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Trump, Who Called for Death Penalty for Drug Dealers, Pardons Most Influential Drug Dealer in Human History

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Trump appears to have reversed on his position that drug dealers should get the death penalty by pardoning Ross Ulbricht this week.

During his announcement in late 2022 that he would be once again running for president of the United States, now-reelected president Donald Trump issued an outrageous threat: that he'd seek to punish drug dealers with the death penalty.

"We're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts," Trump told an audience during his speech at his Mar-a-Lago estate at the time. "Because it's the only way."

Just over two years later, Trump appears to have completely reversed that position by unconditionally pardoning Ross "Dread Pirate Roberts" Ulbricht this week. Ulbricht ran Silk Road, the now infamous site that made history as the first dark web marketplace, offering a cornucopia of banned drugs in exchange for the then-nascent cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

Ulbricht was sentenced to life in federal person in 2015 after he was busted by the FBI — and after Silk Road had facilitated the sale of over $200 million in illegal drugs and other illicit goods.

"Make no mistake: Ulbricht was a drug dealer and criminal profiteer who exploited people’s addictions and contributed to the deaths of at least six young people," Preet Bharara, then US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement at the time.

During his 2015 sentencing, district judge Katherine Forrest described Ulbricht as "no better a person than any other drug dealer."

Forrest had a point. Ulbricht didn't just sell drugs; he disrupted the entire industry. He wasn't your neighborhood dealer; he was the Uber of plugs, singlehandedly creating an entire new model that directly connected drug buyers with drug sellers — and taking a handsome cut in the process. In terms of long term impact, Ubricht probably had more of an impact on the global drug trade than Pablo Escobar.

It's not that drug crimes actually deserve draconian punishments, but Trump's pardon serves as a painstakingly obvious attempt to curry favor with the crypto industry — which he also once reviled, before gaining its financial support — as well as contradicting his earlier promise to literally punish drug dealers with death.

The pardon highlights Trump's fragile moral compass and well-documented willingness to abandon his stance on a given matter when presented with an opportunity to cash in.

Ulbricht's life sentence has long been the subject of libertarian outrage, as Al Jazeera reports, with the crypto community arguing he was unfairly prosecuted as an example to others.

"I was doing life without parole, and I was locked up for more than 11 years but he let me out," he said in a video message posted on X-formerly-Twitter. "I’m a free man now. So let it be known that Donald Trump is a man of his word."

Trump's decision to pardon him, however, had plenty of critics.

"Pardoning drug trafficking kingpins is a slap in the face to the families who’ve lost loved ones to his crimes," Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto wrote in a tweet. "Donald Trump should have to explain to them how any of this makes America safer. It's an outrage."

Meanwhile, Trump signed an executive order earlier this week, looking to reinstate the death penalty. Whether the Supreme Court will green-light the decision remains to be seen.

During a campaign speech in September, Trump reiterated his desire to expand the death penalty to those who were convicted of drug trafficking.

"These are terrible, terrible, horrible people who are responsible for death, carnage and crime all over the country,"  he said at the time. "We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts."

Yet somehow Ulbricht, who created an entire marketplace and new business model for the sale of drugs, has been set free.

More on Silk Road: Silk Road Mastermind Ross Ulbricht Seen Leaving Prison Holding a Small Plant

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Trump, Who Called for Death Penalty for Drug Dealers, Pardons Most Influential Drug Dealer in Human History

Is Elon Musk Now Secretly Controlling Donald Trump?

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Elon Musk's control over Donald Trump seems akin to, well, the president-elect's control own takeover of the GOP.

Succession Theme

As one politico points out, Elon Musk's hold on Donald Trump seems akin to the president-elect's control own takeover of the GOP.

In an interview with Newsweek, Democratic strategist Chai Komanduri suggested that the Muskian agenda is now the Republican party line — and that may help the billionaire's bottom line, too.

"The Republican Party is led by an elderly man who is increasingly deluded, distracted and extremely greedy," said the longtime strategist and MSNBC contributor. "[Musk] saw an opportunity here, also, with the fact that there is no clear MAGA successor."

