Trump Wants to Axe Freedom 250 Concert After Artists Drop Out
Center Left
President Donald Trump is now calling on the Freedom 250 event to be cancelled and replaced with a MAGA rally after several musical artists dropped out. Meanwhile, the president also claims he “canceled” his involvement with the Kennedy Center after a federal judge ruled that Trump’s name must come off of the building. NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez reports for TODAY.
MS NOW's Jonathan Lemire struggled to make sense of President Donald Trump's latest weekend social media posting spree.The 79-year-old president posted dozens of times across more than 12 hours Saturday, including a lengthy tirade against a federal judge and numerous AI-generated memes celebrating himself in fantastical scenarios, and the "Morning Joe" host attempted to describe the posts to viewers."Right now, we want to turn to President Trump, who spent most of his Saturday posting on his Truth Social platform," Lemire said. "Again, the president's first post at 11:50 a.m. was a more than 700-word rant about a federal judge who on Friday ruled that the Kennedy Center must remove Trump's name from the building. Over the next 14 hours, Trump posted more than 60 times, finally ending at just after 1 a.m. Sunday morning.""His social media spree included political memes attacking his perceived political rivals, memes about crime under his administration compared to former President Biden, multiple AI-generated pictures, including two separate posts of Trump on Mount Rushmore and at least three posts with George Washington, one of which was the two men on horses near a Trump-branded NASCAR vehicle with the Washington Monument and the White House in the background, and, for good measure, a space shuttle flying over them," Lemire added. "You know, this is not going to help the accusations that President Trump is focused solely on himself and his own priorities."The posts offer a window into the president's thinking, agreed co-host Katty Kay, and she said the view wasn't particularly appealing. "It's pretty clear where the president's head is at at the moment," she said. "He's had this long-running war with Iran, long by his standards, not long, of course, by international standards, that is not going well. He's deeply frustrated by that. When he hits a roadblock in the pet things that he is really focused on, and that he feels a part of his legacy, like the Kennedy Center then and like the reflecting pool, then he gets peeved, and when he gets peeved, he reaches for his phone, and no matter how many people around him say it would be better to take the president's phone away from him during the course of particularly weekend nights, he doesn't want to do that." - YouTube youtu.be
Rev. Al Sharpton’s latest race-baiting found him shoehorning a past president and “slave masters” into a narrative about President Donald Trump’s motivations for an upcoming White House […]
While the public has been focused on the occasional high-profile clash between President Donald Trump and the Supreme Court, the court's conservative supermajority has been quietly using the shadow docket to hand Trump something far more consequential — effective control of the federal government — and legal analysts say that work is now largely complete.That is the central argument of a new piece by Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, who say the popular narrative of a principled Chief Justice John Roberts standing up to Trump conceals a far more troubling reality."Trump's takeover of the federal government is largely complete," Stern writes. "So I just don't think the court needs to issue nearly as many shadow docket orders as it did during that shock-and-awe campaign — it has already achieved its objectives."The shadow docket refers to emergency orders and procedural rulings the court issues outside its normal merits docket, typically with little explanation and no oral argument. During the first year of Trump's second term, the conservative supermajority used it repeatedly and rapidly to clear the way for Trump to impound federal funds, fire executive officials, and rewrite immigration law — moves that would have been blocked under previous interpretations of the law.Lithwick and Stern argue that Roberts has a long-established pattern of using smaller decisions to prepare the ground for larger ones. "Do something small, get people accustomed to it, then do it big," Stern explains. "The shadow docket has become the way you do that now. You seed the ground on the shadow docket and say: 'Well, this is the law now.' This process used to take four or five years. Now, with the shadow docket, you can do it within the same term."The authors also push back on the idea that occasional Trump losses at the court represent meaningful resistance. The justices, they argue, only draw the line when Trump threatens the court's own power and supremacy — not when he threatens civil liberties, voting rights, or the separation of powers more broadly.That selective resistance, Lithwick warns, may ultimately backfire. The court has repeatedly rewarded Trump for defying lower court orders. "There is no clear reason why that should stop with the Supreme Court," she writes. "Eventually, the administration won't just say: It worked all these other times, it should work this time."If that happens, Stern argues, the court will have squandered whatever moral authority it had left. "They've made me a king," he writes of Trump's likely reasoning, "so I'm going to act like one."
WATCH: Unions Join Newark Anti-ICE Protests as the Left MOBILIZES Against Trump’s Immigration Enforcement Anti-ICE protests in Newark, New Jersey, are exposing a much larger problem than opposition to one detention facility.
