Trump Has Left Reality Behind. He Took the Justice Department With Him.
Fake payments, fabricated treason, AI arrest videos — the president is creating an alternate universe where his enemies are criminals.
So Trump is back at it again, and this time he's calling for people to be thrown in prison over payments that never happened. I wish I was making this up.
Over the weekend, Trump took to Truth Social with quite the accusation. He claimed Democrats paid Beyoncé $11 million for her Kamala Harris endorsement, Oprah got $3 million, and Al Sharpton pocketed $600,000. His conclusion? “They should all be prosecuted!”
But here's the thing: That $11 million payment to Beyoncé? It doesn't exist. Never happened. Total fantasy.
What actually happened, according to federal campaign spending records, is that the Harris campaign paid $165,000 to Beyoncé's production company. Not for an endorsement — for “campaign event production” costs. You know, the actual expenses of putting on an event. The kind of thing campaigns are literally required by law to pay for.
Trump went further, declaring in all caps: “YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PAY FOR AN ENDORSEMENT. IT IS TOTALLY ILLEGAL TO DO SO.”
Except... that's completely wrong. There's no federal law that prohibits paying for political endorsements. None. You just have to disclose the payments. But in any case, again, she wasn’t paid for her endorsement anyway.
The President of the United States is demanding that people be prosecuted — imprisoned! — for violating a law that doesn't exist, based on payments that never happened. He's not confused about the amount. He's not misremembering some detail. He's calling for prosecutions based on pure fiction, and he's doing it loudly and repeatedly.
When CNN asked the White House for any evidence of Trump's $11 million figure, they got nothing. When Trump himself was asked about his source in February, he said, “Somebody just showed me something. They gave her $11 million.” That's it. That's the whole source.
The “Epstein Files” meltdown
While Trump was busy inventing crimes to prosecute, he was also dealing with an actual crisis: his own supporters turning on him over the Jeffrey Epstein files.
During the campaign, Trump and his allies hyped up releasing the Epstein files. His FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi both promised transparency. MAGA world was convinced there'd be some kind of "client list" exposing powerful pedophiles.
Then came July 7th, when the DOJ announced there was no client list and no more files would be released. The backlash from Trump's base was immediate and brutal.
Here's where it gets interesting: The Wall Street Journal reported that back in May, Attorney General Bondi had briefed Trump that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files. The Journal also revealed Trump had sent Epstein a “bawdy” birthday letter in 2003 featuring “the outline of a naked woman" with Trump's signature "mimicking pubic hair.”
Trump's response to his furious supporters? He called them stupid. He told them they'd been “duped” by Democrats. He said he didn't want their votes anymore. At one point, he posted: “We had the Greatest Six Months of any President in the History of our Country, and all the Fake News wants to talk about is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax!”
Right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson ripped into the administration at conferences. MAGA influencers warned about losing the midterms over this. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted that if you promise to take down “rich powerful elite evil cabals,” then “you must take down every enemy of The People.”
The pressure got so intense that Trump eventually directed the DOJ to try unsealing some grand jury transcripts. But for a president who built his movement on conspiracy theories about shadowy elites, being unable to deliver on the Epstein promises while his own name keeps coming up in the files? That's a problem that won't go away.
Manufacturing “treason” out of thin air
Just as the Epstein backlash was reaching fever pitch, Trump pulled out his favorite move: change the subject by attacking Barack Obama.
On Sunday, Trump posted an AI-generated video showing Obama being arrested by FBI agents in the Oval Office. By Tuesday, sitting next to the president of the Philippines, Trump was accusing Obama of “treason” and saying “it's time to go after people.”
The basis for these accusations? Trump's Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, released documents claiming Obama and his officials manufactured intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 election. She called it a “treasonous conspiracy” and said she'd submitted criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
But here's what Gabbard and Trump are actually claiming: that Russia never tried to interfere in the 2016 election and that Obama made the whole thing up. This has already been thoroughly investigated and rejected by everyone who's looked at it, including the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Marco Rubio (now Trump's own Secretary of State).
CNN's fact-checkers noted that Trump and Gabbard appear to be confusing two completely different things: Russia's documented attempts to influence the election through hacks and social media (which definitely happened) with claims that Russia hacked voting machines to change vote totals (which didn't happen).
Obama's office finally responded to what they called Trump's “bizarre” allegations, pointing out that “nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election.”
But Trump kept going. “They caught President Obama absolutely cold,” he said. “He's guilty.”
Remember, treason is punishable by death in the United States. The President is calling for his predecessor to face capital charges based on a conspiracy theory that's been debunked by his own party.
