Podcast
FiveStack with Dean Blundell & Zev Shalev
Hosted by D. Blundell and Z.Shalev · EN
The Top 5 stories of the moment with Canada's #1 Shock Jock Dean Blundell and Former CBS News executive producer Zev Shalev.
www.narativ.org
www.narativ.org
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FIVESTACK: Melania Trump Sent Zev A Letter
2d ago01:01:36Tap to summarizeZev Shalev opened Monday’s Fivestack holding a letter from the First Lady’s lawyer. He closed the hour describing two wars fusing into one. In between, Dean Blundell and Zev traced a single thread through five stories: the men named in the Epstein files are the men running the lawfare, the cover-up, and the war.The letterMelania Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito of Brito PLLC in Coral Gables, Florida, demands that Zev and journalist Amanda Ongaro “immediately retract the false, malicious, and defamatory statements” in their report “Special Report: The First Lady Spy Scandal” — and compensate the First Lady for “overwhelming financial and reputational harm.” No suit has been filed. Zev read the letter on air and declined every demand. “I don’t even know how to retract it, because it’s just accurate reporting,” he said. The report never called her a spy; it documented the newly released emails around Paolo Zampolli, the man who ran what looks like a Russian linked influence operation inside the United Nations — and it asked what the First Lady’s unprompted denial was for. “This is just an intimidation tactic,” Zev said. Dean, who has beaten suits like this before, named the species: “These are called SLAPP suits… make Zev poor, make Zev quiet. That is what these letters are for.” Zev stands by his reporting. 5️⃣ Barron and the TatesA federal judge in Miami took up the Tate brothers’ extradition Monday, and Rep. Ansari wants Barron Trump under oath about political interference in it — before the end of the year, Dean reported. His reporting puts the president’s son at the center of the manosphere’s money: $150 million in crypto this year, a video call with Andrew Tate that a Tate associate sat in on, and leaked texts showing the brothers telling associates to call Barron Trump — to get their phones back from the State Department, to protect them in the United States. The phones came back.4️⃣ Netanyahu picks a fight with New YorkBenjamin Netanyahu heads to his eighth meeting with Donald Trump while calling New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani a man “fomenting hate” — because Mamdani said the feds should arrest him on the ICC warrant. That warrant lost its prosecutor Friday: 125 member states voted Karim Khan out on sexual misconduct allegations, after a pressure campaign Israeli officials ran openly. Khan denies the allegations and is fighting the removal. Remove the prosecutor, mock the warrant, walk free.3️⃣ The email inside the DOJThe Narativ exclusive the whole hour bent around: at 7:49 AM on July 24, 2025 — the morning Todd Blanche interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell — one DOJ official asked another for “a sentence or two… [on] the salacious statements made against the individuals in the file.” The 9:53 AM reply catalogued allegations against Trump, Weinstein, Prince Andrew, Dershowitz, Clinton, Wexner, Lutnick and more — and closed with eleven words about the man who used to run the Department: “William Barr, for being present when a girl was raped.” At 10:12 AM, Maxwell started answering Blanche’s questions. Over two days he asked her about every name on the list except Howard Lutnick. On Barr, she answered “no,” then “I don’t recall.” Weeks later the Bureau of Prisons moved her to a minimum-security camp in Texas. The senders’ names are redacted; the entries are allegations logged inside the DOJ, not findings — and that is the point. “It’s a cover-up of a cover-up of a cover-up,” Zev said. His full Barr investigation posted Monday at narativ.org, alongside the estate story: executors have paid out roughly $500 million at their own discretion, Karyna Shuliak stands to collect as much as $100 million, and Maria Farmer — the federal witness — got next to nothing.2️⃣ + 1️⃣ The dead, restored — and two wars becoming oneZev merged the top two on air because they are one story. The Pentagon moved four dead and some 200 wounded into a new “Overseas Operations” category, cutting the public death count from 18 to 14 — then quietly restored the four after the reporting caught it. The BBC now confirms more than 600 US service members injured since February. The strikes on Iran paused, the New York Times reported, after military leaders warned they were draining Patriot interceptor stocks; Dean walked through the open-source math and put remaining key munitions near a quarter. And Ukraine hit an Iranian target on the Caspian Sea. “We’re going to see this merging of these two regional wars into what can only be described as a world war,” Zev said. He left the question where it lands: who profits from an America that spends its arsenal on a war it cannot finish?THE PATTERNDean tied it off in one line: the same people. The names in the DOJ’s own file are the names running the Department, the estate, the manosphere, and the war — and one of them just sent a journalist a letter demanding silence. One hundred days to the midterms. The letter didn’t work.---#Thank you This Will Hold, Uncomfortable Truth by Monica, Lalisa, Stephanie Georgoulakis, Christina Reamy, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe
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FiveStack Special: Trump's War is a Disaster, Why the First Lady is Sending Me Demand Letters
