No, Eric Trump Didn’t Say That; How a Chinese AI Company Freaked Out the Stock Market–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Jan. 27, 2025

Indy Digest: Jan. 27, 2025

A LOT of things have come across my news and social media feeds over the last week that made me exclaim, “WHAT IN THE EVER-LOVING (BAD WORD)?!”

One of those things from yesterday involved a supposed tweet (or whatever the heck you call postings on the toxic platform that is X these days) by Eric Trump, son of the president. Numerous people on social media shared a screen shot of the post, which had purportedly been up for 20 minutes before being deleted. It read:

Any and all who dare to defy the American Golden Age, heed this warning: You WILL lose. Tow the line, or we WILL run you down!

The gloves are off, and we’re not playing around this time. For now, it’s tariffs, but trust me: We can, and will, do SO MUCH WORSE.

Holy (BAD WORD), right!?

Well … this post—apparently in reference to Colombia initially refusing to allow certain flights with repatriated migrants—is fake. It didn’t really happen.

Snopes did a thorough debunking of this alleged post earlier today:

There were no links to the deleted post, nor any mainstream news coverage of the moment. Furthermore, the screenshot appeared edited. As such, we rate this claim as fake.

We reached out to Eric Trump via the Trump Organization to learn more. A spokesperson for the organization responded, “Eric Trump never made that statement. This is a completely false story, and to suggest otherwise is complete and total slander.” …

All the posts sharing the screenshot appeared suspicious because they provided no actual link to the deleted post. Had there been a link available, we would have been able to find whether the post had been archived before deletion.

We also looked closely at the details in the screenshot. We found it had been edited and did not show a real tweet.

I do not understand why some people enjoy making up crap like this—especially when there are so many other things actually happening right now that are equally bonkers, or close to it. But some idiots do like to make crap up, and it sucks.

Misinformation/disinformation is bad, and it’s everywhere. As always, it’s a good policy to stick to reliable information sources—and before you repost on social media, take a moment or two to verify.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Here’s one of the things that made me make the aforementioned exclamation, and this one, alas, is real: Trump’s firing, probably illegal, of independent government watchdogs. The New York Times reports: “The Trump administration on Monday ordered former staff members for as many as 17 fired inspectors general to immediately arrange for the return of work laptops, phones, parking decals and ID cards—even as questions remained over whether President Trump broke the law in dismissing independent watchdogs. Some of the fired officials were seeking to raise alarms about what had happened. Among them was Mark Greenblatt, whom Mr. Trump had appointed as the inspector general of the Interior Department five years ago and who had led an interagency council of the watchdog officials until the new year. ‘This raises an existential threat with respect to the primary independent oversight function in the federal government,’ Mr. Greenblatt said in an interview. ‘We have preserved the independence of inspectors general by making them not swing with every change in political party.’”

• Remember when Trump was distancing himself from Project 2025? Time magazine says: “Just days into his second term, many of Trump’s early actions align with the Project 2025 agenda. An analysis by TIME found that nearly two-thirds of the executive actions Trump has issued so far mirror or partially mirror proposals from the 900-page document, ranging from sweeping deregulation measures to aggressive immigration reform. Democrats had seized on Trump’s connection to Project 2025 during the campaign, pointing out that many of the playbook’s contributors previously worked for Trump or had connections to his orbit. Trump repeatedly said he had ‘no idea who is behind’ the conservative blueprint and that some of its ideas were ‘absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.’”

• California Republicans are torn about Trump putting conditions on federal aid for victims of the Los Angeles wildfires. Our partners at Calmatters report: “The choice before members of the state’s GOP House delegation is a tricky one: Would they fight for unconditional aid to constituents in their home state but risk incurring the wrath of Trump, who has a reputation for rewarding loyalists and punishing those who cross him? Or would they side with their party’s president but risk criticism from future opponents that they didn’t rush to help a California in need? … The delegation already is splintering. Rep. Young Kim—a swing district Republican representing fire-prone parts of Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties—decried talks of conditional aid as ‘playing politics with people’s livelihoods’ and a ‘slap in the face’ to wildfire victims and firefighters. … But Rep. Tom McClintock, whose district in the Sierra mountains and foothills south of Lake Tahoe saw the state’s largest wildfire in 2022, adamantly agreed with the president on making the aid conditional, adding that federal agencies should distribute relief dollars directly to victims.”

• Speaking of the L.A. wildfires: Several Coachella Valley alley cities are easing vacation-rental rules to help out victims of the fires who are staying here. Our friends at The Palm Springs Post say: “The Palm Springs City Council unanimously approved a measure Thursday night to grant temporary relief from annual rental caps for vacation rental properties hosting evacuees from recent Los Angeles wildfires. The decision, which mirrors a similar effort in La Quinta, allows vacation rental owners to offer short-term stays to evacuees without those bookings counting toward their yearly contract limits. … The relief will be retroactive to Jan. 7 and continue through Feb. 28. It comes in response to the state of emergency proclaimed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Jan. 7 to support communities impacted by the fires. Currently, vacation rental properties in Palm Springs are restricted in how often they can be rented annually. Properties with permits issued before Oct. 18, 2022, can be rented up to 36 times per calendar year, while those permitted after that date are limited to 26 contracts. Under the new measure, stays by wildfire evacuees will be treated similarly to friends and family stays, which do not count toward the annual limits.”

• It was an interesting day on the stock market, because investors are freaked out that a Chinese company has apparently made huge strides regarding AI. CNBC says: “Nvidia lost close to $600 billion in market cap on Monday, the biggest drop for any company on a single day in U.S. history. … After Nvidia surpassed Apple last week to become the most valuable publicly traded company, the stock’s drop Monday led a 3.1% slide in the tech-heavy Nasdaq. The sell-off was sparked by concerns that Chinese artificial intelligence lab DeepSeek is presenting increased competition in the global AI battle. In late December, DeepSeek unveiled a free, open-source large language model that it said took only two months and less than $6 million to build, using reduced-capability chips from Nvidia called H800s. Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, dominate the market for AI data center chips in the U.S., with tech giants such as Alphabet, Meta and Amazon spending billions of dollars on the processors to train and run their AI models. Analysts at Cantor wrote in a report Monday that the release of DeepSeek’s latest technology has caused ‘great angst as to the impact for compute demand, and therefore, fears of peak spending on GPUs.’”

• And finally … we’ll conclude with a health-related story that also made me exclaim out loud. Trigger warning: It’s kind of disgusting. Wired magazine says: “What could go wrong with eating an extremely high-fat diet of beef, cheese, and sticks of butter? Well, for one thing, your cholesterol levels could reach such stratospheric levels that lipids start oozing from your blood vessels, forming yellowish nodules on your skin. That was the disturbing case of a man in Florida who showed up at a Tampa hospital with a three-week history of painless, yellow eruptions on the palms of his hands, soles of his feet, and elbows. His case was published today in JAMA Cardiology. The man, said to be in his forties, told doctors that he had adopted a ‘carnivore diet’ eight months prior. His diet included between 6 and 9 pounds of cheese, sticks of butter, and daily hamburgers that had additional fat incorporated into them. Since taking on this brow-raising food plan, he claimed his weight dropped, his energy levels increased, and his ‘mental clarity’ improved. Meanwhile, his total cholesterol level exceeded 1,000 mg/dL. For context, an optimal total cholesterol level is under 200 mg/dL, while 240 mg/dL is considered the threshold for ‘high.’” Ew!

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