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A second figure in Trump's orbit says he personally paid Laura Loomer to post on X - and that what the money really bought was a line to the President. 

Florida political operative Jacob Engels, founder of Command Station Consulting, wrote on X that he paid her "a good amount of cash" earlier this year, two days after Trump 2024 campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz said he had paid her for posts too.

I personally paid @LauraLoomer to post tweets earlier this year. A good amount of cash too. I will gladly share screenshots, receipts, texts, and the names of other people who paid her. It was always very intresting to hear from her who she was willing to be paid to trash and who... pic.twitter.com/eDrmdsxUeQ

— Jacob Engels (@JacobEngels) November 8, 2026

Engels said he would "gladly share screenshots, receipts, texts, and the names of other people who paid her," and that Loomer told him "who she was willing to be paid to trash and who was off limits." The post drew more than 713,000 views overnight. Loomer had not responded to him on X by Sunday morning.

In replies over the next three hours, Engels went further. "I can't control who the President listens to. I can only make sure my clients get their message to him and Loomer rules the WH," he wrote, adding that he felt "ashamed" and "didn't like paying her." Explaining why he went public, he wrote:

Because I don't want this story to die. I want the grifting to stop. This system that's been created where the only way to get to the President is to pay someone like Loomer is responsible for way more of the corruption and bad admin choices than you know. I feel ashamed to have...

— Jacob Engels (@JacobEngels) November 8, 2026

He also says Loomer still has the President's ear. Citing an administration official he spoke with on Wednesday, Engels wrote early Sunday that "as of then she and Trump were still talking daily," which of course means the IC is aware (hence the WaPo report?). 

I spoke with an Admin official on Wednesday as of then she and Trump were still talking daily

— Jacob Engels (@JacobEngels) November 8, 2026

In another reply he claimed the trade reaches into national security: "the people who can give her Pentagon info can get anything done for free," he wrote, alleging "Actual seats next to Trump given by Loomer for access to the Pentagon world." That, he said, was "not my lane but I've seen the fallout." And he said Loomer wasn't the only one taking money - "Nope not just Loomer," he told another user, adding that she "actually has some of the lowest rates."

Engels isn't the only one with a story about her rates. Ari Teman says Loomer demanded $40,000 from him for two months of posts - and that he refused. Teman, a comedian and entrepreneur, was convicted of bank fraud in federal court and has sought a pardon from Trump.

Loomer demanded $40k from me for 2 months of posts. I refused.

Later the same corrupt Judge blocked DOGE and @elonmusk called on him to be impeached.

There is a circle around Trump that put a price on EVERYTHING with zero concern for right or wrong. Harmeet Dhillon, Mike Davis,... pic.twitter.com/E66rmT1xB7

— Ari Teman (@AriTeman) November 8, 2026

Coming from anyone else, a pay-to-post claim would be a story about influencer ethics. Loomer is different, because her campaigns have cost officials their jobs. After she brought what she said was evidence of disloyalty to an Oval Office meeting in April 2025, the White House fired several National Security Council staffers, as we reported at the time, and the head of the NSA, Gen. Timothy Haugh, was fired the same week. Trump denied she was behind the dismissals but acknowledged she had made some recommendations: "Sometimes I listen to those recommendations," he said. Her detractors say several high-ranking defense and national security officials have been dismissed after she publicly rebuked them.

Her critics say that ear is exactly the problem. After Tuesday's election, Loomer posted that "America is over" and told followers to stock up on supplies and finalize their wills, as commentator Baron Coleman read aloud in a clip that circulated Sunday. "This is the person who has Donald Trump's ear. This is the person who can call Donald Trump and he'll answer the phone," Coleman said.

??Laura Loomer posted seventeen tweets saying America is over. 

Baron Coleman: this is who has the president's ear. She's psychotic, and that's the problem. pic.twitter.com/BB7xY3RGyY

— Grace Bella Ashford (@RealGraceBella) November 8, 2026

The fight over her payments broke into the open Thursday. After Democrats' midterm gains, Bruesewitz posted that attacking Democrats over their ties to streamer Hasan Piker "wasn't an effective hit," and Loomer, who defended those attacks, fired back. "I've paid you for tweets before. I haven't for at least a year though," Bruesewitz replied, asking what share of her posts were paid for, according to screenshots published by the Daily Beast.

Engels posted hours after the Washington Post's report. Bruesewitz, who first posted his allegations Thursday, told the Post he paid Loomer for tweets last year through his firm, X Strategies, for posts on policy issues - deals he brokered himself, though he says the practice has "gotten out of hand." Bank records and a wire statement the Post reviewed show four payments totaling more than $60,000 to Loomer and King Breaker Media, a Florida company registered in her name, since May 2025. The documents do not state a purpose. Two of three other people the Post spoke with said they paid her directly for posts; the third oversaw clients who did. Two sources said she charges $3,000 to $5,000 per tweet.

Access is what clients were buying, according to the Post's sources. One described Loomer as "a key way of trying to get a line directly to Trump"; another said some clients hired her "assuming she had an audience in the White House." She has traveled with Trump and met privately with him in the Oval Office during his second term.

Loomer denies being paid to tweet. She told the Post that Bruesewitz's firm paid her for "a one-page research document" that "he wanted me to distribute," accused him of "lashing out" at her over her political beliefs, and said, "I certainly don't charge $5,000 for a tweet." She added, "I'm not some influencer that makes money from tweeting," though she also said, "I'm not going to apologize for monetizing the fact that people fear me." In 2025 she told The Bulwark she was "not paid for [her] posts."

Loomer thanked the Post for "promoting my public affairs company and my opposition research firm" in a post pitching Loomered Strategies to clients - "You can hire me, or your opposition will" - and in another turned on Bruesewitz, saying his firm, X Strategies, "is one of the firms most common for paying so called conservative influencers to tweet." She asked why he waited "till after the election" to speak up, and whether he was "afraid he's going to be investigated by Democrats because of his proximity to 1789 Capital," the investment firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner.

