ACT ONE:
From Paul McLeary, Connor O'Brien, and Joe Gould's 1-7-26 POLITICO article entitled "Trump Calls for Record $1.5 Trillion Defense Budget, a 50 Percent Jump" [published 52 days before the U.S. attacks Iran]:
President Donald Trump on Wednesday declared he would ask Congress for a $1.5 trillion defense budget in 2027, a massive $500 billion increase from this year’s Pentagon budget.
The huge boost likely reflects how expensive some of Trump’s military ambitions are, from the Golden Dome air defense effort to his call for a new battleship design. Neither of those programs could be fully funded under current spending levels.
The president provided few details in his post on Truth Social, other than to say the money would pay for his “Dream Military.”
To read the entire article, click HERE.
ACT TWO:
From a 2-26-26 Finance.Senate.gov article entitled "Wyden Questions DEA Over Mystery Epstein Investigation" [published two days before the U.S. attacks Iran]:
Following a recent report
that Jeffrey Epstein was among several individuals targeted in a
years-long investigation spearheaded by the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) into drug trafficking and money laundering, Senate
Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sought details today
from DEA Administrator Terrance Cole about the investigation’s
findings, whether it resulted in any federal criminal charges, and the
manner and timing of its conclusion.
Senator Wyden also requested a complete, unredacted copy of the document that revealed the existence of the investigation, a 69-page memorandum
prepared in 2015 by the then-director of the Organized Crime Drug
Enforcement Task Forces’ (OCDETF) Fusion Center. (The OCDETF, a
specialized Department of Justice unit tasked with identifying and
dismantling transnational organized crime and drug trafficking networks,
was shut down by the Trump administration in 2025.) A heavily-redacted
version of the memorandum was among the documents released following the
passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
“The fact that
Epstein was under investigation by [OCDETF] suggests that there was
ample evidence indicating that Epstein was engaged in heavy drug
trafficking and prostitution as part of cross-border criminal
conspiracy. This is incredibly disturbing and raises serious questions
as to how this investigation by the DEA was handled,” Senator Wyden
wrote. “Since Epstein and his 14 co-conspirators were never charged by
the DOJ for drug trafficking or financial crimes, I am concerned that
the DEA and DOJ during the first Trump Administration moved to terminate
this investigation in order to protect pedophiles. I am also concerned
that the excessive redactions of this memorandum for operation ‘Chain
Reaction’ go well beyond the intent of the Epstein Files Transparency
Act, which allows for redactions to protect the identity of victims, not
members of a criminal sex trafficking organization.”
The complete text of Senator Wyden’s letter is available online here and below...
To read the entire article, click HERE.
ACT THREE:
From Annabella Rosciglione's 2-17-26 DAILY BEAST article entitled "MAGA Podcaster Torches Trump for Broken Promise" [published 11 days before the U.S. attacks Iran]:
A
prominent MAGA podcaster put the Trump administration on blast for its
failure to “prosecute any pedophiles” after the DOJ’s release of the
files related to disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In a
profanity-filled rant on X, Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL turned
podcaster with more than 5.8 million subscribers on his YouTube channel,
torched the DOJ and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
He took
particular aim at Bondi’s combative testimony before the House Judiciary
Committee last week. Ryan said, “nobody gives a f---,” that the Dow
stock market index was “up 50,000” under Trump, a point which Bondi
attempted to make during her hearing.
“What you should be talking
about is how you are going to investigate and prosecute any pedophiles
that are running around on Epstein Island that you’re affiliated with,”
he said in the video. “But we didn’t talk about that, did we? Oh, and
what’s the excuse? What was the excuse? Oh – ‘if we prosecute everybody
the whole system would go down.’”
“Well, you know what that
sounds like? That sounds like how Trump ran his campaign: ‘Let’s drain
the swamp.’ Doesn’t that sound a lot like draining the swamp? It
actually is drain the swamps served up to you on a f---ing silver
platter, but you’re not gonna take it, are you?” His rant continued.
He then asserted that Bondi is “gonna protect pedophiles!”
“You’re
going to protect pedophiles rather than go after them and hope that
everybody’s happy that the Dow hit 50,000. Are you f---ing out of your
mind?” he said.
To read the entire article, click HERE.
ACT FOUR:
From Aram Roston's 3-1-26 GUARDIAN article entitled "Trump Appears to Link Iran Attack to His 2020 Election Loss" [published 1 day after the U.S. attacks Iran]:
Donald Trump on Saturday appeared to link the massive
attack he ordered against Iran
to his persistent claims about his 2020 election loss to former
president Joe Biden, in a social media post about allegations that
Tehran’s government interfered in the US president elections.
“Iran
tried to interfere in 2020, 2024 elections to stop Trump,” his Truth
Social post said, “and now faces renewed war with United States”.
Those
words, written in the first hours of the bombardment of Iran, repeated
the headline of an article to which he linked from Just the News, a
Trump-friendly news site. “Iranian intelligence sought to undermine
Trump’s re-election bid in 2020 through a variety of election influence
efforts,” the article said. It also said Iran worked against him in
2024, when he beat Kamala Harris at the polls.
This is the second
military operation of the Trump administration where he has alluded to
allegations concerning the 2020 election. He made similar comments on
social media in January, days after Trump ordered the Delta Force
“rendition” of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro. Trump
reposted
links that repeated discredited conspiracy allegations that Venezuela
interfered in the 2020 election by controlling voting machines.
