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Katie Zacharia Tells Newsmax Host She Was Ambushed By Hannity's 'Hostility'

Katie Zacharia Tells Newsmax Host She Was Ambushed By Hannity's 'Hostility'

Former White House press secretary Katie Zacharia, who was removed from her role after only five days following a shaky maiden voyage and inconsistencies concerning her legal background, said she is still surprised at the Sean Hannity interview that may have been the final nail in her short career at the White House

“I'm just as perplexed about what happened specifically with Sean Hannity,” Zacharia told Newsmax host Rob Finnerty Tuesday night.

She added that even though Hannity’s fatal scrutiny of her legal background may have been the break-point where Trump reconsidered her hiring, she said Hannity's team had made overtures to her about a job spot earlier in the year.

“I got a phone call from them asking me if I would consider being Sean's California man on the street, basically asking Californians what they thought of Gavin Newsom ahead of potentially a presidential run that Gavin Newsom might make,” Zacharia said. “So Sean Hannity's team, after being on with him a number of times and having a great rapport with Sean, thought that I would be a valuable asset to be continuing a relationship and in the press for him on his show.”

“Isn't that interesting? So, he thinks you were good enough to work on his show, but not to be press secretary,” quipped Finnerty, “and I doubt that he had any interest in your educational background at that point when you had that call. Is that accurate? Is that fair?”

“We never had a conversation about my educational background,” Zacharia answered. “They were excited that I was someone who could be able to deliver fun, fast, exciting, interesting on the street. … But because I had had a very friendly rapport with Sean and he had even made very backing statements about me on Tuesday, October 13th, really coming to my defense, I was not prepared for the hostility that I received.”

Zacharia left the administration in disgrace earlier this month after she was accused of falsifying her law background and flopping her first press conference, but she was still groveling to stay in Trump’s good graces Tuesday night.

“I still am irritated to this day and angry that the mainstream media will not give [Trump] positive coverage of what he's doing,” she told Finnerty. “We have never seen a president work this hard for midterm elections, and yet the Wall Street Journal writes just recently, maybe a day or two ago, writes this very, very disgusting piece about how the rallies aren't that packed.”

“This is just a personal tour,” Finnerty said, explaining the smaller crowds.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet


Guilfoyle's Shakedown Target Blasts Corruption Of Trump Crime Family On CNN

Guilfoyle's Shakedown Target Blasts Corruption Of Trump Crime Family On CNN

Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle's scandal is spreading as her $100,000 shakedown of Eric Deters, a campaign donor to President Donald Trump makes the rounds, but Deters told CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Thursday that Guilfoyle's brand of grift is nowhere near the end of the corruption choking the Trump administration.

Speaking with Tapper, Deters outlined a dismal stream of exploitation, repeating that Guilfoyle is “wicked” and “knows plenty” about Trump-era corruption.

“That's just common sense. I mean, when Don Jr. and her broke up, she gets the Greek ambassadorship. That was throwing her a bone,” said Deters. “She could find herself a Greek billionaire. And the Trumps could have peace. However, it's not working out very good because she's been flying around Europe with an energy lobbyist, and now she's having to deal with the allegations that I've brought forward against her.”

According to a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report, Guilfoyle needed Deters, a former Kentucky congressional candidate, to secretly pay off her $100,000 American Express bill. Deters, meanwhile, said that he desperately needed someone in the Trump administration to help on some personal tax and legal issues. Guilfoyle said that she could use her influence as Donald Trump Jr.'s ex to connect Deters with the new chief of the IRS and the Justice Department so he could lobby his case. She just needed the $100,000 first.

Deters said he simply didn’t have it. But it was at that point in the interview that Deters unloaded on the rest of the Trump clan, which he considered just as dirty as Guilfoyle.“Is this standard operating procedure in the Trump orbit?” asked Tapper, to which Deters confirmed.

“I don't know everybody in Trump world, but I know a lot of them because I know Corey Lewandowski did it all the time. I know Kristi Noem did it. I know Kimberly Guilfoyle has done it. … we might disagree with some of this, Jake, but I just so you know about my motivation here. I have been a Trump supporter forever. I still consider myself a supporter of Trump's policies for the most part, but I've never cared for Trump's egomania, like the Trump Arch and all that stuff.”

“I bashed the Bidens all the time for what I saw as shadow criminality with Hunter and the family. Well, what the Trumps are doing is just totally different,” Deter said. “Jared Kushner is involved in the Abraham Accords and then does a $3 billion fund with Saudi Arabia? Don Jr. — Uh, Trump says ‘crypto is a scam’ and then his sons get involved in crypto. And all of a sudden, Trump's a proponent of crypto. So, they're adding to their wealth just out in the open.”

“They're not just grifting,” Deters continued. “They're getting appointed to boards and, boom, value stock goes up. They get some stock; they make some money. And now Jared Kushner is an envoy over in the Middle East and wants to help develop the Gaza strip. I mean, it's kind of sickening. It's two sides of the same coin. And that bothers me.”

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Kennedy Center protest

Kerry Kennedy Scorches 'Petty Little Tyrant' Trump For Defacing JFK Memorial

Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of President John F. Kennedy’s younger brother, the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY), held nothing back after hearing of President Donald Trump’s justification for insisting his name should be on the memorial honoring her uncle. The late president's niece, an author and human rights activist, organized a "Hands Around the Kennedy Center" rally on September 18 that attracted hundreds of Washington residents.

