https://www.reddit.com/r/MarchAgainstNazis/fcomments/1x7uumj/the_4_dumb_blondes/#lightbox
FYI, Kelly-Anne
Conway was an advisor to Donald Trump, not press secretary. Still
one of Trump's Blondes.
Glenn
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-- Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
--
Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5f32PpBCNY
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
-- Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
-- Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
The payments, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars, represented an extraordinary flouting of ethical norms for an American president’s family member.
A Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to help finance Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding after-party in the Bahamas this year, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
The payments represented an extraordinary flouting of ethical norms for an American president’s family.
To avoid foreign influence, a president’s family is generally expected to steer clear of these sorts of personal and pricey gifts, particularly from someone in a country like Russia, an adversary known to surreptitiously push its geopolitical agenda. The concern, ethics experts say, is that a foreign actor could ply a president’s family member with gifts and eventually expect something in return.
Mr. Trump, the president’s eldest son, accepted the gifts from Umar Kremlev, the president of the International Boxing Association, according to the people with knowledge of the matter. The payments, reported earlier by ProPublica, included the cost of renting a private island and a fireworks display.
Mr. Kremlev reportedly stood out at the after-party. Some of Mr. Trump’s guests questioned who he was and why he was there, according to one of the people with knowledge of the matter.
After ProPublica reported on Mr. Kremlev’s payments, Mr. Trump and his new wife, Bettina Trump, posted a statement to Instagram acknowledging the gifts.
They said that the trip to the island pertained to “an already planned weekend” with friends, not their wedding ceremony, though some ethics experts said that distinction was irrelevant. They also portrayed their relationship with Mr. Kremlev, who did not attend the wedding ceremony, as nothing more than a friendship.
“Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding,” the statement said. “It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful.”
Mr. Trump and his wife added: “It’s unfortunate that something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from. Friendship doesn’t require a political motive. Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.”
The statement did not address why Mr. Trump, 48, did not pay for the island stay and fireworks display himself. Forbes recently estimated his net worth to be around $300 million.
President Trump did not attend his son’s wedding or the after-party. He said at the time that his son would “like me to go, but it’s going to be just a small, little private affair.”
Asked on Monday whether the president knew that Mr. Kremlev helped pay for the after-party, the White House provided The New York Times a statement from the president, who said: “I have no idea who Umar is, never heard of him, and he didn’t pay for Don and Bettina’s wedding, which took place at a totally different location, and on a different day.”
The president added: “It was an ‘after-party’ given in their honor. Not a big deal!”
A spokeswoman for Donald Trump Jr.’s brother Eric Trump, who attended the wedding, said that “Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is.”
It is unclear how Mr. Trump and his wife met Mr. Kremlev, and then came to be so friendly.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump, who has a sprawling business operation with international ties, said they are not in business together. The two men met through a mutual friend, the spokesman said, adding that they bonded over their mutual enjoyment of boxing and hunting.
Mr. Kremlev’s boxing association, the sport’s longtime governing body, has drawn scrutiny over the years for various scandals and its reliance on Russian government support. The group is backed by Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned natural gas company.
Mr. Kremlev also has direct ties to President Vladimir V. Putin. In April, Mr. Putin honored Mr. Kremlev with a high-level state award, the Order of Friendship. And just days before Mr. Trump’s wedding in May, Mr. Putin and Mr. Kremlev were seen together in China.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Kremlev did not respond to requests for comment. But his press office told ProPublica that “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr. have a friendly relationship” and that they first met “a couple of years ago.”
According to ProPublica, the press office said that “Mr. Kremlev has never discussed political matters with any of his American friends and acquaintances,” including Mr. Trump.
Even so, his acceptance of a gift from a Kremlin-linked businessman showed a flagrant disregard for the optics of the situation, ethics experts say. And although the gift itself was not illegal, it raised concerns that Mr. Kremlev could seek something down the road from the Trump administration.
In an open letter to President Trump shortly after his second inauguration last year, Mr. Kremlev solicited the administration’s support in a dispute between the boxing association and the International Olympic Committee.
“A gift from such an unusual source puts a red flag on the matter,” said Kedric Payne, who leads the ethics program at the Campaign Legal Center. “It completely changed my whole measurement of how outrageous these ethics issues are getting.”
This is not Mr. Trump’s first brush with Russian controversy. In the thick of the 2016 presidential campaign, as Russia sought to sway the election in his father’s favor, Mr. Trump met with a Russian lawyer whom he believed could provide his father’s campaign with dirt on Hillary Clinton.
In response to the offer of damaging information, Mr. Trump wrote, “If it’s what you say I love it.”
The meeting became a focus of the special counsel’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, never accused the president’s son of wrongdoing.
Ben Protess is an investigative reporter at The Times, covering President Trump.
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A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
-- Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
-- Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
1898
-- Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
-- Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
-- Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
-- Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
In August 2026, social media users claimed that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration paid RWE, a German energy company, more than $1.2 billion to abandon the development of ongoing offshore wind projects.
One popular Facebook post (archived) suggested the government was encouraging RWE to put its money into natural gas projects instead. The caption read:
New levels of stupid just dropped. The Trump administration just wired a German energy company $1.22 billion to NOT build wind farms.
That is the fifth time this year it has paid a company to walk away from clean power, and the total is closing in on $4 billion of public money.
RWE was set to put wind turbines off the coast of Humboldt, California. Enough to power roughly 600,000 homes. Instead Doug Burgum's Interior Department cut them a check to abandon the leases and pour the money into gas.
