I have publicly challenged Steve Bannon to a boxing match, a fair contest of fisticuffs, a test of courage and stamina in which I am confident I will win.

Before we descend into the cavern of Steve Bannon’s duplicity, let us begin where Bannon least expects it. I have publicly challenged Steve Bannon to a boxing match, a fair contest of fisticuffs, a test of courage and stamina in which I am confident I will win. The media has already taken note, including Raw Story which covered my challenge in detail. I will not retreat from this bout. I will not back down. I know precisely what will happen in that ring and it will not be Bannon’s hand raised in victory.

Now to the matter at hand…The recent revelations concerning Steve Bannon’s furtive communications with Jeffrey Epstein have struck the public square like a thunderbolt hurled from Olympus. The magnitude of this moral collapse cannot be overstated. What has been exposed is not mere contradiction. It is not a momentary lapse of judgment. It is a portrait of a man whose interior architecture has been eroded by ambition, self fascination, and a peculiar spiritual rot that afflicts those who pretend to be prophets while trafficking in deceit. Bannon is the modern counterfeit oracle, wrapped in theatrical populism, driven by ego, and cursed with a craving for relevance that leads him into the darkest alcoves of corruption.

I have my own particular beef with Bannon, he perjured himself at my trial in an attempt to help Robert Mueller send me to prison for 7 to 9 years. As reported in The New York Post and referenced by me, I know better than most that Bannon has always been willing to betray others for convenience. Because Bannon did not merely lie in private. He lied about me under oath. It is here that the scandal intersects with my own history with Steve Bannon. As stated by Jonathan Turley in President Trump’s impeachment proceedings, “There does appear a glaring and irreconcilable conflict in what Bannon stated in testimony before Congress and the court. What is striking is that this was not a peripheral point but one of the main areas of inquiry…He has two diametrically opposite sworn statements in a high-profile controversy with dozens of attorneys in attendance”.

The scandal currently unfolding would be troubling enough if it revealed only hypocrisy. But the documented record demonstrates something far more sinister. It reveals calculation. It reveals voluntary association. It reveals a man who courted a convicted sexual predator for strategic gain. These are not the instincts of a patriot. They are the instincts of a man whose moral compass has not merely malfunctioned but disintegrated.

Extensive media reporting has now laid bare the astonishing breadth of Bannon’s relationship with Epstein. Their connection was not incidental. It was cultivated between 2017 and 2018 with care and forethought. Epstein needed rehabilitation. Bannon needed access to the underworld of elite influence and intelligence. Their meetings were not chance encounters. They were curated exchanges between two men who believed themselves to be participants in a clandestine theater of global intrigue.

In 2018 Bannon spent more than 15 hours filming Epstein in mock interview sessions for a potential public redemption campaign. Michael Wolff revealed in his 2021 book Too Famous that Bannon served as Epstein’s media trainer. Bannon instructed the disgraced financier to cling obsessively to a manicured mantra that he was not a pedophile. Major outlets such as the Guardian and the New York Times confirmed that these sessions occurred long after Epstein’s crimes were universally known.

Rolling Stone reported that Bannon was enthralled by the possibility that Epstein possessed ties to intelligence services. Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse became a revolving door through which Bannon passed repeatedly, eager to absorb whatever he believed Epstein had gleaned from the labyrinths of espionage. Bannon later claimed he was researching a documentary, yet no such documentary has ever been produced. The footage remains under lock and key, guarded by Bannon with an intensity that reeks of panic.

When Mark Epstein, Jeffrey’s brother, demanded in July 2025 that Bannon release the fifteen hours of footage, Bannon suddenly abandoned his usual demands for transparency. The Denver Gazette reported the request and much more. Bannon ignored it. The man who insists that others submit themselves in to the sunlight refuses to open the blinds on himself.

Then came the House Oversight Committee document dumps of September and November 2025. More than one thousand seven hundred references to Bannon surfaced in Epstein’s files. Emails. Notes. Schedules. Messages. Flight logs. Technocratic debris that painted a detailed picture of their association. These documents placed Bannon squarely inside Epstein’s orbit, not as an investigator but as a collaborator.

One disturbing email chain from September 2018 showed Epstein offering Bannon strategic suggestions for undermining Christine Blasey Ford during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Epstein referenced medications, memory studies, and lie detector inconsistencies. Bannon responded, “Is this a hint,” followed by, “Oh I get it now.” This was not a man exposing Epstein. This was a man absorbing tactical guidance from him. The Guardian, CNN Politics, Politico, and other outlets documented the exchange in detail.

