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One of the best and most poignant moments in the underappreciated 1999 TV movie, RKO 281, about the making of Citizen Kane and the battle between William Randolph Hearst and the brash upstart Orson Welles, comes when Hearst, defeated, broke, and broken, defends himself and the choices he’s made in an argument with his mistress, Marion Davies:

Hearst seemed to have everything: wealth, political influence, multiple homes, a beautiful actress-mistress in California and a wife and five sons back home in New York. And, of course, a media empire that included prominent newspapers across the country. He tried his hand at politics, serving two terms in the House as a Democrat, but losing races for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1904, mayor of New York (twice), and governor of New York. Relentlessly acquisitive, he eventually spent himself into penury, losing control of his company and retiring into seclusion. As James Cromwell, the actor portraying Hearst in the film cited above, says: “I am a man who could have been great, but was not.”

If that reminds you of anybody, join the club.

Exit quote: “For reasons both of, and not of, his own making, Trump (like Hearst) will go out a loser. For the good of the nation, when the time is right and DeSantis most needs him to, he should close down his campaign and retire gracefully to Mar-a-Lago. It may not be Hearst Castle, but if he can hang on to it in the financial disruption that is almost certain to come, he can still do his country a great service. He can be great, just not in the way he might have wished.“

GOOD LUCK: NASA starts RS-25 engine testing for future Artemis missions.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The One Island Where You’ll Definitely Die If You Set Foot on the Beach.

Located [adjacent to India] in the Bay of Bengal, North Sentinel Island was a national news story in 2018 when a Christian missionary John Allen Chau attempted to bring the word of Christ to these people, who he considered lived on Satan’s Island. He knew the risks, and after bribing some fisherman to get him within sight of the island’s shoreline, he met his maker—literally. The Sentinelese butchered the missionary and buried Chau on the beach where it remains today as multiple efforts from local authorities to retrieve the body proved unsuccessful—the natives kept showing up in force.

In 2006, two Indian fishermen were illegally fishing in the waters around the island and got intoxicated, crashing their ship into the surrounding reefs. Witnesses from other fishing boats in the area witnessed Sentinelese men emerging from the dense jungle with weapons and butchering the two men. They later displayed their bodies like scarecrows on the beach as a warning.

In 1976, the cargo ship MV Rusley ran aground near the island, along with the MV Primrose five years later. The crew of the Primrose encountered the belligerent natives and sent an urgent distress call asking for firearms and ammunition for protection. The ship had no weapons, and the crew was waiting for another passing vessel to rescue them. RealLifeLore added that the weapons drop wasn’t necessary as American helicopter pilots working in the area could airlift the besieged crew off the ship. The YouTube account humorously added that this was probably when the Sentinelese got thrust into the Iron Age, as they later scavenged the abandoned ship.

Read the whole thing.

IS JUDGE JUDY A CIVIL RIGHTS SCOFFLAW?: I’m shocked.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Gov. Ron DeSantis Asks Grand Jury to Probe Wrongdoing Over COVID Vax.

TYLER O’NEIL: Conservatives, Christians Systematically Excluded From Benefits of Christmas Shopping on Amazon. “Amazon systematically excludes many conservative Christians from the kind of Christmas cheer that comes with knowing that every purchase helps a good cause of their choice. Thanks to Amazon’s decision to exclude organizations that the SPLC brands ‘hate groups,’ those who support religious liberty can’t help ADF with their doll or other purchases.”

ALL IN THE FAMILY: Sam Bankman-Fried’s esteemed Stanford parents face their own reckoning.

As Joe Bankman and Barbara Fried sat in a Bahamian courtroom Tuesday, the popular Stanford law professors had to be worried about more than whether their FTX founder son, Sam Bankman-Fried, will go to prison for orchestrating what a federal prosecutor described as “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”

The couple also have to be concerned about their own legal jeopardy, a criminal law expert said, given reports that they were involved, at some level, in their son’s efforts to build his allegedly fraudulent cryptocurrency exchange into a $32 billion business. They face scrutiny on multiple fronts over whether they were complicit in the alleged crimes that led to the company’s spectacular collapse.

“I can’t imagine a world where Bankman-Fried’s parents were not his financial and legal advisors,” said Matthew Barhoma, a criminal defense and appellate attorney who is based in Los Angeles.

It could get especially ugly for the couple, who are accustomed to a privileged life in high-minded academia. If prosecutors and the FBI want to play hardball, they could try to force Bankman and Fried to cooperate with the investigation and to testify against their beloved son.

“Beloved?” How much money did SBF funnel to the San Jose Mercury?

Meanwhile: Caroline Ellison likely working with feds against Sam Bankman-Fried.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s reported ex-girlfriend was likely among the first people to turn on him and help prosecutors build their fast-moving fraud case in the epic, $8 billion-plus collapse of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange, a former US government lawyer said Wednesday,

Caroline Ellison, 28, is a key figure in the case as she was at one time CEO of the Alameda Research hedge fund — which authorities claim received billions of dollars that Bankman-Fried, 30, diverted from FTX.

“She would have among the greatest incentives to cooperate, as it was seeming likely that in his effort to exculpate himself, Bankman-Fried would try to finger her,” former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer Howard Fischer told The Post.

Fischer said “the speed of the indictment and the breadth of the charges” against Bankman-Fried meant “someone relatively senior is cooperating with the federal authorities in exchange for leniency for their own potential misconduct.”

“It is possible Bankman-Fried’s publicity tour, in which he repeatedly disclaimed either knowledge of — or responsibility for — mishandling or theft of customer assets, spurred senior officers to fear that he would specifically blame them,” he said.

Finally, America’s Newspaper of Record is now just doing straight-up reportage: DOJ Arrests Sam Bankman-Fried For Running Out Of Bribery Money.

FASTER, PLEASE: World-First Trial Transfusing Lab-Grown Red Blood Cells Begins.

FROM LARRY ALEXANDER: Free Speech and Private Censors.

THAT KINDA MAKES SENSE: McLaren Partners With Lockheed Martin Skunk Works on Road Car Technology.

AT AMAZON, deals on Last-Minute Gifts. #CommissionEarned.

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