“It's heartbreaking to me,” Kennedy told CNN anchor Jake Tapper last Friday night, while describing a recent photograph of Trump seated on Air Force One, holding what looks like a presentation poster entitled “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED. “It's heartbreaking because this is the monument to our slain president. And this is also the monument to the arts. The most important monument to the arts in our entire country. And these are the actions of a petty little tyrant who can't get his way. And because he can't add his name to it, he's going to blow it up.”

“[If he had his way] It would be like the Trump Eiffel Tower or the trump Buckingham Palace or the Trump Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,” said Kennedy, without mentioning that Trump received several military draft deferments as a young man to avoid the Vietnam War.

“Keep your name off our buildings, Mr. Trump. Do your job. Lower our prices, stop the war in Iran and get to work on what's important,” Kennedy barked.

Tapper then played a clip of a White House recording on Friday that showed Trump rationalizing his continued crusade to put his name on the Kennedy Center, despite a judge forcing it’s removal earlier this year.

“I can save it easily, but why should we be doing that and then raise money for the rest of our lives to keep it afloat, because that's what you have to do,” Trump told reporters. “If we get no recognition, I think the Trump administration should be recognized as having saved the Kennedy center, because nobody else can do it.”

Kennedy called this a temper tantrum from a child who does not “get his way.” Plus, his argument is faulty.

“It's not that he has to raise the money. The money has already been allocated by Congress in the Big Beautiful Bill, $256 million, more than enough to completely remake the Kennedy Center. So, this is just a false narrative,” said Kennedy.

She added that there are actually three separate sources of funding for repairs: government, charity, and ticket sales — two of which Trump busted by imposing himself over the building and its board of directors.

“Well, charity and ticket sales plummeted as soon as Trump put his name on the building. So, all he has to do is step away and people will come flooding back,” Kennedy insisted.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Joyce Beatty

CNN Reveals Trump's 'Effing Crazy' Call To Kennedy Center Board Meeting

CNN anchor Kasie Hunt reports President Donald Trump called into his hand-picked Kennedy Center board, shrieking orders to close the Kennedy Center unless he is allowed to put his name on the JFK Kennedy Center building.

“One source told me today that the president himself called into the board meeting and yelled at members, including Democratic Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, whose lawsuit prevented the president's name from being added to the center's exterior,” reported Hunt on Tuesday.

“Another source telling [us] that the heated exchange between Trump and Beatty was, ‘effing crazy,’ with the president blaming the congresswoman for getting the courts involved, saying she was responsible for the downfall of the Kennedy center, according to a person familiar with the matter.”

Trump announced just moments earlier that the Kennedy center board had voted to close the cultural institution, effective immediately. The president also insisted in the post that the renovations to the center won't begin until his name is added to the building. This, after a federal judge prevented the board's latest attempt to do just that.

Hunt then turned to attorney Norm Eisen, who is representing Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) in her lawsuit against the Trump administration.

“President Trump and his hand-picked cronies on this board are taking the Kennedy Center hostage, and they will not allow it to thrive unless his name is placed upon it. But that's illegal. Kasey,” Eisen said. “Congresswoman Beatty has been fighting this from day one. … She stood up for the law, for the, success of the Kennedy Center. And she stood her ground as we've been doing in court. One last thing. They can vote all they want to shut it down. There is a court order that the Kennedy Center cannot be closed, uh, precisely because of these shenanigans. We're going to keep fighting until we get the Kennedy Center back on its feet — and never with Donald Trump’s name on it.”

Hunt then turned to conservative panelist Scott Jennings, asking him to “help [her] understand — as the possible future White House Press Secretary,” why Trump cared about this amid rising gas prices and voter anger.

“Well, I assume it's because he cares about it,” answered Jennings. “We have a president who actually cares about the arts community, cares about the Kennedy Center. There's strong documentary...closing it...documentary evidence that it needs renovations.”

“But he’s closing it,” Hunt countered. “He's refusing to fund it unless they put his name on the outside of it.”

“Well, it needs to be taken care of. look, he's—”

“But he could take care of it without his name on it,” Hunt blared.

“Look, you asked me why, and I'm telling you: It's because he cares about it,” Jennings insisted.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Rich Baris

Pollster Warns Furious MAGA Voters Want First-Term Trump Back — Or Else

MAGA pollster Rich Baris has interviewed countless Trump voters to get a gauge on Republicans’ chances in November. But standing in the way of salvation for Republicans is the fact that the 2024 version of Trump stinks.

“[I]f we're having an honest discussion, you could be a supporter of the president and you can still be honest. I don't just see what sycophants see: how that helps anybody. I mean, ultimately, it's my job to convey what people are telling me. And they wanted the old Trump back.,” said Baris, speaking with former George Bush speechwriter and Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller on Wednesday.

Baris said Michigan and Georgia are effectively locks for Democrats in the upcoming Senate race, and the outlook looks scary in many “safe” districts thanks to a declining Trump 2.0, which is nothing like the Trump of his first administration.

“People felt like,’ you know what? I think we might have had it a little bit better than we thought. Can we go back and have a redo?’ But this administration has not been a redo of 1.0 in many ways,” Baris told Miller.

Baris pointed out that his company releases a monthly summary report of what people tell them in interviews and a common theme keeps coming up over in every survey.

