It’s often said
that history repeats itself, and the Teapot Dome scandal from 100 years ago is
one example.
I read six
newspapers a day, but I have found that the best sources of news are either
Heather Cox Richardson or Rachel Maddow.
Both of them have written
a few books (and I have read all of them) and Heather Publishes a daily newsletter
titled “Letters from an American”. You can read it for free, but an annual
membership is only $50. Rochel, of course, is a long-time contributor on MSNBC,
where she appears at least once a week.
According to reporting in The Ankler, Rachel was making $30 million a year from MSNBC to host the
show on Monday nights, just one night a week. She has now renegotiated her
salary with the network so that she will make $25 million a year for the next
five years. “This is a difficult time and they needed to keep her,” one
executive explained. “No one else can do what she does. You can’t build a brand
like it overnight.”
Heather is
currently a college professor at Boston College, but she also makes about
$1,000,000 a year from her newsletter.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-26-2025
Both of them are
historians, which means they can find a story from the past that directly relates
to today.
The Teapot Dome scandal
is one of those stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal
The Teapot
Dome scandal was a political corruption scandal
in the United States involving
the administration of President Warren G. Harding. It centered on Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall, who had leased Navy petroleum reserves at Teapot Dome in Wyoming, as well as two locations in California, to private oil companies at low
rates without competitive bidding. The leases were the subject of an
investigation by Senator Thomas J. Walsh. Convicted of accepting bribes from the oil companies,
Fall became the first presidential
cabinet member to go to prison, but no one was convicted of
paying the bribes.
Before the Watergate scandal, Teapot Dome was regarded as
the "greatest and most sensational scandal in the history of American politics". It
permanently damaged the reputation of the Harding administration, already hurt
by its handling of the Great
Railroad Strike of 1922 and Harding's 1922 veto of the Bonus
Bill.[citation needed]
Congress subsequently
passed permanent legislation granting itself subpoena power over tax records of any
U.S. citizen, regardless of position. These laws are also considered to
have empowered Congress generally
If you had to pick
the most corrupt president, Harding would certainly be one the list, but there
are a few others that would quality as well, and they can be found at the link
below:
https://www.ranker.com/list/most-corrupt-presidents-us-history/melissa-sartore
For a lot of
reasons, Donald Trump would likely quality as THE most corrupt, in part due to
the fact that the net worth of his family has increased by $80 billion since
this election in 2024.
Andrew Johnson is
also on the list, and so are Richard Nixon, Andrew Jackson, Bill Clinton, Ronald
Reagan, John Quincy Adams and Ulysses Grant.
For what it is worth,
though, Donald Trump is rated as THE worst president we have ever had. That
rating is based on his performance during his first term – and he has gotten
worse since then.
https://presidentialgreatnessproject.com/
Here is the
connection from past to president:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/us/politics/tom-homan-fbi-trump.html
Tom Homan, who was later
named President Trump’s border czar, was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in
an undercover F.B.I. investigation, according to people familiar with the case,
which was later shut down by Trump administration officials.
The
cash payment, which was made inside a bag from the food chain Cava, grew out of
a long-running counterintelligence investigation that had not been targeting Mr.
Homan, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe
the case.
Mr. Homan’s encounter with
the undercover agents, recorded on audiotape, led him to be investigated for potential bribery
and other crimes, after he apparently took the money and agreed to help the
agents — who were posing as businessmen — secure future government contracts
related to border security, the people said.
After
Mr. Trump took office this year, Justice Department officials shut down the
case because of doubts about whether prosecutors could prove to a jury that Mr.
Homan had agreed to do any specific acts in exchange for the money, and because
he had not held an official government position at the time of the meeting with
undercover agents, the people added.
One person
familiar with the case said the evidence gathered had not met all the necessary
elements of relevant federal crimes, while another contended that the
case was effectively ended prematurely, before such additional evidence could
be gathered.
Justice
Department officials ultimately decided that the evidence against Mr. Homan was
insufficient to support charges of wire fraud, bribery or conspiracy, the
people said. Emil Bove III, a former senior Justice Department official and
onetime personal attorney for Mr. Trump who is now a federal appeals court
judge, expressed skepticism about the case as early as February, one person
said. The existence of the investigation was reported earlier by
MSNBC.
Joe McCarthy famous said, “if
looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.”
Logically, is it looks like a bribe, it’s probably
a bride. If Pam Bondi and the Justice Department were doing their jobs, Tom
Homan would be going to prison.
Der Siegel warned us in 2016
that Trump was not qualified to be president – and the majority of American
newspapers said the same thing.
I
have read 25 books about Trump, and all of them have concluded that he is more than
a little crazy, and “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” provides the best
summary.
https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Case-Donald-Trump-Psychiatrists/dp/1250212863
You
can argue until the cows come home about whether Trump’s cabinet is the worst
we have ever had, but Pete Hegseth, Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Kash Patel would certainly
be on the list for “least qualified”
Part
of the problem, of course, is that at least 23 people who worked for FOX “news”
are now working in his administration.
For
now, there is little that any of us can do to fight against the madness of the
Trump administration, but the ongoing protests sweeping the country WILL make a
difference – and Jimmy Kimmel is back on the air. On top of that – the midterms
are actually not that far away – so be sure to vote.
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