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In wake of absurd billionaire tax dodging justification, Patriotic Millionaires rewrites NYT headline to more accurately reflect reality
Recent reporting from the New York Times highlighted efforts by Wall Street executives and Silicon Valley donors to convince Vice President Harris to drop taxation of the ultra-wealthy from her agenda. In response, Morris Pearl, Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director at BlackRock, Inc., released the following statement: “I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you that Wall Street billionaires and Silicon Valley tech bros are trying to convince a presidential candidate to abandon her commitment to tax them, and using their own alleged brilliance to justify it. I admire their chutzpah in claiming that taxing unrealized capital gains will stifle innovation!
Claiming that making a billionaire pay taxes on their second billion will reduce innovation is as absurd as the rooster claiming the sun won’t rise without his crowing. The billionaires I know were all highly motivated to earn their first billion. The only thing at stake here is the remarkably fragile egos of billionaires who are on the verge of realizing they might not be saving civilization for anyone, including themselves.
In light of their silliness, the Patriotic Millionaires have taken the opportunity to rewrite the recent NYT headline (both for our own amusement and to more accurately reflect reality):
Some (Silly/Misinformed) Donors Quietly (although not actually all that quietly; it was reported on the front page of the NYT after all) Push Harris to Drop (Modest Compared to What it Should Be) Tax on Ultra Wealthy While Other (Much More Sensible and, yes, More Patriotic) Donors Loudly Push Billionaires to Drop Opposition to Common Sense.
The Patriotic Millionaires is a group of high-net worth Americans who share a profound concern about the destabilizing level of inequality in America. Our work centers on the two things that matter most in a capitalist democracy: power and money. Our goal is to ensure that the country's political economy is structured to meet the needs of regular Americans, rather than just millionaires. We focus on three "first" principles: a highly progressive tax system, a livable minimum wage, and equal political representation for all citizens.
(202) 446-0489One critic called Trump's social media post following the murders "the most disturbing, deranged, and demented post you'll ever see from a US president."
"Fucking grotesque." "A monstrosity." "A real post by the president of the United States, who has the nuclear codes." "DESPICABLE."
This is but a sampling of the reaction to President Donald Trump's Monday morning response to the apparent double murder of iconic film director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner—who were among Hollywood's most vocal critics of the president and the threat he posed to US democracy.
Trump took to his Truth Social network to make the deaths about himself:
A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!
"Nobody celebrates the murder of perceived enemies quite like Trump—whose celebration of the murder of Rob Reiner is the most disturbing, deranged, and demented post you'll ever see from a US president," singer-songwriter and activist Bill Madden said on social media.
If the New York Times was waiting for a news hook to write a long-overdue story about how Trump is mentally unfit to be president, Trump has provided one today with his post saying Rob Reiner got murdered because he was mean to Trump.Write it, NYT. End the normalization. @nytimes.com
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— Mark Jacob (@markjacob.bsky.social) December 15, 2025 at 7:26 AM
Even Trump's supporters could not believe the president actually posted the message, with some seeking confirmation from Grok, the generative artificial intelligence chatbot on Elon Musk's social media site X, that the post was "fake." Grok obliged, replying falsely that "the statement attributed to Trump is not real" and "appears fabricated."
Invoking the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk—the far-right firebrand known for purveying racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and misogynistic rhetoric from behind a shield of "free speech"—Democratic strategist Max Burns said, "I don't want to hear another sanctimonious word from the Republicans who accused Democrats of not showing enough sadness when Charlie Kirk died."
"Trump is dancing on Reiner's body and blaming Reiner for his own murder—but remember, they demanded people be FIRED for not dropping down in tears to praise Charlie Kirk after his death," Burns added. "It's all an act. These people only have compassion for their own."
Some also pointed out that in contrast to Trump's comments, after Kirk's killing, Reiner called the assassination an "absolute horror" and condemned political violence.
"It is abundantly clear that Republicans and the Trump administration want to strangle the VA until it all gets privatized," said the advocacy group VoteVets.
Before the end of the year, the Trump administration is planning to eliminate up to 35,000 healthcare jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, a chronically understaffed agency that has already lost tens of thousands of employees to the White House's sweeping assault on the federal workforce.
