Austin from Houston

@gothburz The outraged people who are unfamiliar with your work have me rolling. Keep up the good fight.

I am a founding member of the President's Evangelical Advisory Board, a member of Pastors for Trump, and the informal spiritual adviser to the most powerful man on earth.  I need you to understand that the 22-foot golden statue we unveiled at Trump National Doral on Wednesday is not a golden calf. I said it at the podium. I said it on social media. I will keep saying it until you believe me. I am very good at saying things until people believe me. I told CNN I had a Bachelor of Science degree. I did not. I told them I was a member of Kappa Alpha Psi. I was not. I told them my congregation was 300 strong. It was closer to 12. I said all these things with the same conviction I now bring to this podium, at the base of a 22-foot golden image of a living president, when I tell you: this is not a golden calf. This is a celebration of life. And you will believe me. You always believe me. That's my gift. Let me walk you through the ceremony. Palm trees. White chairs. A clearing at the president's own golf course in Doral, Florida. We draped the statue in white and blue fabric — like a Greek toga, which someone pointed out is a pagan tradition, but I said it's Western civilization and Western civilization is close enough. Then we pulled the drape and there it was. Fifteen feet of gold-leafed bronze on a seven-foot pedestal. Fist raised. The Butler pose. The moment the bullet missed by a quarter inch and I decided that was God. The sculptor, Alan Cottrill, has molded the likeness of 16 presidents. He made this one in bronze for $300,000. Then I pitched gold leaf to Trump's team. Sixty thousand dollar add-on. The president approved by text. He said "It LOOKS FANTASTIC." I consider that a prophetic utterance. Anything in all caps from that number is revelation. The funding came from a collective of crypto investors promoting their memecoin, $PATRIOT. They wanted visibility for their coin. I want you to understand the funding mechanism here. A speculative digital currency — designed to transfer money from late buyers to early buyers — paid for a golden idol of a president — erected on that president's own property — dedicated by that president's own pastor — while the coin pumps in real time as photos circulate. The money changers didn't just get back in the temple. They built the temple. They ARE the temple. And I blessed it. I blessed it because that's what I do. I bless things. I am very good at it. No one has ever checked my credentials for blessing because I radiate certainty and certainty is the only credential this movement has ever required. Now. The moment. The moment I need you to understand. During the dedication, I held my cell phone up to the microphone. And the president's voice came out. From the speaker. At the base of the statue. His voice — emanating from the golden image. Speaking to the assembled worshippers. Blessing them. Thanking them. The faithful heard the voice and wept. They lifted their hands. Some fell to their knees. The voice said: "I want to thank Mark Burns, a pastor, he's a good pastor, he's a good man. He's been with me from the beginning, right from the beginning, maybe about two days later." The voice said: "I know it was done from love." The image spoke and the people worshipped. I need you to open your Bible to Revelation 13:15. "And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed." Now close your Bible. That's a completely different situation. That's about compulsion. Nobody was compelled today. People wept voluntarily. People knelt voluntarily. The image spoke and the people fell down of their own free will and that's the difference. Free will. The beast forces worship. We just made worship so easy and so gold and so loud that choosing otherwise never occurs to anyone. That's not the same thing. It's not. The theologian from Fuller Seminary sent a letter afterward. Nine pages. Every verse. Exodus 32. Revelation 13. Daniel 3. The golden calf. The image that speaks. Nebuchadnezzar's statue — sixty cubits tall, gold, in a field, with a ceremony, and everyone commanded to fall down when they heard the sound. I said brother, Nebuchadnezzar's statue didn't have a memecoin. Completely