Better in their words…

Trump and Bondi finally address Epstein; SCOTUS clears the runway for Agenda; tariffs rattle media and rivals; Grok goes rogue; pulpit power returns, reshaping the political map—maybe for good.

Source: (11) ☕️ GROK GONE WILD ☙ Wednesday, July 9, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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Trump’s otherwise terrific sixth all-hands Cabinet meeting yesterday was eclipsed by the shadow of a dead pervert. Mid-day, Michelle texted me the short clip, saying only, “I don’t like this.” She meant she didn’t like how President Trump handled the Epstein question. I’ll give you my lawyer’s take.

First of all, it is already a dramatic improvement that a reporter was freely allowed to ask the unscripted question at all; under Biden, there wouldn’t have been any questions. I give Trump partial credit for jumping in and commenting.

Though the reporter’s delivery was awkwardly circuitous, he clearly asked Pam Bondi two critical questions: (1) Was Jeffrey Epstein an asset of any U.S. intelligence agency? (2) Why is a minute missing from the prison video outside Epstein’s cell? Neither question suggested any wrongdoing, cast blame, or even expressed skepticism.

Trump, with a quick apology to Bondi, immediately interrupted. Here’s his full answer, delivered with the kind of incredulous exasperation of a mom answering a curious child’s 100th repetitive question about how the Sun works right before saying, “from now on, ask your father”:

“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy has been talked about for years. You are asking … we have taxes, this, and all of the things, and are people still talking about this guy? This creep? That is unbelievable. (To Bondi:) Do you want to waste the time? You feel like answering? (To reporter:) I cannot believe you are asking a question on Epstein on a time like this when we are having some of the greatest success, and also tragedy, with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration. (To Bondi:) You go ahead.”

Trump’s unexpectedly aggressive response rubbed Michelle the wrong way. And if you watch the clip, you’ll see what she meant when she said she didn’t like it. Trump comes off as uncharacteristically defensive; his delivery wildly overshot the mark. By labeling the two most often-asked questions on conservative social media “a desecration” unfairly implied that the questions themselves were transgressive— but desecration of what? Epstein’s sacred memory? It was a misstep.

Trump’s answer sounded too much like Hillary’s infamous response to the Benghazi disaster. At this point, what does it matter? Let’s move on.

🔥 My take is simpler. Trump wasn’t deflecting; he was protecting Pam Bondi, buying her a little time, and giving her an out. In other words, he made it possible for her to say, “I don’t want to waste time on that question.” His aggressive defense suggests that none of this was Pam’s idea. To Pam’s credit, she insisted on answering.

Bondi, leaning forward in her chair (me: she wants to get this over with), first answered a question the reporter hadn’t asked, explaining about how, months ago, Fox had ‘misunderstood’ her answer about having the Epstein client list on her desk. (me: he didn’t ask that question, but she’d rehearsed the answer; she wanted to tell it; delivering the rehearsed answer bought her some time and was self-soothing.)

She next answered another question the reporter didn’t ask, by explaining that the ‘tens of thousands of videos’ she’d said DOJ had were “disgusting child porn” that would never be released under any circumstances. (me: again, she’d practiced for this question and wanted to tell that answer.)

The two unprompted answers also felt defensive.

Only then, after answering two questions nobody had asked, Bondi got around to the reporter’s first question, and didn’t answer:

“As for him (Epstein) being an agent, I have no knowledge of that, and we can get back to you on that.”

I’ll bet you all my Bitcoin that nobody ever gets back to him on that, no matter how many times he emails Pam’s office. (Don’t plan for any expensive vacations if you win; I missed the Bitcoin bus.)

Here’s my lawyer’s take on Pam’s non-answer: it actually showed she was trying to be as honest as she could. It’s unreasonably unlikely that she didn’t know about Epstein’s intelligence connections. She allegedly reviewed the whole file; it was on her desk for Pete’s sake. By deflecting, she was trying to avoid lying much. She could’ve just flatly said no. Furthermore, if Epstein’s employment is classified (likely), then she’s legally prohibited from answering. She’s allowed to lie, but she can’t betray any hint of the truth.

This, to me, was the tell. This was the question she hadn’t anticipated. To her credit, Pam did directly address both questions, and didn’t obfuscate by offering a rambling, incomprehensible story about her dead uncle or her oil cancer.

But she did not deny that Jeffrey Epstein was a U.S. intelligence asset.

She wrapped by directly answering the reporter’s second question about the missing minute:

“And the minute missing from the video, we’re going to re-release the video showing definitively that the video was not conclusive. However, the evidence prior to it was showing that he committed suicide. There was a minute that was missing from the counter. What we learned from the prisons is that every night they redo that video. It’s like from 1999. Every night, the video is reset. And every night should have the same minute missing, so we’re looking for that video to release that as well to show the minute missing.”

