Writer-for-hire: Cinapse, Screen Anarchy, That Shelf. 🍅meter-approved critic. Member: SFBAFCC, OFCS. He/Him. Progressive. #LGBTQ+ Ally #ReproRights
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Joined July 2007
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Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
Clay Travis claims The Cheesecake Factory was a childhood luxury. Except it didn't open in Nashville until he was 26.
@Timodc and @PabloTorre investigate the curious case of his restaurant nostalgia:
“We are now swift boating Clay Travis for Cheesecake Factory stolen valor.”
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
Witkoff tried to convince Budanov of how rich he could be if he sold out his country by allowing Russian pipelines to again flow through Ukraine. Budanov ended the meeting.
Content of Tense Conversation Between Budanov and Trump's Team Revealed
Negotiations between the Ukrainian delegation and Donald Trump's special envoys in Miami, as reported by Le Monde, escalated into a conflict. According to the publication, during a three-hour meeting at the Shell Bay golf club, Steve Witkoff "with irritation" demanded that Kyrylo Budanov, head of Zelenskyy's office, cease strikes on Russian oil refineries.
Budanov, per Le Monde's information, "barely contained his anger" and felt that he was being "treated like a child, trying to teach him how to make money." The Americans presented an ambitious plan for postwar "regional prosperity," which envisioned resuming the transit of Russian oil and gas to Europe through Ukraine, with dividends paid to Kyiv.
Budanov was outraged that such a deal would tie Ukraine to Moscow, after which the negotiations broke off. When the meeting resumed, the Americans proposed accepting a deal for supplies of Russian diesel to the United States.
The publication's sources noted that they had never seen Ukrainians "so upset and alarmed." Zelenskyy's entourage described the situation as "hopeless," since Trump's envoys "think only about business."
📸: Press service of the President of Ukraine
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
“The easiest thing for a political leader to do is to appeal to our bigotry and our hatred and xenophobia and prejudice, and point to people who are unlike us and say they’re the ones who are damaging our country," Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., August 5, 2016 on Larry King Now.
There was a time when I completely agreed with my brother. Today, I am deeply ashamed of him.
Arab and Muslim people alike have made extraordinary contributions to the world across literature, science, mathematics, medicine and countless other fields. To name a few, Omar M. Yaghi won the Wolf Prize in Chemistry in 2018 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2025. Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1999, and Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.
A person’s race, religion, ethnicity or socioeconomic background does not determine their intellect, creativity or capacity to contribute to humanity.
My thoughts are with all those hurt by my brother’s false, cruel and derogatory words.
nytimes.com/2026/10/27/us/rf…
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
A sitting governor exchanged 1,400 intimate and embarrassing emails with the world's richest man, then gave him about $2 billion in tax breaks.
State law bans the governor from preventing sitting legislators from seeing those public records. Greg Abbott did it anyway.
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
Whoever this "strategist" is shouldn't be listened to. Ossoff is actually famous for excellence in constituent service, which is definitionally "retail politics." Also you don't get that kind of embrace in the Black community in Georgia if you're a "robot." Ossoff's ties are deep
“He’s a robot,” says one top Democratic strategist who has interacted with Ossoff. “He can do the speeches. But he can’t do the retail politics at all.” vanityfair.com/story/jon-oss…
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
A Republican nurse in Georgia reached out to Mike Collins after Trump’s Medicaid cuts closed the ONLY labor and delivery unit in four counties.
Collins literally told her Trump’s agenda was more important than moms & babies.
Another Trump,puppet who doesn’t care about you.
She's voting Ossoff and so should you.
#BlueWaveIn7Days
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
CNN Brasil reports that Trump personally authorized Flávio Bolsonaro's entry into the U.S., and that American officials knew about the Brazilian passport order BEFORE he fled.
Folha is now reporting that Marco Rubio actively participated in arranging his departure, citing sources connected to both governments.
If that reporting holds up, we're looking at the U.S. helping a defeated presidential candidate evade another country's judicial authorities.
That's one hell of a diplomatic scandal.
There are major questions about how Flavio Bolsonaro left Brazil this morning with his family for the US without detection by Brazil.
All morning, Brazilian authorities were utterly confused and clueless. As rumors circulated that Bolsonaro had left Brazil, they had no idea if it was true. At one point, they thought they had located a plane in Argentina, but Bolsonaro wasn't on it. That seems to have been a decoy.
Some Brazilian media outlets are now reporting that the US Govt did not merely agree to allow Bolsonaro to enter, but actively planned, participated in and even executed the exit of Bolsonaro and his family from Brazil to the US: meaning that it was a covert extraction operation by US officials carried out right under the noses of Brazilian intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, who had no idea it was happening.
(Bolsonaro has now arrived in the US, but the secrecy of all this means the US Govt has not publicly spoken on it. Everyone, including me, is working on finding out their version).
There are lots of questions for both governments, some pretty serious implications as well, and ultimately lots of embarrassment for Brazilian officials no matter how it happened (to say nothing of the authoritarian and anti-democratic stench of having Brazil's globally notorious tyrannical judge order the passport seizure of Lula's opponent a mere 7 minutes after Lula was declared the winner).
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
Essayli has no democratic legitimacy. He’s never been confirmed by the Senate. He was disqualified as a US Attorney, and his current title is a legal fiction—an assistant to an empty seat.
He’s a Trump stooge clinging to power to interfere with elections till his appeals lapse.
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
Losing an election is not grounds for asylum.
Yet the Trump Administration is giving Flávio Bolsonaro safe haven in the United States. In Brazil, he is under investigation for alleged corruption, money laundering and currency evasion, and was ordered to surrender his passports.
The Trump Administration owes Congress answers on its role helping Bolsonaro flee Brazil in contravention of Brazilian law.
apnews.com/article/brazil-fl…
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
It was actually our 250th anniversary.
Not that you would know — you spent it with the British.
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
almost all of my students were talking about wildwood today - only a handful had already seen it, but the rest were saying they want to after hearing more about it - and i’m hoping against hope it’s gonna be a slow burn word-of-mouth success story
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
Travis Knight says that LAIKA will never use generative AI in their films.
“AI is theft. It’s the ingestion of years and years and years of human creativity and ingenuity, regurgitated back. It has no humanity. It has no spirit.”
(Source: theplaylist.net/wildwood-tra…)
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
As a former prosecutor, I agree with the saying that any prosecutor “can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.”
So when the grand jury refused to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, that means there was no real evidence. Another huge embarrassment for the corrupt @AGToddBlanche.
Breaking news: A grand jury rejected the DOJ’s attempt to indict former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson for the account she gave lawmakers of President Trump’s actions during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to people familiar with the matter. wapo.st/4jFAkbz
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
😂 The Cheesecake Factory thing really got to him, didn't it.
He'll wake up screaming thinking that he's a pig in blanket being eaten by Obama 😂
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
Much easier for the media to lock in on faux Cheesecake Factory outrage than a House Dem report indicating Todd Blanche basically told Ghislaine Maxwell "stop talking" when she was about to discuss a girl that could more closely tie Trump to Epstein
Mel Valentin 🇵🇷🇺🇸 retweeted
The national security advisor that has overseen one failed war of choice and the kidnapping/indefinite detention of legal US residents is now a coyote for foreign autocrats. Quite the resume.
As I reported hours ago, Flávio Bolsonaro has arrived safely in United States.
The mastermind behind this operation is U.S. Secretary of State @SecRubio .
From the United States, free and safe, Flávio will lead the opposition against Lula.