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TGIF: The Luddite Party
Sharon Simmons with DoorDash gets a $100 tip after delivering McDonald’s to President Donald Trump in the White House on Monday, April 13, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Alex Brandon via AP Photo)
Tom Steyer goes hard in the paint, the father of SantaCon and the missing SantaBucks, World Liberty Financial gets accused of being an ATM, and Allbirds is now an AI company.
By Nellie Bowles
04.17.26 — TGIF
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Welcome back to TGIF. I’m writing this week from sunny San Diego, where I had the pleasure of speaking at the ASU+GSV Summit. I rarely leave the kids for a night, so this was real exciting for Ol’ Nell! Now to the news.

→ Trump as Jesus himself: President Donald J. Trump posted a picture to Truth Social of himself as Jesus. It depicted him draped in white and a red shawl, hands glowing with divine light, healing a sick patient as a soldier, a nurse, and others looked on in awe. The Christian community did not particularly enjoy the image, and Trumpo got a rare rebuke from his base. The next day, outside the White House, after receiving a McDonald’s delivery, Trump explained that he “thought it was me as a doctor.” Do doctors wear red shawls usually? Anyway, he deleted it. Fine! Then, why not, he posted another Jesus meme, this time showing Jesus hugging Trump. Because they’re all good now, him and JC. Here’s the Yahoo! News summary of all this:

→ Quote of the week: “I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be. . . . My kids waited patiently in the car.” Who else could it be? It’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For those of you who might be freaked out by the admission, don’t worry. Bobby was cutting off the genitals of a dead raccoon apparently to “study them later.” It was research, heard of it? He’s a budding zoologist. It’s called primary sources. Onward.

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Nellie Bowles
Nellie Bowles is a co-founder 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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