Kagro in the Morning - May 15, 2026

There's always room for a little more travelogue, right? Even when we're not traveling? Don't forget to choose your side in the In-N-Out vs. Culver's war kinetic action excursion!

In other travel news, they opted not to sedate the president for his return trip to China. So you can anticipate a full day of Aaron Rupar clips of him damaging national security and the international geopolitical order.

Well, if we're not traveloguing all day, then why not start the day instead with some lighthearted accusations of international espionage? It's yet another case of Billionaire Brainrot, as some guy who should have better things to do sets out in earnest to attack... some regular, normal people. Well, some Democrats from Utah, anyway. Why? Because AI profits, of course.

Hey, remember when Republicans were just out to "relitigate Watergate?" And then the relitigators had their children's faces eat by leopards? No? Well, never mind, because as usual, we're way beyond that now. This is just the latest entry (but a good one that's worth your time) in the "revolutionary moment" discourse, there's another new data point that drives the theme home in a different way: 50 years after the unifying moment of the entire nation being captivated by the TV miniseries adapted from Roots, Knox County, TN (where a statue of the author Alex Haley stands today) is now banning the book from its school libraries. zOMFG.

This may require a brief suspension of disbelief, but I do think we have a contender for Trump's most nakedly corrupt move so far. It was previously a different version of today's story, but the alleged diminution in value from $10 billion to a mere $1.7 billion didn't make it any less corrupt, in the end. (Nor does it preclude ratcheting the corruption back up to $10 billion, or indeed any other figure he'd like to imagine.) Yes, it's the Trump-sues-himself-and-then-orders-himself-to-settle-with-himself case. Only now it involves using the case to "fund" a sort of "victims' compensation fund," where the "victims" are anybody he'd like to give cash to.

Oh, you wanna hear about more corruption? OK, fine. Them Duke Trump boys are miraculously always getting in just in time on investments that pay off big when their dad's government make decisions about major contract awards mere days after they buy in to the recipients of those contracts! And this time, they're doing it with a big play in Kazakh tungsten. Which I guess means dad won't be freeing up any Chinese tungsten on his trip. And some people are wondering whether the fact that deals like this always seem to involve defense contracts is the reason why they won't cut Whisky Pete Hic-seth loose.

You want a story about dad's own corrupt stock plays? Well, I have one. Does it play into this week's GINA trip? Duh! Of course! His attention span isn't long enough to sustain anything else, you know.

What about cronyism, though? Isn't there a corrupt cronyism story today? Yes, but it involves a connection to the other nation of 1 billion-plus, not the one he was visiting.

But what about corruption, cronyism and pointless jingoism? Can we get a trifecta? Yes we can, to borrow and completely unfairly tar a perfectly good catchphrase. How about by "committing" to 250 pardons for America's 250th birthday? Definitely going to be corrupt (and crony-licious), because Trump. And by God, 250 of them really is pointlessly jingoistic. We've done it!