"He said, 'The Republican Party is here for the taking,'" Komanduri told the magazine of Musk's potential frame of mind. "'I just have to deal with Trump, and then it will be mine.'"

By joining forces with Trump, the multi-hyphenate business owner seems to have made a "very clear investment opportunity," Komanduri said.

Indeed, as Business Insider noted in another recent analysis, Musk's seemingly outrageous over-spending on purchasing Twitter back in 2022 may be paying off in spades now that he wields such political influence — and it all raises the question: is Trump the boss of Musk, or vice versa?

Kiss the Ring

A looming question since the election has been how long the Musk-Trump bromance will last, especially since Trump's last administration quickly became a revolving door of spurned former loyalists.

While there have been reports of tensions between the Tesla and SpaceX owner and members of Trump's posse, the South African-born mogul's appearance at the president-elect's Thanksgiving dinner — not to mention the pair's bizarro joint dance to The Village People's "YMCA" — suggests he's in the inner sanctum, at least for now.

In an interview with CNN last week, New York Times senior political reporter Maggie Haberman opined that if Trump has grown weary of the brash billionaire whose dollars boosted him into office, he hasn't been "making that especially public."

Given that it's rare for people in the president-elect's orbit to be richer than him, Musk's money may be part of the draw he holds for Trump, the longtime White House watcher said.

"Musk is also, and depends on the day, the richest or one of the richest men in the world, and Trump has a huge fascination with wealth," she said. "As you noted, Trump equates wealth with intelligence, and so I actually think this relationship could last for quite some time."

If that's the case, we're in for a very bumpy and extremely cringe four years.

More on this strange dynamic: Body Language Expert Says Trump Is Acting "Submissive" Around Musk

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Is Elon Musk Now Secretly Controlling Donald Trump?

The World Health Organization Just Declared a New Global Emergency

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For the second time in just over two years, the WHO has declared an outbreak of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, a global emergency. 

For the second time in just over two years, the World Health Organization has declared an outbreak of mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, a global emergency.

As the New York Times and other outlets report, this second outbreak has already resulted in 14,000 cases and 524 deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone.

Compared to the 100,000 people worldwide who contracted mpox and roughly 200 who died from it in 2022, this year's strain of the virus — which like its predecessor can cause lymph swelling, fever, respiratory symptoms, muscle aches, and rashes — is significantly more virulent.

Both in 2022 and this year, Congo's specific strains of mpox have been more severe, the NYT notes. In that country, however, this year's outbreak seems to be even worse, with a death rate of roughly three percent compared to the 0.2 percent death rate back in 2022.

Thus far, mpox has spread to 13 countries on the African continent, though as the Associated Press notes in its reporting, 96 percent of them are in the DRC.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a media briefing that the rapidity of spread this time around is concerning, especially because women and girls are now the most at-risk groups for contracting the primarily sex-spread disease that previously was mostly contained to gay and bisexual men.

"The detection and rapid spread of a new clade of mpox in eastern DRC, its detection in neighboring countries that had not previously reported mpox, and the potential for further spread within Africa and beyond is very worrying," Ghebreyesus.

The current strain of mpox was detected for the first time last year, the NYT notes, and was found to be equally occurrent in both men and women for the first time. It seems to have mutated, per genetic analyses, sometime in September to become more easily spread, and has done so in part due to heterosexual sex work.

Thus far, this strain has not yet been detected outside of Africa, and with the DRC approving two new mpox vaccines geared towards this outbreak earlier in the summer, epidemiologists are hoping it'll stay that way.

"This outbreak has been smoldering for quite a long time, and we continually have missed opportunities to shut it down," Nicole Lurie, the executive director of the vaccine-financing nonprofit Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, explained in an interview with the NYT. "I’m really glad that everybody is now paying attention and focusing their efforts on this."

Indeed, given that the virus continued to spread to the point that it mutated to become more virulent and deadly, it seems clear that some opportunities to contain it must have been missed.

More on virulence: Deranged Politicians Are Trying to Ban Wearing Masks

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The World Health Organization Just Declared a New Global Emergency