The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the targeted positions—many of which are unfilled—include doctors, nurses, and support staff. A spokesperson for the VA, led by former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), described the jobs as "mostly Covid-era roles that are no longer necessary."
VA workers, veterans advocates, and a union representing hundreds of thousands of department employees disputed that characterization as the agency faces staff shortages across the country.
"We are all doing the work of others to compensate,” one VA employee told the Post. “The idea that relief isn’t coming is really, really disappointing.”
Thomas Dargon Jr., deputy general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees, said remaining VA employees "are obviously going to be facing the brunt of any further job cuts or reorganization that results in employees having to do more work with less."
The advocacy organization VoteVets cast the job cuts as another step toward the longstanding GOP goal of privatizing the VA.
"This is outrageous," the group wrote on social media. "It is abundantly clear that Republicans and the Trump administration want to strangle the VA until it all gets privatized."
"We must expand the VA, not hollow it out."
News of the impending job cuts came months after the Trump administration moved to gut collective bargaining protections for many VA employees and as recent staffing cuts continued to hamper veterans' services nationwide.
"Wait times for new mental health appointments have increased sharply since January in my home state, Connecticut," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said during a Senate hearing earlier this month. "For example, the most recent data shows the current wait time for a new patient mental health appointment at the Orange VA Clinic in Connecticut—an outpatient facility specializing in mental health—is 208 days."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said in a statement Sunday that "it is unacceptable that the US Department of Veterans Affairs plans to eliminate as many as 35,000 healthcare positions this month."
"This is especially outrageous given the reality that VA facilities in Vermont and across the country already face severe staffing challenges," said Sanders. "When someone puts their life on the line to defend this country in uniform, we in turn must provide them with the best quality healthcare available. These layoffs are unacceptable and must be reversed. We must expand the VA, not hollow it out. And I will do everything I can to make that happen."
"The 'Nobel Peace Prize' continues thanking the US for the maximum pressure against her own country," said one critic.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, the winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, is taking criticism for lending support to US President Donald Trump's campaign of military aggression against her own country.
In an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS News' "Face the Nation," Machado praised Trump's policies of tightening economic sanctions and seizing oil tankers that had been docked at Venezuelan ports.
“Look, I absolutely support President Trump’s strategy, and we, the Venezuelan people, are very grateful to him and to his administration, because I believe he is a champion of freedom in this hemisphere," Machado told CBS News.
Machado elaborated that she supported Trump's actions because the Maduro government was "not a conventional dictatorship," but "a very complex criminal structure that has turned Venezuela into a safe haven of international crime and terrorist activities."
Trump's campaign against Venezuela has not only included sanctions and the seizing of an oil tanker, but a series of bombings of purported drug-trafficking vessels that many legal experts consider to be acts of murder.
Trump has also said that he would soon authorize strikes against purported drug traffickers on Venezuelan soil, even though he has received no congressional authorization to conduct such an operation against a sovereign nation.
Machado's embrace of Trump as he potentially positions the US to launch a regime-change war in Venezuela drew swift criticism from opponents of American imperialism.
SussexBylines columnist Ross McNally questioned whether someone who is going on the record to support military aggression against her own country was really the right choice to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
"The Nobel Committee's decision to give the Peace Prize to Machado is bizarre for several reasons," he explained. "Firstly, its description of Machado’s ‘tireless work promoting democratic rights’ ignores the fact that she supported the attempted coup against democratically elected President Hugo Chávez in 2002... Alongside her encouragement for Trump’s military escalation, this jars somewhat with the Committee’s description."
The Machado interview was also criticized by Venezuelan journalist Madelein Garcia, who argued in a post on X that it was ironic to see that "the 'Nobel Peace Prize' continues thanking the US for the maximum pressure against her own country."
Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi also excoriated the Nobel Committee for overlooking Machado's support of militarism when it decided to award her a prize intended for peacemakers.
"Nobel Farce Prize Winner Maria Corina Machado is not a freedom fighter, she’s a CIA asset and de facto spokeswoman for US corporations," he wrote. "Here she is smiling gleefully at the prospect of selling $1.7 trillion of infrastructure and resources should the US carry out regime change in Venezuela and install her in Miraflores, promising 'we have a massive privatisation program waiting for you.'"