PREVIEW: The Friday Edition. - I'm responding to criticisms of my Trump corruption piece.

7 snips

May 8, 2026

A writer answers waves of criticism after a viral longform investigation into alleged self-dealing in the Trump administration. Topics include pay-to-play diplomacy, wealthy donors becoming ambassadors, opaque business ties influencing policy, and errors from AI fact-checks. The conversation highlights polarized reader reactions and why the author felt compelled to respond publicly.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Why Isaac Wrote A Follow Up To His Investigation

Isaac Saul explains he wrote a 6,000-word investigation into Trump-era self-dealing and corruption allegations.
The piece went viral on X and generated a broad mix of praise, criticism, and questions that prompted this follow-up dialogue.

ANECDOTE

ChatGPT Fact Check Backfired On A Reader

Saul recounts a reader who used ChatGPT to fact-check his article and initially got false negatives because they omitted source links.
After supplying the article with sources, ChatGPT reversed and apologized, exposing risks of blind AI reliance.

INSIGHT

Obama Wealth Is Transparent While Trump's Is Opaque

Saul contrasts Obama's post-presidency wealth with Trump's in-office profiteering, noting Obama's income sources were transparent book royalties and speaking deals.
Obama released tax returns, making his wealth traceable, unlike Trump's opaque finances.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Last week, I published an exhaustive 6,000-word essay on the self-dealing and potential corruption of President Donald Trump’s second administration.

I shared clips of the article on X, and it went viral. The initial feedback from readers within and outside the Tangle community overwhelmingly asked us to drop the paywall on the piece. After a few hours, we did.

Since then, we’ve been inundated with comments, criticism, and questions. Usually, when an article takes off like this, I write a follow-up piece addressing those criticisms and questions. I do this because I think engaging with our audience is an important way to gain trust and an important exercise in humility and intellectual honesty. I often engage with feedback by quoting specific readers and then responding directly to what they said in a Q&A format.

That’s exactly what I’m doing today.

Ad-free podcasts are here!

To unlock the rest of this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!

Here is the piece Isaac is responding to: Corruption in the Trump administration?

“After reviewing the evidence of the first 15 months of President Trump’s second term, I believe the president is profiting off the office and making foreign policy decisions based on business interests to a level we’ve never seen or even conceived of before, and apparently nothing is being done to stop it.”

Gold phones, Qatari planes, Syrian golf courses, cryptocurrency schemes, ballroom donations. Market moves, board seats, lawsuits dropped, lawsuits threatened. Pardons, prosecutions, profits, profits, profits… This past Friday, Executive Editor Isaac Saul waded through all of it in a thorough exploration of the charges of corruption against President Donald Trump.

In case you missed it, you can read the piece here. We’ve also decided to make this Friday edition open to everyone, so please share it with anyone you think would be interested!

You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.

Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.

This podcast written by: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.

Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.