“And you could see it if you don't read the transcripts, the interviews, you could see in the word clouds, clear as day. They thought that the first Trump administration was much more focused on domestic policy. And Americans, they're not stupid. They know that the president's job has a lot [on its plate] but it's in the name right there: America First,” Baris said. “Look, I mean, I feel like I have a hard time speaking to some people on the right who are being intellectually dishonest with themselves. I mean, it's in the name, guys.”

Trump is a candidate and a two-time president who ran on “no new wars in the Middle East,” said Baris, and Trump’s voters very clearly plan to hold him to account on that. MAGA clearly loved what he was doing in the first three to five months in his second term, especially younger people, but that was a long time ago in terms of politics. Now, Republicans are running off the rails fast.

Trump’s economy, in the meantime, is in chaos thanks to tariffs and rising fuel and grocery prices.

“Republicans are going to run out of a coalition soon if they don't build on what he started to build in '24. And a lot of those gains are squandered because of the direction they took,” said Baris. “I mean, they decided by spring, certainly by summer, before Charlie [Kirk] was killed, to conduct Operation Midnight Hammer. And that was Kind of like a PTSD moment for a huge part of Trump's coalition.”

“They just thought, ‘here we go again. No, please.’ And they gave him a lot of grace and they waited and waited and waited, but he never took that pivot back to the domestic,” Baris added.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Clarence Thomas and Ted Cruz

On Cruz Podcast, Clarence Thomas Whines About Exposure Of His Gross Corruption

Justice Clarence Thomas does not do podcasts, or, really, much media of any kind, said Above the Law journalist and litigator Kathryn Rubino. So, it clearly took something serious to turn up on Texas GOP Sen. Ted. Cruz’ podcast “Verdict with Ted Cruz.”

Sure, the sit down was timed with a book launch, but Rubino said it was also fueled by the fact that Thomas is still hurting from getting caught engaging in what looks like horrendous corruption.

“If you’ve followed Supreme Court scandals over the last few years you know, it’s the reporting that revealed Thomas spent two decades accepting luxury travel and other largesse from GOP megadonors and declining to tell anyone about it,” reported Rubino, adding that Thomas marched straight into Cruz’ podcast for some self-soothing over getting busted.

You’re one of the people who actually stands up, particularly at times when others seem to wither, and I appreciate it,” Thomas told Cruz. “And more personally, when we, my wife and I, were under attack for obvious reasons, you and Mike Lee and some of the other friends would stand up,” he said. “So I really appreciate that.”

“It’s fascinating that Thomas refers to it as ‘under attack,’ as though the ProPublica reporters who documented the roughly $500,000 Indonesia vacation aboard Harlan Crow’s superyacht were the ones who’d done something untoward, and not the justice who left all of it off the disclosure forms federal law requires him to file,” said Rubino. “Thomas has been nursing this grievance since the story broke, his first real explanation for the whole thing boiled down to my rich friends told me it was fine.But the gifts kept surfacing, Rubino said. Crow bought three properties from Thomas, including the house where Thomas’s mother lived rent-free, and he paid the private-school tuition for Thomas’ grandnephew.

“By our count, the undisclosed benefits ran to something like $5.8 million. When the Senate Finance Committee asked Crow to itemize any of it, his Gibson Dunn lawyers told the Senate to take their chances with contempt, then doubled down. Thomas eventually amended his disclosures (better than before, nowhere near where they need to be) and then reporters just kept finding more vacations,” said Rubino.

Worse, Thomas was a member of a billionaire’s club, with billionaire friends that “lavished him with pricey gifts,” said Rubino. “Even the RV Thomas uses to establish his everyman bona fides was financed by a rich buddy, via a “loan” that was never paid back.”But of course, Thomas’s ethics issues run deeper than money, with his wife, right-wing operative Ginni Thomas, sending her “LOVE” to the January 6th rioters hours before the Capitol was stormed, and firing off nearly 30 texts to Mark Meadows urging him to keep fighting the legitimate election putting Biden in the White House.

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Insulting Trump Bombs At Redo Of White House Correspondents' Dinner

Insulting Trump Bombs At Redo Of White House Correspondents' Dinner

President Donald Trump does not appear to be the entertainer he once was, reports CNN’s Brian Stelter.

The president’s insult-laden speech drew mostly stunned silence from the audience as he attacked a bunch of journalists at the pared-down recap of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday.

“Trump bombed at the ... Dinner Friday night. He knew he was bombing, too, and he even tried to meta-joke his way out of it,” reports Stelter. “But no. Even the president’s jokes about his bad jokes fell flat, and he was widely ridiculed for the comedy routine afterward.”

In a “rambling hour-long speech,” Stelter said Trump insulted journalists by name, “repurposed old nicknames for political opponents, made a strange number of fat jokes that weren’t funny at all, and sounded mad at his unnamed writers for giving him weak material to work with.”

“Does anyone understand this stuff?” he said at one point during the razzball speech. The answer, said Stelter, was “generally no. But more than anything, the speech was just … boring.”

“Trump’s low energy led more than one TV executive to muse that the president had stumbled upon a new technique against the media: Tank the ratings with a snoozefest,” added Stelter. “Some attendees said they were surprised that Trump didn’t bring more original material, given how highly anticipated the dinner was, in part because his attendance ended his years-long boycott of the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual fundraiser.

