiers, and reform of rebate structures that inflate drug prices. These are the same structural defects the EO seeks to address. The alignment between Trump’s policy and Cuban’s advocacy is more than accidental. It reflects a growing consensus that PBMs have become a market failure in themselves, distorting prices and blocking access in pursuit of opaque profits.
Charlie , you aren't close. Drug prices are too damn high. But the big culprit isn't the brand manufacturers, it's the big middlemen. Namely PBMs. They work so hard to distort pricing the first lines in their contracts with everyone is "you can't disclose any of this "
That Trump and Cuban, two men with vastly different public personas, can agree on this solution is a testament to its power. The issue of drug pricing, once mired in partisan clichés, is now the battleground for real reform. Cuban’s support underscores the seriousness of the EO. It is not simply a gesture, but a genuine effort to untangle the knotted system that has left so many Americans paying so much, for so little.
Opponents cite legal precedent. Indeed, a similar MFN policy was blocked by federal courts in 2021. The Biden administration quickly shelved the idea, preferring not to test its legal authority. But legal difficulty is not legal impossibility. Trump’s new Executive Order is crafted more carefully, with an expanded evidentiary record and administrative justification. Implementation will no doubt be litigated, but the constitutional structure gives the executive branch discretion over how Medicare reimburses for services. Provided the process adheres to administrative law, the courts may well uphold it.
Let us confront the core objection head-on: that price controls reduce innovation. This concern is not frivolous. America leads the world in pharmaceutical innovation precisely because it has, historically, paid the price. The profits derived from the US market fund research labs from Basel to Boston. But this global good comes at a local cost, one that is becoming unbearable.
What Trump offers is not an end to pharmaceutical profitability, but an insistence on proportionality. If research and development are a global public good, then the funding of that good should not be extracted primarily from one nation. Let the Germans and the French and the Canadians contribute more. Let them pay their share. And let the American patient, who already shoulders more than enough, get some relief.
Consider the counterfactual: suppose the MFN policy were in place ten years ago. American taxpayers might have saved hundreds of billions of dollars. Lower out-of-pocket costs would have meant better medication adherence, fewer medical complications, and a healthier, more productive citizenry. That is not a theoretical hope but an economic projection rooted in well-documented health economics. The US spends more per capita on health care than any other country, and drug prices are a major contributor. The MFN model begins to correct that imbalance.
To be sure, implementation challenges remain. Drugmakers may respond by raising prices in foreign countries, undermining the benchmark. The direct purchasing mechanism may be slow to launch, hampered by logistics, safety protocols, or bureaucratic inertia. But these are not arguments against reform, only reminders that reform must be executed with competence.
Trump’s order also calls out foreign governments for their own price manipulation. The US Trade Representative is directed to push back against discriminatory pricing policies abroad. In effect, the administration is making clear: if you want access to the American market, you must stop freeloading off the American consumer. This is economic diplomacy at its most justified.
The pharmaceutical lobby will fight this tooth and nail. Already, industry stocks surged after the EO’s announcement, a signal that insiders believe implementation may be delayed or diluted. But if the Trump administration can muster the will to enforce the order, the effects will be historic. It would mark the first time in decades that the US government sided squarely with the American patient over the multinational drug cartel.
No other president has dared confront this imbalance so directly. Democrats have talked about drug pricing reform for years, yet under Biden, the MFN rule was rescinded without a whimper. Trump, in contrast, resurrected it and expanded its scope. In so doing, he returned to the populist conservative ethos that put him in the White House: government exists to serve its citizens, not to enrich corporate middlemen or subsidize foreign welfare states.
The critics will continue to cry foul. But as prices fall and access improves, their objections will ring hollow. The moral arc of drug pricing reform is long, but with this Executive Order, it bends toward justice. Americans deserve to pay no more than their peers abroad. At last, there is a president willing to say so, and more importantly, to act on it.
Sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to helping independent journalists overcome formidable challenges in today’s media landscape and bring crucial stories to you.
ANALYSIS – If you only followed establishment news, you would think that only former president Donald Trump is in a heap of legal trouble. Well, regardless of whether Trump’s legal woes are justified or a witch hunt by a weaponized Department of Justice (DoJ) and politicized local prosecutors, he isn’t the only president in increasingly hot water.
Whether it’s through his son Hunter, or by his own doing, Joe Biden is also facing what one congressman called an “inferno of allegations.”
Pennsylvania Republican and House Oversight Committee member Scott Perry said on a Newsmax TV interview on Thursday that where there’s smoke there’s fire, and Joe Biden has “gotten himself into an inferno of allegations and credible claims of influence peddling that seems like it’s filled with probable cause.”
