Trump’s $1.8B Fund Draws Cries of ‘Brazen Corruption’
Left, Right & Center
KCRW
3.9 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
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Summary
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What is an anti-weaponization fund? Is it a legit use of taxpayer dollars to help people of all political stripes who were wronged by their government, or is it a corrupt slush fund to help President Trump and his political allies? One immediate question on the minds of Democrats is if people who attacked the Capitol on January 6 will be some of the early beneficiaries.
Also, despite Trump’s sagging poll numbers, he continues to hold sway over his party with one primary vote after another against sitting Republicans. Is there a political cost for Trump and the GOP if a coalition of lame ducks starts growing with an eye towards their own counter-revenge?
And we’ve got some great questions from you this week, including whether we really need politicians at all to run a government.
Producer: Leo Duran
Host: David Greene
Guests:
- Elizabeth Bruenig, staff writer, The Atlantic (@ebruenig)
- Mike Dubke, veteran GOP communications strategist and advisor. He was the White House Comms Director under Donald Trump in 2017 (@MikeDubke)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Who gets to be a citizen of the United States at birth? When it comes to sports in school, who gets to compete with the girls? |
| 0:08.8 | And how much power does the president actually have to hire and fire at independent agencies? |
| 0:15.6 | These are some of the key questions before the U.S. Supreme Court this term. |
| 0:19.4 | And as any good lawyer knows, whether you win or lose in the |
| 0:22.0 | highest court depends on the facts, the evidence, and how you frame your arguments. But that's not the |
| 0:27.3 | only thing that matters. I'm Laura Jarrett, senior legal correspondent at NBC News. And this month, |
| 0:33.0 | in a news series for our Here's the Scoop podcast, I'm talking to legal experts and lawyers whose past |
| 0:38.5 | legal victories are now the building blocks for the biggest cases still left to be decided. |
| 0:43.2 | I want to know how they convinced the court they were right. When the stakes were high, |
| 0:48.0 | what special sauce locked it in? And what could be different this time around? |
| 0:52.8 | Join us for Here's the Scoop Supreme Court Edition. New episodes every Saturday. Join us for Here's the Scoop, Supreme Court Edition. |
| 0:55.4 | New episodes every Saturday. |
| 0:57.3 | You can find Here's the Scoop from NBC News on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:06.0 | Welcome to left, right and center, everybody. |
| 1:07.7 | I'm David Green. |
| 1:08.5 | What is the price of justice? Well, to President Trump, it is 1776. Yes, that's the year of our country's founding, but also $1,776 million is the value of President Trump's new anti-weaponization fund. He has said for years that the government was weaponized against him. |
| 1:30.1 | And so to settle a lawsuit that he had against the IRS, he created this fund. |
| 1:34.9 | Money and an official apology will be issued to anyone with a claim that the government unfairly targeted them. |
| 1:40.6 | Here is the president. |
| 1:41.6 | These were people that were weaponized and really treated |
| 1:44.8 | brutally by a system that was so corrupt with corrupt people running it, and they're getting |
| 1:50.8 | reimbursed for their legal fees and the other things that they had to suffer. |
... |
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