Essays
Real American Patriot Entourage
Air Force One left Edwards Air Force Base on Tuesday, May 12th, 2026, bound for Beijing. On board, in addition to the President of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, Apple’s Tim Cook, Tesla’s Elon Musk, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg, and the Fox News host Sean Hannity, was Brett Ratner.
Yes. That Brett Ratner.
The director of Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2, Rush Hour 3, and the X-Men franchise’s most embarrassing entry. The same Brett Ratner who was the subject of a 2017 Los Angeles Times investigation in which six women came forward to accuse him of sexual assault and harassment, on the record, with their names attached.
Welcome Aboard
The Trump administration has, since day one, operated as something the press has not yet found the right name for. A name that captures what these powerful men actually have in common.
So allow me:
The Real American Patriot Entourage.
R.A.P.E.
Because when you look at the flight manifest closely, that is the actual organizing principle. The qualifying credential.
But note what is not a credential. Ironically, American citizenship is optional (Musk). Commitment to American manufacturing is optional (Cook). The “Real American” half of the branding is just hollow marketing.
The Ratner File
Natasha Henstridge, then a nineteen year old fashion model, said Ratner blocked the doorway of his New York apartment when she tried to leave, began touching himself, and forced her to perform oral sex. “He strong-armed me in a real way,” she told the Times. “He physically forced himself on me.”
Eri Sasaki, an extra on Rush Hour 2, said Ratner touched her without her consent and asked her to follow him to a bathroom. When she refused, his answer was: “Don’t you want to be famous?”
Olivia Munn, then an aspiring actress, said Ratner emerged from the bathroom of his trailer on the set of After the Sunset wearing no pants, holding a shrimp cocktail in one hand, masturbating with the other. He ejaculated in front of her before she could leave. Years later, on television, he claimed he had “banged” her, which she denied, and which he then publicly admitted he had lied about.
Jaime Ray Newman was harassed by Ratner on a commercial flight in 2005. He swapped seats with his assistant to sit beside her. He spent the flight verbally assaulting her, describing in graphic detail the sex acts he wanted to perform on her. And two more women, on the record, with two more patterns.
Twenty-one years later, same passenger, same problem, just a different plane.
Of course Ratner denies all of it. Predators always deny all of it. It is the script every powerful man uses after a Los Angeles Times investigation exposes him, and it worked just about as well as you would have expected. For eight years it had kept him out of his Hollywood hunting ground. Blacklisted. No major studio would touch him.
Then, on Tuesday, he boarded Air Force One.
So how does this happen?
The Mechanism
Officially, Ratner is going to China to scout locations for Rush Hour 4. This film is actually in production. Paramount, recently acquired by David Ellison on the back of a meritless $16 million settlement with Trump, is distributing. Of course they are. Trump personally pressed the Ellisons to revive the franchise. The President of the United States, with his copious amounts of free time, makes phone calls to studio executives to resurrect dead movie franchises for credibly accused sexual predators. Priorities.
Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker have so far rejected the initial offers of $8 million each to return. Both men made roughly $20 million apiece for Rush Hour 3 in 2007. They have, presumably, read the news in the last decade.
Ratner does not have that problem.
Ratner has a friend in the White House.
In an administration whose guiding principle is “quid pro quo”, this was not the first transaction.
As you are aware, in January of 2026, Amazon paid $40 million for the rights to a documentary called Melania. The film, directed by Ratner, was about the First Lady and her struggles, like trying on shoes. A tale as old as time. The film somehow managed to gross $16 million globally. Amazon lost roughly $24 million on the deal. On paper, that is a flop. Under normal circumstances, those are career ending numbers for anyone attached to something that tanked that badly.
But look at the numbers again. There was nothing normal here. Beyond the fact that a $40 million documentary is absurd, of that $40 million, Melania Trump was personally paid $28 million to participate. More than half the total cost.
Amazon, a company under regulatory oversight from the federal government her husband runs, paid $40 million for a movie that grossed $16 million, and twenty-eight of those forty million dollars went directly to the President’s wife.
Obviously, that is not a film acquisition, that is a payment.
Money laundering through a documentary, from a tech company to the First Family, in exchange for the kind of regulatory courtesy that money normally cannot buy. Because there are laws against it.
And the director who facilitated that payoff is now on Air Force One en route to Beijing to scout locations for his comeback film.
The Hollywood blacklist has been overridden by Executive Favor.
The Pattern
Why does this keep happening with this man?
In 2005, Donald Trump was recorded saying that when you are a star you can “grab them by the pussy.”
He has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least sixteen women.
He was found liable for sexual abuse in the civil case brought by E. Jean Carroll, with the federal judge in the subsequent proceedings stating, in writing, that what Trump did to Carroll was, in common parlance, rape.
He paid hush money to the porn actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair during his 2016 campaign.
A thirteen-year-old plaintiff filed federal lawsuits in 2016 alleging Trump raped her at Jeffrey Epstein’s apartment. That case was dropped after she received threats, days before the 2016 election. She has not been heard from since.
Trump’s closest friend for two decades was Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex trafficker of minors.
But Donald and Brett are not the only predators living their best lives on this flight.
Trump’s current Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, was the subject of a confidential police report in 2017 alleging sexual assault. He paid the woman to drop the matter. Trump saw something familiar in that problem-solving technique and decided that guy should be put in charge of the entire United States military.
Sean Hannity has been the subject of multiple sexual harassment complaints from Fox News staffers over the years.
But this pattern extends well past this one flight manifest. Do not forget that Trump’s briefly-nominated Attorney General, Matt Gaetz, was the subject of a federal investigation into sex trafficking and statutory rape. The House Ethics Committee report uncovered substantial evidence of payments to women in exchange for sex, including to a seventeen year old. Once again, Trump recognized his own playbook and the investigation was quietly closed without charges.
Birds of a feather.
Look at the pattern. Look at every major figure in the inner orbit of this presidency, and check who has a sexual misconduct file. These percentages are not normal.
Of course the pattern is not a coincidence. The pattern is the credential. Being a sexual predator is not a requirement, but clearly it helps.
And make no mistake, predators do not arrive in this administration by accident. They arrive because the administration is built to accommodate them.
They are not a problem to be managed. They are the constituency. Men who, in any honest society, would be unemployable. But in this society, they hold cabinet positions, direct puff films about the First Lady, host top-rated cable news shows, run major corporations, and fly on the President’s plane.
It is a mutual protection society for men who would, under any reasonable accounting of their lives, be facing consequences of their choices.
The flight manifest is the indictment. Read the names. Check the files. Then ask yourself how it is possible that this many men, with this many credible allegations against them, all happen to be on the same plane at the same time, on a state visit to the second largest economy on earth.
You will come to the stark realization that it is the design.
The Real American Patriot Entourage flew to Beijing on Tuesday.
A flying meeting of the sexual predator caucus, conducting foreign policy.
This is who they are.
This is who they have always been.