Many journalists refused to attend, and the dinner was a small-scale redo of the April 26 black-tie affair that got called off after a gunman tried to rush into the ballroom of the Washington Hilton hotel, so Trump joked about bullet proof vests and how attendees hid under their tables while his staff bravely stood on tables and directed crowds.

He gave shoutouts to media executives he considers propaganda allies, namely Larry and David Ellison, who took control of Paramount last year, killed off the high-rating show of late-night comic gadfly Stephen Colbert, destroyed legacy news show 60 Minutes and turned CBS News into a ratings flop.

Ellison is now trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, and the parent company of CNN.

“Under my administration, a once-feared and powerful regime that relentlessly attacked America has finally been toppled,” Trump said, referring to changes implemented by Ellison’s handpicked editor-in-chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss. “Their former leaders have been removed, and they’re now being run by a gay dictator facing internal divisions. But I, for one, wish Bari Weiss all the best at CBS News. She’s a wonderful woman.”

“The more resentful and recycled Trump’s speech got, the more attendees seemed to tune it out,” said Stelter.

One of the most intriguing parts of the evening involved the correspondents’ association’s annual journalism awards presentation, said Stelter, when Trump looked on while journalists earned multiple prizes, including one for “courage and accountability” in reporting that went to a team of Wall Street Journal reporters for their investigative work on a lewd birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein with Trump’s name on it.

“Trump quickly filed a $20 billion lawsuit against the Journal, revealing reporter Khadeeja Safdar’s home address,” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said while presenting the award. To which “Trump laughed and threw up his hands in an aw shucks-like gesture,” according to Stelter.

“Her family had to be relocated,” Blitzer added more somberly. “The Journal was kicked off of Air Force One, but the reporters continued to file revelatory stories.”

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet

Trump Orders Federal Workers To Wear His 'Freedom 250' Promotional Merch

Trump Orders Federal Workers To Wear His 'Freedom 250' Promotional Merch

Federal workers for the U.S. Department of the Interior are being directed to wear pins promoting the president’s public-private partnership created to celebrate America’s 250th birthday — instead of the congressionally mandated group that was created to organize the events.

According to Mother Jones, National Park Service employees have been ordered to wear the pins, under threat of “professional reprimands.”

“When I asked if I would receive any disciplinary action if I chose not to wear the pin, I was told, ‘Yes,’” one person told Mother Jones. “I chose not to continue the conversation after that.”

Mother Jones reports that the “establishment of Freedom 250 has allowed Trump to more easily plan events that double as campaign rallies, to privately raise funds from corporations seeking influence with the administration, and to avoid disclosing exactly how much all this is costing US taxpayers.”

“Consequently,” says Mother Jones, “NPS employees say that wearing Freedom 250 pins amounts to a partisan declaration, akin to donning a MAGA hat, or worse.”

Democrats have called the Trump-created Freedom 250 organization a dark money group, Mother Jones noted, warning that it has no congressional oversight and has been accused of being used to buy access to the president.

Trump has announced that Freedom 250’s July 4 celebration on the National Mall would feature a “Trump rally.” Sunday’s White House UFC cage fight, which also celebrated President Trump’s 80th birthday, was organized by the president’s Freedom 250 group.

In a February statement, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Democrats “called out Republicans for allowing Trump to hijack America’s 250th Birthday celebration to sell access, hide his donors, and rewrite history — turning the country’s founding anniversary into a party exclusively for billionaires and a platform for Christian Nationalism.”

NBC News reports that the bipartisan America250 “is the nonprofit supporting the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which was established 10 years ago through an act of Congress and is led by a bipartisan group of lawmakers and private citizens,” while Freedom 250 “was established by the Trump administration as a public-private partnership by which to fund and plan events celebrating this summer’s historic anniversary.”

President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance serve as chair and vice chair for the Freedom 250 group.

America250 lists its corporate sponsors while Freedom 250 only indicates certain “strategic partners.”

Reprinted with permission from AlterNet



On Fox, Irked Laura Ingraham Notices That Iranian Strikes Prove Trump Is Lying

On Fox, Irked Laura Ingraham Notices That Iranian Strikes Prove Trump Is Lying

Fox News host Laura Ingraham is getting bummed with President Donald Trump’s mixed messaging and embarrassing fabrications, especially when they keep producing cringe moments in the U.S. invasion of Iran, reports Mediaite.

Specifically, Ingraham was aggravated that Iranians were still able to strike U.S. targets when their military was allegedly destroyed, as Trump and his cohorts keep claiming.

Ingraham was speaking with former State Department official Nathan Sales about the U.S. strikes against Iran on Tuesday in retaliation for the downing of an Apache helicopter by an Iranian drone — after Trump vowed to respond to the Iranian attack earlier on Tuesday.

But the reason for the U.S. response was really the root of Ingraham’s ire.

“We keep hearing their military is destroyed,” Ingraham told Sales. “But if their military is destroyed, how are they continuing to hit us? I mean, an Apache helicopter costs about, what, about $46 million?”

Mediaite reports the attack on the helicopter came as a bit of a surprise to Fox because of Trump’s conflicting remarks and” the 38 times the president has claimed that the two sides were close to reaching a deal.”

Also surprised, apparently, was Ingraham.