Engels is no neutral party. He has spent the past week attacking Loomer, Susie Wiles, James Blair and Roger Stone by name, and offered on Saturday to explain "how Wiles, Blair, Loomer, Stone work from someone on the inside."

About an hour after the Post contacted her, Loomer announced a hiatus from her show, "Loomer Unleashed," citing a "healthy work life balance" and an upcoming wedding; she said the announcement had been scheduled in advance. The disclosure question is unsettled: the FTC requires disclosure of paid endorsements but does not cover political ads, the Campaign Legal Center asked the FEC last year to consider "paid for by" rules for influencers, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a law penalizing undisclosed paid political posts. The White House declined to comment.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

Nearly 400 truck drivers and vehicles have been removed from service in a crackdown on hazardous vehicles, unsafe drivers, and fraudulent practices along Arkansas highways.

The removal came under the third phase of Operation Highway Shield, which targets unqualified truckers and related criminal activity on U.S. roads. In addition to putting 393 drivers and vehicles out of service, the operation identified 183 English Language Proficiency violations, referred 74 immigration violations to federal enforcement, made 44 criminal arrests, and recovered one stolen trailer, the Department of Transportation (DOT) said in a Nov. 4 statement.

"Gone are the days of dangerous - and many times illegal and foreign - drivers putting American lives at risk on our roads," Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said in the statement. "Under the Trump Administration, we are restoring law and order."

RESULTS ARE IN: Operation Highway Shield put nearly 400 drivers and trucks OUT OF SERVICE during the 48-hour operation in Arkansas - including nearly 200 truckers that COULDN'T READ ROAD SIGNS ?

Gone are the days of dangerous, and many times illegal and foreign drivers putting... pic.twitter.com/Bytv8sTZS7

— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) November 4, 2026

A total of 1,724 inspections were carried out in 48 hours along highways in Arkansas and other major freight corridors during the operation.

The first wave of Operation Highway Shield was conducted in Florida in March and led to 176 drivers being removed from service.

The second phase, conducted in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio in July, resulted in 766 unsafe drivers and vehicles being placed out of service.

"This latest wave of Operation Highway Shield has pulled over 300 dangerous drivers off the road including 183 foreign drivers that couldn't read road signs," Duffy said. "We are not slowing down when it comes to keeping Americans safe on our roads."

The DOT cited the launch of an interagency effort in August to crack down on fraud in the U.S. trucking sector. The effort involved emergency removal of 110 commercial driver's license schools that were associated with more than 5,000 drivers who failed English tests and putting 160 more schools on notice.

The Trump administration took action to codify English language requirements for truckers in August, with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) proposing a rule under which commercial motor vehicle drivers who do not know how to speak or read English sufficiently or those who fail to understand highway traffic signs and signals would be placed out of service.

"When a driver can't read a 'Steep Grade,' 'Runaway Truck Ramp,' or 'Do Not Enter' sign, people die," FMCSA Administrator Derek D. Barrs said in a statement at the time. "This rulemaking codifies commonsense safety into law."

American Trucking Associations (ATA) welcomed the move, but raised concerns that the English language proficiency (ELP) assessment of truckers may end up being subjective, depending on individual enforcement officials.

"Without standardized scoring metrics or clearly defined evaluation criteria, ELP determinations may vary considerably from one roadside inspection to another. For example, a driver's level of English proficiency may be deemed sufficient by one officer yet insufficient by another based on differing interpretations of the same interaction," the ATA said.

The long-term success of the proposed rule will depend on ensuring that ELP determinations are made in a "predictable, objective, and uniform manner" irrespective of the officers who carry out such assessments, the ATA said.

Around 33,000 drivers have been knocked out of service since April 2025 for not being able to speak basic English or read road signs, the DOT said in its recent statement, adding that a total of roughly 31,000 illegally issued licenses given to unvetted foreigners have been revoked and almost 10,000 "shady driving schools" have also been shut down.

House Democrats are on track to hold somewhere between 251 and 268 seats, by CBS News' estimate, up from 214 going into Tuesday. The size of that majority has opened a fight between the party's centrists and its left over what the next two years are for, according to Axios interviews with more than a dozen sitting and incoming House Democrats.

CBS projected the Democratic takeover at 10:29 p.m. Eastern on Nov. 3, and about 75 races were still undecided early Wednesday. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Democrats will win "at least 255 seats, if not more." The majority line is 218. 

He marked the win on X:

Too big to rig. 

Thank you, America.

— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) November 4, 2026

As we noted in our takeaways from the GOP's wipeout, the margin is large. That blows up the leverage of the incoming progressive "Bloc," the left-backed freshmen who planned to trade their votes for changes to House rules, plum committee seats and floor votes on Medicare-for-All, defunding ICE and cutting U.S. aid to Israel, Axios reported. With a margin of dozens, one Democrat told the outlet, "the Bloc has way less influence."

So the left is changing tactics. It wants the Congressional Progressive Caucus, around 100 members, to "assert its authority in a way it has never done before," one sitting Democrat told Axios. An incoming Bloc member said the caucus is adding 25 more, and the plan includes recruiting freshmen from battleground seats, among them the "Bernie Dogs," working-class populists who won red districts, and the "wave babies," upset winners nobody on Capitol Hill knows yet.

Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) called Tuesday "a rebuke of the status quo" and "for the left an affirmation and a validation," saying there is "absolutely no excuse" for the party not to do "the most over the next two years, and as quickly as possible." CPC chair Greg Casar said Medicare-for-All is "overwhelmingly popular" and "we should move that kind of legislation forward." Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said she is "100% down" for Jeffries' 100-day agenda but "I just don't think there's any way we can stop there. ... We have to pass a living wage bill, we have to pass universal childcare."

The centrists read the same night differently. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) called it a "gigantic night for the middle ground," and said the mandate is "to crush high costs and corruption." Rep. Adam Gray (D-Calif.), a leader of the Blue Dog Coalition, said "the most extreme elements ... want to do messaging bills and yell and scream and point the finger. There's time for that, let's just not make it the majority time."