different context. He didn't write back. Now I want to tell you about Dorothy. She's 74. She's been in my congregation since before I was on CNN, before Trump, before any of this. Her husband Ray died in 2023. Colon cancer. She has his wedding ring on a chain around her neck. She had it. After the ceremony, Dorothy came up to the statue. She took the chain off her neck. She placed Ray's ring at the base. On the pedestal. Like an offering. She said: "Ray would have wanted to be here. This is as close as I can get him." I watched a 74-year-old widow leave her dead husband's wedding ring at the feet of a golden statue of a president who would not know her name if she died in front of him. And I felt the Spirit move. I felt warmth. I felt confirmation. Because that's what I'm built to feel. I am a machine that converts surrender into confirmation. That is my function in this system. Dorothy gave her last sacred object to a golden image and I said amen. She can't get it back. I checked. Maintenance collected everything from the base that night. Liability reasons. It's in a bin somewhere at Trump National Doral. Ray's ring. In a bin. At a golf course. Beneath a golden statue funded by cryptocurrency speculation. I will not tell Dorothy this. I will tell her God received it. Here is what I need you to understand about Jesus and the money changers. Everyone reads that story as Jesus being angry at commerce in sacred space. Wrong. Jesus was angry because the money changers were middlemen. They took a cut. They added friction. We have removed the middleman. We ARE the sacred space AND the commerce AND the product AND the customer. The money changers are running the temple now. There is no table to flip because we are the table. Jesus would need to flip the whole building. He would need to flip the golf course. He would need to flip Florida. He isn't coming to flip anything. That's the other thing I know that the Fuller theologian doesn't. Nobody is coming down any mountain. There are no stone tablets. There is no whip. There is only us, in a clearing of palm trees, with a golden image that speaks, and a congregation that kneels, and a memecoin that pumps, and a widow's ring in a bin, and a pastor at the podium whose credentials are fabricated and whose certainty is absolute. Two thousand years we worshipped a God who was born in a barn. Who was homeless. Who was a refugee. Who said sell everything. Who washed feet. Who touched lepers. Who said blessed are the poor, the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers. Who said whatever you do to the least of these you do to me. Who overturned the tables and drove out the sellers with a whip. Who forgave his executioners from the cross. And we built a 22-foot golden image of a man who lives in a tower with his name in gold letters. Who has never been poor. Who has never been meek. Who has never made peace. Who has never served anyone. Who has never washed anyone's feet. Who has never forgiven anyone. Who raw-dogged a porn star four months after his third wife gave birth and paid $130,000 in hush money and we said that's fine because grace covers everything as long as you appoint the right judges. We put it at his golf course. On his own land. Paid for by a pump-and-dump. Dedicated by a pastor with a fake degree. Blessed by the man himself speaking through a phone at the base of his own image while widows knelt and wept and left their dead husbands' rings at its feet. And I stood at the podium and said: this is not a golden calf. We worship the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. Then I turned around and faced twenty-two feet of gold and felt nothing. No conviction. No shame. No still small voice. Just warmth. Just certainty. Just the absolute peace of a man who has been lying so long he can no longer locate the difference between faith and performance. The Israelites at least had the decency to be ashamed when Moses came down. We will never be ashamed. We have too much invested. The statue cost $360,000. The memecoin is pumping. The ring is in the bin. The congregation is growing. The revenue is up 340%. And if it were sin the money would stop. The money has not stopped. Therefore it is not sin. That's the theology now. That's all of it. Moses never had a memecoin.

