Author: Buck Banks

Epstein Files up to 5.2 Million Documents to be Reviewed

Buck Banks

5.2 million

“The Justice Department is seeking to enlist about 400 lawyers to review roughly 5.2 million pages of Epstein files documents, an effort that is drawing in prosecutors who work on national security and criminal cases, and in U.S. attorneys’ offices in New York and Florida,” the New York Times reports. “The number represents a more precise, and potentially much larger, figure than previous estimates provided by the department.” BTW, that comes out to 13,000 pages per lawyer for review.

Nobody Watched Trump’s “Kennedy Center Honors”

Buck Banks

3.01 million

“Ratings for the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors sunk to its lowest numbers ever as President Trump hosted the once-prestigious event from the renamed Washington, D.C. performing arts center, which he altered to include his name weeks after its taping,” The Wrap reports. “The awards ceremony drew in just 3.01 million viewers as it broadcast on CBS and live streamed on Paramount+ on Tuesday, Dec. 23… As preliminary ratings suggested, the 2025 ceremony marked the lowest audience for the Kennedy Center Honors, and even sunk lower than the Covid-restricted 2021 program, which gathered 4.1 million total viewers, its lowest viewership at the time.”

Trump Administration Is Hurtling Toward WWIII

Buck Banks

“One wonders what goes on in the minds of the architects of President Trump’s foreign policy. It seems as if they have all taken time to study the classic history books on the causes of the world wars — Margaret MacMillan’s The War that Ended Peace, E.H. Carr’s The Twenty Years’ Crisis — and then said to themselves: That’s exactly where we want to take the world. … Mr. Trump, both in his first term and now during the first eleven months of his second, has made clear that the bipartisan post-Cold War consensus — by which the United States oversaw an economically integrated world order governed by common laws regulating property relations, trade and conflict — has outlived its usefulness. In its place the White House offers a vision of the world carved up into garrisoned spheres of competing influence.”

— Greg Grandin

Trump’s Christmas Message

Buck Banks

“Merry Christmas to all, including the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein, gave him bundles of money, went to his Island, attended his parties, and thought he was the greatest guy on earth, only to ‘drop him like a dog’ when things got too HOT, falsely claimed they had nothing to do with him, didn’t know him, said he was a disgusting person, and then blame, of course, President Donald J. Trump, who was actually the only one who did drop Epstein, and long before it became fashionable to do so … Now the same losers are at it again, only this time so many of their friends, mostly innocent, will be badly hurt and reputationally tarnished. But sadly, that’s the way it is in the World of Corrupt Democrat Politics!!! Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas! President Donald J. Trump.”

— President Trump, on Truth Social, Dec. 25, 2025

So Long, ’60 Minutes’

Buck Banks

“I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow (who also revealed to America the danger of Joe McCarthy) and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS. And when the top management of CBS felt they had independent responsibilities to the American public. … America can survive without a 60 Minutes it can trust, just as we can survive without trustworthy editorial pages of the Washington Post. But at some point, as Trump continues to repress criticism of him and his regime, American democracy is compromised beyond repair.”

— Robert Reich