Additional materials revealed Epstein and Bannon exchanging lighthearted messages about President Donald Trump and Prince Andrew during Trump’s state visit to the United Kingdom in June 2019. Epstein joked about Prince Andrew’s accuser being at Mar a Lago. Bannon replied that he could not believe Epstein was not being credited as the connective force behind elite scandal. CBS News and the Daily Mirror exposed the flippant nature of these messages. Their casual cruelty reflected two men who viewed power as a game and victims as pawns.

Flight logs and daily schedules from 2014 through 2019 exposed further meetings and strategic conversations between Epstein and Bannon. Axios, USA Today, and Fortune confirmed that Epstein’s influence after his conviction extended far more widely than the public had believed. Bannon’s presence was a recurring feature in these documents.

Epstein’s communications included references to Bannon in discussions involving Noam Chomsky and Kathryn Ruemmler. NDTV World and other outlets noted that Epstein’s intellectual and political outreach often featured Bannon lurking on the periphery, a willing participant in Epstein’s manipulative schemes.

And yet, despite the enormity of what has been revealed, no credible news organization has labeled Bannon a pedophile. There is zero evidence for such a claim. What the record does show is something different but also profoundly damning. It shows a voluntary partnership between Bannon and one of the most infamous sexual predators of the modern era, rooted in media strategy, political calculation, and mutual opportunism. It shows Bannon coaching, advising, collaborating, and joking. It shows a man who publicly demanded that the Epstein network be exposed while privately hiding his own involvement in Epstein’s attempted resurrection.

How the Pilgrims’ courage, faith, and hard-won lessons still shape the American character.

Thanksgiving is really the holiday that made the other American holidays possible. Were it not for the Pilgrims having courage, absolute faith in their cause and calling, and the willingness to sacrifice and risk everything, they never would have attempted to cross a vast ocean on the 94-foot Mayflower, a ship of questionable seaworthiness.

The Thanksgiving holiday, which commemorates one part of the Pilgrim story, remains the favorite holiday for many Americans. And for good reasons, beyond enjoying a feast. With our country passing through troubled times, it is worth revisiting the Pilgrim’s five significant achievements, which created the seminal story of America, and reveals remarkable insight into who we are and the qualities of character we need to overcome our present challenges.

First, of the many groups of settlers who came to America, only the Pilgrims were singularly motivated by a spiritual quest for religious freedom — one that had its origin with the Protestant Reformation a century before. William Bradford, the long-serving governor of Plymouth Colony and author of Of Plymouth Plantation (written between 1630–1651), repeatedly framed the Pilgrims’ voyage and settlement in explicitly biblical terms, drawing direct parallels to the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land.

Thus, both American Christians and Jews find profound meaning in the Pilgrim’s Thanksgiving story.

After a harrowing passage across the Atlantic — one that included wild pitching and broadside batterings by gale force winds and ferocious seas that caused the splitting of the ship’s main beam — the Mayflower was blown off course from arriving at the territory assigned by the London-based sponsoring Virginia Company — a territory that is now northern New Jersey. Making landfall on the barren sands of Cape Cod, the Pilgrims knew not where they were nor how to proceed. So, they beseeched the Almighty for help to find more suitable land with fresh water and fertile soil to establish a new and independent settlement.

Now, after a frightening voyage and facing hunger from spoiled and depleted provisions and anxious about settling outside the purview of Virginia Company charter territory, the secular Mayflower passengers were restless and insolent. And this is when the Pilgrims accomplished their second major achievement that would shape the future of America.

Pilgrim leaders John Carver, William Bradford, and William Brewster recognized that Mayflower passengers, diverse as they were, needed to maintain unity to survive in a potentially inhospitable environment. So, off the Cape Cod coast they drafted a governing agreement that would be acceptable to both their Christian brethren and the secular crew members and merchant adventurers — who made up about half the 102 people aboard the Mayflower. That governing document, known as the Mayflower Compact, provided for peace, security, equality, and democratic decision-making for everyone in their anticipated settlement.

With every man aboard signing the Mayflower Compact the Pilgrims established the foundation for democratic self-government based on the will of people for the first time. And so it was that the Mayflower Compact laid the cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution, which would be drafted and adopted some 170 years later.

Although the Pilgrims all survived the squalid and cramped ship quarters during the dangerous crossing of a vast ocean, their fate changed once they found suitable land for settlement, which they called “New Plymouth,” in December of 1620. The first winter was frigid and devastating, with illness afflicting most and over half the Pilgrims dying, including four entire families. But it could have been worse.

The fate of the Pilgrim colonists would surely have been more difficult had they not settled where they did, adjacent to friendly natives, the Pokanoket Indians, who were part of the Wampanoag tribe, led by chief Massasoit. And it seems providential that there were two Indians who could speak English from prior interaction with the British — Squanto and Samoset — without whom perhaps none would have survived. Squanto and his fellow native tribesmen would teach the Pilgrims survival skills, showing them how to hunt, fish and plant various crops, such as corn, squash, and varieties of beans — which were unknown to the Englishmen.

