Rick Harrison

Rick Harrison

@rickharrison.bsky.social

New Jersey expat, cynical idealist. My opinions are my own, not my employer’s. I don’t own a pawn shop.

7.1K followers12.4K following424 posts

Rick Harrison reposted

I know there's a lot going on but I feel it should probably be more of an above-the-fold story that members of Congress released a thoroughly documented report directly accusing the president of the United States of being a serial rapist.

Rick Harrison reposted

OBAMA: "Trump is focused on enriching himself & his family/friends. A Venezuelan billionaire wanted a pardon, so he paid a Trump lawyers $50 million — and lo & behold! The pardon falls out of the sky... We’ve never seen a president straight-up grifting on your dime like this."

Rick Harrison reposted

If still debating whether Donald Trump or Elon Musk willfully crippled Ukraine's missile defense, helping to slay innocent civilians, you are a rube. If the U.S. President had no role, then an oligarch governs national security. If not, the U.S. President serves Russia. Both answers are mortifying.

Rick Harrison reposted

The president sides with child rapists and their enablers. That's the message I'm receiving.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Trump: "Ramaswamy put up a very powerful Ad about a mother saying that her daughter, Acton, is a liar, and much worse. The Press is trying to get him to 'take down the Ad.' Frankly, anybody whose mother spoke about daughter that way would normally lead to the daughter being precluded from serving"

Rick Harrison reposted

This sick, vile, disqualifying ad, siding with a monster who abandoned her 12-year-old daughter in favor of the boyfriend who raped her, and hasn't seen her daughter in 50 years, accusing Acton of lying about, it is being headlinezed into normalcy. It's NOT normal. Don't do that.

Please do not describe it as an "attack ad" in which Acton's "estranged mother" "calls her a liar." It's a "taboo-breaking ad accusing Acton of lying about being raped as as child"

Rick Harrison reposted

we're going to need a long-term plan, with broad political appeal, for ending impunity & holding the trump administration accountable for its crimes, malfeasance & cruelties. not 'tit-for-tat' but an american version of transitional justice. my take in @slate.com 👇

slate.comAmerica Needs to Reckon With What Trump 2.0 Has Done. Planning Should Start Now. (Gift Article)Some people will beg off in the name of “bipartisanship.” That will not solve anything.

Rick Harrison reposted

My brain cannot process this level of corruption. She was being paid $50 million to engineer a pardon from Trump *while working at the Justice Department* as a "Special Government Employee." And it worked. He got the pardon, and she got the money. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/u...

nytimes.comA Billionaire Wanted a Trump Pardon. His Family Gave Alina Habba a $50 Million Deal. (Gift Article)Julio Herrera Velutini, a prominent Venezuelan, was seeking clemency. He got it not long after his daughter gave Ms. Habba, a lawyer close to President Trump, an extraordinarily lucrative job.

Rick Harrison reposted

Demonizing someone who thinks he is better than everyone else because he is white is *not* the same as demonizing someone who is black because he wants to be treated the same as everyone else. JD Vance is an ignorant apologist for White Supremacy.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

JD Vance makes excuses for white nationalists: "When you demonize a guy because he's white, it's just as evil as when you demonize a guy because he's Black. When you demonize a guy because he's white ... some people will get radicalized into some very dangerous ideas."

Rick Harrison reposted

The slithering back to even vaguely positive or optimistic analyses of Trump’s second term after the abominations of January 6th cleared the way for today’s abject betrayal of the Ukrainian people. It’s astonishing how many public figures on both sides of the Atlantic are complicit in the crime.

Rick Harrison reposted

Replying to @markharris.bsky.social

This language endangers lives. It treats gay people as by definition worthy of contempt and less than fully human and trustworthy. To discuss it as "strategy" or an odd "choice" is to put yourself in the service of minimizing it, to volunteer as thecleanup crew for evil men. I'm sick of it.

Rick Harrison reposted

Rick Harrison reposted

QUICK QUIZ: Which of these was an actual TV show to air on CBS in 2024: NCIS: Topeka Law & Order: Animal Control Unit Cold Case: Criminal Minds CSI: FBI NCIS: Hawai’i NCIS: No Jurisdiction FBI: Dubai US Coast Guard: Vessel Boarding Security Teams (VBST)

Up until recently, I would say it was usually hyperbole to call a prominent media figure a Nazi. But what else should you call someone who talks like this? Some might say he’s being ignorant or stupid. I don’t think he’s either of those things. Provocative and contrarian, sure. But this is more.