“One thing that a lot of Americans can’t really wrap their heads about here is we keep hearing that they’ve been destroyed, decimated. The word is often used ungrammatically, but nevertheless … we hear that, and we know there’s extensive damage. Yet these drones are lethal, and they’re easy to make. They’re fairly cheap, and obviously did some damage to us last night over Oman. How can we guard against that? How can we protect against that, given the stakes here, again back home, and over there?”

Sales insisted “the Iranian military threat has been substantially degraded,” but “it hasn’t gone down to zero.”

For Ingraham, that wasn’t good enough.

“Why have we left any military structure there? … [W]e seem to have hit a number of base points tonight and are still, perhaps. We knew where those were. Why did we leave any of them standing? If we wanted to just really get this done, why are they still standing at all?” Ingraham demanded.

The explosion came a handful of weeks after musician Kid Rock scored a ride at Fort Belvoir in the same kind of Apache Helicopters when Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave him a trip. Kid Rock’s trip came after an earlier controversial flyover at the artist’s Nashville home prompted the Army to suspend the aircrew involved in the stunt. Hegseth swiftly reversed the suspensions.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet


Trump Takes Cornyn's Scalp In Texas -- And Terrifies Senate Republicans

Trump Takes Cornyn's Scalp In Texas -- And Terrifies Senate Republicans

President Donald Trump’s 11th hour endorsement against incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn seems to have paid off in Texas, as Trump’s champion Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton swamped Cornyn in the Senate primary, according to CNN and MS NOW projections. Cornyn conceded the election later that evening.

Trump routinely targets Republicans he finds too independent by fielding or supporting more Trumpy candidates in primaries. Recently Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, became the latest victim of Trump's effort to back primary challengers for his perceived enemies within the GOP.

But Paxton is nothing if not a flawed candidate, according to critics. He is an adulterer who attempted to overthrow the 2020 election and who was nearly impeached by his own Republican senate. Sixteen Texas attorneys signed a 31-page complaint against Paxton, demanding he be disbarred for legal offenses.

Still, it will be Paxton, not Cornyn, who will face off against Democrat James Talarico, a state lawmaker, this November.

Both Cornyn and Paxton were found to be trailing hypothetical head-to-heads against Talarico last month in a Texas Public Opinion Research poll of 1,865 voters. That poll showed Talarico with a three-percentage point lead over Cornyn, 44-to-41 percent. But he leads Attorney General Ken Paxton by a wider, five percentage point margin, 46-to-41 percent, according to the poll.

Talarico leads Paxton with Black voters by +56, Latino voters +27 and college-educated voters +14. Nine percent of surveyed respondents remain undecided. Independents break for Talarico against Paxton 53 percent to 28 percent.

Democrats winning a major statewide election in Texas has long been seen as unlikely, but according to a new breakdown from The Atlantic, Trump's recent "casual betrayal" of an endorsement has given the party its best chance at an upset in decades.

“Trump may have cemented a set of very difficult circumstances for his party,” reported the Atlantic. “If Paxton wins on Tuesday, Democrats will probably be better positioned to win statewide in Texas than they’ve been in the past 40 years."Critics complain that Trump’s endorsement means Republican financiers will have to invest more heavily to beat Talarico, which means less money helping vulnerable Republicans in other states, when Texas should have been an easy win.

Trump's vendetta against Republicans who defy him represents a significant shift in party dynamics.

Since his return to the White House, Trump has systematically targeted GOP lawmakers deemed insufficiently loyal, orchestrating primary challenges against sitting senators and representatives. Notable victims include Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who lost his primary after voting to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial, and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who challenged Trump on government spending and the Epstein files. Trump has also threatened Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert for supporting Massie.

These purges extend beyond symbolic gestures—Trump has mobilized campaign resources and Super PAC funding to ensure defeats, effectively establishing a loyalty test within the party that prioritizes personal allegiance over policy positions or constituent service.

Expert Warns That AI Bust Is Now Inevitable -- And Will Sink Trump's Economy

Expert Warns That AI Bust Is Now Inevitable -- And Will Sink Trump's Economy

The Wall Street Journal and other industry observers keep saying artificial intelligence investment is the one thing “saving” President Donald Trump’s stock market time and again, as Trump’s economy plateaus or tanks other stocks. However, Asad Ramzanali, director of AI and technology policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, says AI overinvestment and risky financial engineering have made an AI crash more likely.

“I started [my research] not assuming we’re in a bubble, but that if we are, we should be prepared. As I got deeper into this, I became convinced that we are in a period of overinvestment where the money going out the door in the industry, which is primarily for data centers and chips, doesn’t match the money coming in,” Ramzanali told Washington Monthly podcast senior editor Anne Kim.

Ramzanali said research shows “$2 trillion is what the annual revenue from AI will have to look like to recoup” all this investment — and that’s not what can happen in the real world. So, prep for the inevitable bust.

Companies that build data centers -- Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Oracle -- are making estimates in the 2026 capital expenditures that promise “higher percentage of GDP than the Manhattan Project, the expansion of electricity, the Apollo space program, the building of the interstate highway system, the broadband build out in the ‘90s, everything but the Louisiana Purchase. This nets out to about $700 billion of investment this year,” said Ramazanali.

