A Republican trying to defend President Donald Trump's legacy was shut down on live television Wednesday with one simple question that he would not answer. The argument erupted on CNN Wednesday morning ahead of a contentious Senate hearing, when Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) will haul in his longtime bogeyman Dr. Anthony Fauci back to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as part of his ongoing quest to determine the origins of the coronavirus. The Kentucky Republican posted online more than 1,100 pages of the physician's diaries written during the pandemic on government computers. Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright admitted he found the situation frustrating."What burns my biscuits the most is you have this political theater that will happen in the United States Senate today with Sen. Rand Paul, but there's no interest in the fact that you have the screw worm sending everyone on the run," said Seawright. "The fact that you see recall after recall and foods that basic everyday Americans are afraid to even deal with, and all the challenges that came along that come along with this current administration, and there's no sense of accountability in that regard."The Daily Signal's Rob Bluey tried to argue the hearing was more than political theater, saying it did address an issue that Americans cared deeply about."There will be fireworks today, I agree with you on that point," Bluey said. "But it's the role of Congress, in this case Sen. Rand Paul, to have oversight and hold this this government employee, former government employee who was paid $400,000 a year with our tax dollars and who lied to the American people repeatedly about the origin of Covid.""Respectfully, how do you know that?" Seawright interjected."Because it's in the diary," Bluey replied.Paul has long maintained that Fauci covered up evidence supporting the "lab leak" theory, and the senator's website highlighted a Feb. 1, 2020, diary entry covering a conference call with prominent scientists who Fauci noted had not all been in "total agreement" about the origins."This might not be the last time that the United States finds itself in a situation where we have a global pandemic," Bluey argued, "and holding that person accountable, getting answers, holding the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, accountable for what its role was, and then think about all of the losses that our country experienced, not only in terms of jobs, but the schooling. I mean, I have kids, it affect my family's life profoundly."That's when Seawright posed the question Bluey would not answer. "Can someone remind me who was in charge when we were going through the Covid 19 pandemic?" Seawright said. "Because I think sometimes that gets lost in the conversation. Who was the president?" "Apparently, Anthony Fauci thought he was," Bluey retorted. "Well, who was in charge?" Seawright asked. "Who was the president?"Trump was in charge during Covid." - YouTube youtu.be
We are now under 100 days until the midterms, and Republican strategists and GOP leaders have all come to the same conclusion for their caucus: keep Donald Trump's name out of your mouth, and ostensibly keep him off the campaign trail.Operatives close to the White House are reportedly telling incumbents and challengers alike — privately, one assumes, so the boss doesn't find out — to stop echoing his line on the Iran war, stop defending his economic numbers, and build their own case to voters instead.They'd be fools to attach themselves to him, even in some red districts where inflation has really come home to roost. Trump's almost “worst ever” approval rating is in the mid-30s and sinking. The war is closing in on half a year old, with no clean end in sight.Gas prices are up, "affordability" is the word Democrats have successfully claimed as their own, and every additional minute Trump spends talking is, by the party's own admission, a minute of bad news for candidates trying to get their messages through and survive in November.It all sounds reasonable and doable, except for the fact that one variable in this equation is petulant and predictable. When you tell Donald Trump no, or that he needs to be managed, nothing in the man's history suggests he knows how to do that.What's actually coming down the pike for Republicans isn't pretty and will make their plans look like chop suey. Does anyone say that anymore? Well, we can say it literally, because if Trump’s economic chaos continues, the only thing Americans will be able to afford to eat are cheap cans of chop suey.Trump is heading into the fall with a wish list that has absolutely nothing to do with food prices, reality or what's on voters' minds. He's obsessed with the SAVE Act, which is a loser in the Senate. He is still gunning for funding for his anti-weaponization fund, eager to provide updates about his gilded ballroom, and determined to sell the Iran war as successful when everyone, except he and Hegseth, knows it's a catastrophic