As some of you may know, I write a lot about politics and government but a lot of the time there’s simply too much going on for me to cover in a single focused article. Because of this, I decided to make a new column to discuss recent developments in the political world. So without further ado this week I’ll be discussing Donald Trump’s recent escapades, Kanye West (now known as Ye), and Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files.”

First, the last few weeks have not been good for Trump. Since he announced his presidential candidacy in November, Trump has faced numerous legal challenges along with fierce backlash due to posts on his own social media platform, Truth Social. 

On December 6, two of Trump’s companies were found guilty on 17 charges, including tax fraud, falsifying business records, and conspiracy. These organizations face up to paying $1.6 million in damages. On top of that, even more classified documents have been found in a storage unit owned by Trump. His lawyers initially denied the discovery of the documents, but the Washington Post reported that was false.

Along with that, Elon Musk released “The Twitter Files” which makes a load of bogus or out of context claims (I’ll get into them a little later). In response, Trump took to Truth Social to say, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

Yes, that’s right. Trump said that we should terminate the rules of the Constitution, the foundation for our republican government.

I don’t know how you could get lower, but if this doesn’t prove he is completely unfit for office, I don’t know what will. There is no justifiable way that the head of one of the two major political parties should be advocating for terminating the Constitution. Let’s be clear, he isn’t doing this for any righteous purpose. He’s doing this because he surrounds himself with people who will grovel at his feet and lick his boots, like Kevin McCarthy and Rudy Giuliani. He doesn’t care about the truth; he just cares about himself.

If that wasn’t enough, he also had dinner with his buddy, Kanye West, now known as Ye. Recently, Ye has been on a crusade to destroy any career and credibility he had by making a litany of antisemitic statements and peddling conspiracies, such as the Jewish Question (frequently adopted by Nazis) which implies that a cabal of Jewish people have absolute control over the government and media. If that weren’t bad enough, he also had dinner with white supremacist and neo-Nazi, Nick Fuentes, who advocates for overthrowing the US government to establish a fascist Christian theocracy. 

So what was his defense to this? Fuentes said Ye never said anything antisemitic and that Fuentes was an unannounced guest and he had no idea he was coming. Thing is, that is not how this works. You can’t just waltz into the former president’s house unannounced and have dinner with him. This man has an entire Secret Service team. There is no possible way Trump or his team didn’t know who Fuentes was. 

Conservative commentator for the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, said on Twitter, “A good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you don’t know is not to dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you do know.”

Following the dinner date, Ye and Fuentes have been popping up on conservative podcasts and shows everywhere. Most notable were Tim Pool’s podcast, Timcast, and Alex Jones’ Infowars. On the Timcast, Ye received very minor pushback from Pool on the topic of Jewish control of the banks and the media, and he responded by storming out of the room. Even worse, on Infowars Ye was actively defending Hitler and the Nazi party saying, “I like Hitler.” 

He also said he does “not like the word evil next to Nazis,” citing highways and microphones as some reasons he likes the Nazis (despite existing for decades beforehand). 

Ye went so off the rails that he got Jones, a man who peddles conspiracy theories like fluoride making frogs gay and the Sandy Hook school shooting being fake, was nervous laughing and trying to steer away from the conversation. In these last few weeks, Ye has lost billions of dollars through dropped partnerships. So good job Yedolf you’ve just killed your career and any remaining shred of your credibility to pal around with neo-Nazis.

For our last topic, let’s talk about Elon Musk. After a month of appealing to right-wing pundits by posturing about “free speech” on Twitter, despite it being a private platform, he dropped what he thought would be a massive bombshell against Twitter’s former staff and the Biden Administration, The Twitter Files. This supposed exposé claims that Twitter interfered with the 2020 election by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story at the behest of the Biden Campaign. 

There are three different problems with this. First is that much of the Hunter Biden story did break Twitter’s terms of service. Second is that the Hunter Biden story had no bearing on the election or Joe Biden’s governmental work. Third is that this is done all the time by both sides of the political aisle.

The Biden campaign was requesting pictures and information about Hunter Biden’s sexual relations with numerous sex workers. Twitter terms of service state that you can’t post someone’s private and intimate imagery without their expressed consent, so posting about the files found on his laptop did in fact violate terms of service. Furthermore posting this information is illegal in many countries.

This was also before the 2020 election, so Biden’s campaign was not acting as a government agency since he was not in any form of governmental office at the time.

Furthermore, Hunter is his own man and a private citizen. His doing drugs and having sex with prostitutes should have no bearing on what his father is doing. Many will show concern about all the jobs that Hunter got with foreign companies despite not being qualified at all, but that is simply how things have been done since the beginning of time.

Members of powerful families tend to get powerful jobs. A perfect example is the Trump administration which was rife with nepotism with Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr, and Jared Kushner all serving as top advisors. The only way this would be illegal is if those companies tried to use that to influence Joe Biden’s decision-making as a sort of quid pro quo.

Lastly, this kind of stuff is done all the time by powerful people and companies. While yes it is inherently unfair that a large corporation or influential person can get an audience with Twitter more easily, it doesn’t negate the fact that it’s extremely common for them to request that content be removed. In the same thread that “The Twitter Files” dropped it says that the Trump campaign made use of this, too. Even more, anyone can report terms of service violations to Twitter and get tweets removed so how in the world could this spell political corruption when it’s done by everyone and it involves no government action?

Despite Elon attempting to say that Twitter has a strong left-wing bias, multiple studies (including this one from PNAS) show that Twitter’s algorithms in fact have a right-wing bias that amplifies conservative views more than left-wing views.