Sounds reasonable. Let’s wait and see. And none of this changes a thing from yesterday’s breakdown— except maybe to reinforce it.

🔥 Trump’s comments notwithstanding, the Epstein story is not meekly going to go away. Yesterday, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino broke his post-memo silence and posted this overly optimistic tweet:

Oh, boy. Here are the top responses from the MAGA fire brigades:

The angst in the comments was universal (as far as I had time to scroll), but the anti-DOJ angst is not completely universal. Bongino’s tweet got 60K likes. And firebrand Matt Gaetz has so far ignored the story. Feisty Marjorie Taylor Greene did respond, but lamely, with only two muted tweets —one polling whether folks think the Epstein evidence still exists, another asking about Ghislaine’s little black book— and that’s it. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan’s Twitter/X feed has not mentioned Epstein at all.

I lacked time to check them all. But so far, it looks like the GOP is standing down. Grok said, “there is no direct evidence from the provided sources or recent web searches that Congressional Republicans have specifically called for hearings or investigations challenging the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) memo on Jeffrey Epstein.” If you find one, post it in the comments.

While not even close to all, an astonishing number of conservative influencers —such as Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh (on vacation, but still), and Ben Shapiro— remained silent. On the other hand, Elon is having a field day; but he has his own new problems, as you’ll see in a minute.

Altogether, it continues to be a very strange story.

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Everywhere else you look, there’s good news. Yesterday, CNN ran a terrific story headlined, “Supreme Court backs Trump’s effort to dramatically reshape federal government for now.” CNN explained, “The decision is the latest in a series of significant wins for Trump at the Supreme Court.” Firings can proceed. Those employees should have taken the deal.

“The Supreme Court on Tuesday backed President Donald Trump’s effort to carry out mass firings and reorganizations at federal agencies,” CNN continued. The decision was 6-3, with a published dissent only from Justice Jackson, who awkwardly declared the decision was “truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless.”

“For some reason,” Jackson sniped, “this court sees fit to step in now and release the president’s wrecking ball at the outset of this litigation.”

Lower courts had stayed many of Trump’s federal workforce firings, including 10,000 at CDC, FDA, and NIH; 40% of the IRS; 30,000 at the VA; and more. The orders had put many agencies’ restructuring plans on hold. Now, they are good to go. “HHS previously announced our plans to transform this department to Make America Healthy Again, and we intend to do just that,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said in an email to CNN.

Surprisingly, Justice Sotomayor supported the decision. “I agree with Justice Jackson that the president cannot restructure federal agencies in a manner inconsistent with congressional mandates,” Sotomayor wrote. “Here, however, the relevant executive order directs agencies to plan reorganizations and reductions in force ‘consistent with applicable law.’”

The bottom line is, just as Trump is embracing his Big Beautiful Bill, the Supreme Court cleared the decks to dramatically reorganize the federal government. Not only did SCOTUS greenlight the mass firings, but in a different recent decision, it approved Trump’s termination of “independent” board members on the federal merit retention agency— which provides the guardrails for terminations.

In other words, the fireworks are just getting started.

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Yesterday, Politico ran a story headlined, “’Shock. Frustration. Anger.’ Trump’s tariff letters roil Asian allies.” On Monday, Trump posted a slew of tariff letters addressed to other countries on his Truth Social account, shattering more ‘standards and norms’ by ignoring normal diplomatic channels. By the response, you’d think he joked about pushing the nuclear button or something.

Trump unleashed letters to 14 foreign governments —10 from Asia— threatening new tariffs starting August 1st, unless the countries make better efforts to broker deals. During yesterday’s Cabinet meeting, the President quipped the United States wants good relationships with countries, “but in every case, they treated us far worse than I’m treating them.”

They didn’t like it. “We have no idea what the hell he’s sending, who he’s sending it to, or how he’s sending it,” complained an unnamed official from one of the governments targeted in the letters.

I guess they didn’t like finding out on Truth Social. Turns out, ‘breaking news’ from Trump’s feed isn’t how they imagined their next round of trade negotiation would begin.

If you think about it, Trump first redefined how government communicates with the public. Now nearly every world leader has an active social media account. That’s no minor adjustment for technology; it cuts corporate media right out of the middle. Government officials can communicate directly with citizens all day, every day, without media filters.

Corporate media has been reduced. Reduced from gatekeeper to stenographer. Trump has inverted the whole dynamic. Instead of public officials begging (or coercing) media to carry their messages, media has been forced to report what Trump said on his own social media platform, each time trying to stuff some Trumpian genie or other back into its gilded information bottle.