failure.Standing between Trump and all of it is a small but real bloc of his own party. Jilted Sens. John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy have shown they're willing to buck him now that the chains are off after Trump sank their re-election hopes.Sen. Thom Tillis has already called parts of Trump's agenda "theater" and made clear he isn't interested in absorbing the blowback from ramming through election-law changes months before voters go to the polls.In the House, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie is making it his life's mission to buck his party when it counts and say no. Individually, none of them can stop Trump, but together they can make his life miserable by blocking the SAVE Act, trying to rid the bill, once and for all, of the anti-weaponization funding, and denying him the permission and funds to keep the Iran war going.And that is exactly the problem, because a boxed-in Trump doesn't respond well to being told "no." Instead, he has a long history of reacting by getting louder, angrier, and, in his current demented state, more demented.In 1990, he opened the Trump Taj Mahal on a mountain of junk-bond debt after financial advisers warned him the numbers didn't work for the economy at the time. When an analyst went public predicting the casino would fail, Trump's answer was to fire the analyst. The Taj Mahal missed its debt payments within months and was in bankruptcy court within the year.And who could forget Trump's insistence on promoting his favorite drug, hydroxychloroquine, from the White House podium? After federal scientists told him, repeatedly and on the record, that there was no evidence it did anything for COVID-19, he took it upon himself to play doctor and tout the drug's nonexistent benefits.He kept pressuring regulators to protect its emergency authorization right up until the clinical trials came back and the FDA had to reverse course in public.And more recently, when military and intelligence officials warned that an open-ended bombing campaign in Iran risked a war with no exit, he launched it anyway, relying on his "gut instincts" and, most assuredly, his spoiled brat persona to try to prove he knew more than military generals.Being told "no" has never once made Trump smaller. It has always made him bigger, louder, and more determined to prove the people telling him no were wrong. And what's wild about the whole thing is that Trump has always been wrong, even though he thinks he's always been right, which is yet another reason why he will ignore the word "no."Each of the examples above shows that Trump takes the word "no" as a personal insult, and hearing "no" from his own party, which he built and claims to have rescued, is going to be too much for him to handle.He is going to hit back publicly, make it all about him, loyalty to him, and betrayal of him, and remind everyone watching that he is the one being wronged.While the GOP insists on message discipline on the campaign trail, off the trail it will be...
President Donald Trump sparked a firestorm late Tuesday night with an endorsement of a House candidate in Michigan — and his shocked fans on Truth Social let him have it.“It is my Great Honor to endorse Amir Hassan, who is running to represent the fantastic people of Michigan’s 8th Congressional District!” Trump wrote. “Amir Hassan has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next Representative from Michigan’s 8th Congressional District — HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”His MAGA followers were not happy — Despite campaign literature in which Hassan says “Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior," followers raged at Trump for endorsing a Muslim. “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul," one Trump supporter wrote. "No political gain is worth insulting our Christian faith. No Muslims in America. No Muslims in office.”That was a common theme in the comments under Trump’s post.Trump supporter Conita Drew wrote a 542-word reply.“Have you lost your mind, endorsing Muslim candidates," Drew wrote. "What has happened to you? You are not the man that I voted for three times, you have no wisdom whatsoever where Islam is concerned.”“Honestly??? Why????" ranted “Proud conservative” Kimberlee. "Do you think there are already too many foreigners in congress??? Don’t you think enough is enough at this point????” “THATS A HARD NO FOR ME. NO MUSLIMS IN OFFICE PERIOD!” stated JeffV4JC, who claims in his profile, “Jesus Christ is my God and, Donald J Trump is my President.”JoniMarieForLiberty warned, “YOU ARE BEING MISLED, President Trump! This guy is a snake in the grass. Muslim and never voted for a republican in his whole life. Moved to Michigan last summer and immediately filed to run for office. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!”“His name gives me pause. Call me racist 🤷🏼♀️ but I am merely being cautious. Obama comes to mind,” advised “Loyal Trump supporter” Billie.Mad1Macs was short and to the point, writing: “NOPE.”