The mad king
Look at the timeline here. Trump faces mounting pressure from his own base over the Epstein files, with his name surfacing in documents about a convicted sex trafficker. His response? Invent an $11 million payment and demand Beyoncé be prosecuted. Post fake videos of Obama being arrested. Accuse his predecessor of treason. Call for imprisonments based on crimes that exist only in his imagination.
This isn't normal political deflection. This is the President of the United States using the full weight of his office to threaten people with prosecution for things that literally didn't happen.
And unlike his first term, he's got a Justice Department ready to fully play along. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday that the DOJ would launch a “strike force” to assess the criminal referrals against Obama. When asked by reporters what actions Trump wanted to see, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “It's in the Department of Justice's hands and we trust them to move the ball forward.”
This is what's different now. These aren't just angry tweets or campaign rally rants. The president who controls federal law enforcement is openly calling for prosecutions based on fabrications, and his Justice Department is taking steps to make it happen.
When a president starts threatening imprisonment for imaginary crimes while trying to bury real scandals, we've moved into genuinely dangerous territory.
The Beyoncé payment that never was. The treason that never happened. The deflection from files he doesn't want released. It's all connected, and it's all concerning. Because what happens when inventing fake crimes to prosecute stops working as a distraction? What comes next?
We're watching a president who, when cornered, doesn't just lash out. He creates alternate realities where his enemies are criminals, then demands his government act on those fantasies. That should worry everyone, regardless of party.
In other news
Axios founders Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei claim they practice “clinical” journalism free of political opinion. Then they wrote that Trump's first six months were "the very best chapter of his presidency" and blamed his low approval ratings on Americans being "tired of all the winning." They somehow forgot to mention the 1,500 January 6 pardons, gutting cancer research, or deploying the military against protesters. But sure, totally objective. The best part? They sold Axios in 2022 for $525 million to Cox Enterprises, whose only previous digital media venture was a right-wing website called Rare with the slogan "Red is the center." Nothing says unbiased journalism like repackaging conservative ideology as neutrality while cashing checks from Koch Industries.
Katelyn Burns has a take about the Democrats who think the path to 2028 runs through throwing trans people under the bus. Gavin Newsom went on a right-wing podcast to say trans women in sports is “inherently unfair,” while Rahm Emanuel told Megyn Kelly that “a man cannot become a woman.” They're chasing voters who will never be satisfied with half-measures—the anti-trans zealots want us "eradicated," not just excluded from sports. Meanwhile, they're alienating millions of LGBTQ voters who actually show up for Democrats. Watching these geniuses trade their most reliable voting bloc for people who attend anti-trans protests (all 10 of them) is like watching someone sell their car for gas money.
Brian Beutler at Off Message says liberals are suckers for bad-faith arguments. He watched a fascist tell Mehdi Hasan that free speech is just “the means to support an end” and that he'll abolish it once his side wins. Yet liberal institutions keep treating these people like they're making sincere arguments worth debating. Beutler admits he was trained in DC to presume good faith and ignore who's making the argument, even when dealing with obvious grifters. That's how propagandists get NPR gigs and CNN contracts while openly admitting they're just using democratic norms as a stepping stone to tyranny. We're basically handing fascists the rope they plan to hang us with, then patting ourselves on the back for being so open-minded.
Greg Sargent at The New Republic says a NYC mayoral candidate cracked the code Democrats keep missing: make politics entertaining. Zohran Mamdani's vacation video mocking racists who told him to “go back to Africa” got 4.5 million Instagram views, mostly from non-followers. While national Democrats obsess over finding their “Joe Rogan,” Mamdani's just posting videos about traffic and the price of halal food that somehow go mega-viral. His “halalflation” video about chicken over rice costing $10 wasn't focus-grouped or poll-tested—it was just a real person talking about real problems in a way that doesn't make you want to die of boredom. Turns out “cheerful populism” beats doom-scrolling, and talking while eating street food beats another PowerPoint about messaging strategy. Who knew?
The Wall Street Journal says grocery stores in Europe are changing prices 100 times a day, and it's coming to America? Norwegian shoppers watch prices literally blink and change while they're shopping — eggs drop 10 cents, competitors match it, rinse and repeat in what one exec calls “a race to the bottom.” U.S. stores like Walmart and Kroger are already installing electronic shelf labels, sparking panic about surge pricing (imagine ice cream costing more on hot days). But the Europeans swear they only use it for price cuts during shopping hours, saving increases for overnight. The weirdest discovery? Dutch shoppers stopped buying discounted items when stores went fully digital, so they had to bring back physical sale stickers. Turns out people need that dopamine hit of seeing a red “SALE” tag, even if the price is right there on the screen.
The abject absurdity of this era is profoundly demoralizing.
And the racism underlying these latest attacks I doubt is a coincidence. Obama, Harris, Beyonce, Oprah, Al Sharpton. He believes his followers will be more distracted by these accusations. It's a worrying trend.