1w ago01:00:05Tap to summarizeSPECIAL REPORT: Dean and Zev break format to go deep — shredding Pete Hegseth’s disastrous Iran-war testimony, then breaking the news live that Zev has been hit with a demand letter from Melania Trump’s lawyer over his Narativ reporting.Most days, FiveStack is a fast countdown of the five biggest stories. Today was different, and on purpose. Two stories were too big to bury in a rundown: a sitting Defense Secretary caught contradicting his own war claims under oath, and — breaking on-air — a demand letter from the First Lady’s lawyer aimed at silencing an independent journalist. So the guys tore up the format and stayed with them. This is a FiveStack Special Report: longer, feistier, and more personal than the daily show, because the news came for the newsroom itself. If you watch one episode this week, watch this one.A late start turns into one of the most consequential FiveStacks yet. The guys open on the “grift clock” ($5.1B and counting), the Qatari jet Trump may keep as a “getaway vehicle,” and the missing tariff-refund money. The spine of the episode is Sen. Jon Ossoff’s clinical dismantling of Pete Hegseth — replaying the SecDef’s own “destroyed / combat ineffective / every objective achieved” claims against an Iran war that’s now 11 nights of bombing, $37.5B spent, 18 U.S. dead, and an ask for $67–70B more. Zev lays out the escalation risk: Iran degrading Kuwait’s power/desalination infrastructure as bait to draw U.S. ground troops into a “mini-Vietnam,” plus reported Trump plans to strike Mali (an 8th country). Then the show breaks news: Zev has received a demand letter from Melania Trump’s lawyer over his reporting on Paolo Zampoli and alleged Russia connections in the First Lady’s orbit — which Dean turns into a rallying cry for Narativ subscribers.Thank you Uncomfortable Truth by Monica, Amy Gabrielle, Richard Hogan, MD, PhD(2), DBA, Lalisa, Noble Blend, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe
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FIVESTACK: Tates Will Not Be Sprung, Kash Goes to Moscow, Lutnick Caught in BridgeGate, China Guiding Iran Missiles, Canadian Dairy Tariffed
1w ago01:07:07Tap to summarizeToday’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.Eighteen American soldiers are dead in Iran’s war, Pete Hegseth spent the afternoon asking the Senate for another $70 billion, and the 50% tariff Trump swore at China landed on Canadian dairy. Zev Shalev and Dean Blundell counted down a Tuesday that points one way: the friends get punished, the adversaries get visits.5️⃣ The Tates Aren’t Getting SprungMAGA spent the weekend swearing Trump would never let Britain take Andrew and Tristan Tate. On Monday’s Narativ Live, former Palm Beach state attorney Dave Aronberg walked the extradition step by step and found nowhere for the brothers to stand — 59 counts, seven accusers, a probable-cause bar they clear without trying, and a final signature belonging to Marco Rubio, who won’t spend it on them.The show added the week’s new pieces: Roy Black — Jeffrey Epstein’s old lawyer — has joined the defense. Dean reported, confirmed through the State Department and two sources close to Trump, that Trump will let the extradition proceed. Four days before the shackles went on, the brothers were honored guests at Paolo Zampolli’s garden party in Washington. Before America, they made videos in front of the Kremlin. Now they sit in solitary 23 hours a day, next hearing July 27. Ghislaine Maxwell dangles testimony and gets “I’d have to take a look.” The Tates get silence — they have nothing to trade.4️⃣ Trump’s FBI Director Books MoscowKash Patel plans October 14 and 15 in Moscow and St. Petersburg with sit-downs at the FSB, per Politico — the first FBI director on Russian soil since 2013. Zev put the calendar problem plainly: the trip lands three weeks before the midterms, when the FBI director should be guarding the election, not touring the service built to attack it. Dean added the history — Patel has done paid work for Russian interests before. Neither Patel nor the Kremlin will say what the trip is for. Narativ won’t invent an agenda. The destination speaks for itself.3️⃣ Trump Demanded a Cut of His Own Bridge — the BlindspotThe Ground News Blindspot turned into a paper trail on air. Zev put two congressional letters on screen. The first, to Ambassador Bridge owner Matthew Moroun: “It appears that you have used your influence as a donor to President Donald Trump to jeopardize American commerce to protect your company’s bottom line.” The second, to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, lays out the sequence — Moroun met Lutnick on February 9, Lutnick briefed Trump, and Trump attacked the Gordie Howe bridge the same day: “What does the United States of America get — Absolutely NOTHING!”The opening slipped to July 27, after Canada agreed to share revenue. Dean put the most-cited price of the interference at $2.5 million in donations. Congress wants the documents. Right-wing coverage of all of it: zero percent.Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.2️⃣ Trump Fires China’s 50% at CanadaTrump signed the 50% tariff Monday — six days before he cuts the ribbon on the bridge. In the Oval Office today he explained it: Canada has “been mean to us.” The wildfire-smoke tariff, he added, is “a different thing we’re going to ding them for.” Hockey sticks sit in the annexes.Canada answered. Dean watched premier after premier — Ford, Eby, the Atlantic provinces, Manitoba — declare the appeasement game over, with export taxes on potash and energy on the table. Mark Carney has spent eighteen months signing trade and security deals around Washington. And Dean carried the Warren Buffett test into the story: real friends are the ones who would hide you. Canada hid six American diplomats in Tehran in 1979. That country got the tariff.1️⃣ China’s Missiles Are Killing American SoldiersThe count rose on air: a soldier killed in Iraq Sunday makes 18 dead, on top of the July 17 strike in Jordan that killed Isabella Gonzales, 19, and Lt. Tyler Feehan, 25. Hegseth testified today and asked for $70 billion more, on top of the $114 billion already spent. Trump waved the fatal strike away — a missile “slipped through.”Zev walked the exclusive graphics again: Iran’s Fattah warheads reorient in flight to dodge Arrow and THAAD, and China’s Beidou-3 military satellites feed them targeting America can’t jam. Thousands more missiles sit in tunnel cities under Iran’s mountains, beyond any bunker-buster, while US Tomahawks run $4 million a shot and the stockpile draws down. Dean reported Iran quietly destroyed an Amazon data center in Bahrain — AWS admits only “service disruptions,” and Narativ has not confirmed the strike. Xi promised Trump that China would sell Iran nothing. Eighteen families now know what that promise was worth.THE PATTERNTrump tariffs the friend, demands a cut of the bridge, and his FBI director packs for Moscow — while Beijing aims the missiles and pays nothing. At five o’clock the Grift Clock crossed $5.1 billion: $100 million into the Trump family in ten days, while gas holds at $4. The friends get punished. The adversaries get visits. The family gets paid.The Fivestack airs live Monday–Friday at 3 PM ET. Subscribe free or paid at narativ.org — Know Sooner.Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.Thank you Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, Cat: Poli-Psych, LC - Silence is Complicity, Robin Payes, LeftieProf, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe
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FiveStack: Trump Edited From World Cup, China Helping Iran Target US Troops, The Tates In The SHU, The Grift Clock Goes Live, and Number 10's New Occupant
1w ago01:14:04Tap to summarize5️⃣ The Boos Trump Couldn’t Edit OutSpain won the World Cup 1–0 at MetLife Stadium, and the cameras caught what the White House couldn’t cut: the crowd booing through the anthem, Spanish players turning their backs, Lamine Yamal refusing the president’s handshake — every player warmly greeting Mark Carney one spot down the line. Trump planted himself in the champions’ team photo until FIFA’s Gianni Infantino ushered him off, then collected a trophy of his own from Infantino Monday morning. Spain’s federation and FIFA, Dean reported, have already edited him out of the official footage. “This visual will live forever,” Dean said on air. The country that spent months insulting Spain watched Spain win on its soil — and watched its president get cropped out of the picture.4️⃣ Burnham Takes No. 10Andy Burnham became Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade Monday morning, hours after Keir Starmer resigned. Zev tried to name all seven on air and couldn’t — which is the story. The turnstile at Downing Street is what a Brexited country looks like ten years on, with Tommy Robinson’s street movement and Elon Musk’s misinformation machine working the wound. Dean, a dual British citizen, called Burnham “Mark Carney-esque” — the most trusted politician in England, promising, in the most British phrasing available, to settle things down.3️⃣ The Grift Clock Starts TickingZev launched the Grift Clock live on air: a real-time counter of the Trump family fortune, which crossed $5 billion on July 10 — real estate, crypto, international licensing — and climbs $107.74 every second. By Tuesday at 5 PM ET it adds another $100 million. The figure is deliberately understated: a billion in Trump media holdings, government contracts, and pardon money sit in separate counters, uncounted. The clock is free for any newsroom to carry. “It’s a remarkable look at how much money is being taken from you, the American taxpayer,” Zev said. It ticked past the show’s end. It hasn’t stopped.2️⃣ One Garden Party, 59 ChargesFour days before US Marshals cuffed Andrew and Tristan Tate outside a Miami arena, Paolo Zampolli — the president’s Special Envoy for Global Partnerships, the man Narativ’s reporting with Amanda Ungaro has tied to Epstein’s world, to Jean-Luc Brunel’s model pipeline, and to Melania Trump’s path from Slovenia — threw the brothers a garden party near the White House. A hundred and fifty guests. Cabinet secretaries in attendance. The show played Zampolli’s own interview with the Tates: gifting Andrew a copy of the Constitution, boasting he asks heads of state to “buy a Boeing,” calling Marco Rubio his “second boss.” Then the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the hammer: 59 charges across both brothers — rape, trafficking, assault, and counts involving indecent images of a child — seven women, 2010 to 2017. The brothers sit in solitary confinement tonight.1️⃣ The War They Won’t CountThe dead have names now. Specialist Isabella Gonzalez, 19, of Carleton, Texas. First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii. A third soldier died at the Jordan base; a fourth is missing; the show reported 17 to 22 more severely injured — numbers the Pentagon withheld while Iranian missiles struck the same base three times in a week. Iran’s new missiles change course on descent, guided — analysts believe — with help from China’s Beidou satellite system, and they are beating air defenses the public was told were impenetrable. Hours before airtime, three more vessels burned near the Strait of Hormuz, two of them British. Trump, on his way to the World Cup: “We control the strait. They don’t control anything.” The show ran the footage of the base strike instead — sourced from foreign outlets, because Hegseth’s Pentagon won’t release it.THE PATTERNZev closed the show with Hunter Biden’s post: “We are not a divided country. We are a country being divided on purpose by an American oligarchy that profits from the fight.” Every story Monday was that sentence with a different number attached — a hidden casualty list, an uncounted fortune, a protected trafficking network, an ally ground down by the same machine. The count is the fight. Narativ is keeping it.Thank you Lev Parnas, Cat: Poli-Psych, Robin Payes, Elaine Cimino, Richard Hogan, MD, PhD(2), DBA, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe
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The Rollout: Lev Parnas Says Tonight's Address Launches the Plan to Steal 2026
2w ago01:04:19Tap to summarizeLev Parnas drove his car into the Fivestack on Thursday — literally, phonemounted on the dash — and spent an hour telling Dean Blundell and Zev Shalevwhy tonight matters more than Washington wants to admit. At 9 PM, Trumpaddresses the nation on what he calls foreign interference in Americanelections. Parnas, who flew to Washington last week to warn Democraticleadership in person, put it plainly: “Today is the rollout. Today is thebeginning of the next rollout for Project 2025 — to keep Donald Trump inoffice forever.” The five stories all fed the same machine.5️⃣ The 104The panel opened on the number rattling both parties: 104 House Democrats —nearly half the caucus — voted Wednesday to end $3.3 billion in Israel aid.Zev called it what it is: a big number, and a weapon. “Trump will use thatagainst Democrats,” he said, while Parnas begged the coalition to hold:“We can disagree hardcore on a lot of different policies — but we should allagree we don’t want to live in a dictatorship.”4️⃣ The Grift LedgerDean brought the receipts on the fraud Trump won’t mention tonight. Forbesreported the president has taken in $2.4 billion this year — six thousandtimes his salary. A CNN whistleblower story detailed stock buys that precededhis Truth Social endorsements, American Eagle to Nvidia. And Gabriel Perez —Trump’s personal teleprompter operator — landed on administrative leave aftermaking $100,000 on Polymarket, betting on