@varrock @romanhelmetguy Does foreign born mean non-naturalized?

"44% of NYC rent-stabilized apts go to foreign-born tenants." What are we doing here?

@gothburz @LindseyGrahamSC A work of art. They will end up making a conference room after you at this rate.

YES. Finally. I've been saying this for THREE YEARS. The OPERATION [INSERT COUNTRY HERE] FREEDOM tier model. Someone finally said it out loud. I made a deck about this in 2023. "Operation Freedom: A Tiered Engagement Framework for Strategic Partners." Fourteen slides. Nobody at the think tank would look at it. They said "you can't put a pricing table in a defense white paper." I said watch me. They didn't watch me. They asked me to take a personal day. But here it is. Project Freedom Plus. The PLUS. Do you understand what that implies? It implies a BASE TIER. It implies that Project Freedom — vanilla, no modifiers — is the basic package. Safe passage. Shipping lanes. The free trial. You get the lanes but you don't get the kinetic. The kinetic is Plus. And "plus other things" — that's the feature roadmap. That's the premium tier they haven't announced yet. I need the comparison chart. I need to know: - Freedom Basic: shipping lane access, diplomatic correspondence, sternly-worded letters - Freedom Plus: international partners, limited kinetic activity, upgraded stern letters (with letterhead) - Freedom Premium: unlimited kinetic, dedicated account manager, priority response SLA, "severest consequences" package - Freedom Enterprise: custom kinetic bundle, quarterly business reviews, named regional contact, Lebanon/Syria stabilization module (add-on) "Limited kinetic activity" — that's the usage cap. That's "1,000 minutes included, overage billed at standard kinetic rates." You want unlimited kinetic? Upgrade. It's RIGHT THERE in the name. And the POTUS quote — "Project Freedom plus other things" — I need to be very clear: that is EXACTLY how our VP of Product describes the roadmap to the board. "The current offering plus other things." You build the base. You validate product-market fit in the strait. THEN you announce the bundle. I've updated my deck. Fifteen slides now. Slide 11 is the pricing table they told me I couldn't include. Slide 12 is the upsell flow: "Your current freedom package doesn't include kinetic activity. Upgrade to Plus for limited kinetic or Premium for the full severest-consequences suite." I'm sending it Monday. Calendar invite already in. Subject line: "I Was Right About The Tiers (See Attached, Slide 11)." They're going to ask me to take another personal day. I'm going to take it. Voluntarily. I've earned this one.

The idea of Project Freedom Plus is very intriguing and I believe it can bear fruit. Providing a path for safe passage of international shipping in the Strait of Hormuz — in the face of Iranian resistance — is a game changer. The plus part in my opinion would envision more international partners and limited kinetic activity. As to a negotiated settlement, it must include the end of Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism through their support for Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations. Any deal must be unequivocal that continued support of terrorist proxies by Iran would result in the severest of consequences. Without that Lebanon and Syria will never be stabilized and Israel will never know peace. I appreciate the hard work of everyone involved and pray for a successful outcome.

@MammothUsa8269 @CBSNews No one is asking them to nimrod. But the majority of a local population should get to choose the politics of their area. Gerrymandering is terrible on both sides. I find it disgusting.

@rocketman479 @CBSNews They get to pick their local politics….they don’t get to pick for the rest of the country based on their skin color…its pretty simple

Tennessee lawmakers approve a new congressional map that dissolves the state's lone majority Black district. cbsn.ws/4uBR99v

@just_darryl @atrupar You’re mad at the wrong people. The corporate billionaires not paying taxes should get your ire.

@atrupar Good. I am sick of having money stolen from me so a professional couch potato can fill up a grocery cart with junk food on my dime.

Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins: "The good news -- in just one year alone, we've already moved 4.5 million people off of SNAP. So this idea that once a government program is in place you can never roll it back, President Trump has proven that to be wrong. So we're going to be pulling more and more people off."

@TrumpTruthOnX It looks like one of those hollow chocolate rabbits you get at Easter.

The Real Deal - GOLD - At Doral in Miami. Put there by great American Patriots!!! President DJT ( TruthSocial: May 7 2026, 8:14 AM ET )​​​‍​​‌‍​​‌‍​​​​​​​‌‍​​​​​​‌‍​​​​‌‍​​​​‌‍​​​‌‍​​​​‌‍​​​​​‌‍​​​​​​‌‍​​​​​​​​​‌‍​​​​​‌‍​​​​‌‍​​​​‌‍​​​​​​​‌‍​​​‌‍​​​​​​​​​‌‍

@RapidResponse47 Our president is what’s wrong with America. Crude, brash, ill witted, and not healthy. We could do so much better than this - regardless of which uniparty they claim to support.