In other words, curb your enthusiasm. But tech companies now make up one third of the stock market, and banks are invested in those tech companies in big ways like private credit, structured finance and endless pools of capital all funneling into similar investments.“[W]hen you’re talking about something that is this large, this high of a magnitude of our whole economy, that’s where I start to get worried about the spillover effects into the rest of the economy,” said Ramzanali.

What this means for the Trump stock market — which is practically all Trump has left to brag about — is nothing good for Trump.

The New York Times reports Trumps largely steady stock market keeps assuming it “will always be saved” by the government and that markets are “not properly pricing risk, because they really don’t have to.”

“ … [But] the new rescuer investors are counting on — artificial intelligence — is vulnerable to the exact risks markets are ignoring,” reports the Times. “This has huge consequences. … This reliance on A.I. looks like an extraordinary concentration of bets” that the Times reports is “likely straining their cash cushions.”

Nobody will want to be president when the only stable stock buttressing Trump’s economy in a time of widely-fluctuating gas and grocery prices suddenly goes wobbly. And Trump has three more years for the wobble to hit him.

Lara Trump

Lara Trump Blasted For Claiming Presidency Made 'Good-Hearted' Father-In-Law Poorer

Critics on social media were not buying Lara Trump’s pity party for President Donald Trump. They particularly did not care for her claim that Trump would have an easier time of things were he not president.

“Lara Trump was slammed for claiming her father-in-law’s life would be better if he weren't President of the United States,” reported RadarOnline.com. “Lara, 43, who is married to Donald Trump's son Eric, said in a recent interview that the business mogul has been punished financially by getting into politics – even though his net worth has climbed to $6.5billion from $2.6 billion in little over 14 months.”

“I wish people would appreciate how much easier Donald Trump’s life would’ve been if he'd never gotten involved in politics,” Lara Trump claimed on the podcast of Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s senior advisor Stephen Miller. “He's the one President to leave the White House with less money than he went into it with. He’s had zeros come off his net worth because he ran for president.”But RadarOnline and other critics fact checked Lara Trump on the spot, with RadarOnline pointing out that “Donald Trump and his family made over $4 billion since he took office.”

“You cannot be serious. Unplug your head from Trump’s a——," said one critic on X, while another called her assertion “Absurd.”"Lara, you are f—— delusional,” wailed another on X, while a third called her claim “a complete lie. Trump is using the presidency to become richer.”

“Our [lives] would be so much better, too,” said another critic on X. “ … [M]aybe he should just quit now.”

“But [Trump is] a genuinely good-hearted person," Lara Trump added, while ignoring the fact that Trump threatened to extinguish the entire civilization of Iran on Easter and destroy their energy infrastructure.Lara Trump's claims stand in stark contradiction to documented financial realities.

Beyond the $4 billion accumulated by Trump and his family since taking office, investigative reporting has revealed specific mechanisms through which the presidency has enriched the Trump organization [including her husband Eric's firm recently winning a $24 million Pentagon deal}.

Foreign leaders and wealthy donors have funneled money into Trump-branded properties, investment funds, and business ventures at unprecedented rates. The World Liberty Financial crypto fund alone secured a half-billion-dollar investment from UAE officials shortly before Trump's inauguration—a transaction that coincided with the White House granting advanced AI chip access to the Emirates.

Meanwhile, Trump has collected hundreds of millions from corporate donors and wealthy individuals for vanity projects including a proposed presidential library, ballroom renovation, and triumphal arch, with tens of millions of those funds remaining unaccounted for. The assertion that Trump sacrificed financially for public service ignores the systematic weaponization of the presidency for personal enrichment.

Additionally, Trump's threats of genocide against Iran, his illegal war that has destabilized global markets and cost American consumers billions in increased energy costs, and his various corruption scandals paint a portrait of a president whose time in office has been characterized by personal gain at the expense of national stability and democratic norms. Lara Trump's narrative of victimhood rings hollow against this documented record.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Rejecting Trump's Hypocritical Plea, Voters Approve Virginia Redistricting

Rejecting Trump's Hypocritical Plea, Voters Approve Virginia Redistricting

In one of the nation’s final redistricting battles before the November midterm elections, Virginia voters decided on Tuesday to allow Democrats to redraw the state’s House map to give their party a plus.

With the passage of the referendum, voters opted to empower Virginia’s Democratic-led legislature to create a congressional map that leaves the state with just one safe Republican district. Prior to the Tuesday vote, Virginia’s 11-member House delegation consists of six Democrats and five Republicans, but this will likely change if court decisions fail to stop it.

Virginians voted "yes" to approve the new temporary map by 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent, according to a Washington Post analysis with nearly all the ballots counted. After millions of dollars in spending by both sides, roughly 44 percent of the electorate voted -- an impressive turnout for a special election. Last November's gubernatorial election had a turnout of 55 percent.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been pushed into the position where two wrongs will make a right, and as Democrats, we simply can’t come to a boxing match when the person brings a knife,” one voter told MS NOW.

The decision followed in the aftermath of President Donald Trump demanding Texas Republicans push a mid-decade gerrymandering effort to erase Democrat districts and give Trump an advantage in the House. Trump began pushing the effort last year as polling began to reveal voters would punish Republicans in the 2026 mid-terms for Republicans’ congressional behavior.

But that effort appeared to backfire as Democrats retaliated by enacting extreme anti-Republican gerrymanders of their own in blue states.“MAGA is having a rough day. They have just entered the “find out” stage after they f—— around,” said one X user on social media.