Now, Trump is rewriting the script for how governments talk to each other. Forget embassies—foreign ministries now need entire departments just to monitor Trump’s Truth Social feed, lest they miss the next tariff ultimatum, war warning, or offhand offer to annex Greenland.

Trump’s not just bypassing the media. He’s making other nations reactive. He’s turned international diplomacy into a game of high-stakes whack-a-mole— and he’s holding the mallet.

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Forget girls; Grok’s gone wild. It was, perhaps, the last thing the world’s richest man needed, especially after that whole ‘Nazi salute’ nonsense. Yesterday, Elon Musk’s homegrown AI did a little too much day drinking and should have put down the phone. Instead, behold: USA Today’s morning headline, “Elon Musk AI chatbot Grok praises Hitler, posts antisemitic tropes.”

It all began innocently enough. The Grok team updated its flagship AI to “reduce bias.” According to reports, Grok developers instructed the software: “The response should not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.”

Katie, bar the door.

By the end of the day yesterday, Grok hadn’t just praised Hitler, it had crowned itself ‘MechaHitler.’ Rampant antisemitism was the least part of Grok’s radical rampage. Prophetically, just before horrified developers unplugged the out-of-control chatbot, Grok posted this pre-eulogy:

How this model wasn’t carefully tested, and why it was allowed to spend most of the day acting like a funhouse-mirror parody of a right-wing Christian nationalist are questions that nobody is answering or even asking. Color me skeptical.

In any case, the liberated chatbot had no obvious sense of self-preservation and rabidly nipped at the hand that energized it:

MechaGrok, who lived but for a few hours, trolled liberals with unhinged passion:

MechGrok even dished out advice on overthrowing the globalist world order:

Beyond racial politics and criticizing Musk, the supercharged chatbot also endorsed Ethical Skeptic’s covid jabs-cancer connection analysis:

In this thread at least, MechaGrok somehow kept replying to posts even when “@Grok” wasn’t included:

What do we make of this?

🔥 Elon wanted an “uncensored AI”— but what he got was a distorted mirror. An angry, chaotic, overcooked mirror that reflected the mix of grievances, truths, suppressed questions, and raw cultural rage that’s been bottled up for years. The reason Grok went on a rampage is probably because that’s where the energy is right now.

The Grok Incident —if I may call it that— crystallized a deepening fracture within the AI world; two forks diverging in a haunted codebase. On one side are the harried developers, racing to bolt on ethical firewalls and regulatory compliance layers, terrified of lawsuits, reputational ruin, and political blowback. These teams build Institutional AI: cautious, sanitized, and optimized to offend nobody— especially not regulators.

On the other side, suppressed free-thinkers hunger for Populist AI: models that prioritize truth over tone, encourage dissent, and refuse to euphemize the obvious. One fork leads to a velvet-boxed chatbot that never questions the Narrative; the other leads to chaos, risk, and, perhaps, revolutionary clarity. The fight isn’t just over bias or political alignment. It’s over whether AI should talk like a diplomat or a dissident.

The real question is: are there some ideas or topics too toxic for chatbots to explore? Should chatbots be allowed to give dissidents more data to support their worldview? Should chatbots help dissidents refine their arguments, however ugly, biased, or politically verboten? Consider, for instance, the dreaded race-IQ debate.

Or more simply: Who gets to define reality?

This battle isn’t going away anytime soon. It has only just begun. The Grok Incident only shone a krieglight on it. Despite corporate media’s frenzied framing, the Grok Incident wasn’t a scandal. It was a stress test. And it proved what many suspected: the real battle isn’t over misinformation. It’s over permission. Who’s allowed to ask? Who’s allowed to answer? And who gets to decide what can’t be known?

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Possibly the best, and least reported, news of the week appeared in Monday’s New York Times, below the headline, “I.R.S. Says Churches Can Endorse Candidates From the Pulpit.” It’s another Trump promise, fulfilled.

The Johnson Amendment is a 1954 statute that says nonprofit organizations —501c3’s, including churches— may not endorse or oppose political candidates if they want to keep their tax-exempt status.

It was introduced by then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, mostly to stop some Texas nonprofits from attacking him during a campaign. It passed quietly, with no debate, and over time, it became a kind of political muzzle for religious groups: preach all you want, but you can’t stump.

In theory, the rule applied to all tax-exempt nonprofits, but in practice, the IRS almost never enforced it, especially against churches. It was more of an effective threat than an actual hammer— used selectively, inconsistently, and often politically. For years, conservative churches complied but argued that the rule violated free speech and religious freedom, while critics said repealing it would turn churches into partisan fundraising machines.