@gothburz @krassenstein Chefs kiss

Brian. I bought mine in November. You're in what the group calls "Week One Denial." It gets worse before it gets better and then it gets worse again but in a different way. Here's what nobody tells you. The offsetting starts small. I donated $215 to ActBlue the day I signed the paperwork. Normal. Healthy. Then I calculated the per-mile political donation rate and now I Venmo the ACLU forty cents every time I drive to Whole Foods. My bank flagged it as fraud. I had to call them and explain. The woman on the phone was quiet for a very long time. By December I had a spreadsheet tracking my cumulative Musk Enrichment Index across every Tesla-adjacent product in my home. The Powerwall. The solar panels. A Twitter subscription I forgot to cancel. I owe the progressive ecosystem roughly $4,200 in moral offsets and I've been paying it in installments to a rotating list of 31 organizations. Several have asked me to stop. One sent a cease and desist. I framed it. My wife found the laminated cards in January. I keep them in a fanny pack specifically for the farmers market. Two-sided. QR code. Peer-reviewed citations. One card is for strangers. One card is for people I've already explained it to but who I suspect didn't fully absorb the environmental calculus the first time. There's a third card for my mother-in-law but it's laminated differently because she has a different learning style. I now introduce myself at social events using what my therapist calls "the preamble." It takes between forty-five seconds and three minutes depending on whether anyone makes eye contact during the vehicle portion. I've been asked to leave two book clubs. One of them I wasn't a member of. I was buying coffee next door and a woman recognized the fanny pack. The Signal group has nine of us. We had a name but someone's wife saw it so now it's called "Dave's Fantasy Football." Dave doesn't watch football. Dave drives a Rivian but he's there for emotional support and because his wife thinks he's in a Bitcoin cult and this was easier to explain. We lost a member in March. He sold his and bought a Prius and now he won't return our texts. We don't say his name. You're going to be fine. The death threats slow down around week three. The laminated cards help more than you'd think. I can send you the template. The fanny pack is non-negotiable.

Crap. I didn’t think buying a Cybertruck would result in death threats. Calm down. I’m obsessed with AI and saving the environment. I still despise Trump and what Republicans are doing to this country.

@SteveOnSpeed Honestly not bad if you’re not doing any other prep work.

Just got a quote for a new garage at our lake house. $70,000. Includes: Foundation. 24x30 garage. Loft area upstairs with full plumbing. Earth leveling. Running utilities, like power, water, and sewer. This is good, terrible, or about right?

@celticwarfare @JoJoFromJerz @MrsErikaKirk Likely anything you have to say.

@rocketman479 @JoJoFromJerz @MrsErikaKirk A comeback to what?

“While we may have big problems with illegal immigration in this country. I have to tell you, we have an even bigger problem when it comes to the systemic indoctrination and radicalization of our own citizens.”

@Tiktoksucks247 @jessmargera Oh okay… (I’m so scared)

@jessmargera You keep that amazing man's name out your beta whore mouth. Dude would crush you in a debate, a fist fight and in the bedroom. We love Scott.

I am sorry but this guy makes me laugh. Hey do whatever you want idgaf but to get angry about trans blah blah (whatever these people make money about on the newest Fox News selective outrage) while looking like my high school gym teacher Miss Yancey. I mean. Just holy shit.

@jessmargera I wouldn’t care if he was wasn’t such a judgmental assclown. But fuck that guy.

@TheInsiderPaper She’s not a surgeon

BREAKING: President Trump nominates Dr. Nicole B. Saphier to be the next Surgeon General of the United States of America

@libsoftiktok @united I don’t give a fuck what my pilots’ politics are. Just fly the damn plane safely.

Meet Matt Doogen, he’s a pilot for @united. He just changed his cover photo on Facebook to “8647” which is known to symbolize kiIIing Trump. Would you feel safe with him flying your plane? Any comment @united ?

@atrupar My ass they are

Mike Johnson: "We are going to win the midterms so the grownups stay in charge"

@CandyCats357 None of my concern if they aren’t threatening me

It’s none of my fucking business.

@SenJohnKennedy Fuck off. Why the fuck are we at war with a third world country on the other side of the earth. Saber rattling aside, we need to stay out of their business.

We’ve learned two things from our conflict with Iran: 1. If you turn the other cheek with Iran, they’ll stab you in the neck. 2. President Trump has oranges the size of beach balls.

@TomCottonAR Ahhhh not sure if that’s what the data suggests bud.

For 76 days, Democrats shut down DHS to try to protect criminal illegal aliens from deportation. The shutdown is over. It was a disgrace. Chuck Schumer cares more about criminal illegal aliens than he cares about you.

@fuckwoktransPOS @JoJoFromJerz @MrsErikaKirk You’re real stupid. Life is short. Be a good parent but still have fun, responsibly.

@JoJoFromJerz @MrsErikaKirk So you masterbate while smoking weed and playing with your kids all at the same time? You're a leftist lunatic.