This is not a subsidy for wind. It is a payout to kill it.
RWE is taking the cash and dropping $900 million into a Louisiana gas terminal and a fleet of new gas plants. So the "energy security" on offer is you breathing more of what comes out of a smokestack, on purpose, because your government paid a premium for it.
Burgum's justification is the best part. He said Americans deserve energy that doesn't lean on "costly subsidies." He said this while handing $1.22 billion to a foreign corporation.
The projects were legal. They were permitted under Biden. Courts keep telling this administration it cannot simply cancel wind farms, and a federal judge in Oregon was leaning against them this week.
So they found a workaround. If you cannot kill the clean energy in court, buy it and bury it.
Cheaper power, off the table. Cleaner air, off the table. Six hundred thousand homes that will now pull from gas burned somewhere a kid has to breathe it.
They will tell you this keeps the lights on and the bills low. It does the opposite. Gas peaker plants are some of the priciest power you can build. The turbines were the cheap option. They paid extra for the dirty one and called it responsible.
Your grandkids inherit the heat. A German company inherits the check.
And somewhere in Essen, an executive is still working out how he got paid a billion dollars to lose.
The story also spread on Reddit (archived) and Instagram (archived), and Snopes readers emailed us asking if the rumor is true.
In short, RWE and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum both announced the deal on Aug. 6, 2026, in a news release and on X, respectively (archived, archived). Therefore, we've rated this claim true.
RWE's news release says the company reached a settlement agreement with the Department of the Interior to abandon the company's offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York, California and Louisiana. According to RWE, it originally secured these leases from the U.S. government and had invested more than $1 billion in development towards these projects. RWE said the leases "represented years of planning, investment, and partnership with federal agencies."
As part of the deal, RWE is instead investing $1.2 billion into natural gas projects, according to the news release.
That same day, Burgum took to X to say the DOI welcomes RWE's agreement and "voluntary investment" in natural gas programs.
This is not the first time in 2026 that the Trump administration has made such a deal. In March, the administration reached a $928 million agreement with French energy company TotalEnergies to cancel two offshore wind projects. In April, the DOI announced a similar deal with two other companies developing offshore wind farms. In each agreement, the DOI described reimbursing the companies for the canceled leases.
According to Reuters, the Trump administration has reached agreements to reimburse energy companies roughly $4 billion in 2026 for canceling in-development offshore wind projects.
For further reading, Snopes has previously fact-checked several other rumors about Trump and wind energy, including a claim that Scotland approved a new wind farm shortly after the U.S. president visited the U.K. and complained about wind turbines.
"Attorney General James and Governor Hochul Announce Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Trump Administration Wind Deal." New York State Attorney General, 2 June 2026, https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2026/attorney-general-james-and-governor-hochul-announce-lawsuit-challenging-unlawful. Accessed 10 Aug. 2026.
Bantel, Solange Petit de. 'United States: TotalEnergies Signs Agreements with U.S. Department of Interior to End Its U.S. Offshore Wind Projects'. Newsroom TotalEnergies, 23 Mar. 2026, https://totalenergies.com/newsroom/?p=14108.
Burgum, Doug. "Secretary Doug Burgum (@SecretaryBurgum) on X." X (Formerly Twitter), 6 Aug. 2026, https://x.com/SecretaryBurgum/status/2085409733989589124. Accessed 10 Aug. 2026.
Groom, Nichola. "RWE, Trump Administration Reach $1.22 Billion Agreement to Cancel Offshore Wind Leases." Reuters, 6 Aug. 2026, https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/rwe-says-reached-122-bln-deal-cancel-us-offshore-wind-leases-invest-gas-2026-08-06/. Accessed 10 Aug. 2026.
"Interior and TotalEnergies Agree to End Offshore Wind Projects, Lowering Costs for American Families | U.S. Department of the Interior." U.S. Department of the Interior, 23 Mar. 2026, https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-and-totalenergies-agree-end-offshore-wind-projects-lowering-costs-american. Accessed 10 Aug. 2026.
"Interior Announces Two Historic Agreements to Promote Affordable, Reliable Energy Production in the United States | U.S. Department of the Interior." U.S. Department of the Interior, 27 Apr. 2026, https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-announces-two-historic-agreements-promote-affordable-reliable-energy. Accessed 10 Aug. 2026.
"RWE U.S. Offshore Reaches Settlement Agreement With U.S. Department of Interior on Offshore Wind Leases." Rwe.Com, 6 Aug. 2026, https://www.rwe.com/en/press/rwe-americas/2026-08-06-rwe-us-offshore-reaches-settlement-with-doi-on-offshore-wind-leases/. Accessed 10 Aug. 2026.
-- Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
-- Sent from my Linux system.
A NASA software engineer for 23 years (retired), Silicon Valley software engineer for 36+years, Egyptology hobbyist and ARCE-NC board of directors member for more than 25 years, reporter and copy editor for the Kansas City Star and Louisville Courier-Journal for 6 years. Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Kappa Tau Alpha, Heritage Registry of Who's Who. I favor open source development, Linux, net neutrality, medical care as a right and not a privilege, the ACLU, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, freedom of speech.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MarchAgainstNazis/fcomments/1x7uumj/the_4_dumb_blondes/#lightbox FYI, Kelly-Anne Conway was an advisor ...