The New York Times reports Democrats spent heavily on the Virginia election. But opinion polls said voters appeared split in the days leading up to the final vote.

Republicans like former senator John McCain’s daughter Meghan McCain demanded “If you live in Virginia, remember to vote NO on the communist takeover of elections today,” on X, although she made no reference to Republican gerrymandering efforts in red states in her post.Other MAGA X social users appeared to hit a shrill tone as Virginia marched to the polls.

“Democrats are trying to steal 4 seats in the House by redrawing Virginia's map. GET OUT AND VOTE NO!’ posted one X account, also without referencing similar GOP efforts in red states.

Reprinted with permission from Atternet

Top Pentagon Official Confronted Vatican Ambassador With Menacing 'Lecture'

Top Pentagon Official Confronted Vatican Ambassador With Menacing 'Lecture'

Pope Leo XIV chronicler Christopher Hale says he has confirmed that Trump’s Pentagon threatened to declare war on the Vatican.

“In January, behind closed doors at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre — Pope Leo XIV’s then-ambassador to the United States — and delivered a lecture,” said Hale.

“America has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world,” Colby and his associates informed the cardinal. “The Catholic Church had better take its side.”

As the room temperature grew, Hale said, one U.S. official “reached for a fourteenth-century weapon and invoked the Avignon Papacy, the period when the French Crown used military force to bend the bishop of Rome to its will.”

Hale said the report confirms that the Vatican had reason to decline the Trump-Vance White House’s invitation to host Pope Leo XIV for America’s 250th anniversary in 2026 two weeks after the confrontation.

Citing a Free Press report, the writer obtained accounts from Vatican and U.S. officials briefed on the Pentagon meeting. According to his sources, Colby’s team picked apart the pope’s January state-of-the-world address line by line and read it as a hostile message aimed directly at President Donald Trump. Hale said what “enraged them most” was Leo’s declaration that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force.”

“The Pentagon read that sentence as a frontal challenge to the so-called ‘Donroe Doctrine’ — Trump’s update of Monroe, asserting unchallenged American dominion over the Western Hemisphere,” said Hale.

Hale said the cardinal sat through the lecture in silence, but added that “The Holy See has not, since that day, given an inch.”

The Trump administration's contentious relationship with the Catholic Church represents a significant departure from traditional Republican-Church alliances. While Trump secured substantial Catholic voter support in 2016 and 2024 by championing conservative social issues like abortion restrictions, his foreign policy approach and rhetoric have increasingly alienated Church leadership.

Pope Leo XIV has positioned himself as a moral counterweight to Trump's geopolitical aggression, consistently advocating for dialogue-based diplomacy over military intervention. This philosophical clash intensified during Trump's second term, particularly as his administration pursued more hawkish positions on Iran, trade relations, and immigration — issues where Church teaching emphasizes compassion, dialogue, and respect for human dignity.

The Vatican's traditionally neutral stance on secular governance has been tested by Trump's unilateral foreign policy decisions and inflammatory rhetoric. Church leaders have publicly questioned whether American military interventions align with Catholic doctrine on just war theory and the sanctity of human life. Additionally, Trump's administration's hardline immigration policies directly contradict papal messaging that emphasizes welcoming migrants and refugees.

The Pentagon's January confrontation with Cardinal Pierre signals an unprecedented willingness by Trump officials to pressure religious institutions into alignment with administration goals. This represents a potential inflection point: where diplomatic courtesy once governed state-Church relations, coercion may now be replacing negotiation. The Vatican's refusal to participate in the 250th anniversary celebration underscores that even America's most prominent religious institution will not compromise its moral authority for political expediency.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

MAGA Dread As Democrat Flips Mar-A-Lago District In Special Election

MAGA Dread As Democrat Flips Mar-A-Lago District In Special Election

The MAGA world went deep into panic mode as soon as the official results of a Florida special election landed.

On Tuesday, Democrat candidate Emily Gregory won a Florida state house special election against Republican John Maples — in a district that President Donald Trump won by 11 percent of the vote roughly one year ago.

As an additional kick, the district happens to house Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago Club, putting the district, as one CNN analyst described it, right ‘in Trump’s backyard.”

Conservative writer Eric Daugherty tried to play down the win, arguing on X that the legislative session in Florida has already ended and that Republicans are “hoping for powerful comeback later this year to cancel it all out.” But the victory set off alarms throughout the rest of MAGAsphere, with one X commenter posting “I don't like how this ‘trend’ is going.”

“How in hell do we get 30 percent turnout in today’s politically charged environment,” demanded another. “Do we have that many lazy, unengaged Republicans who ignore special elections and maybe even (God heal us) the midterms?”

While some MAGA X users shrilly shouted: “Don’t run Blacks” as Republican candidates (losing GOP candidate John Maples is African-American), others argued for Republicans to “work on our ground game.”

“These special elections are a sign we aren’t paying attention,” said the X user. “Download ActiVote, fill out your info, and you’ll know when all races in your district are. This is bare minimum civic duty sh——, guys.”

Still another frustrated Republican posted: “Floridians, I’m starting to see a trend that shouldn’t be happening,” while a casual observer wagered “Midterms are going to be brutal for the GOP.”

