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Bạn có thể nhớ rằng tổng thống có một đồng tiền meme, $TRUMP. Vài ngày trước lễ nhậm chức lần thứ hai, vị tổng thống – người đã nói với Fox News trong nhiệm kỳ đầu rằng ông không “mê mẩn” tiền điện tử, mà ông cho rằng có thể là “giả mạo” – đã tự mình dấn thân vào tiền điện tử.
Giá trị của đồng tiền meme nhanh chóng tăng vọt lên khoảng 75 đô la. Nó đã giảm ngay sau đó nhưng đã tăng vọt vào tháng 4 khi Trump công bố “LỜI MỜI ĐỘC QUYỀN nhất thế giới”: dành cho 220 nhà đầu tư hàng đầu vào đồng tiền $TRUMP để thưởng thức bữa tối riêng tư với tổng thống tại câu lạc bộ golf Virginia của ông.
Kể từ đó, giá trị của đồng tiền Trump đã giảm trở lại, xuống còn 9 đô la, giảm 88% so với mức cao nhất vào tháng 1.
Bạn cũng có thể nhớ rằng – nếu bạn cố gắng nhớ lại – đệ nhất phu nhân Melania Trump cũng tham gia vào lĩnh vực tiền meme. Đồng xu $MELANIA của bà cũng đi theo quỹ đạo tương tự như đồng xu của chồng bà, chứng kiến sự sụt giảm giá trị chóng mặt, 98% so với mức đỉnh 8,50 đô la vào giữa tháng 1.
Vào tháng 5, tờ Financial Times đã công bố một cuộc điều tra về đồng xu meme của Melania Trump, tiết lộ rằng một nhóm các nhà giao dịch đã thu về gần 100 triệu đô la bằng cách mua đồng xu $MELANIA chỉ vài phút trước khi thông báo chính thức được công bố, trước khi bán ra phần lớn số tiền họ nắm giữ khi giá trị của nó tăng vọt sau thông báo.
Đồng xu meme của đệ nhất phu nhân hiện có giá trị chưa đến một phần tư đô la.
Democrats Have a Massive Voter Registration Problem
The Democratic Party is bleeding registered voters.
Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images
Fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to be Democrats.
With just over a year until midterms, one of America’s two main parties is hemorrhaging voters, losing registered voters in all 30 states that track registration by political party. The change has been observed in blue, red, and swing states alike.
In total, some 2.1 million voters ditched the Democrats in favor of alternative politics between 2020 and 2024, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The drop has resulted in more registered independents, but it has also become a boon for the GOP, which gained 2.4 million new voters over the same period.
Last year marked the first time since 2018 that more Americans checked “Republican” on their voter registration forms than “Democrat.” The downward trend has sparked serious concern among Democratic strategists, who have identified it as a “hidden-in-plain-sight crisis” that needs a solution before the next presidential election.
“I don’t want to say, ‘The death cycle of the Democratic Party,’ but there seems to be no end to this,” Michael Pruser, who tracks voter registration closely as the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ, told the Times. “There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill. This is month after month, year after year.”
The most contentious battleground states have also experienced the liberal erosion. Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania all saw support peel away from Democrats over the last four years.
“In North Carolina, Republicans erased roughly 95 percent of the registration advantage that Democrats held in the fall of 2020, according to state records as of this summer,” reported the Times. “In Nevada, Democrats suffered the steepest percentage-point plunge of any state but West Virginia between 2020 and 2024.”
Meanwhile, Republicans are working overtime during Trump 2.0 to minimize future turnout at the voting booth. Since Inauguration Day, the administration has tried and failed to force Americans to show proof of citizenship at the voting booth and has attempted to take away the option of mail-in ballots.
Donald Trump and his allies have also made a target of voting softwaredesigned to identify potential voter fraud, advanced a Homeland Security agenda that has made immigrants fearful to legitimately participate in the American electorate, and generally undermined trust and confidence in the country’s process to elect its leaders.
In Latest Weird Flub, Trump Mixes Up Two Countries That Start With A
It occurred while he was calling in to a radio show.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Tuesday night confused Armenia with another, somewhat similar-sounding nation, leading him to mistakenly claim he’d brokered peace between Azerbaijan and Albania.
The gaffe, which occurred while he was calling in to conservative commentator Mark Levin’s eponymous radio show, is only his latest geographical flub.
The president raved on air about his peacemaking efforts, repeating his false claim about having ended six wars during his second term.
“It’s, you know, a lot of amazing, amazing things,” Trump said, before attempting to mention his recently arranged Azerbaijan-Armenia peace declaration, which moved the countries toward peace—but did not fully end their 37-year-long conflict.