Perry made the comments on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” in a discussion about the president’s use of at least one email alias when he was vice president. The Oversight Committee has demanded that the National Archives turn over unredacted material related to the alias and its use that overlaps with Hunter Biden’s time in Ukraine.
“I think it’s really long past time where the Oversight Committee and the Congress itself to play hardball with these agencies that somehow think that this information that belongs to the American people somehow solely belongs to them as though it’s their personal possession,” Perry told Schmitt.
Joe Biden’s use of email aliases during his time as vice president is the latest bombshell to come from investigations into Hunter’s shady foreign business deals.
President Biden used at least three pseudonyms during his vice presidency to send messages to his son Hunter concerning both family and official government business — including meetings with Ukrainian leaders, emails found on the first son’s abandoned laptop show.
Then-Vice President Biden emailed Hunter under the aliases “Robin Ware,” “Robert L. Peters” and “JRB Ware” between 2014 and 2016, keeping his son abreast of scheduled talks with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Kyiv Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, among other communications The Post first revealed in 2021.
The elder Biden had one of his aides, John Flynn, send his daily schedule to the private email address “[email protected]” at least 10 times between May 18 and June 15, 2016, copying Hunter on a May 26 message with a note about an “8.45am prep for 9am phonecall [sic]
Biden had pressured Poroshenko five months earlier to fire Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the natural gas company Burisma Holdings, where Hunter earned roughly $1 million per year while serving on the board between 2014 and 2019.
Joe Biden also used the “JRB Ware” alias in 2016 to discuss plans for the Penn Biden Centerin Washington, DC, and where improperly kept classified material was found late last year.
The revelation of these Biden aliases has promptedHouse Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) to ask the National Archives to turn over unredacted records where Biden relied on the aliases when communicating with his son Hunter and his son’s business partners Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer.
Archer told the committee on July 31 that Joe Biden got on phone calls with his son’s foreign business associates nearly two dozen times.
Schwerin also visited the Old Executive Office Building to meet with then-Vice President Biden around the time the Obama-Biden administration was making big changes to US-Ukraine policy.
So, what should happen next? Well, Congressman Perry has an answer for that.
I think the subpoenas have to start. I think the impeachment inquiry is overdue again. We have probable cause. I think in any other criminal case instance right now that this would be completely fulfilling the probable cause requirement.
I think it’s our duty to ferret this out, so the American people know about their president, whether they can trust him or not.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm should be removed from her position amid a “litany” of alleged ethics violations, a group of conservative leaders report.
More than a dozen conservative leaders, including Media Research Center President Brent Bozell, sent a letter to President Joe Biden requesting Granholm’s resignation “based on a series of violations of federal ethics laws and regulations,” the MRC reports.
“In light of the repeated ethical lapses, as well as the apparent tolerance of a lax culture of ethical compliance at the Department of Energy, it is crucial for ensuring the trust of the American people that Secretary Granholm be immediately relieved of her duties,” the letter to Biden states.
The letter lists a “litany of abuses of public trust,” including:
Failure to accurately report financial holdings
Participating personally and substantially in matters directly benefiting a company in which she had a financial interest
Inappropriately using her official position to promote products for multiple companies in which she had a financial interest or covered relationship
Abusing her position of authority and misusing government resources to advance partisan activities in violation of the Hatch Act
Signaling to career civil servants and senior political leadership under her command that policy objectives take priority over basic compliance with ethics and legal obligations.
The letter also accuses Granholm of using her office to boost the value of her stock in Ford Motor Company.
“The recent revelations about Secretary Granholm’s continued financial ownership of Ford stock while acting to enrich – and at times even publicly endorse – the company is egregious,” the letter read. “However, it is simply the latest incident evidencing recklessness at best and intentional disregard for the law at worst.”
The leaders also demand Granholm’s resignation for engaging in prohibited partisan political activity noting the Office of the Special Counsel found Granholm violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits government employees from using their positions to engage in some forms of political activity, in an October 2021 interview.
“Taken together, these episodes cast serious doubt on the Secretary’s fitness to hold a cabinet seat,” the letter reads.
“You often speak of maintaining the highest standards for your administration’s appointees. It is past time that you demonstrate that this promise holds some meaning,” the letter concludes.
Granholm would not the first Biden administration Energy Department official to resign in disgrace.
Former Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Kelly Speakes-Backman amid allegations she used her office to benefit a former employer.
Senior DOE official Samuel Brinton was also fired and later arrested for stealing womens’ luggage from airports.
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