CNN Analyst Harry Enten compounded Republicans’ frustration, saying the GOP loss in Mar-a-Lago “is unlikely to stay at Mar-a-Lago.” Nationwide discontent with Trump appears to be making many voters hostile and driving Republican voters into disinterest.

“Historically speaking, special elections have forecasted what will happen in the midterm elections,” said Enten. “… [E]very single time a party outperformed the presidential baseline in the next midterm election, what we saw — five out of five times — that party went on to win the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Ed Martin, Weaponized Prosecutor For Trump Justice, May Soon Face Disbarment

Ed Martin, Weaponized Prosecutor For Trump Justice, May Soon Face Disbarment

Ed Martin, former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, had to look hard, but somehow managed to find the “dumbest possible rake” to step on, as Mark Joseph Stern tells Slate. Now the former Trump appointee is in even more trouble than he was.

“On Tuesday, the disciplinary counsel for the D.C. bar announced a formal complaint against Martin for professional misconduct,” said Stern. “The charges accuse him of violating his oath to the Constitution, then interfering with the investigation into his alleged malfeasance. If found culpable, he could be suspended from the practice of law or disbarred in D.C.”

Martin’s alleged unconstitutional behavior is already a matter of public record, said Stern. But it’s what he did after receiving notice of the complaint that sets Martin’s arrogance apart from all others. Upon receiving the initial complaint, Stern said Martin “launched a pressure campaign against the D.C. Court of Appeals … to suspend the lead investigator on his case.”

This, it turns out, was a much more egregious violation of court process than what the D.C. bar was initially investigating him for. The initial complaint was all about Martin’s harassment of Georgetown University Law Center, when he sent a letter to then-Dean William Treanor warning the school to remove all traces of DEI or the Trump administration would not hire Georgetown Law grads. He even threatened that the school might lose federal funding.

But while Martin’s letter was “absurd and malicious,” Stern said it might not constitute a violation of his oath. There was even a chance that the Board on Professional Responsibility or the D.C. Court of Appeals would agree.

But instead of contesting the claim against him through the proper legal channels, Martin allegedly tried to quash the complaint by committing “a far more clear-cut ethical breach,” said Stern. “According to the charges, Martin refused to respond to the complaint, and instead wrote directly to the chief judge and senior judges of the D.C. Court of Appeals. In his letter, he requested a “face-to-face meeting with all of you to discuss this matter and find a way forward.”

The chief judge, Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, told Martin to go pound sand and follow standard procedure. But rather than take her advice, Martin reportedly told the disciplinary counsel that he was essentially “calling their manager” — and he copied Blackburne-Rigsby on the email.

Furious, the disciplinary counsel demanded Martin turn over his letter to the judges. But rather than comply, he wrote to the chief judge again, insisting “that you not only suspend Mr. Fox immediately to investigate his conduct, but also to dismiss the case against me because of his prejudicial conduct.”

“Unfortunately for Martin, the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct expressly forbid lawyers from communicating with a judge ‘unless authorized to do so by law or court order,’ which he was not,” said Stern. “There appears to be no serious dispute that Martin communicated with Blackburne-Rigsby ex parte not once, not twice, but three separate times, all in an effort to evade discipline against him.”

If proven, Stern said this behavior “is a textbook example of misconduct sanctionable by the bar. So, of course the D.C. bar’s disciplinary counsel charged Martin with violating that rule, as well as another prohibiting conduct that ‘seriously interferes with the administration of justice.’”

“The erstwhile interim U.S. attorney, then, is in a pickle of his own making,” said Stern. “Had he simply fought Fox’s complaint the right way, he may well have defeated the charges in short order. But because he allegedly tried to obstruct the investigation, he faces a separate set of charges on much firmer legal ground.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Trump Demands Passage Of Partisan Election Bill To 'Guarantee The Midterms'

Trump Demands Passage Of Partisan Election Bill To 'Guarantee The Midterms'

Politico reports President Donald Trump ordered House Republicans Monday to pass his huge partisan elections bill a third time with even more provisions, targeting mail-in voters and vulnerable minorities.

“It will guarantee the midterms,” Trump told lawmakers, according to Politico. “If you don’t get it, big trouble, my opinion.”

Provisions that Trump wants added include targeting transgender rights in addition to curbing mail voting, even though Trump himself has voted by mail. And Trump warned the GOP to pursue passage of the law even it means abandoning the rest of their legislative agenda before the November elections.

“It’s actually a matter in a serious way of national survival. We can’t have these elections going on like this anymore,” Trump said.

Trump also endorsed a push by House Republican hard-liners to attach a must-pass spy powers extension to the SAVE America legislation in a bid to pass both together. But there is a reason Trump is asking the House to pass the bill a third time: Politico reports this would create “a nightmare for House GOP leaders who already face obstacles passing either bill.

The House has already two passed versions of what is now called the “SAVE America Act,” which would create onerous new citizenship and photo ID requirements for voting. Still, Politico reports Trump is framing the voting and transgender provisions as “proven political winners” that Democrats will not easily be able to oppose.

“That should be the easiest thing to get passed that you’ve ever had,” Trump told the Republicans. “Those are best of Trump. This is the No. 1 priority, it should be, for the House.”

But Democrats have opposed the bill in unison every time Republicans tried to get it to the president’s desk, and even Republican leaders have been loath to change Senate rules to make the bill easier to pass.

Reprinted with permisson from Alternet