speeches he read before the countrydid. Zev pitched the fix: a live counter outside the White House tracking whatTrump takes from the American people, running every second.3️⃣ Epstein’s Money MenLeon Black didn’t show. The Apollo co-founder’s videotaped deposition, set fortoday, slid to September 3 — no reason given by his lawyers. His Epstein NDAsstill land in the committee’s hands next week, and the panel that grilledGoldman’s Kathryn Ruemmler over her Epstein emails keeps working the money.Parnas, who testified before the same committee, saw the pattern: thepaper trail survives every delay.2️⃣ Blanche’s Worst DayDay two of Todd Blanche’s confirmation produced the week’s most damningtestimony. Elizabeth Oyer, the career pardon attorney, told senators Blanche’soffice pressured her to restore gun rights to a convicted domestic abuser —Mel Gibson, a friend of the president. “When I wouldn’t, Mr. Blanche fired mewithin hours,” she testified. “He then took extraordinary measures to silenceme. He sent U.S. Marshals to my home.” Her close drew blood: “The casual liesthat Mr. Blanche tells, even while sitting in this chair testifying to thiscommittee, are emblematic of a much larger problem.” Epstein survivorDanielle Bensky recounted Blanche’s DOJ leaving her name unredacted hundredsof times. Tillis set his price on camera: meet the Epstein victims, or the novote stands. Cornyn isn’t moving either. The committee sits 11–10.1️⃣ The RolloutThen the show returned to where it began — 9 PM. Parnas laid out the sequencehe’s been warning about for months: tonight’s curated “declassified” documentsseed the doubt; indictments follow — Obama, Comey, Clapper are the targets hehears — and the FBI’s signature-matching review of ballots seized from FultonCounty supplies the “proof.” Dean named the tell: sixty-plus courts found nofraud, and no one has been charged. Zev named the flaw: “He’s got a bit of aprocess issue here. He was the president in 2020.” And Parnas named themechanism: “When you pick and choose what you declassify, it becomespropaganda.” The target isn’t 2020. It’s November.THE PATTERNOne machine, five gears. A prime-time lie needs an attorney general who firesthe honest lawyers, a committee that runs out the clock on Epstein’s bankers,a press under subpoena, and an oppositionatoo divided to answer. Zev left thepanel with the counterweight: “He’s turned America into the very thing he saidhe was trying to fix. But that’s not who America is — millions are going toshow up in their droves.”Thank you Ellie Leonard, Lyudmila and Daniel, Richard Hogan, MD, PhD(2), DBA, Alex LeMay, Lori Modafferi, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe
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BLANCHE COLLAPSES UNDER FRAUD CLAIMS; OSSOFF EVICERATES CLAYTON; TRUMP'S ADDRESS TO THE NATION IS A POWER GRAB BASED ON A LIE
2w ago01:02:38Tap to summarizeThree of Trump’s nominees sat for confirmation on the same day a federal judge’s fraud finding hung over the tallest of them — and by airtime, the votes to sink him were coming into view. Zev Shalev and Dean Blundell spent the hour with attorney and military veteran Anne P. Mitchell, who watched the Blanche hearing with Zev gavel to gavel and came armed with the one legal wrinkle nobody else caught.5️⃣ THE HIGH-T DEPARTMENT OF WARPete Hegseth opened the day by authorizing annual testosterone-deficiency screening for every warfighter over 30 — “the biological foundation required to sustain the fight.” This from the secretary who banned flu vaccines until 222 active-duty members got sick enough to bring the mandate back.Mitchell’s read ran the other way: “He actually is saying the quiet part out loud. We’re going to boost your testosterone so unnaturally high that you are going to be just hair-trigger angry all the time. And then we’re going to funnel that anger into the quote-unquote enemy.” Dean reached for the historical parallel — the Luftwaffe’s amphetamine program — and Mitchell reached for the obvious question: what does Moscow think of an army that announces its men need pharmaceutical help to be fighters? 4️⃣ CLAYTON, DEFENESTRATEDJay Clayton wants to run American intelligence and could not say who won the 2020 election. Jon Ossoff asked him seven times. “I’m not going to do this with you. This is a job interview,” Clayton offered — before the exchange collapsed into “I’ve answered the question” / “No, you didn’t” / “That’s my answer.”Then came Fulton County: Clayton claimed he first learned yesterday, in Ossoff’s office, that Tulsi Gabbard attended the raid on a Georgia election facility — then conceded thirty seconds later he simply hadn’t “thought about it recently.” Mitchell called the whole performance what a courtroom would: “This is the equivalent of invoking the Fifth, in terms of non-responsiveness.” Zev called the ritual itself: a loyalty test. Lie about 2020 under oath, and the president knows you’ll lie about whatever comes next.3️⃣ TOMORROW AT 9: THE OPERATIONThe 2020 question wasn’t academic. Tomorrow night Trump takes primetime to unveil “declassified intelligence” about the election he lost — served up by acting DNI Bill Pulte, teed up for the man who wouldn’t say who won. Mitchell flagged the tell in the credible reporting: foreign *plans* to interfere — not evidence anything happened. Old news, rebranded as a scandal, 110 days before the midterms.And the show put down the marker that matters: he cannot cancel the midterms. “The states have control over elections, even federal elections,” Mitchell said. Zev’s count: the administration is 0-for-14 trying to pry voter rolls from the states — “and he will go 0-for-50.” 