Jeffries is stuck in the middle, and has said little. His own agenda is narrow: the Associated Press reported last month, it starts in the first 100 hours of the new Congress with restoring the Affordable Care Act tax credits that expired in 2025, reversing the Medicaid cuts in the "One Big Beautiful Bill," votes against the Iran war and a rollback of Trump's tariffs, plus investigations of Trump, his family and his administration led by the ranking Democrats on Oversight and Judiciary. Impeachment, he said then, is "neither on nor off the table."

Medicare-for-All isn't on that list. In August Jeffries told NBC's Kristen Welker it is "not legislation that I currently am co-sponsoring or that I support," and that "I don't support the DSA agenda as has been articulated by the DSA itself," theGrio reported. Asked Wednesday about marking up Medicare-for-All, he said the caucus will have a "family conversation" about health care beyond the ACA credits and Medicaid, and that members will meet "upon our return about what the agenda looks like."

Even some of the left's own are skeptical about how far this goes. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), a Medicare-for-All co-sponsor, said "Medicare-for-All is not going to happen in the next two years and everybody knows that," and called the jockeying "tedious." Another House Democrat summed up the caucus the left now has to move: "On balance, this is a center-left caucus."

As we noted, one reading of Tuesday is a rejection, not a mandate, which is the argument the centrists are making and the leftards are rejecting. Jeffries has said the caucus settles it when members return.

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

Well, this certainly wasn’t on anybody’s bingo card.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has found himself at the center of an extraordinary espionage controversy, following reports by FT and others that a Chinese businesswoman with whom he allegedly developed a close personal relationship (wink, wink) was recruited by Chinese intelligence.

The allegations, which Nvidia disputes, have already attracted congressional scrutiny, and some on social media are even calling for Huang’s resignation.

I have no idea whether this could ultimately amount to anything resembling a black swan event for Nvidia, but it’s definitely a reminder that the unexpected happens. I’d guess zero sell side analysts heading into 2027 had “Jensen Huang potentially being compromised by a Chinese spy” anywhere in their analysis for the upcoming year.

Readers may recall that I first began questioning what a black swan event at Nvidia could do to broader financial markets as far back as 2023, when it was becoming increasingly apparent just how much of the market’s fortunes were being tied to one semiconductor company at the same time critical questions were being asked of Nvidia’s relationship with CoreWeave.

I followed up again in 2024, ridiculing the almost religious, cult-like status Nvidia had: Nvidia's Animal Spirits

At the time, I even joked about Huang signing the breasts of a particularly perky female “fan” at Computex, the annual technology expo in Taipei. The spectacle seemed to perfectly capture the absurdity of the moment: the CEO of a semiconductor company was being worshipped like a rock star.

But beneath the humor was a serious concern about Nvidia’s colossal weighting in the S&P 500, the extraordinary expectations embedded in its valuation, and the degree to which investors and the economy had become attached to both the company and its CEO.

And just days ago, I reiterated that Nvidia, the nerve center of the entire AI bubble, has become so central to financial markets that an extraordinary amount of the world’s financial fortunes now hangs in the balance of what happens to one company: The World Will End If Nvidia Misses Earnings

Which brings us to last week’s bizarre developments.

According to recent reporting, U.S. intelligence officials believe Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman associated with Singapore-based data-center company Megaspeed, was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security. Her alleged target was Jensen Huang, with reports suggesting the two developed a personal relationship that may have become romantic.

The suspected operation reportedly went beyond simply gathering intelligence about Nvidia. Officials were also concerned that Chinese intelligence might have sought to influence Huang’s advocacy regarding U.S. restrictions on advanced AI-chip exports to China, an issue with enormous geopolitical and financial implications.

Nvidia has disputed the allegations, and there is no publicly established evidence that Huang knowingly participated in espionage or transferred confidential information. Nevertheless, congressional Republicans have requested a briefing, and the controversy has raised uncomfortable questions about the company’s leadership and security practices.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is demanding answers from Huang and Nvidia’s board, while even Trump has publicly questioned Huang’s continued role as a technology adviser.

At the very least, this is an unwelcome distraction for Nvidia, particularly given its position at the center of the AI trade. But at the other end of the spectrum lies a question that I suspect virtually nobody was contemplating just a week ago: Could Jensen Huang even be forced to resign at some point? 

I’m not suggesting he will, or that the available evidence justifies such an outcome. But consider what it would mean if the controversy escalated to the point that his leadership became untenable.

Huang isn’t merely Nvidia’s CEO. In many ways, he is Nvidia, at least in the eyes of investors who have turned him into the leather-jacket-wearing embodiment of the AI revolution. The company’s extraordinary market mythology has become deeply intertwined with his personality, credibility, and genius. And now his potential relationship with a spy.

What would happen if Huang stepped down? How much key-man risk is embedded in Nvidia after he almost single-handedly built it into the company it is today?

And lest we forget…I’m getting ahead of myself here, but that’s what I do….there’s also the uncomfortable reality that major executive departures can sometimes bring previously concealed problems into the open. New leadership, new scrutiny, and changing incentives have a way of revealing things that were previously swept under the rug. That’s not to suggest Nvidia is hiding anything, but it’s another potential consequence of an abrupt leadership change that investors would have to consider. Or, in the case of Berkshire Hathaway, sometimes the new guy just comes in and immediately f*cks things up.

Of course, none of this is guaranteed to happen. The allegations could ultimately go nowhere, congressional scrutiny could fade, and Huang could remain at the helm while Nvidia continues its extraordinary run, potentially bails out CoreWeave again, and ties itself further to every AI company and retirement portfolio on the planet.

In fact, I’ve often joked that Nvidia has become such an indispensable lynchpin of the global economy that it can practically do whatever it wants. The company is so deeply embedded in the AI investment narrative, and so important to the broader market, that investors seem willing to overlook almost anything that threatens the prevailing story.