President Donald Trump’s social media network’s plan to sell faster access to Truth Social posts hands Democrats another high-profile target as they prep congressional investigations into the Trump administration in case they win in the November midterm elections. Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs the Truth Social platform, recently announced the plan. Trump’s posts […]
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 29 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.Donald Trump just unleashed a barrage of unhinged threats toward Iran in a new interview with Fox News. He threatened to bomb all Iran’s bridges and power plants, and said explicitly that the entire population of Iran might soon be without electric power.There’s a temptation to dismiss moments like these as bluster. But we can’t let ourselves lose sight of what exactly he’s threatening to do, just how sociopathic these threats really are, and just how terrible it is that the media is now largely numb to them. This all comes as some MAGA figures are warning against escalation in some surprising new ways as well.So we’re trying to make sense of it all with former State Department official Emily Horne. Emily, always good to have you on.Emily Horne: Thanks, Greg, for having me.Sargent: OK, so we’re in this weird holding pattern where Trump has held off on escalating and he just keeps making all these threats, and he keeps saying Iran is desperate to talk to him. Yet at the same time, the reporting indicates that in reality the Iranians are not in any rush to talk to Trump at all. Emily, can you sum up the situation as of now?Horne: The TLDR on that, to use bureaucratic terms, is that Iran has all of the leverage and all of the momentum at this moment in the conflict. I think they’ve shown that there’s a real willingness on their end to pass the cost of this war to the Iranian people, which, as terrible as that is, is a major asset for them. They are not particularly troubled by their own people’s suffering. And that, plus their control of the Strait of Hormuz, gives them a lot of incentives to maintain the status quo, and a lot of leverage over the status of negotiations.They also continue to have a nuclear program, because Trump walked away from the JCPOA in his first term. So no matter what Trump has said at various points in Trump II about obliterating Iran’s nuclear program, again, that is something that Iran has as a bargaining chip, and they have been very clear that they’re going to control the direction of the conversation moving forward.Sargent: Why is it that they don’t seem to fear Trump escalating, exactly?Horne: I think part of it is that, again, they have the leverage here. As you and I have talked about before, this is an existential conflict for the IRGC. Many of them have lost family members, have already suffered greatly; they have already inflicted a great deal of suffering on the Iranian people. And so there’s a tremendous sunk cost that has already been absorbed by the IRGC in this conflict. And from their perspective, maintenance of the status quo is fine by them—as much as that continues to put Trump in an impossible position, because again, he just doesn’t have a lot of leverage at this point.But also, their strategy has been working for them. They don’t just control the strait, they are able to inflict a great deal of pain on the broader Middle East region, including by attacking tech infrastructure like data centers, attacking desalinization plants in Kuwait and other Gulf countries, attacking civilian infrastructure across the Middle East. And that again sends a signal that it is Iran’s momentum at this point in the conflict, not the U.S.’s.Sargent: Well, in that context, let’s check out something Trump just said on Fox News. He starts by saying, I could knock out all the power plants, then it keeps going from there. Listen to this.Donald Trump (voiceover): I could knock out the power plants within one day. All of their power plants would be gone. And I let ‘em know that, you know, with negotiations. They say, look—people want me to do that. I think about 91 million people without power, without bridges, with that to live. And it’s a very, very delicate balance. So I think we have a very strong position right now. They know I’m going to do that if they don’t make a deal. The bridges are going to be gone. Literally, in less than a—I would say in two hours, most of the bridges, the major bridges, will all be gone. And the power plants in one day.Sargent: Emily, I could be wrong, but I think this might be the first time that Trump has explicitly said not only that he’d knock out all the power plants, but also clarified that he really means knocking out electricity for all of Iran’s 91 million people. He said that. And that would be like a humanitarian catastrophe of unthinkable proportions. What would actually happen if he did that?Horne: So if Trump were to follow through on his threats to attack Iranian civilian infrastructure like power plants en masse, then you would likely see an immediate and mass humanitarian crisis that would affect at minimum tens of millions of people.
Last week, the Trump administration announced a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. The deal would allow the kingdom to develop nuclear power using American technology and could eventually pave the way for uranium enrichment on Saudi soil. But the agreement must first undergo congressional review — and survive President Donald Trump’s social […]
President Donald Trump pardoned a Republican megadonor linked to a massive fraud scandal after he contributed to a high-stakes swing state campaign, according to a new report.Adam Kidan — who pleaded guilty in the lobbyist Jack Abramoff conspiracy case —received a pardon from Trump just days after making a $2,600 to Rep. Ryan MacKenzie's (R-PA) leadership PAC on June 30, NOTUS reported Wednesday."Trump traveled to Mackenzie’s eastern Pennsylvania district on June 23 to campaign with him," the report stated. "The president pardoned Kidan on July 3."Mackenzie’s office denied communication with Trump regarding the pardon but did not respond to question about whether the campaign would keep the cash, NOTUS reported. Neither the White House nor Kidan replied to requests for comment.But his Democratic challenger Bob Brooks's campaign told NOTUS they are livid as it fights to win a “toss-up” race, according to the report.“Three days after a convicted fraudster cut Ryan Mackenzie a massive campaign check, that same fraudster walked away with a presidential pardon," Brooks campaign manager Jenna Kaufman told NOTUS. "That is corruption in plain sight.”Kidan donated about $270,000 to Trump-affiliated committees during the 2024 election cycle and hosted fundraisers at Mar-a-Lago, according to the report.He pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy and mail fraud in 2005."As part of his sentencing, Kidan and Abramoff were ordered to pay a total of $217 million in restitution," the report stated. "It’s unclear whether Kidan paid the full amount, and Trump’s pardon is likely to erase any remaining financial obligations."