2️⃣ THE MATH THAT SINKS BLANCHEThe Judiciary Committee sits 11–10 with Graham’s chair empty, and by airtime both John Cornyn and Thom Tillis were being reported as no votes — two Republicans who got primaried out of their party and, as Mitchell put it, got handed their freedom in the process. Blanche spent the day answering fraud questions with “I don’t know” and “I wasn’t part of that decision” — about a settlement he announced, advocated, and signed. Under oath, Mitchell noted, those are the only words left that aren’t a confession.1️⃣ THE $2 BILLION SELF-DEALThe story of the day, walked step by step. Trump sued his own IRS over his leaked tax returns. The DOJ — which, in Judge Kathleen Williams’ words, has “vigorously defended” the IRS in every such suit — rolled over for this one. The IRS’s own rank and file had prepared a 25-page defense that was never used. Trump dismissed his own case with prejudice; the $1.776 billion “settlement” appeared the next day, paying Trump allies and immunizing the family’s taxes forever. Williams reopened the case after 35 former federal judges told her something smelled, voided the fund, named the lawyers — and referred them for discipline.Then Mitchell delivered the wrinkle: the settlement protects “plaintiffs” — and the moment Trump dismissed the case, there were no plaintiffs. “It was a non-entity that was being protected. Blanche had to know that. A first-year law student would know that.” Whether that makes the AG nominee a fraudster or a man quietly harpooning his own client’s scheme, the paper trail runs through his signature either way.THE PATTERNOne day, one test, three nominees — and every answer pointed at the same boss. The fraud was signed at Justice, the loyalty oath was administered at Intelligence, and the audience for all of it speaks at 9 PM Thursday. The desperation is the tell: a president polling at Nixon levels, stacking officials whose only qualification is what they’ll refuse to say under oath. Watch tomorrow night with us — and as Mitchell said, call, call, call.Watch: [link]Thank you Robin Payes, Shulamit Elson, Cathy R. Payne, Lalisa, Cheryl Young, and many others for tuning into my live video with Anne P. Mitchell, Esq. and Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe
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THE FIVESTACK: THE HUNTER BECOMES THE HUNTED
2w ago00:56:21Tap to summarizeToday’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.Five stories, one thread. Dean Blundell and Zev Shalev spent Tuesday’s Fivestack tracing a single line through a broken news day: the people who built a machine to jail, track and frighten Americans are now the ones living behind the walls. A president who bombs a foreign capital flinches at his own hit list. Two justices who handed Trump immunity now beg Congress for bodyguards. The hunter, Zev argued, always becomes the hunted — he watched it happen once already, growing up white in apartheid South Africa.5️⃣ Trump Books Primetime to Declare the 2020 Election Stolen — AgainTrump has booked the nation for Thursday at 9 p.m. to claim newly “declassified” intelligence proves foreign interference handed Democrats the 2020 election — and, per reporting from Georgia’s own senators, to declare Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock illegitimate ahead of the 2026 midterms. Zev called it what it is: a pre-announcement of the intent to cheat. Trump ran the 2020 election as the sitting president; 80 court cases, up to the Supreme Court, found no fraud. The big lie built the resentment that carried him back to power. This is the sequel — the biggest lie, aimed at the vote that comes next.4️⃣ Twenty FBI Agents at Graham’s Door — and Trump Wants Them GoneTwenty FBI agents searched Lindsey Graham’s home; Kash Patel called it “assisting local authorities.” Zev laid the calendar out plainly: Israeli intelligence warning of an Iranian plot to kill Trump, Graham in Kyiv closing a Russia sanctions deal, a published hit list, Trump refusing the new Air Force One — and then Graham dead. Russia, Iran and China run as one alliance; one death could serve all three. Zev stopped short of the conspiracy — he believes the aortic dissection, the same silent killer that took Graham’s father — but Trump’s “the FBI is wasting their time” only sharpened the question. Dean’s read: you can’t believe a word the man says, so watch what he’s this eager to shut down.Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.3️⃣ Blindspot: DOGE Let AI Write Housing Policy — and the Right Won’t Cover ItThis week’s Ground News Blindspot is a story the right-leaning press is ignoring: DOGE used an AI model to draft federal housing policy affecting millions, then refused to name the model, the prompts or the guardrails. Wired obtained the records. The tell of the whole regime, Zev and Dean agreed — too lazy to do the work, willing to hand millions of Americans’ housing to a chatbot and sign it unread. See what both sides cover and hide: groundnews.com/fivestack, 40% off.2️⃣ The Split Screen: Justices Beg for Guards While ICE Stops Stopping CarsKagan and Barrett sat before appropriators — the first justices to face Congress since 2019 — asking $14 million to protect their homes; Barrett described the bulletproof vest Secret Service handed her, and her twelve-year-old asking what it was for. The same day, ICE ordered agents to halt vehicle stops nationwide after killing two men in a week — Joan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford, work-authorized and not the target, and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, also the wrong man. The powerful seek protection from the people; the people seek protection from the government. Dean’s harder edge: the Court handed Trump the immunity that built this, and the threats are the job now.1️⃣ Blockade Hour: Trump Scraps the Toll, Keeps the WarTrump announced a 20% toll on the Strait of Hormuz Monday and killed it by Tuesday — days after Rubio called Iran’s own tolls illegal under maritime law. The blockade itself went live at 4 p.m., mid-show. Trump calls himself “guardian” of a strait Iran still controls; only 22 ships crossed on July 9, down from 147 before the war. As Dean put it: watch nothing change in the Strait of Hormuz.THE PATTERNZev brought it home through apartheid. In white South African suburbs, families sealed themselves behind high walls, barbed wire and glass shards, more imprisoned by their own fear than the people in the open, communal townships they feared. Tonight Trump builds an iron fence around the White House, extends the National Guard through 2029, and houses his cabinet behind a twelve-foot electrified fence on a military base. Miller, Noem, Hegseth — all living in more of a jail than any citizen. The fear they manufacture to hold power is the same fear now closing in on them. The hunter becomes the hunted. That is the whole show.Tomorrow: Narativ carries the Blanche confirmation hearing live from 9 a.m., then Trump’s primetime address at 9 p.m.Today’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.Subscribe free — The Narativ and the Fivestack, every day. Know Sooner: narativ.orgThank you Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, LeftieProf, Michelle C. Funk, Stephanie Munoz, Lori Modafferi, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe
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BREAKING: LINDSEY GRAHAM’S SISTER TAPPED TO SERVE REST OF HIS TERM
2w ago00:46:03Tap to summarizeDean Blundell and Zev Shalev returned from a two-week break to five headlines telling one story: one man pulling power into his own hands, and only the courts and the states pulling back. Watch the full countdown at narativ.org.5️⃣ A Senate Seat, Filled by Truth SocialIt became official an hour after the show ended: Governor Henry McMaster appointed Darline Graham Nordone — Lindsey Graham’s sister, who has never held public office — to serve out his term, hours after Trump announced the pick by Truth Social and preempted the governor’s own press conference. On the show, Zev played Graham’s final tape — Kyiv, 24 hours before his death, announcing the White House had agreed to his Russia sanctions bill — and walked the who-benefits board on a death the medical examiner calls natural causes and Iranian state TV calls a kill. The whole story, including the photograph propping up Mitch McConnell’s empty seat, is in the episode.4️⃣ Twelve States Move to Stop the Ellison Media EmpireCalifornia AG Rob Bonta led a 12-state antitrust suit to block Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — CNN, HBO and CBS News under Larry Ellison’s family, Trump’s biggest donor, who already holds Oracle and TikTok. Zev takes you inside how media owners actually collude — he watched it from inside CBS — and Dean names what Jake Tapper’s weekend Trump interview was really about.3️⃣ ICE Kills Again — Maine This TimeICE agents shot and killed a man in his car in Biddeford, Maine this morning — the second fatal ICE shooting in under a week, at least the fourth death this year — and it took the Maine House Speaker, not the agency, to tell the public. Biddeford poured into the streets. Dean connects it to the Houston foreman ICE admits it killed by mistake last week, and to the $5,000 NDAs his reporting says witnesses were offered.2️⃣ Judge Kathleen Williams Kills the $1.8 Billion Slush FundA federal judge tore up Trump’s settlement with his own IRS — voiding the $1.8 billion “weaponization victims” fund, the family immunity deal, all of it — ruled the suit was filed for an “improper purpose,” and referred Todd Blanche to the Florida bar for attempting to defraud the court. Blanche faces his Senate confirmation hearing for Attorney General on Wednesday. The hosts break down the 56 pages that just followed him there.1️⃣ The Guardian of the StraitIran struck US facilities in Bahrain and radar sites in Oman, and Trump answered by Truth Social: America is now “the Guardian of the Hormuz Strait” and “will be reimbursed at the rate of 20%” on all cargo through it — a toll on a war Congress never voted on, from a blockade Dean calls fantasy dressed as policy. What it actually buys: higher prices straight through November.Watch the full Fivestack at narativ.org — and tonight at 7 PM ET, Amanda Ungaro returns to Narativ Live with new Zampolli documents. Fivestack viewers get 20% off annual subscriptions.Thank you Caro Henry, Lalisa, Courtney M 🇨🇦🏳️🌈, Fran, Jeanne Elbe, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe
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FiveStack: SCOTUS Hands Trump the Government
Jun 3000:58:32Tap to summarizeToday’s FiveStack is brought to you by GroundNews — FiveStack viewers get 40% off their Vantage plan.In forty-eight hours the Supreme Court closed its term and rewrote who runs the government. Six to three, again and again — a number that tells you how fixed this Court has become. It gave Donald Trump the agencies, opened the money spigot, and let the states decide who counts as a girl. Then it drew exactly two lines it would not let him cross: it would not erase the Fourteenth Amendment, and it would not hand him the Federal Reserve.On Tuesday’s Fivestack, Zev counted the five rulings down — least significant to most — with guest Anne P. Mitchell, the Stanford Law professor and federal-law author who writes Notes from the Front. (Dean Blundell was out sick; Mitchell stepped in at short notice.) What follows is the countdown, the words the justices actually wrote, and the impact measured in numbers.5️⃣ The Court Lets the States Decide Who’s a GirlFor three years Lindsey Hecox fought Idaho’s law to try out for the Boise State women’s track team, and a West Virginia middle-schooler, Becky Pepper-Jackson, fought to stay on her school squad. On June 30 the Court ended both fights at once, upholding state bans on transgender girls in girls’ and women’s sports. Kavanaugh wrote it. The vote was 6–3.Mitchell put her finger on the move that should trouble even people who welcome the result: the Court resurrected “separate but equal.” A century of race cases held that separate is inherently unequal. Here the majority says the opposite — that limiting girls’ teams to “biological females” is “substantially related” to an important government interest, and so it stands. The ruling leans on the meaning of “sex” when Title IX passed in 1972, before the country was having any conversation about gender identity. “It’s funny,” Mitchell noted, “how they only do that when it’s to their ideological advantage.”The reach is total. This is the Supreme Court, not a circuit — it is now the law of the land. Twenty-seven states already ban trans girls from school sports; every public school and university in them, K-12 through the NCAA, now operates on solid constitutional ground. Sotomayor, in dissent: “to the Court, the facts do not matter, even though the consequences are serious.” The majority, she wrote, lets states bar every transgender athlete “even if the facts show” no competitive advantage — moving the goalposts to answer the constitutional question without the record to support it.🎯 THE GROUND NEWS BLINDSPOT — The Next Fight Is Already HereThis week’s GroundNews.com’s Blindspot is the sequel the Court already greenlit: it granted review of the assault-weapons bans in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois — the first direct ruling on AR-15-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, with about a dozen state bans hanging on it. Arguments come this fall. Mitchell, who says she hasn’t missed a call yet this term, expects the bans struck. Power, then money, now the guns — the same six justices, one case at a time.Sign up for the blindspot at groundnews.com/fivestack and get 40% off of their vantage plan.4️⃣ Trump Tried to End Birthright Citizenship — and LostOn day one of his second term Trump signed an order stripping citizenship from babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented and temporary residents. Eighteen months later Chief Justice Roberts told him no, 6–3: children born here to parents “unlawfully or temporarily present” are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and “are citizens at birth.” The challengers’ reading, Roberts wrote, “commanded only a dissent in 1898, and neither time nor circumstance has changed the fact it is not the law.”Mitchell traced the stakes back to the worst day in the Court’s history. The Fourteenth Amendment exists because of Dred Scott — the 1857 ruling that Black Americans born on this soil were not citizens. The amendment was the country’s answer. Her takeaway: even a Supreme Court can be overruled by the people who wrote the Constitution to begin with. “They are only one of three — I argue four — branches of government,” she said. “The fourth being we the people.”The number behind the ruling is enormous. Roughly 255,000 to 260,000 babies a year — about one in nine U.S. births — had their citizenship riding on this case, and the order reached past the undocumented to the children of H-1B workers, international students, asylum seekers, and DACA recipients. It is Trump’s biggest defeat of the term. And the warning sits in the dissent: Thomas, joined by Gorsuch, wrote 90 pages arguing the other way. The three justices who wanted to read the amendment down are still on the bench.3️⃣ The Court Opens the Spigot — Unlimited Party MoneyA Watergate-era cap on how much a party could spend hand-in-glove with its own candidate just fell. In NRSC v. FEC, Kavanaugh wrote for a 6–3 majority that coordinated-spending limits “necessarily abridge political parties’ freedom of speech.” One of the original plaintiffs, back in 2022, was a Senate candidate named JD Vance — now the Vice President, who will run on a case he helped bring.Mitchell flagged a detail most coverage skipped: the suit was filed under Biden, but by the time it reached the Court, the Trump DOJ agreed with the plaintiffs. The justices had to appoint outside counsel to defend the limits at all — and you have to wonder how vigorous a defense the law got with no administration behind it. The result rewires the money. A single donor’s reach jumps from $7,000 given directly to a candidate to roughly $500,000 routed through the party — a 70-fold widening, by Justice Kagan’s math — and the party can now operate in lockstep with the campaign. Republicans are cheering louder than Democrats, Mitchell said, because “they’re the party of a massive amount of money behind the donors.”The throughline is Citizens United. That ruling freed the outside money; this one frees the inside money, the party and the candidate spending as one. Kagan, in dissent, warned it “ushers back in the same opportunities for quid pro quo corruption that the contribution limits were meant to check.” Watch the airwaves in contested districts as November approaches.2️⃣ The Fed Survives — But Read the Fine PrintHere the show did what Narativ exists to do: correct the headline. Every outlet reported that the Court let Lisa Cook keep her seat at the Federal Reserve. Mitchell stopped Zev cold. “That’s not what it says.”What the 5–4 ruling actually did was send Cook’s case back down. Trump moved to fire her over an allegation of mortgage fraud surfaced by Bill Pulte; the Court found she had never been given a chance to answer it, and remanded so she can present her defense. Along the way the majority wrote an exhaustive history of why the Fed, created by its own statute, has always stood apart — but it pointedly did not announce a blanket rule that Fed governors can only be fired for cause. As Mitchell put it, Trump probably wishes he had fired Cook without stating a reason at all. Had he done that, she’d have gone the way of Rebecca Slaughter.Why it ranks second on a list where it touches one person: this is the board that sets interest rates, that steers inflation, affordability, the direction of the whole economy. A president who can install a majority on the Federal Reserve can manipulate the cost of living heading into an election. The Court drew its second line here — not out of principle, but because even this majority knows a president who can fire the Fed chair on a whim can crash the bond market. The line held by a single vote.1️⃣ The 90-Year Wall Falls — Trump Can Fire Them AllThe biggest ruling of the term overturned a unanimous 1935 precedent. For ninety years, Humphrey’s Executor held that a president could not fire the members of independent agencies just for disagreeing with him. On June 29, in Trump v. Slaughter, Roberts erased it 6–3. The case began when Trump fired FTC commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya in 2025 with no cause, citing only Article II.Mitchell called the animus by name. Roberts has been gunning for Humphrey’s since 2010, chipping away case by case, shopping for the right plaintiff and the right moment for fifteen years — a Federalist Society long game, with Trump as the figurehead willing to bring the suit. The Chief Justice wrote his contempt into the opinion: “if anything more is left of Humphrey’s, the Court overrules it.” This was never really about Slaughter. It was about who is allowed to work in government.The impact is structural: more than two dozen independent agencies — the FTC, the SEC, the FCC, the NLRB, and the rest — lose their insulation. Congress built them bipartisan on purpose, so the referees couldn’t be fired for the call. Now they answer to one man. Mitchell offered her “cynical hope” — that Trump has already done most of the firing, so the damage may be priced in. Zev was less sanguine: a president who has spent his term gutting the government of anyone who opposes him will go as deep as the law now lets him. The enforcement machine has one master, and he has shown he will use it.ALSO FROM THE BENCHTwo rulings barely made the headlines, and Mitchell brought both to the table. In Chatri v. United States, the Court held that pulling a person’s cell-phone location data from Google is a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant — Americans have “a reasonable expectation of privacy in their cell phone location information.” Against an administration building...