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social

Tucker: “I never understood why 🇬🇧 fought World War 2?” 😕 Rees-Mogg: “It was good vs. evil…We did the right thing…” Tucker: “Has 🇬🇧 benefitted?” RM: “We defeated Hitler… We’d all be speaking German…” Tucker: “Who cares?” 🤔

He is clearly intelligent, meaning he can read and understand complex topics, he has a broad base of knowledge, and the ability to use language eloquently. His conclusions are almost always factually and/or morally wrong. Does he believe what he’s saying? I’d argue it doesn’t matter.

Vonnegut wrote a book about a non-ideological Nazi propagandist working for the Americans during WWII. The moral appeared in opening remarks written 5 years after its 1961 publication: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Rick Harrison reposted

Whether it’s Benjamin Netanyahu empowering Hamas, presiding over a massive intelligence failure that let them kill 1,200 Israelis on October 7th, and then killing 74,000 Palestinians in response or Zohran Mamdani pointing out that he did this, both men have fueled their bitter feud.

Assuming they aren’t lying (just for fun), how is paying for something you don’t use considered an act of fraud? What even is the concept here?

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Assistant AG for Fraud Colin McDonald: "Apparently 35% of people have never even used their Obamacare account for any health services. That is a statistical impossibility and it's because these are not real people seeking real care. These are fraudsters."

So much of society’s functioning relies on shared faith in the persistence of abstract ideas: Money can be used for goods & services. Laws protect us & punish bad actors. Elected officials should serve the public good. We possess inalienable rights. Fascism is bad. Facts are real. Seems so quaint.

Rick Harrison reposted

When they do this, it's not enough to reject the demand. You've got to shove it back in their face, and ask why they never ask Republicans to denounce the racist mass murderer who is their party's top donor and who was given the keys to the federal government to cause mass chaos.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Raskin after Kristen Welker plays him clips of controversial Hasan Piker comments and asks him to react to them: "I think all of that is an irrelevant distraction"

Rick Harrison reposted

This is downstream of America's oligarchy problem. The GOP is the party of the top 1% of the wealth distribution, but also the ~25th-80th percentile. Meanwhile, media is the provenance of the 90th-99th%ile where you'll encounter dumb campus leftism, but not Nazism or Christian nationalism.

Radley Balko@radleybalko.bsky.social

It’s mind-blowing that we have literal white nationalists in the White House carrying out unfathomably cruel, abusive, white nationalist policies, and the punditariat has spent the last two weeks debating if some people were too intemperate after a Black man was murdered by cops six years ago.

Rick Harrison reposted

There are going to be Democrats who say we shouldn’t rip it all out — it’s already built, we have other priorities — but removing the visible signs of Trumpism is absolutely necessary.

Andy Craig@andycraig.bsky.social

The vandalism and desecration of the White House isn't just vanity and it's not trivial. It's caesarism, as in literally what Julius Caesar did to the symbolic architecture of civic republicanism. Our national iconography matters and allowing the disfiguring of it to persist is a substantive harm.

Honest Question: What IS the biggest scandal of this presidency?

Steve Benen@stevebenen.com

There’s fresh evidence that the White House hatched a scheme to punish an American state because it didn’t free a convicted felon the president likes. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” a federal judge said. “I’ve never even imagined something like it.” Why isn't this a bigger scandal?

In the future, when a Democrat does anything remotely similar to these egregious acts of corruption, obfuscation, and outright deception, they will suddenly act like they care. As if their outrage originates from some untouchable integrity. Most will act as though they have forgotten. But not me.

Rick Harrison reposted

Replying to @michaelhobbes.bsky.social

The excesses of the Woke 1 era mostly amount to cringe public statements, harmless vocabulary updates and loss of prestige for public figures. The backlash to Woke 1, on the other hand, is imprisoning dissidents, dismantling public education and eroding democracy. That's what needs reckoning

Rick Harrison reposted

An experienced fact-checker, Linda Qiu, at the most well-resourced and serious news organization in America, STILL cannot manage to call a true statement true: "Susan Collins helped Trump slash Medicaid to the tune of $990 billion.” —Troy Jackson This is true. Here's why Qiu gets it wrong:

nytimes.comFact-Checking 3 Competitive Senate Races in Maine, Michigan and OhioRepublican attacks have focused on terrorism and illegal immigration, while Democrats have sought to capitalize on the unpopularity of President Trump’s cuts to Medicaid.

Rick Harrison reposted

"If there is a question to ask, then, it is this: Why does Musk get a pass? Why do politicians, journalists and commentators treat his far-right racist radicalism as a sideshow rather than the core of his political, ideological and industrial project..." www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/o...

nytimes.comOpinion | Elon Musk Is a Menace to Society (Gift Article)Why does the owner of X get a pass for what he says and does there?