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TGIF: Scammander in Chief
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TGIF: Scammander in Chief
President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office. (Andrew Harnik via Getty Images)
Trump plays a game of chicken. The White House doles out fishy pardons. Democrats get all masculine. Elon departs D.C. The Macron slap. And much more.
By Nellie Bowles
05.30.25 — TGIF
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TGIF: Scammander in Chief
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Welcome back to your week in review. My only housekeeping announcement is that new merch has hit the store just in time for those who use “summer” as a verb or live in the White House: Free Press golf balls. Please add your best tagline for them in the comments.

→ I can’t afford a pardon: The White House vending machine is giving out pardons this week! Scott Jenkins, a Virginia sheriff convicted of conspiracy, fraud, and bribery for accepting piles of cash in exchange for letting rich folks have fake sheriff’s badges, got a Trump pardon. So did reality show stars and fraudsters Todd and Julie Chrisley, who’d initially been sentenced to 12 and 7 years, respectively, for conspiring to commit bank fraud and (obviously) conspiracy to commit tax evasion. And a random tax criminal has also been pardoned—right after his mother gave Trumpo $1 million at a fundraising dinner. That gentleman had been ordered to pay the state $4 million restitution alongside his prison sentence, so the $1 million payment to the president is a better deal in many ways.

At this point, paying your taxes directly to the Trump family is a better deal and probably safer than using the IRS. Trump wanted to slash red tape, and slash red tape he has. Now he just puts a briefcase on the table and nods. I pay my cleaning lady in cash, and that’s how I will probably pay my taxes now too. Every April, I will throw wads of dirty bills in a brown paper bag, scrawl my Social Security number (666-66-6666) on it, and leave it at Tiffany Trump’s door. How do I calculate what’s owed? Well, it’s based on my income, of course, plus extra in my case for being a blue state libtard and for not losing the baby weight. Deductions offered for pictures of a local ballot showing Trump written in for every option, especially library board; being a guy with beer cozies and acceptably strong biceps because we need more of you fellows; and being a woman with anything above a B-cup. I get two of three deductions this year!

After Trump held a crypto dinner last Thursday night, crypto moguls who paid to be there felt scammed that the president didn’t even stick around at the event they’d hoped to do their own scams at. I saw someone describe him as the apex scammer. Our Scammander in Chief. Give me a pen and a ballot for the Upper West Side library committee because I need to add one more name.

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Nellie Bowles
Nellie Bowles is a reporter for The Free Press and its head of strategy. She was previously a reporter at The New York Times, where she won the Gerald Loeb Award for investigative journalism and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. She started her career at her hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle.
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