Moody's Downgrades US Credit, Bondi Makes a "Timely" Stock Sale, and Will "60 Minutes" Ever be the Same?

US Bond Rating Downgraded…not a great time for a billionaire tax cut.

U.S. Downgraded by Moody’s as Trump Pushes Costly Tax Cuts

Now all three major credit rating firms no longer give the United States their best rating.

The credit rating of the United States received a potentially costly downgrade on Friday, as the ratings firm Moody’s determined that the government’s rising debt levels stood to grow further if Republicans enact a package of new tax cuts.

The downgrade, to one notch below the highest triple-A rating, amounted to a repudiation of Washington, where President Trump only hours earlier had pushed his party to adopt a legislative package that might add trillions of dollars to the nation’s fiscal imbalance.

The downgrade from Moody’s means that each of the three major credit rating agencies no longer gives the United States its best rating. Fitch downgraded the United States in 2023, citing fiscal concerns, and Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country in 2011.

The new rating decrease could send ripple effects throughout the economy if it prompts investors to demand higher payments on bonds, which in turn could raise consumers’ borrowing costs.

Although the Moody’s report (rightly) faulted successive Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses for not balancing revenue with expenditures…

Moody’s specifically referred to the push to renew the expensive tax cuts adopted under Mr. Trump in 2017, a task that Republicans are now struggling with on Capitol Hill.

In order to compensate for extension of the trump billionaire tax cuts first approved by a Republican Congress in 2017, the current Republican majority is wrestling over proposed cuts to the health care system, scientific research, Medicaid, and food assistance for poor families to pay for the tax cuts. And their budget would still enhance the deficit, which they are so worried about when there is a Dem in the White House.

Bondi Guilty of Insider Trading?…Her DOJ not likely to investigate

BREAKING: U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media stock on April 2, the same day President Donald Trump unveiled bruising new tariffs that caused the stock market to plummet, according to records obtained Wednesday by ProPublica.

Bondi’s disclosure forms show that the Trump Media sales transactions were made on April 2 but do not disclose whether they occurred before or after the market closed. There is no known evidence that Bondi was aware of any nonpublic details of Trump’s tariff announcements when she sold the stocks.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to questions about the trades.

BTW, this is the same Pam Bondi — your Attorney General — who has OK’d trump’s corrupt attempt to accept a “Palace in the Sky” bribe from Qatar. Not everyone agrees:

“There’s nothing Donald Trump loves more than being treated like a king, and that’s exactly why foreign governments are trying to buy his favor with a luxury jumbo jet and investments in Trump’s crypto scams. This isn’t a gift out of the goodness of their hearts – it’s an illegal bribe that the President of the United States is champing at the bit to accept. That’s unconstitutional and not how we conduct foreign policy. Unless Qatar rescinds their offer of a ‘palace in the sky’ or Trump turns it down, I will move to block this arms sale.” — CT Senator Chris Murphy

‘60 Minutes’ Chief Resigns…so the controlling stockholder can..become richer

This is old news by now, but I cannot let it go by without comment. “60 Minutes” has — for decades — been a stalwart news program reporting on a variety of issues and subjects in an in-depth manner. But now — like other formerly renowned institutions — they have capitulated to trump to sell their soul and line their pockets.

Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, is eager to secure the Trump administration’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of her company to Skydance, a company run by the son of the tech billionaire Larry Ellison. She has expressed a desire to settle Mr. Trump’s case, which stems from what the president has called a deceptively edited interview in October with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on “60 Minutes.”

Legal experts have dismissed that suit as baseless and far-fetched. Many journalists at CBS News — the former home of Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace — believe that a settlement would amount to a capitulation to Mr. Trump over what they consider standard-issue gripes about editorial judgment. — NY Times