Perhaps this controversy will prove to be another example of that dynamic. But whether it does or not, the larger lesson for my readers remains the same.

Black swans, by their very nature, don’t announce themselves in advance. The most consequential market risks are often the ones nobody is modeling, nobody is hedging, and nobody even knows to look for.

85% OFF FOREVER IF YOU SUBSCRIBE TODAY: I am again offering an 85% discount to anyone that wants to become a Fringe Finance annual subscriber today. It’s a discount you can keep and stays applied for as long as you wish to remain a subscriber: Get 85% off forever

Investors have spent years debating Nvidia’s valuation, margins, competition, and the sustainability of AI capital expenditures. But how many analysts had a potential Chinese espionage scandal involving Jensen Huang on their list of risks? How many models contemplated an international intelligence controversy that might threaten the leadership of the world’s most important AI company?

To be clear, an unexpected scandal is not automatically a black swan, and this one may never develop into anything remotely catastrophic. But it illustrates how quickly an entirely unforeseen category of risk can materialize, particularly at a company whose enormous index weighting and central role in the AI trade give it disproportionate influence over global financial markets.

And at the worst time possible: as the market is already volatile. When so much of the market’s confidence is concentrated in one company and one narrative, the potential consequences of an unforeseen disruption become that much more significant.

Maybe this scandal disappears next week, or maybe it becomes something considerably more serious. I wouldn’t pretend to know, and I’m certainly not declaring that Nvidia’s black swan has arrived.

But eventually, a genuine black swan will emerge somewhere, and when it does, it may come from a direction nobody was watching. The possibility of that happening at a company as systemically important to market sentiment as Nvidia is precisely what I’ve been warning about for years.

It’s a lesson worth keeping in mind not just during the current market weakness, or amid the growing questions surrounding AI, but at all times, especially when investors begin convincing themselves that a company, a trade, or an entire market narrative has become too important to fail.

Now, hold onto your nuts, Monday’s cash open is only hours away…

QTR’s Disclaimer: Please read my full legal disclaimer on my About page here.

Three troubling developments emerged from the Gulf region on Sunday morning:

• An Aramco office building in Riyadh was damaged during a Houthi missile attack;
• Iran reported three oil tankers on fire in the Strait of Hormuz;
• US forces disabled a vessel in the Gulf of Oman amid surging regional tensions, less than a week after the US midterms.

Saudi Arabia's Energy Ministry confirmed that an attempted attack on the Aramco administrative building in King Abdullah Financial District occurred earlier.

The Saudi Press Agency reported that falling shrapnel caused minor damage, with no injuries or fatalities reported. Videos posted on X show blown-out windows and damage across several floors.

"An administrative building belonging to Saudi Aramco in Riyadh was subjected to an attempted attack," the official Saudi news agency reported earlier today, citing a source at the Saudi Energy Ministry.

"The incident resulted in falling shrapnel that caused minor damage to the building, with no injuries or fatalities reported," the agency reported.

The Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted and destroyed two cruise missiles over Riyadh and the southern region. The damage to Aramco's office tower raises questions about the effectiveness of the kingdom's $83 billion in defense spending last year and its ability to safeguard both the financial district and critical oil and gas infrastructure.

Coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki wrote on X that the kingdom's air defenses also "intercepted and destroyed two ballistic missiles launched by the terrorist Houthi militia towards Riyadh."

In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said three oil tankers were ablaze. Iran has threatened vessels transiting the critical waterway without Iranian authorization. Tehran did not say whether it had targeted the three tankers.

"Since the early hours of this morning, three non-compliant tankers have exploded and caught fire while they were sailing in the illegal channel in the Strait of Hormuz," the IRGC wrote in a statement.

Separately, US Central Command said US forces disabled the St. Kitts-flagged M/V Huda in the Gulf of Oman after it attempted to breach the blockade of Iran.

Following the Democratic Party's sweep in the US midterms, fears have mounted that the Trump administration could target Kharg Island and/or Pickaxe Mountain to figuratively "finish the job" and weaken the regime by striking its oil and gas exports or nuclear program, despite positive diplomatic signaling.

Last week, Brent crude fell by more than $20 as traders unwound its war-risk premium amid expectations that the Democratic sweep would force the Trump administration to wind down operations against Iran and pursue a peace agreement.

"The more than $20 decline in Brent over the last week reflects bearish sentiment and a rapid unwind of the geopolitical risk premium in the price rather than a change in supply/demand fundamentals. I'd guess there is still $10-15 of risk premium reflected in the current $95 level, and while there is risk of an ongoing unwind if the Iran-US narrative continues to trend towards de-escalation, it is worth reflecting on what has really changed," UBS analyst Dominic Ellis wrote in a note to clients.

However, Ellis warned that even with the path toward de-escalation seemingly "opening a new era of diplomatic outreach, a new Iran deal and a clear path back towards the normalization of energy exports, the near 700 mn drawdown in global inventories as a result of the conflict so far and the at least 40-50mb ongoing monthly inventory draw if the conflict continues will drive incremental demand that keeps a floor on oil for the next 18-24 months."

Former senior White House advisor Calley Means says he had full White House approval for a federal look at how much sugar American children eat - until Trump's former Chief-of-Staff Susie Wiles killed it. 

"And that's where Susie told me, we can't do that. I need the sugar industry money. I need the money for the midterms," Means told Joe Rogan in an episode published Friday. In fact, according to Means, Wiles was up to all sorts of bad stuff. 

Means, who quit on Oct. 22 without giving a reason and says he connected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with Donald Trump in 2024, spent more than two hours naming the people he says stood between MAHA voters and what they voted for. He said a Wiles aide put an executive order on his desk declaring glyphosate, the weed killer in Bayer's Roundup, a national security issue, told him it was "final," and said Kennedy "should not be calling the president or calling anyone." Trump, he said, didn't know his own Justice Department then pushed the Supreme Court to take the case Bayer went on to win.