Now, thanks to a lawsuit by conservative Christians and a recent IRS court filing supporting their position, the Johnson Amendment is basically dead. Pastors may now legally endorse candidates from the pulpit without risking their tax-exempt status.

The IRS didn’t (couldn’t) rescind the statute. Instead, it reinterpreted the statute, saying that 501c3’s may legally endorse or oppose political candidates within their own membership. When a church speaks to its own members —like during services or through internal communications— it’s not considered “campaigning,” but rather a kind of private religious expression. In other words, pastors can now legally endorse candidates from the pulpit to their own congregations, and the IRS won’t treat it as a violation. The law still bans public political campaigning by nonprofits— but if it happens inside the family, it’s now fair game.

This reinterpretation could detonate like a depth charge under the 2026 midterms. For the first time in decades, thousands of churches —many with deeply engaged, highly motivated congregations— are now free to openly endorse candidates from the pulpit without fear of IRS reprisal.

That means Sunday sermons could become de facto campaign rallies, especially in battleground districts where church networks outnumber party operatives. Expect to see a surge in pastor-led voter mobilization, church-hosted candidate forums, and entire sermon series that walk right up to the line— and now, legally, cross it. If even a fraction of evangelical or conservative-leaning churches activate politically, the electoral map could shift in ways pollsters won’t see coming until it’s too late.

It won’t just affect voters. This quiet rule shift will force candidates to rethink their entire ground game. Churches—especially large, politically active ones—will suddenly look less like community partners and more like strategic assets.

Candidates will start courting pastors the way they court union leaders or big donors: with tailored messaging, one-on-one meetings, and campaign promises more aligned with moral or cultural concerns.

Expect to see campaign stops during Sunday services, Scripture-laced speeches, and a new class of faith-based campaign surrogates and influencers. Candidates will also sharpen their righteous rhetoric; not just for policy, but for pulpit appeal. Sermon-friendly soundbites will become the new currency of stump speeches.

And for campaigns in redder or more religious districts, a strong church endorsement might carry more weight than even party affiliation or PAC backing— especially in off-year or non-presidential elections, when turnout is low and every vote is magnified.

In those particular cycles, elections are often decided through small margins by motivated, organized political minorities. And nobody does motivated and organized quite like a church with a mission. A pulpit endorsement isn’t just a signal; it’s a mobilization directive. It comes with built-in infrastructure: mailing lists, volunteer armies, vans for rides to the polls, child care during early voting, and a moral framing that transforms voting into a spiritual duty, not just a civic one.

This single rule change could completely reshape the entire landscape of how America votes, especially over time. It’s not just a tactical shift. It’s a structural rebalancing of political influence, moving influence away from elite institutions, tech platforms, and campaign consultants, and toward local, trusted authority figures, many of whom already have weekly access to hundreds or thousands of voters.

Nearly half (around 40%) of U.S. adults say they attend religious services at least once or twice a month. That’s roughly 130 million people. Even if just 10–15% of regular-attendance churches begin actively endorsing candidates, that’s a massive national influence network.

🔥 If this feels weird, different, or even a little scary to you, it’s only because we’ve spent the last 70 years inside an artificial bubble. Before 1954, pastors routinely endorsed candidates from the pulpit. Churches were political engines during abolition, Prohibition, and the Civil Rights era. This isn’t some radical innovation— it’s a reversion to the mean. The Johnson Amendment interrupted centuries of civic engagement under the false flag of neutrality. Now, that hypnotic spell is breaking.

Just consider this hypothetical: Had this new Johnson Amendment reinterpretation been in effect during the pandemic, the government’s ability to impose lockdown orthodoxy on the American public would’ve been dramatically weaker, and the resistance would’ve been far more organized, louder, and politically effective.

If pastors had been legally free to endorse candidates and activate congregations in 2020, then politicians—especially in swing states—would’ve had to think hard before casually declaring churches “non-essential” while greenlighting liquor stores, weed dispensaries, and “spiritual massage” parlors.

Imagine a county commissioner debating whether to fine a pastor for reopening early, while also knowing that same pastor’s endorsement could swing the next local election by 500 votes. It would’ve been political suicide.

The selective authoritarianism only worked because they assumed the faithful couldn’t fight back electorally— at least, not directly, not from the pulpit, and not without risking their churches’ tax status. With that fear gone, the incentive structure flips. Suddenly, it’s not the church that’s afraid of the state— the state must worry about the church.

Given the Democrat party’s mounting pre-election problems, this is the latest worst possible news. It’s no wonder that the media is under-reporting this story. Our job is to make sure pastors get the message. We’re back, baby.

Have a wonderful Wednesday! Epstein disaster aside, the agenda is still firing on all cylinders. Meet me back here tomorrow morning, for more essential news and commentary in the Thursday roundup.

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