BREAKING: WIFE FOR PAY? An ex-White House aide says Melania Trump only shows up to be Trump’s wife in public if she gets PAID for it and otherwise wants nothing to do with him or the First Lady job! If the shoe fits, Melania… The president’s bizarre and clearly extremely strained relationship with his wife continues to undergo more and more scrutiny as it appears she has been replaced by a young, blonde, obsessive disciple – Natalie Harp. In fact, Melania has been almost entirely absent from the public eye for his entire second term. When she does show up, it’s usually very briefly – unless she’s holding a personal press conference to throw Epstein’s victims under the bus. That may be explained by a former White House official revealing that Melania was being paid to attend campaign events. Former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews spent a year on the Donald Trump campaign before joining the White House staff for its final seven months in Trump’s first term, and she had some very interesting things to share. "When I was working on the campaign for a year and then at the White House for the last seven months of the first admin, I met the vice president, I met almost every cabinet official. I met members of the first family; I met all of them at one point or another. The only person I never met was Melania Trump," Matthews told the On Sunday podcast. "I never met the first lady, even though I was the deputy spokesperson for the president on his campaign and in the White House. That kind of sums it up, where it was this known thing that she was just not around, and she didn't want to be around," she said. “We know too that—it’s been reported—that Melania gets paid for showing up at events when they were on the campaign trail, which is crazy to think that you have to pay your own wife to show up somewhere.” Matthews wondered if Melania's "rate has gone up after all of this news, because I'm sure she doesn't like any of this being out there — whether or not it's true." Which begs the question…what else is/has Melania been paid to do? Has their entire marriage just been a sugar daddy arrangement? Did he just purchase her from one of Jeffrey Epstein’s fixers? Whatever the truth might be, it’s just another peek behind the curtain into how literally everything in Trump’s life is a scam, a con, or a delusion.

 BREAKING: “MAYBE I WASN’T KIDDING”: Trump doubles down on his bizarre plan to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” – suggesting that everyone who thought he was joking is in for a surprise!

Trump used a new interview with MAGA hack Glenn Beck this morning to revive his threat to rename Lake Ontario, just one day after posting that his administration was giving ‘serious consideration’ to calling it ‘Lake America.’ 

“You know, people thought I was kidding,” Trump told Beck. “Maybe I wasn’t, because the last one you saw was the Gulf of Mexico’s Gulf of America. Now we have a gulf and we have a lake.”

The comment came one day after Trump posted an image proposing to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America,” saying the United States was giving the idea “serious consideration.”

On its face, this is just stupid and puerile – a president of the United States amusing himself by crossing out the name of a lake shared with one of our closest allies and replacing it with “America.”

But Trump’s attacks on Canada have a political purpose whether or not this particular stunt was dreamed up with one in mind. Picking fights with allies and portraying America as some sort of victim plays directly to the grievance and jingoism that used to fire up his political base. 

And it comes at a convenient moment, as the debacle in Iran continues to fester and our ADHD president needs to think about something else. 

The more serious problem is that Canada isn't some prop at a Trump rally. It is a sovereign country, major trading partner and longtime American ally. 

Deliberately attempting to humiliate and antagonize it can have consequences that extend far beyond a moronic social media post and online bluster.