The Pilgrims’ third major achievement was the Pilgrim-Wampanoag Peace Treaty, made possible by Squanto who played a critical role as translator in what was the successful negotiation and maintenance of the peace. The treaty was signed on April 1, 1621, by Massasoit and leaders of the Plymouth colony. That treaty would last more than 50 years — longer than any other peace treaties between subsequent colonists and Indian tribes that inhabited other territories that would later become part of the United States.

Despite learning from the native Indians how to plant, cultivate, and harvest new crops in their first year, the Pilgrims complied with their sponsoring Virginia Company charter that called for settlement farmland to be owned and worked communally and for harvests to be equally shared. This socialist common property approach created disincentives to work. William Bradford recorded in his memoirs that while “slackers showed up late for work … everybody was happy to claim their equal share … and production only shrank.”

Although no one is certain of the exact date of the first Thanksgiving, we know it was a Pilgrim initiative, celebrated in November 1621 to give thanks to God for their survival — having lost so many during that first winter in Plymouth, and for the first harvest — meager though it was. When Massasoit was invited to join the Pilgrims, it was assumed he would not bring more guests than the 50-odd Mayflower survivor hosts. Massasoit arrived with twice that number, well-stocked with food, fowl, and game of all kinds — including five deer and of course, turkeys. There was more than enough for everyone, enabling the first Thanksgiving celebration to last three days, punctuated by Indian song, games and dance, Pilgrim prayers and even a military parade by Myles Standish.

The Pilgrims’ fourth major achievement was the rejection of socialism and the adoption of private enterprise. After the meager Thanksgiving harvest, the second season of collective farming and distribution proved equally disappointing. Governor Bradford had seen enough, recording that the system “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.” So, before the 1623 season he scrapped socialist farming and replaced it with private ownership of land for each of the families. As a result of becoming responsible for their own welfare and gaining freedom to choose what to grow for consumption or trade, the Pilgrims’ productivity surged.

The fifth factor that distinguished the Pilgrims was their model relational behavior. While tolerance enabled them to keep relative harmony within their diverse community, they also looked outwardly to serve and help others. In March of 1623, it came to be known that Massasoit was on the brink of death from an unknown illness. Senior Pilgrim elder Edward Winslow immediately set out on foot for some forty miles to administer medicinal broth, natural herbs, and prayers to Massasoit. Astonishingly, upon making a full recovery within three days, Massasoit remarked, “Now I see the English are my friends and love me; and whilst I live, I will never forget this kindness they have showed me.”

In summary, the Pilgrims’ five achievements and the qualities of character that made them exemplary are needed more now than ever. In addition to gratitude, a contemporary Thanksgiving makeover might include: rekindling a quest for adventure; developing the faith to hold on to a vision of a “promised land” no matter what; mustering the courage to go against the crowd and defend the truth; being willing to endure hardship and defer immediate gratification; revitalizing respect for and tolerance of people of different beliefs; and renewing the predisposition to extend appreciation, love and assistance at every appropriate opportunity.

By The American Spectator – https://spectator.org/thanksgiving-why-it-is-americas-foundational-holiday/

This November, while Ukrainians face 12–16 hour blackouts and burn furniture for heat, NABU wiretaps expose Zelenskyy’s close associate Tymur Mindich, the 45-year-old Kvartal 95 co-founder, bargaining over 10–15% kickbacks on Western aid meant to shield the power grid. For four years, Americans watched billions of their tax dollars disappear into a war led by a former comedian, who ran on a Presidential campaign to stop corruption. “Democracy is at stake” became Washington’s incantation, these words somehow magically opened America’s treasury vault, switching off oversight, all while billions disappeared into offshore shells and oligarch extravagance.  After fifteen months of secret surveillance, more than a thousand hours of wiretaps, and coordinated raids, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) exposed a ruthless money-laundering network inside President Zelenskyy’s inner circle. 