“You saw the Azerbaijan. That was a big one going on for 34, 35 years with, uh, Albania. Think of that,” the president said.
Not only did Trump incorrectly call Armenia “Albania,” but he also hesitated uncertainly while stating the name of Azerbaijan. He ultimately bungled the country’s pronunciation (“the Aber … baijan,” he said), so much so that TheMark Levin Show’s transcript of the episode, as of this writing, has him as saying “Arab or Bhaijaan.”
In a recent Fox News appearance, Trump puzzlingly added an extra seventh war to his already misleading list of six accomplished peace deals. Perhaps the mysterious seventh was this fictional conflict between Armenia and Albania.
Trump Forced European Leaders to Admire His Dictator Merch
So many, many hats.
Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg/Getty Images
President Donald Trump showed off “Trump 2028” hats and other merchandise to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and European leaders—right after an extremely sobering discussion about ending the death and destruction of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
According to photos, he was keen to draw their attention to various items, including a “Four More Years” hat, a “Gulf of America” hat, a “Trump was Right About Everything” hat, along with the classic “MAGA” and “USA” hats.
It’s moments like these that remind us that the president is a salesman in his heart of hearts.
The Trump Organization conglomerate has made billions through cryptocurrency and media ventures alongside the merchandise, which is typically only used to fund campaigns. But Trump has yet again figured out a way to game the system.
“In addition to the campaign merchandise sold by his campaign, which all candidates and all presidents do … the Trump Organization also has its own online store, and they sell all kinds of Trump merchandise that looks very much like its campaign merchandise, but this money flows to Trump himself—you know, $20, $40 for a pair of flip-flops, a pair of beer koozies, a baseball hat,” The New Yorker’s David Kirkpatrick told Democracy Now! on Wednesday.
“He’s making, you know, millions of dollars—you know, I forget what the exact number was, but 20 millions of dollars over the last few years—selling this kind of merchandise, which is arguably competing with his own campaign and diverting some of the money that his supporters might think is supporting the MAGA movement and his candidates to his own pocket,” Kirkpatrick continued.
The words on the hats are as alarming as the open corruption they represent. “Trump 2028” has become a commonplace slogan on the right, though the president is constitutionally barred from running again. But Trump himself has alluded to the possibility multiple times, as recently as this week.
“So you say, during the war you can’t have elections?” Trump said to Zelenskiy. “So let me just see: Three-and-a-half years from now, so you mean, if we [the United States] happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections … I wonder what the fake news would say about that.”
Trump’s Interior Secretary Repeats Weird D.C. Restaurant Claim
The Trump administration really can’t let this one go.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum
The Trump administration is apparently intent on lying about the impact of the president’s military occupation of D.C. on local restaurants.
While some data suggests the federal takeover may be scaring away diners, the Trump team keeps insisting that the very opposite is happening.
Appearing on Fox Business Wednesday morning, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum touted Trump’s crackdown, which is strongly opposed by most D.C. residents.
Burgum cited alleged decreases in carjackings and robberies—apparently, week-over-week percent decreases reported by D.C.’s police union, from which little can actually be concluded (in part because, as one conservative commentator observed, “robbery and property crime reports often lag the date of the incident by a week or more, making any short-term comparison like this liable to look more favorable than is true of the situation on the ground”).
Burgum also said restaurant reservations are “up 30 percent,” in a “dramatic change.” Here, the interior secretary was echoing Trump’s baseless claim earlier this week that restaurants are “busier than they’ve been in a long time.”
As D.C.’s local Fox station reports, restaurant attendance was down each day during the first week of Trump’s crackdown on the capital compared with the same week last year. The most significant plunge took place last Wednesday, when reservation numbers fell by 31 percent.
Conveniently overlooking these facts, Burgum seemingly narrowed in on data from Monday, which saw a 29 percent year-over-year increase in reservations made via the online service OpenTable.
However, this increase took place on the first day of the city’s summer Restaurant Week, during which local eateries offer promotional deals. Restaurant Week 2024 took place a week earlier, also potentially affecting last week’s numbers.
Reservation data aside, The Washington Post reports that Trump’s actions in D.C. have sent restaurant owners reeling.
One said that “reservations are low, low, low,” and, “The city is dead.”
Another, who said this month is on track to be the slowest August in his restaurant’s seven-year history (peak pandemic years included), told the Post that “seeing law enforcement—armored and plainclothed—in the neighborhood, casing our building and looking into our windows, definitely put guests and staff on edge.”