To read the entire article, click HERE.
ACT FIVE:
From Ewan Palmer's 3-5-26 DAILY BEAST article entitled "Rattled Trump Amps Up MAGA Civil War With Late-Night Threat" [published 5 days after the U.S. attacks Iran]:
Donald Trump blasted high-profile MAGA figures who have attacked the president over his war on Iran by claiming that Tuesday’s elections prove their influence is waning.
In a late-night Truth Social
post, the 79-year-old shared an article from the
Just the News website attacking former supporters who have turned on the “America First” president for launching the Middle East conflict despite his 2024 campaign pledge not to start
any new wars.The article notes that even as a MAGA civil war erupts, almost all of Trump’s
endorsed candidates in Tuesday’s primaries went on to win their respective races. The majority of these Trump-backed candidates were incumbents widely expected to win their primaries anyway, or ran unopposed [...].
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson called the joint U.S.-Israel airstrikes “absolutely evil and disgusting.” He also suggested the war was “waged purely because Israel wanted it to be waged.”
MAGA podcaster Megyn Kelly spent the entirety of her Monday show speaking out against the war and the reasons behind it [...].
Trump had
already lashed out at Carlson and Kelly for their criticism of the Iran war.
“I think that MAGA is Trump—MAGA’s not the other two,” Trump told reporter Rachel Bade earlier this week. “MAGA wants to see our country thrive and be safe. And MAGA loves what I’m doing—every aspect of it.”
To read the entire article, click HERE.
ACT SIX:
From my 3-6-26 EVERGREEN REVIEW article entitled "One Nation Under G: Celebrating 250 Years of the Revolutionary Spirit" [published 6 days after the U.S. attacks Iran]:
While the serpentine forces of authoritarianism and fanaticism rear
their ugly heads in the United States of America more brazenly than ever
before, it’s self-evident that the pro-democratic, anti-totalitarian
spirit of our revolutionary past is needed as much now as it was in
those bloody, tumultuous decades of the late eighteenth century.
To read my entire article, click HERE.
If you want to know exactly how we reached this nadir, consider reading my nonfiction book, OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP, which maps out the anatomy of a ten-year-long campaign of asymmetric warfare directed against the American people by Trump and the cabal of sadistic cabal of right-wing nutjobs who support him...
PRAISE FOR
OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP
"It's great."
--Marc Maron, WTF Podcast
"Voltaire
suggested that those who can make us believe absurdities can make us
commit atrocities, and QAnon provided the practical demonstration.
Robert Guffey’s razor-sharp postings illuminate how a collage of Shaver
mysteries, Discordian prankster politics and recreational conspiracy
theory played out as dissociative American fugue. Jaw-dropping and
essential."
—Alan Moore, author of V for Vendetta and Watchmen
"One
of the most difficult aspects of confronting QAnon conspiracism is
finding the time and resolve to delve into its ever-expanding network of
self-reinforcing connections and concepts. Robert Guffey does that work
for you in OPERATION MINDFUCK, a codex to madness and a critical
examination of how a massive fraction of our culture has imbibed a
counter-reality. Guffey also explores underground sources lost on many
mainstream historians, bringing us into an (occasionally ingenious)
netherworld of outsider thought forms. Guffey is the Ernest Shackleton
of paranoia—and one hopes his journey will result in a happier ending."
—Mitch Horowitz, PEN Award-winning author of Occult America and Uncertain Places
"It's
practically a guide to your character to discover whether you find this
expose of possibly the stupidest political movement in human history
funny, alarming, or infuriating.... Highly recommended."
—Richard Smoley, author of Supernatural: Writings on an Unknown History and How God Became God
"OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP
by Robert Guffey tackles the conspiracy theories Q draws from, the
history of the Q phenomenon, and the eventual attempts by mobs at least
partially influenced by Q, and certainly influenced by Donald Trump, to
overturn the 2020 Presidential election. The book is well-researched,
with a full Bibliography of notes that reference and identify each quote
from each source that Guffey cites. Guffey, additionally, has a long
background studying conspiracy theories and their origins [...]. Guffey is not a lightweight."
—Steve Henn, author of And God Said Let There Be Evolution
"Whether QAnon is a religion, a cult, a joke, a political movement, or just an online game gone awry, Robert Guffey's OPERATION MINDFUCK: QANON & THE CULT OF DONALD TRUMP is his attempt to figure it all out. Guffey's pedigree in this area is unmatched [...]. Throughout OPERATION MINDFUCK, Guffey follows Theodore Sturgeon's advice he quoted in his book CHAMELEO: 'Always ask the next question.'"
—Roy Christopher, author of Dead Precedents: How Hip-Hop Defines the Future
"[Guffey's] expertise shines through in every chapter of this book. Operation Mindfuck: QAnon and the Cult of Donald Trump
is not only a well written and well researched look into the abyss of
bullshit known as QAnon, but it is also very funny and quite sad at the
same time—an interesting, entertaining, and sometimes frightening read."
--Razorcake
"If
you are still dazed from this [QAnon] business, then Robert Guffey has
written a book just for you. In readable yet well researched fashion, he
lays it all out: where it began, who, why, how. He can’t make it go
away for you—or me, for that matter—but he can make the whole bizarre
business a bit less confusing... [T]his book is what you need. Get your
fire lit, your cup of coffee (or something far stronger), curl up (in
fetal position, if necessary), and prepare to learn."
--Seattle Book Mama
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