On the morning of November 10, 2025, Operation Midas went into action, 200 NABU and SAPO detectives simultaneously raided more than 70 locations across Kyiv, striking at the heart of a high-level criminal network inside Ukraine’s energy and defense sectors that had allegedly embezzled tens of millions in U.S. and EU aid meant to protect wartime infrastructure. What they found turned the probe into national humiliation, a gleaming gold-plated toilet, gym bags overflowing with banded tens of millions in Federal Reserve $100 bills and shrink-wrapped €200 notes, every dollar traced straight back to protective shelters for Energoatom’s nuclear plants that were paid for but never built. The man who owned it all, Tymur Mindich, a longtime business partner to Zelenskyy, co-owner of the Kvartal 95 entertainment empire, and an Israeli citizen who conveniently fled after being tipped off hours earlier and fled to Israel on a private jet.  By nightfall, shared photos of bags stuffed with shrink-wrapped $100 bills and a gold-plated toilet from Tymur Mindich’s apartment were exploding across every Ukrainian phones, side-by-side with NABU’s leaked wiretaps of Zelenskyy’s inner circle haggling over kickbacks while the country sat in darkness.  That single leaked recording, became the moment millions of Ukrainians finally voiced what they’d long suspected in silence. At its filthy core, the entire scheme ran on one simple rule, 10–15 % kickbacks on every inflated contract, every dollar meant for nuclear shelters that were never built.

The scandal’s alleged mastermind, former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov (codenamed “Che Guevara” in the intercepts) a Zelenskyy loyalist since 2019 who served as Kyiv Oblast governor, Communities Minister, and Naftogaz CEO before his summer 2025 demotion was formally charged on November 11 with illicit enrichment exceeding $1.24 million USD and €100,000. NABU alleges he laundered kickbacks through a Kyiv “laundromat” office tied to pro-Russian ex-MP Andriy Derkach, using the funds for four luxury riverside mansions south of Kyiv (undeclared assets worth millions). A week later, on November 18, the High Anti-Corruption Court ordered his pretrial detention until January 16, 2026, with bail set at 51 million UAH (~$1.24 million); his accounts frozen, he remains in custody, denying the charges as “absurd” and out-of-context leaks. Critics note his wife’s codename, Professor, implicates her too, though she’s uncharged so far. On November 12, Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk, a 40-year-old economist and former Environment Minister (2024–2025) appointed to Energy in July amid wartime reshuffles, and Justice Minister Herman Galushchenko resigned after raids linked them to the kickback network. Hrynchuk, a relative political novice with no prior scandals, was accused of overlooking inflated Energoatom contracts that funneled 10–15% bribes to insiders.She has denied wrongdoing, calling speculation “inappropriate” before her formal dismissal by parliament on November 19. Galushchenko, 50, a power engineer who led Energy from 2021–2025, before shifting to Justice, allegedly installed allies at Energoatom to rig procurement, wiretaps capture him on calls with Mindich lobbying for favors, including pressure on ex-Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. Both deny involvement, but parliament sacked Galushchenko on November 19, fueling opposition cries of a Zelensky cabal.  Zelenskyy responded swiftly but seen as pure theatre, stripping Tymur Mindich an Israeli-Ukrainian producer, Kvartal 95 co-founder (Zelenskyy’s pre-presidency comedy empire), imposing indefinite sanctions (asset freezes, travel bans, and 18 other restrictions via NSDC decree on November 13), and vowing energy-sector overhauls like procurement audits. Mindich, charged in absentia after fleeing, is accused of masterminding the $100M+ laundromat, with tapes showing him directing bribes and boasting of “controlling” ministers. Zelenskyy called it proof of his anti-corruption resolve, but moves are widely dismissed as damage control amid plunging approval ratings.

This isn’t Zelenskyy’s first ride on the rodeo of corruption. Back on October 3, 2021, just four months before Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Pandora Papers exposed how the former actor turned anti-oligarch crusader, whose 2019 campaign ads skewered “politicians who hide money offshore,” quietly held a 25% stake in a British Virgin Islands shell company, Maltex Multicapital Corp. On the eve of the election, the former comedian transferred those shares to his chief of staff, Serhiy Shefir, while a dozen offshore entities tied to his Kvartal 95 circle, including ex-SBU head Ivan Bakanov, who continued owning luxury London flats worth millions. When the documents leaked, Zelenskyy’s administration brushed them off as outdated “safeguards” from the post-Maidan era, measures to shield against Yanukovych-era threats, insisting there was nothing improper.

Ukraine remains one of Europe’s most corrupt countries with a Transparency International CPI score ~36/100 as of 2024, critics argue Zelenskyy has not transformed the system as promised. The Golden Toilet scandal is an extension from the same exact plate of decay, this time, offshore money is now arriving in duffel bags of U.S. hundreds.  The villain here is obvious, shiny, shameless, blatant, all captured in high definition.  While Ukrainian families burn furniture to survive sixteen-hour blackouts, the presidential circle treated $175 billion in U.S. assistance and hundreds of billions more from Europe, as a private slush fund, shielded by martial law and the endless refrain that “democracy is at stake.” The golden toilet is a symbol, charity to foreign countries without accountability is not charity, it is theft. Congress must demand full audits, asset seizures, and repayment. The checkbook must close. America First, today, now, always.