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FiveStack: Trump's Mailroom Coup Exposed
Jun 2500:41:50Tap to summarize5️⃣ Leon Black Faces the Committee — $170 Million for “Tax Advice”Leon Black sits for House Oversight tomorrow, and Zev set the stakes: $170 million paid to Jeffrey Epstein over the years for what Black calls tax and estate planning. Narativ has reported that much of it ran through tax swindles — including the art-deal scheme the show investigated a few weeks ago, which Zev called one of the most egregious examples of how Black and Epstein conspired to steal from the American taxpayer.Zev set expectations low for the testimony itself. Black, he said, will follow the Bill Gates script — a 30-year friend of Epstein who claims he never knew, who will obfuscate, define the word “me,” and offer no real accountability. But Black is 1A in this story alongside Donald Trump: the financial crimes reach back to the 1987 crash, the $62.5 million he paid the US Virgin Islands in 2023 to escape prosecution, and the money that moved between Black and Russian women. Black has been photographed beside Vladimir Putin, and he traveled to Moscow with Trump in 1996. The money, Zev noted, keeps leading the same direction.4️⃣ The Real Cost of Venezuela Comes HomeTwo earthquakes leveled the towns west of Caracas on Wednesday night. The toll climbed through the show — at least 188 dead, and rising — in a country the United States captured in January and has occupied ever since. Marco Rubio has already sent resources, and Zev noted the policy itself is sound: you endear yourself to a people you now hold.But Dean landed the contradiction hard. He reminded viewers of Hurricane Helene’s wreckage still unrepaired across North Carolina, of the Texas floods that killed children at Camp Mystic, of FEMA money Trump refused at home — while resources flow to Venezuela to protect oil. When you seize a nation, you seize its rubble too. The bill for empire doesn’t stop when the cameras leave.3️⃣ A War He Calls “Over” Keeps ClimbingThe Iran war’s price tag won’t stop rising. The administration sent Congress an $87.6 billion supplemental — $21 billion for munitions, $17.3 billion in operations, $12.1 billion classified that no one outside the room can see. And that number, Zev stressed, leaves out the biggest line: nine US sites hit in the first 48 hours, carriers in dry dock, dozens of aircraft destroyed. The real cost runs toward $200 billion.Dean pushed it further — fold in the restitution and the deal-servicing meant to reopen Gulf investment, and the figure approaches half a trillion dollars for a war Zev called foolish to enter and worse to lose. That’s money, the two noted, that could have funded healthcare, the affordable housing Trump just abandoned, or the debt. Instead it went to a war the president promised he’d never fight.2️⃣ Two 6-3 Rulings in a Day — The Court Guts TPS and AsylumThe Supreme Court spent the spring letting lower courts slow Trump down. Thursday it stopped pretending — twice. One 6-3 ruling ends Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians, stripping protection from roughly 350,000 to half a million people who have built decades of American life and now face removal. The second revived border “metering,” capping how many asylum seekers can apply each day and turning the rest away at the door.Zev flagged the human edge: Syrians sent back may face a hostile new regime as potential opponents; Haitians return to the most poverty-stricken country in the hemisphere. Dean named the design beneath the law — not protecting Americans, but vilifying everyone else, a cudgel sharpened since “they’re eating the pets.” Justice Sotomayor, dissenting from the bench, said the ruling “extinguishes the light of the torch of the Statue of Liberty.”1️⃣ The Postmaster Enforces an Order the Courts Already StruckThe breaking story, and the one the show argued matters most: Postmaster General David Steiner testified Thursday that the Postal Service will withhold mail ballots from any state that won’t surrender its voter rolls. Asked directly by Senator Gary Peters whether USPS would still mail ballots to a non-complying state, Steiner answered: “No.” A federal judge struck down the underlying executive order a day earlier. Steiner is enforcing it anyway.Dean called it plainly — an attempt to run January 6th through the mail — and read the order aloud: DHS directed to mash Social Security, immigration, and State Department records into citizenship lists; USPS, built by Congress to stay out of politics, turned into the gatekeeper of who may vote by mail. Combine that with the SAVE Act, he warned, and you build double jeopardy for anyone without a passport or driver’s license, anyone who changed their name, every woman who married last year and no longer matches a federal list. Zev traced the wider machine — the career election officials at DHS replaced by 2020 deniers, Pulte now atop ODNI, a multi-department assault on November. The courts may not stop it in time. That’s the alarm.THE PATTERNRead the five together and the shape is unmistakable: a regime spending half a trillion abroad while refusing FEMA at home, deporting the desperate while pardoning El Chapo’s people, and rewriting the rules of the next election through a mailroom and a barcode. Zev and Dean kept returning to one word — colonialism — and one comparison: Vladimir Putin. The cost of the Trump presidency, Zev said, will dwarf even the $80 trillion Narativ has tracked. But Dean closed on the read beneath the desperation: these are cornered rats, a fingernail from The Hague, and that fear is exactly why all of it is happening at once. Stay calm. Call your senator. Fight.Narativ publishes the full investigation of Trump’s USPS midterm play today. Subscribe at narativ.org to read it.Thank you Cat: Poli-Psych, Uncomfortable Truth by Monica, LC - Silence is Complicity, Grace Lovelace, julie elder, and many others for tuning into my live video with Dean Blundell! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.narativ.org/subscribe
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