It’s said that you can tell a lot about a person by the company she or he keeps. If that’s the case, and I agree it is — with the caveat that we don’t choose our family of origin or their spouses — it’s possible to indict the current president of the United States for hanging out with, and pardoning by means of his executive power, a world-class cohort of creeps.
By world-class I don’t mean up-market or stylish; I mean off the charts crass, literal convicted criminals and creepy creeps with whom I would not be caught dead or alive, especially in an alley or anywhere else after dark.
Rotten companion Numero Uno (alive, that is, as Jeffrey Epstein would otherwise “win”), although the break-up of the grossest bromance ever might be real: Ketamine-fueled Elon Musk. Musk is the world’s richest man who, rather than using his wealth to help educate, inoculate or elevate others out of poverty and disease, instead spends his time X-ing, damaging his auto brand and trolling young women on line who might be willing to have more of his test-tube babies. Ick.
Perhaps You-Know-Who doesn’t spend loads of time with his authoritarian friends, men like Viktor Orban, Kim Jong-Un, Putin, Mohammed Bin Salman or Nayib Bukele, but when he speaks admiringly of their power and practices, it’s both unsettling and telling.
More disturbing still is the disdainful way in which he treats fellow democratically elected leaders. I may never recover from watching golfer Ernie Els debase himself while trying to help his president, Cyril Ramaphosa, try to charm and disarm Orange POTUS. I’m no fan of golf, but is that what we’ve reduced the office of the presidency to? Pulling in world-class athletes in order to have any hope of impacting the baby-man in the Oval? and please don’t remind me of way he treated Zelensky, or Liberia’s President Boakai.
More of the company he keeps? Stephen Miller (no relation, thank goodness), Andrew Tate, Lauren Handy, Nick Fuentes, Laura Loomer, Ross Ulricht, Enrico Tarrio — what a crew of dangerous, violent loonies, racists and misogynists — drug and sex traffickers, too! He lets the unelected Miller set national policy, pardoned Ulricht, Tarrio and Handy, welcomed Tate, who was convicted abroad (but who cares, right?), dined with Fuentes and holds hands with Loomer on Air Force One, often directly parroting her hate-filled point of view as a result. And if you don’t know who Lauren Handy is, lucky you. Don’t look her up after a meal, or if you’re feeling queasy. Actually, don’t look her up at all. Trust me.
Orange Wanna-Be-King has also pardoned Trevor Milton, who was convicted of committing fraud and sentenced to four years in prison, as well as being ordered to pay a $1 million fine and $168 million in restitution to shareholders in Nikola, the company he founded. A month before the 2024 election, Milton and his wife donated more than $1.8 million to You-Know-Who’s presidential campaign, and in March of 2025, Milton was given a full pardon by the winner. As a result, Trev will not need to compensate anyone he defrauded. Paying $1.8 mill instead of $168 mill? What a sleazy, corrupt bargain.
Also pardoned were convicted fraudsters Todd and Julie Chrisley, convicted bribe taker (former sheriff) Scott Jenkins, and convicted tax cheat Paul Walczak, whose mom contributed $1 million to the same election campaign the Miltons supported. Funny how that works.
Walczak evaded more than $10.9 million in federal payroll taxes while running a South Florida health care empire with his GOP fund-raising mom-ster, siphoning money from the paychecks of nurses, doctors and administrative staff, many of whom testified against him regarding rubber paychecks, unpaid insurance premiums and unceasing IRS liens due to Walczak’s actions. Only the best/worst people!
Adding insult to literal injury, the administration has hired Jared Wise, a former FBI agent and Jan. 6 rioter charged with encouraging fellow insurrectionists to kill police officers that day. Is that what they mean by “Back the Blue,” meaning stab in the back? Regardless, Wise was pardoned by Trump during his trial, and now he’s advising the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group to root out “abuses of the criminal justice process” by local and federal law enforcement officers, primarily, reporting says, looking at those who prosecuted his and other insurrectionist’s cases. Make it make sense. Anyone?
There are many more, but let’s end the parade of creeps with Michele Fiore, whom POTUS also pardoned this year. Among other frauds, Fiore raised $70,000 in funds to create a tribute for a slain police officer in her home state of Nevada, laundering the money through several front companies in order to instead use it for plastic surgery. If that isn’t 100% on brand for You-Know-Who and his creepy-crew, I don’t know what is.