"There is a very concentrated group of people in the Trump administration that are antagonistic to what people voted for and are frankly, I think it's very clear, doing things for other reasons, particularly in many cases to enrich their families," Means said near the top of the episode.

The episode went up the same day Trump announced that Stephen Miller will replace Susie Wiles as chief of staff on Monday, with Wiles moving to the Trump political operation after Republicans' midterm wipeout. Means taped it before the shakeup, and Wiles is who he spent most of the first hour on. He marked the news on X:

Susie Wiles is out as chief of staff.

— Calley Means (@calleymeans) November 6, 2026

"No Policy Decision Gets Done Without Her Office"

"Susie Wiles is the most powerful chief of staff in modern American history. And she has taken a stranglehold on any policy decision," Means said, adding that cabinet secretaries spend meetings "constantly worrying about how to get on Susie's good side."

He then walked Rogan through the people around her. Wiles, he said, was one of the country's top lobbyists before the White House, and "her career has been taking money from the industries and foreign governments who would pay her the most money" - including, in his account, as a top consultant to Benjamin Netanyahu and to the pharmaceutical and pesticide industries. James Blair, the head of political operations and "her friend from Florida," he said "has taken a lot of money from industries like the sugar industry."

Tony Fabrizio, Trump's chief pollster, is the one every policy "goes through," Means said, because his polling tells the team what is politically worth doing, while he takes money from "almost every single industry we're fighting against right now to this day." Later in the episode the show pulled up what Means said was the client list on Fabrizio's website: Pfizer, PhRMA, Philip Morris, Procter & Gamble, R.J. Reynolds and Dow Chemical among them. On school lunch reform, Means said, Fabrizio was "getting paid by Pepsi and giving political analysis that the juice isn't worth the squeeze."

When Means pitched healthier school meals to Fabrizio, citing Rogan's listeners, the pollster brushed it off, he said: "[MAHA] is not really a big part of our strategy." The strategy, by Means' account, was gerrymandering ("they were obsessed with redistricting") and campaign gimmicks like no tax on tips, all justified by the need for campaign cash.

Richard Walters, who joined the White House from FGS Global, came from a firm that "lobbied for pesticides, lobbied for pharma" and was paid by the pesticide trade group CropLife right before he left, Means said. While Wiles was "out getting cancer treatment," he added, "Richard was effectively chief of staff." Trump disclosed Wiles' breast cancer diagnosis in March, saying she would keep working through treatment.

Then the family business. Wiles' daughter Katie is a lobbyist at Continental Strategy, and Means said that was an open channel. "If a company hired Susie's daughter, then that was getting a high priority," he said, calling it "an open discussion in the White House." By his account the firm had "almost zero in revenue" before Trump's return and shot up to "30-ish million dollars a year in revenue." Florida filings already put Continental's lobbying pay near $5 million in 2023.

Ballard Partners, where Wiles worked before the campaign, was the other route. "If you hire Ballard, you get a meeting with Susie and you can get things done," Means said, calling the firm's reported $98 million "the down payment." Later in the episode he laid out the whole menu:

"If any special interest is watching, and you're trying to rig the system, unless it changes, pay Ballard, pay Continental, Susie's daughter, pay Checkmate, Chris [LaCivita's] son. That's another one that shot up. And, you know, pound Susie with donations and calls. Everyone knows this playbook. It's an open secret in DC."

Chris LaCivita ran Trump's 2024 campaign with Wiles. His son, Chris LaCivita Jr., joined Checkmate Government Relations after the election and registered to lobby for more than 40 clients in 2025.

Means stressed it isn't a Trump problem alone. "This is how DC works," he said, and he said he doesn't think Trump "knows about most of this."

"This Is Final. It's National Security."

Means' most detailed account was glyphosate, the herbicide in Bayer's Roundup. He said getting the word into the first MAHA report was "the biggest policy battle I had seen up to that time," and that as Bayer's push for legal immunity stalled in the states and in Congress, he warned Wiles' team and USDA leadership that the administration should stay out of it.

Then, he said, a Wiles aide called him into a room and put an executive order on the desk. "And it was the glyphosate EO that says it's a national security issue," Means said. "And he said, this is final. It's national security. It's coming out tomorrow." The aide told him to "please inform Bobby" and that Kennedy "should not be calling the president or calling anyone," Means said. Wiles then called Kennedy's office, and the order came out the next day.

That was February's "Promoting the National Defense by Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Elemental Phosphorus and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides," published in the Federal Register on Feb. 23, which Kennedy publicly defended at the time. "I will tell you, the Secretary of War, the major generals, they don't see our lack of glyphosate on US farms as a national security issue," Means said. He said the order was driven by Courtney Knupp, then a National Security Council staffer - "she, with Susie, drove the E.O." - who has since been named CEO of the United Soybean Board.

The Supreme Court came next. Means said Heidi Overton, then a White House aide and now Trump's pick for FDA commissioner, worked with the Justice Department, without consulting Kennedy, on the argument for the Court to take up the Roundup case, and that the solicitor general's office brought in Sarah Harris, who he said came from Bayer's main law firm. The solicitor general urged the justices to take the case, and the Court ruled for Bayer's Monsanto in June.

Trump himself didn't know his Justice Department had pushed for it, Means said. When a regenerative farmer raised the ruling at a meeting with Trump and Kennedy, he said, the president called it "a terrible idea." "And the people around him, I think treat him horribly. They treat him like they talk about him like a baby," Means said.

"The Top Issue Among These People For All Of Health"

The single most prioritized health issue for Blair, Means said, was "to get a better pathway for fruit flavored vapes" - ahead of Medicare, health access or food. Blair argued that approving vapes "was a core midterm issue," aimed at young men, Means said.

Then-FDA Commissioner Marty Makary was pressed on it "meeting after meeting" in the West Wing and held his ground, Means said. Makary was pushed out in May. Overton then "wrote up a policy to relax standards" on fruit-flavored vapes, Means said, and public health groups sued over the FDA's flavored e-cigarette policy in July.

