A Favor Returned, Beheaded Statue, Melania Ceasefire, & Fraud
Fat Elephant wants you to have some of today’s normal news.
Elon Musk Returns the Favor
Four years ago, Larry Ellison wrote Elon Musk a $1 billion check to take Twitter private. This week, Elon Musk invested about $1 billion in Skydance, which Ellison’s son, David, is trying to remake into a media-and-entertainment powerhouse, Semafor scooped. It’s their story, not mine.
The Ellisons are politically more neutral and, overall, well-intentioned and fair.
They could bring back normal entertainment.
Skydance, created by the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, will have to manage $87 billion of debt while simultaneously cutting costs and investing in good content.
A distribution deal between Skydance and SpaceX may be on the horizon. Starlink’s network could deliver live TV to homes.
The Iwo Jima Statue & a Stafford Man
The Battle of Iwo Jima monument in Quantico, Virginia, has suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage after a man beheaded the Iwo Jima statue Wednesday evening, police said. The same sculptor created the statue in D.C. Austrian-born American artist Felix de Weldon sculpted the Quantico Iwo Jima memorial. He was in the Navy at the time.
CNN calls 27-year-old Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano a man from Stafford, Virginia. However, he’s actually here illegally. Court records show he is charged with felony destruction of property, trespass with intent to damage, and felony injury to a monument. He is being held without bond pending a court appearance Friday afternoon.
Virginia’s officials will worry mostly about the federal government deporting this lowlife.
Melania Rescues Oleshky
Melanie Trump negotiated a peace between Russia and Ukraine for the town of Oleshky. She heard of the desperation of the people in the occupied town of about 2,000 people, including 50 children.
“The situation in Oleshky is dire. Oleshky is a front-line war city on the brink of disaster. Oleshky’s remaining population is comprised primarily of elderly residents who urgently need medical attention, medicine, food, and clean water,” she said.
It is so horrible that one woman walked through a minefield to seek freedom.
Melania is a treasure. I wish everyone could see that.
JD Vance’s Fraud Efforts
JD Vance’s fraud division has charged more than 450 potential fraudsters so far. He charged another 15 in California. Prosecutors charged 15 individuals—including six to eight medical professionals and doctors—across separate schemes.
Recently, Federal prosecutors charged 15 people in connection with multiple alleged Southern California healthcare and insurance fraud schemes totaling approximately $2 billion in fraudulent claims, as announced by the U.S. Department of Justice on October 22, 2026. The roughly $2 billion in fraud came from separate schemes, allegedly.
Eight of the defendants, some of whom were physicians, were arrested by federal agents on Thursday, with most of the arrests taking place in California, according to officials.
The alleged schemes included billing private insurers for phony substance abuse treatment, billing Medicare for unnecessary atherectomy procedures (which are for removing plaque from blood vessels), and another charging Medicare for hospice services for patients who weren’t terminally ill, the Justice Department said.
They are stealing from the poor, the addicted, and the near-dead. “Do no harm” desperately needs a comeback.
Image: AI Grok