Republican hypocrisy has always been one of my favorite targets. It’s low hanging fruit begging to be picked. The acronym in the post title is a shortened version of IOKIYAR: It’s Okay If You’re a Republican. It’s a term that’s been around since the Bush-Cheney administration, but it reflects the reality that the legacy media has been wired for Republicans for decades. Oy, just oy.
Now that I’ve explained OKIYAR, let’s go to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary for a definition of slush fund:
- a fund raised from the sale of refuse to obtain small luxuries or pleasures for a warship’s crew
- a fund for bribing public officials or carrying on corruptive propaganda
- an unregulated fund often used for illicit purposes
That’s right, the term’s origin was nautical whereas its current usage is naughty; confirmed by synonyms including payoff, kickback, bribe, and baksheesh, which is Persian for bribe but is used throughout the Middle East. Perhaps that’s why Trump and Kushner feel so at home among sheikhs and shit.
Let’s get to the point, which, as always, is Republican corruption. In this instance, Trump’s $ 1.776 billion “settlement” of his bogus suit against the IRS. The case was on the verge of being tossed out by the judge when the plaintiff ordered the defendant to settle. The plaintiff is, of course, the Insult Comedian, the defendant the MAGA DOJ. Holy conflict of interest, Batman.
This so called anti-weaponization slush fund is off budget and will be run by a board headed by-you guessed it-the Kaiser of Chaos. It will be used to “compensate” MAGA maggots who claim to have been wrongly targeted by Team Biden. That’s a fancy term for rioters, insurrectionists, election deniers, and grifters.
Jamie Raskin accuses Team MAGA of planning to use this fund to establish a private militia. I’m not sure if they’re that organized or if Trump intends to wet his beak each time the slush fund pays off. In either case, Raskin explained why it’s not kosher:
“Moreover, even if Congress wanted to do such a thing –– which we never would –– it would be unconstitutional because the 14th Amendment says that money cannot be spent out of the federal fisc for the purposes of repaying people for insurrection or rebellion against the United States.”
The featured image is of Coach Senator Tommy Tuberville. In 2023, the Alabamian proposed a bill BANNING what he mischaracterized as slush funds when, in fact, they were settlement funds that paid litigants who settled out of court with the feds. Coach Tubs called them slush funds because they often compensated left-leaning non-profits. The bill passed the House and stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Coach Tubs has let his fakakata bill languish because he’s running in today’s Alabama goober primary with Trump’s support. That’s goober as in gubernatorial, which rhymes with tuber as in Tuberville.
Repeat after me: IOKIYAR.
Adding insult to injury, Tuberville’s bill claimed to ban slush funds while establishing one for Republican Congresscritters whose phone records were subpoenaed during the Trump 1.0 investigations. In a word: Chutzpah.
You say settlement fund; I say slush fund. Let’s call the whole thing off.
There’s been a firestorm over this blatantly corrupt move by Team Trump. Acting AG Toady Blanche is having a hard time explaining the inexplicable. That won’t phase him: he only has to satisfy an audience of one. The MAGA patrimonialism, it burns.
Repeat after me: Slush funds are OKIYAR.
The last word goes to The Kinks: