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Trump pardons MLB legend and ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ cast member for 30-year-old tax fraud charges
President Trump has granted a pardon to a cast member from his hit show “Celebrity Apprentice” for the second time this term.
In February, Trump pardoned former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) after commuting the politician’s 14-year prison sentence in 2020.
The new pardon again extinguishes charges laid against a member of the Season 3 cast of Trump’s hit reality show, this time for a legendary baseball player.
‘Mr. Strawberry found faith in Christianity and has been sober for over a decade.’
“President Trump has approved a pardon for Darryl Strawberry, three-time World Series champion and eight-time MLB All-Star,” a White House official told the New York Post.
Strawberry had an iconic 17-year career in the majors, spending 13 seasons with teams in New York. He came into the league with the New York Mets and finished his career with the New York Yankees.
Back in 1995, Strawberry pleaded guilty to a single count of tax evasion over a failure to report nearly $500,000 in income from baseball card shows and autograph signings between 1986 and 1990.
As UPI reported at the time, Strawberry was sentenced to three years of probation in April 1995, along with six months of home confinement and $350,000 in restitution for tax evasion
At just 32 years old, Strawberry was also battling substance problems that cost him some opportunities in MLB.
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Photo by James Devaney/WireImage/Getty Images
Strawberry was beloved as a member of the Mets and was hilariously immortalized in the iconic episode of “The Simpsons” titled “Homer at the Bat.”
However, the trouble started after he moved back to his home state of California to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Following an All-Star campaign in 1991, the outfielder never played a full season again.
Just three days prior to appearing in front of a federal judge for the tax evasion charges in 1995, Strawberry was suspended by MLB and released from his new team, the San Francisco Giants, over his continued use of cocaine.
Months later, Strawberry signed with the Yankees and played well, but only appeared in 32 games. He retired from baseball after the 1999 season.
Photo by Mitchell Layton/Getty Images
“Mr. Strawberry served time and paid back taxes after pleading guilty to one count of tax evasion,” the recent White House comment added.
“Following his career, Mr. Strawberry found faith in Christianity and has been sober for over a decade — he has become active in ministry and started a recovery center, which still operates today.”
Strawberry has been praised in recent years for overcoming his drug-abuse problems and turning to God, and he now preaches alongside his wife.
“There’s nothing too hard, there’s nothing too big for God,” Strawberry was recorded telling a group of prisoners in 2024.
“There’s nothing too hard, there’s nothing too big for God to fix in your life right here, right now,” he preached, as the men rejoiced. “God has not forgot about you. You’re not a mistake to God. We’ve all made mistakes. We have all fallen short. The Bible didn’t say some of us. The Bible says all of us have fallen short.”
Strawberry concluded, “So you gentlemen need to know that today I stand up here; there’s nothing great about me. I was a liar. I was a cheater. I was a womanizer. I was an alcoholic. I was a drug addict, and I was a sinner, saved by grace.”
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Explaining Mamdani’s appeal to the young, with polling
It’s a sad week for the de facto capital of the world, New York City. The epicenter of American finance, media, and dynamism now enters a self-imposed trajectory of decline.
But those of us on the populist right should not merely shake our heads and bemoan the extremism of Zohran Mamdani, frightening though it is. Instead, we must understand his appeal, so that we might effectively counter his un-American ideas and continue to build on our 2024 triumph by earning further big gains nationally among young voters.
We have much to learn from Mamdani, even though he is a dangerous Marxist. Establishment Republicans have no effective answer to this kind of populism.
Polling shows the pathway to that success.
First, the great news. Young voters have swung massively to the right over the last three presidential election cycles. President Trump won young men in 2024, and overall, voters 35 and under shifted materially from a +37% preference for the Democrats in 2016 to only a +13% preference in 2024, cutting the young adult margin by two-thirds in just over eight years. It represents a massive macro shift.
In addition, a new national poll of 2,100 voters ages 18-25 shows a substantial rejection of Democrats’ radicalism on key social issues, especially transgenderism and free speech. Simultaneously, young voters express extreme frustration with the current economy, creating a clear opening that Mamdani drove a campaign truck right through.
So, backed by data, here are the three lanes of success that Mamdani exploited.
‘Affordability’ is key
Even though all of his Marxist answers are wrong and immoral, Zohran is laser-focused on the issue that matters most to voters, especially younger ones. Most young citizens have not benefited from the massive run-up in asset prices in recent years. Without substantial holdings of equities or real estate, they struggle to afford the staples of life amid sky-high costs. Even worse, the job market got substantially tougher for young adults, adding even more angst.
These voters correctly blamed the Democrats for the pain of Bidenomics, but that anger has now shifted over to Republicans, fair or not.
Right now, per TIPP Insights polling, only 24% of young adults rate Trump’s performance on the economy as “good” or “excellent,” while 54% rate it as “poor” or “unacceptable.” On inflation, using letter grades, only 6% of young independents give the president an A, while 44% deliver an F.
Mamdani smartly dove into this issue. All his proposed solutions will only make inflation worse, of course, from “free” public transit to lavish benefits for illegal aliens. But regardless, he fixated on what matters to voters, especially young ones.
Media skills
After watching Mamdani throughout the campaign, it’s clear he hates the founding principles and history of the United States. He exemplifies how America’s immigration system — even its lawful pathways — too often imports people who reject the nation’s heritage rather than embrace it.
That said, as a media professional, I can only respect his acumen in front of the cameras.
In this new digital age, which President Trump helped create, successful politicians must be able to perform effectively. Mamdani exudes charisma and likeability. His youth and enthusiasm captivated voters, especially those in the streaming/TikTok spaces.
Media savvy combined with lots of ludicrous promises of freebies is a pretty powerful approach in this populist age. Young people are especially receptive to the heavy use of new/alternative media. TIPP Insights shows that only 31% of independent young adults have positive sentiment for legacy media, and only 34% of young women.
Focus on home
Perhaps the most compelling moment of the campaign for Mamdani was during the July debate, when all candidates were asked where their first foreign visit would be as mayor of New York. All of them said Israel, with Ukraine thrown in as well. But Mamdani gave a truly “New York First” answer instead, one that might well have been uttered by a MAGA partisan. He said, “I would stay in New York City.”
That answer clearly appeals to young voters, who are decidedly non-interventionist abroad. For example, a whopping 69% of young men think we “intervene too much in foreign conflicts.” Only 26% of young adults think the United States should remain involved in Ukraine if Putin and Zelenskyy cannot reach a settlement soon.
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Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
That non-interventionism seeps over into a very negative view of Israel among young voters. Survey results found that only 25% of them have a positive view of Israel, versus 52% negative. Among young independents, only 18% have a positive view of Israel.
Therefore, Mamdani probably did not generate the blowback he deserved for extremist postures, such as embracing a pro-terror jihadi who was implicated, but unindicted, in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.
We have much to learn from Mamdani, even though he is a dangerous Marxist. Establishment Republicans have no effective answer to this kind of populism, because their default is always “cut taxes for the wealthy and go to war.”
The MAGA movement has a very different vision — one that can appeal to reasonable young people in increasing numbers — to continue this patriotic, populist surge for decades to come.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
From New York to the nation: Mark Levin warns that socialism’s endgame is America itself
True grassroots communist revolutions are a myth, says Mark Levin. These political uprisings are always orchestrated by privileged, educated elites who romanticize poverty and oppression while living comfortably.
It’s a theme that echoes throughout history. Revolutions rarely start in slums or sweatshops; they start in lecture halls, cafés, and salons where theory outweighs experience.
Take China’s Mao, Russia’s Lenin, Cuba’s Castro, or Germany’s Marx as examples. All were brought up in well-to-do families, educated, and set up for success. They preached justice for the working man, pretending the whole time that their ivory towers were actually trenches.
New York City’s new Democrat mayor, Zohran Mamdani — a self-described socialist — is no different.
“His family is worth millions. … The mother, funded in part significantly by Qatar; the father secretes himself into Columbia University, where he makes a good salary as a radical professor promoting anti-Westernism, anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and terrorism,” says Levin, calling Mamdani “a trust-fund baby” who married a woman even “richer than he is.”
Mamdani’s socialist supporters — primarily Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — have similar stories. Neither grew up in impoverished homes or worked much in the private sector before rising to political prominence. And yet they push socialist reform to the masses as if they knew the taste of poverty.
Levin then highlights his own blue-collar beginnings and decades of conservative activism as proof that he understands real work and therefore real America.
“I was a litigator. I was a lawyer for a nonprofit organization. We wouldn’t have school choice in this country but for Landmark Legal Foundation and the battles that we fought in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. … We are the ones who went after the NEA. … We’re the ones that went after the Environmental Protection Agency that was trying to push out a zillion regulations right before Donald Trump took office,” Levin recounts.
“’76 — the Reagan campaign. ’80 — the Reagan campaign. The Tea Party movement … that’s where I met Donald Trump. He was very interested in the Tea Party movement,” he adds.
“[The Convention of States movement] was started by Mark Meckler and me with my book ‘The Liberty Amendments.’ … It’s now 5, 6 million members.”
“I’m [sharing] this to explain that when I come to you and I talk about these things on this platform, on Fox, on my radio show, where I write about them, it’s not esoteric. It’s not theory. It’s from experience,” says Levin. “So when I see Marxist Islamists doing what they’re doing, I take them on. I expose them.”
“We do not want these poisonous people destroying what our ancestors have worked for — our founders.”
But that’s exactly what’s about to unfold in New York City under Mayor Mamdani, with his socialist agenda poised to wring the city’s capitalist core from the nation’s economic capital.
Levin warns: “It matters what happens in New York because [Marxist Islamists] are organizing in the states and in the cities across the country.”
The plan doesn’t end with New York City. It won’t stop until America herself — and everything that makes her exceptional — is erased.
To hear more of Levin’s commentary, watch the clip above.
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