When Means pushed the other way on food, he said, Blair told him "the food industry, we don't want to beat up on them too much."

"How Demonic This Culture Is"

Asked by Rogan what was stopping Trump, Means pointed at the bureaucracy. Kennedy, "my hero," runs a 90,000-person department, and "he's surrounded by demons who want him out and want him just destroyed," Means said. "They were sending around a memo, a CIA manual, about how to be a bad bureaucrat and subvert an institution from within. That's like sent around by all the career officials."

Means appeared to be describing the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a 1944 guide from the CIA's wartime predecessor, the OSS, which the CIA publishes on its website. It tells saboteurs inside an organization to insist on going through channels, refer everything to committees and haggle over the wording of communications.

Means also pointed to Moderna's mRNA flu shot, which the FDA refused to review in February. He said the trial compared it against an outdated flu vaccine and showed "a 0.8% absolute risk reduction." Asked about side effects, he said, "it can't be definitively said, but there were deaths," in the trial group.

Overton, a Makary protege from Johns Hopkins, told the two of them the corporate pressure had grown too much, Means said. "And I'm like, okay, this place turns you into demons," he said. The shot was approved in August after what Means called a "sham advisory committee." After Makary's exit, he added, the FDA told Pfizer it no longer has to run the new COVID vaccine study that had been a condition of the shot's reapproval.

Kratom's concentrated opioid compound 7-OH, which Means called "gas station heroin," followed the same path. He said regulators set a strict 0.05% limit early in the term, then, after "unrelenting lobbying," raised the allowed concentration 20-fold. "Again, I don't think Trump even knows about this," he said.

"I Need The Sugar Industry Money"

The line Means said he heard most from Wiles was about the midterms. "Susie said to me many times, we need money for the midterms, [Calley]. We need money for the midterms," he said.

The sharpest example came when David Kessler, the 1990s FDA commissioner who took on Big Tobacco, petitioned the FDA to examine sugar and refined carbohydrates in children's diets. Means said the initiative had a 60 Minutes segment behind it, full White House approval and a pass through the interagency process before Wiles told him she needed the sugar industry money. Earlier in the episode he gave it as a "direct quote": "I need the money from the sugar people to win the midterms."

"Okay. The midterms are over. Now what?" Rogan asked. Whatever the strategy was, he added, "they got destroyed." Means pinned the loss on "the strategy of James Blair and Tony Fabrizio and Susie," and said the point now is "why the hell aren't we doing these now?"

Rogan didn't let Trump off the hook. "Don't you think he takes some responsibility?" he asked, pointing to the Iran war and "the cryptocurrency thing." "Of course he's the ultimate responsibility," Means said, while arguing that senior staffers are now working to throw the president under the bus for the loss.

The Last Straw

What finally pushed him out, Means said, was a federal definition of ultra-processed food that was "simply a definition, not even tied to regulation." He said he had Harvard, Tufts, the American Heart Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association lined up behind it. A Mondelez lobbyist told him "we don't want it done. This will hurt our business," and said he would call Wiles. "He talked about these people at the White House like they were extensions of him," Means said.

In a meeting with Means and Kennedy, Wiles said they were "doing great" and that she didn't know "about any special interest concerns," Means said, adding that she "lied to us to our face." Afterward, he said, he heard her saying "we need to do something about [MAHA]."

School meals were the other casualty. Means spent six months on an interagency rule to end donuts and sugary pastries at school breakfast, the most common breakfast for American schoolchildren in his telling, and to add a protein requirement. "There was dozens of meetings and calls saying that taking junk food out of school lunches would hurt the companies," he said. "And when I left, the day I left, the stocks of the major junk food companies went up 8 percent."

The market data back up the size of the move. General Mills closed up 8.0% on Oct. 22, the day Means resigned, and Kraft Heinz gained 6.8%, though it was a strong day for consumer staples broadly, with the Consumer Staples Select Sector SPDR ETF up 3.3%.

When he left, Means said, Wiles texted him "saying how much she admired me" and asked him "not to speak negatively of her." Asked what he would tell Trump now, he said, "I would recommend that he clears house," and that the president should "go to war with Congress" and stop "trying to make friends with John [Thune] anymore, who's a demon."

"I Haven't Even Gotten Started"

The fight moved to X on Saturday. Means posted what he called "a formal request" for Wiles and Blair to stop "harassing" him with texts and calls, and offered to "vigorously correct and apologize" for any factual error sent to him in writing:

This is a formal request for Susie Wiles and James Blair to stop harassing me with texts and calls. 

If there is a factual inaccuracy in what I said, send it to me in writing and I will vigorously correct and apologize for any misstatements. I will note that everything I said is...

— Calley Means (@calleymeans) November 7, 2026

Blair answered 42 minutes later, saying he had called Means the night before and told him he would consider suing if Means defamed him. "Calley, your poor me act is tiring and embarrassing for a grown man who launched a smear campaign," Blair wrote. "I've been called worse things by better people than you. And I haven't even gotten started."

Again not true. 

Called Calley last night. He didn't answer or return my call.

He messaged me this morning.

After a few messages and telling him I'd consider suing him if he defamed me, I told him was done responding to him privately.

And haven't since.

Calley, your poor... https://t.co/FRjj32Ojj7

— James Blair (@JamesBlairUSA) November 7, 2026

Kennedy, whom Means called "a hero," didn't name him. Within two hours of the episode going up on Friday, he posted that "draining the swamp is a mandate" - and then thanked Wiles, crediting her, not Means, with his partnership with Trump:

Draining the swamp is a mandate, and we have an obligation to deliver. Entrenched interests have exercised power in Washington under both parties for decades. President Trump and I intend to keep fighting until the American people - not corporate influence - drive our health...

— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) November 6, 2026

I'm grateful to Susie Wiles for her calm and inspiring leadership and wisdom. Susie brokered my partnership with President Trump in July 2024 and then spearheaded the campaign to get our team elected. She oversaw the transition process and helped me bring an extraordinary cadre... https://t.co/hZ9JC5WRyH

— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) November 6, 2026

"After years of being on the political sidelines, the MAHA coalition has found a champion in President Trump, who has made incredible strides to Make America Healthy Again," White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster told the Daily Caller News Foundation, which could not reach Wiles.

Meanwhile:

The Calley Means - Joe Rogan episode this week should be required listening in every high school civics class

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) November 8, 2026

Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa (D-TX) has asked the state's parks department to hold off on a proposed sale of state land to SpaceX until she takes office, contacting the department's executive director before she is sworn in this January. The move puts part of Elon Musk's expansion plans in South Texas on hold.

Hinojosa won the governorship this week as Democrats swept the statewide races in Texas, a result that put the state's relationship with Musk and his companies in question. Musk relocated several of his businesses to Texas in recent years, and he has close ties to President Donald Trump and outgoing Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX).

Investors reacted the morning after the vote. Tesla and SpaceX each fell nearly 6% in premarket trading on Wednesday. Musk had spent heavily to prevent that outcome. The billionaire, one of the Republican Party's largest donors, had given more than $445 million to Republican candidates and causes this cycle and urged his followers on X to vote against Democrats. About $190 million of it went into Ken Paxton's (R-TX) race for the U.S. Senate, most of it through the Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Senate Republican leaders.

The sale under discussion covers about 1,300 acres of public land in Cameron County, including Boca Chica State Park, which covers about 1,055 acres and sits next to SpaceX's Starbase rocket facility. Acquiring the land would allow SpaceX to expand its operations at the site, which serves as the company's main launch and production hub for its Starship program.

A draft agenda for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission's Thursday meeting included the sale, according to the Texas Tribune. The item came off the agenda at Hinojosa's request, she said, though the department had already said in October that the commission was not considering the sale at its November meeting. Hinojosa did not say whether the department agreed to wait until she takes office, and the commission did not announce a new date for the discussion. Texas Monthly first reported the proposed deal last month, and environmental groups opposed it after the news became public.

Hinojosa tied her intervention to her personal connection to the area. The park lies in the Rio Grande Valley, where she grew up.

"It's such an important resource," Hinojosa said of the park. "The Valley is so important to me as the place I am from, and I will never forget it."

The Boca Chica pause is the first concrete action Hinojosa has taken against Musk, one of Texas's largest employers, and it arrives before she holds any formal authority over state agencies. Abbott remains governor until January, and the Parks and Wildlife Commission's members serve under his appointments.

Musk's companies came to Texas largely on the strength of the state's business climate. He moved the headquarters of Tesla, SpaceX, X, and The Boring Company to the state, citing in part his opposition to Democratic policies in California. Tesla relocated its headquarters to Austin in 2021, and Musk announced in 2024 that SpaceX and X would follow after California enacted a law he publicly opposed. Starbase incorporated as its own city in 2025.

Hinojosa's election also raises questions beyond Musk's holdings. During the campaign, she promised a temporary moratorium on data centers in Texas, a pledge that bears on the artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout the Trump administration has promoted as part of its push to reindustrialize the American economy. Texas has become one of the country's leading destinations for large-scale data center construction.

CNN's Jake Tapper pressed Hinojosa on that issue in an interview on Thursday.

"Your victory, in particular, is one that we're told AI investors are worried about, given your promises of a temporary data center moratorium," Tapper said.

Hinojosa said she intends to change the terms on which Texas deals with major companies.

"We have always been a pro-business state in Texas, but what changes now with me as governor is it has to be a partnership that benefits Texans," she said.

Tapper also asked about Boca Chica, and whether Musk might move his companies out of Texas. "Selling our beach to Elon Musk is just something that is almost unimaginable. It's unacceptable," Hinojosa said. "Our beaches are enshrined in our Texas Constitution as being free and open to the people of Texas."

Hinojosa claims she remains open to working with Musk, though she placed conditions on that relationship.

"We can have a strong working relationship with Elon Musk and his companies, but it has to be on our terms," Hinojosa told Tapper. "It cannot be just running over the people of Texas, and that's what changes now that I will be governor."

Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa: "We can have a strong working relationship with Elon Musk and his companies, but it has to be on our terms" 

Jake Tapper asked her about blocking the sale of a Texas state park to SpaceX, and whether Musk might leave the state over it. Her... https://t.co/owsQCmw5iW pic.twitter.com/Zzl8At5X2J

— Fireside Alpha (@firesidealpha) November 6, 2026

Hinojosa did not say in the interview what terms she would require of Musk's companies. On data centers, she said Texas needs to "stop what we are doing with data centers until we have those protections," new state laws she did not spell out.

Hinojosa takes office in January, and the fate of the Boca Chica land sale, and the working relationship between Musk's companies and the state of Texas, now rests with her administration.

Authored by Connor O'Keeffe via Mises Institute,

The 2020s have been a crazy decade in American politics.

They began, of course, with one of the most chaotic and intense years in recent American history. After a global pandemic brought almost all aspects of life to a halt, cities erupted in nationwide riots for much of the summer, and a seemingly endless stream of scandals and stunts like the Hunter Biden laptop drove the politically-active public to exhaustion; after all that, Joe Biden won the presidency.

Biden - the old-fashioned, centrist, familiar vice president from the Obama years - was supposed to represent a repudiation of the chaos of the Trump years, and of 2020 especially. The "adults were back in charge," and politics could finally get boring again. Or so many thought.

Instead, the Biden years saw the government's heavy-handed pandemic response drag on, the outbreak of war in Ukraine and, later, Gaza, and the consequences of the bipartisan economic response to the covid pandemic slam into the already-exhausted country in the form of a forty-year-high rate of price inflation.

The high prices especially drove many voters to abandon the Democrats in the 2022 midterms - although the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade earlier that year drove high Democratic turnout, which greatly minimized the expected "Red Wave." Still, in 2024, voters seemed to snap all the way back in the other direction and handed Trump and the Republican Party the White House and both houses of Congress. And now, only two years later, Trump's approval rating is at a historic low, and not only Democrats but even "democratic socialists" are enjoying all the political momentum, as we saw in Tuesday's elections.

