In 1984 the Reagan’s CIA director William Casey asked the FCC to pull ABC’s TV and radio licenses in retaliation for ABC running a story about how the CIA had attempted to assassinate a US citizen. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/11/22/us/complaint-by-cia-over-report-on-tv.html

Shortly after, ABC was acquired by Capital Cities in which Casey owned 34,000 shares (worth $7MM). At the time it was the largest non oil merger in US history. One of Capital Cities original owners was Thomas Dewey, one of the backers of the Mary Carter Paint Company in 1958.

If you’ve been following along, you know that MCPC became resorts international, spearheaded the legalization of gambling in Atlantic City, and built Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal. But first they operated a gambling monopoly in the Bahamas tied to Meyer Lansky’s crime network.

Why does any of this matter? Because it shows that the dark nexus of corrupt politicians and media, organized crime, and intelligence agencies from which Donald Trump emerged was already formed three decades ago. We can assume it has gotten worse since then.

Which is why our institutions failed to stop Trump from getting elected in 2016, failed to inform the public of the danger he posed, and continue to fail in constraining him now even as he leads an open sedition movement against our democracy itself.

The institutions have been captured and no one bothered to tell us - because journalism was methodically assassinated over time to keep the public uninformed. Which is how no one told us about Trump’s links to Epstein in 2016 despite it being of paramount importance.