It can be tempting to chalk these dramatic political swings up to any one of the many stories that dominate the news cycle at the moment. Or, on the other side, to some seemingly inexplicable global forces of chaos that seem to be driving all aspects of public life these last few years.

But, in truth, there's a very clear explanation for the political whiplash we've been experiencing in these last few elections: inflation.

Now, too often, any discussion of inflation becomes hyper-focused on one unusually high driver of last month's CPI report or a slightly better-than-expected month-over-month reading in the core PCE.

But that is not how most people have experienced and are experiencing inflation.

To better understand how inflation has changed our politics, we have to zoom out.

As we cover here a lot, inflation has been a ubiquitous and escalating problem in this country for a long time. Prices naturally fall as economies grow. It's only because the political class was able to take control of the monetary and banking system over the last fifty to a hundred years that the sort of permanent price inflation we're supposed to consider normal is even possible.

In other words, inflation isn't a new problem. But, back in 2019, it was mostly a background issue. Prices were rising, but slowly. And the entire field of "respectable," establishment-friendly economists were telling everyone that the 2 percent inflation rate was optimal. Those obsessed with politics were focused on non-economic stories like the Trump impeachment, while the politically-disinterested majority were focused on their own lives.

But then covid started to spread, and state and local governments across the US began locking down the country with the full support of the federal government. And a primary aspect of that federal support came from the Federal Reserve.

The central bank printed trillions of new dollars to help finance the enormous economic "rescue plans" that Congress passed to make the complete shutdown of huge swaths of the economy possible. The Fed created a little over six trillion dollars in the first two years of the decade. And most of it was injected straight into the economy. That massive increase in the monetary supply greatly lowered the value of every dollar. The pain that would eventually follow was unavoidable.

However, importantly, the economic pain would not be felt right away, and it would not be experienced equally. As economists have been explaining for hundreds of years, when governments print money and send it to their friends and cronies or use it to fund government programs, the resulting loss of purchasing power is not instantaneous. It occurs over time as the new money works its way through the economy. Those who get the new money first get to use it at the old, unadjusted prices. As they spend, they bid prices up, forcing those who get the new money last to pay higher prices before the new dollars even reach them.

Monetary inflation is, literally, a transfer of wealth from the people who get the money last to the people who get it first. And, because it's hard for the victims of this forced transfer to detect it at first or connect their later resulting troubles to the true culprit, it's become the political class's favorite way to quietly move wealth to friends and allies. This is exactly what they did during the covid pandemic, at a scale that's almost hard to comprehend. The government printed so much money that, today, one in every three dollars in existence was created after 2019.

So, as governments finally began to relent and allow people to return to normal life, we were met with an enormous jump in prices. In 2022, prices rose faster than they had in four decades. And, in the years since, even though the rate of price increases has slowed, prices are still rising faster than we've seen in a long time.

But remember, most people are not combing through inflation reports or obsessing over the data. They're comparing their experience today with how it was before. And before, in this case, means 2019. Prices have increased by 30 percent since then. Some prices have gone up even higher, such as with coffee, beef, and - especially this year - energy. But, overall, there is visceral, widespread, and appropriate frustration that prices are not normal right now, and, further, that the way these price increases have played out has made us poorer. And that's correct.

Further, the sheer scale of this monetary theft forced the issue out beyond the normal political and ideological silos. Swing voters, political independents, and - most significantly - the politically disinterested were very angry about inflation and, understandably, put the blame on whoever was in office. That gave a tremendous advantage to any political candidate who made improving the cost of living a centerpiece of their campaign and who, importantly, was perceived as having been out of power as the inflation crisis materialized.

That is what happened in 2024 with Trump. In fact, that basic dynamic was present worldwide. 2024 was the first election since 1905 where every developed-country incumbent party lost vote share. These are countries that either operate within the dollar system or under their own inflationist central banks. Americans are not the only ones dealing with this.

However, what had been an advantage for Trump in the run-up to 2024 began turning into a disadvantage as Trump and Congressional Republicans showed no interest in going after the actual root of the inflation crisis. The inflationist racket run out of the Federal Reserve is too lucrative and empowering for the political class to ever roll it back absent extreme public pressure. Trump, in fact, has pushed for the Fed to print more money so he could pretend the artificially boosted economy was his doing.

Republicans instead used the public's anger to justify unrelated pet policy projects and hoped the public would grow used to the new price level and wealth distribution. To push that along, administration officials took after their predecessors in the Biden administration. They cherry-picked positive economic data, dishonestly conflated inflation (or price increases) slowing down with prices actually coming down, and, above all, tried to declare over and over again that the economy was great.

Then, of course, Trump poured fuel on the fire by launching a war on Iran that led to a completely predictable jump in energy prices. And, by doing so, he helped reverse the dynamic that had helped him win in 2024. This time around, it was the Democrats - especially the anti-establishment democratic socialists - who had the advantage of being able to present themselves as outsiders with no hand in bringing about this "affordability crisis," but every intention of fixing it.

However, as we'll see a bit over the next two years, and especially if they hold onto Congress and win the White House in 2028, the Democrats also have no interest in actually going after the central bank that lies at the root of this inflation crisis. They, like Republicans, merely want to steer it towards their own partisan ends. But, even more so than Republicans, the Left's sought-after levels of government spending would require another significant increase in money printing - further fueling the crisis that's currently helping them win.

Which means that, in all likelihood, the Democrats and democratic socialists will soon be in the same precarious position Republicans now find themselves in. When that happens, the public will look elsewhere for answers and leaders - untainted by having held office in recent years - who can offer a path out. It's up to those of us who do understand the true cause and cure of the inflation crisis to be ready. Because the advantage we've seen swing around wildly may soon lie with us. And we cannot ignore that opportunity.