The post Publicly Funded Teachers Unions Join Newark Anti-ICE Protests as the Left MOBILIZES Against Trump’s Immigration Enforcement Agenda (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Some MAGA Republicans, including "War Room" host Steve Bannon, are calling for President Donald Trump to seek a third term in 2028 even though the U.S. Constitution's 21st Amendment, ratified in 1951, is crystal clear about presidential term limits. Others in the MAGA movement are arguing that they need to think about MAGA's future. Turning Point USA's Erika Kirk is already endorsing Vice President JD Vance for 2028, but according to Never Trump conservative Rick Wilson, Trump is undermining Vance as the "golden child for MAGA" — and making sure Republicans compete for his support. In a "Fast Politics" video with liberal co-host Molly Jong-Fast, Wilson argued, "I think (Trump) is starting to try to shape the future to pick out who he wants as the golden child for MAGA. And you notice, he said, over the weekend — or, I guess, at the end of the week — there was that big meeting with Candace (Owens) and Tucker (Carlson), all these people who are MAGA but are opposed to…. the Iran war, and he came out and said: Well, they're not MAGA, I'm MAGA. I'll decide who is MAGA."The former GOP strategist continued, "And I think he's starting to look at himself as the kingmaker to come in the immediate years ahead of them — however many there are left. And so, I think that's why you're getting this sort of vibe of competition between Vance and (Secretary of State Marco) Rubio."Republicans, Wilson noted, are by no means universally sold on Vance as the logical successor to Trump.GOP insiders are paying attention to former Sen. Rubio (R-Florida), who is the closest thing to a traditional conservative in the second Trump Administration.Wilson told Jong-Fast, "And you're going to start seeing (Trump) mentioning senators or governors that he likes. You're going to see him play the game. He's going to throw meat out there to make them all compete for his love. Just like with his children." Jong-Fast interjected that "this is all happening with the backdrop" of recent firings in the Trump Administration. Although Trump's second administration hasn't had nearly as much turnover as his first, the president has fired some prominent MAGA loyalists in 2026 — including former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi (who was replaced by Acting AG Todd Blanche) and ex-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (who was replaced with now-DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a former U.S. senator).
The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 1 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.On Friday, former Attorney General Pam Bondi testified to lawmakers behind closed doors about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. What Democrats said afterwards strongly suggests that this mess is not going away for Donald Trump and very likely will get worse next year if Democrats take back the House. This comes amid other signs that the Republican lines of defense around Trump are crumbling on many fronts. And Trump himself may be to blame, because it’s his mounting unpopularity that’s driving it all. As one Republican put it, Trump is lame-ducking himself.We’re talking about all this with historian Nicole Hemmer, who’s one of our go-to people on Epstein and the right wing, a topic she’s written several books about. Nicole, always nice to have you on.Nicole Hemmer: Lovely to be back, Greg.Sargent: So Pam Bondi, the former AG, was on Capitol Hill as part of the House’s ongoing investigation into the Jeffrey Epstein files, which are the investigative materials gathered as part of DOJ’s probe of Epstein’s sex trafficking. One of the big things that happened in her testimony was that she essentially threw acting AG Todd Blanche under the bus. Listen to Representative Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, recounting what Bondi said.Robert Garcia (voiceover): In that interview and what she’s saying here, in her words and remarks, is that it was Todd Blanche, the current acting AG, that was leading the Epstein investigation. And quite frankly, all of the mistakes that we saw—the redactions, not protecting survivors—she continues to push that back onto the acting AG Todd Blanche, who, by the way, was Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer.Sargent: So Bondi apparently blamed Blanche for just about everything that’s gone wrong—the lack of transparency, all of it. Nicole, what do you make of that?Hemmer: It’s an interesting move. Pam Bondi is in such a different position at this point than she was when she was first subpoenaed to give this testimony. She used to be the attorney general. Now she’s been forced out and she is shifting all the blame onto her presumed successor. Blanche is going to have to go through confirmation hearings soon, and she has just made that very difficult for him. Epstein is going to be the focus of conversation when Blanche goes up for confirmation.What’s interesting about it, and kind of surprising about it, is that Pam Bondi only has herself to blame for being the face of the Epstein scandal within the Trump administration. She is the one who said that she had the files on her desk. She called in all of those right-wing influencers to come parade around with their binders. And so it’s a little too little too late, but I think that it plays into her hand—and into Democrats’ hands—for her to push the blame on Blanche, who’s not only going up to be attorney general but also is Donald Trump’s personal lawyer. And so she’s making his life difficult, probably because she was forced out of her position.Sargent: Well, yes. And I think we should remind everybody, just sort of related to what you just said there, that MAGA for many, many years really wanted to know what was in the Epstein files. It was a huge obsession on the far right. It was a huge obsession among all these influencers, to the degree that she actually brought them in to say, hey, we’re going to really blow this thing open for you guys. You put us in charge and now we’re going to make it all right. And then of course, as soon as Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, the FBI director, got a look at what was in the Epstein files, they were just like, no, we’re not doing that anymore. Can you just sort of talk about that big history in context?Hemmer: Well, that history is really important because so many of the people who were put in place in this second Trump administration were put in place not only because they were Trump loyalists, but because they had a lot of support from the MAGA base that they built on this idea that the Epstein files needed to be released. This is huge for Kash Patel, for Dan Bongino, both in the FBI, and for Pam Bondi. And so I think Bondi thought early on that she could score a lot of points with the Trump base by pushing the Epstein story to the very front of her time as attorney general. This was going to be the thing that she was going to make her name on because it was so important to the base.And she immediately put herself between a rock and a hard place because the base really cares about these Epstein files. They really care about this scandal. And Donald Trump doesn’t want anyone talking about it. And so Bondi saw herself suddenly serving two masters—the MAGA base and Donald Trump—and there was no way to satisfy both of them.
President Donald Trump is not cool anymore, culturally as well as politically, according to a recent analysis.Trump’s so-called “fair” to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary is losing talent because top pop culture figures, even non-liberal ones, want nothing to do with Trump, wrote MS NOW’s Jeff Slate on Sunday. Slate reviewed how Bret Michaels, Morris Day, the Commodores and Young MC have cancelled their planned appearances, with several of them stating they were not aware that it was a pro-Trump event.Then slate focuses on Martina McBride, a Grammy-nominated singer known for her wholesome and seeming neutral image.“I’ve spent my entire career singing songs about real people with real issues,” McBride wrote in her statement. “I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to be a voice for those who have felt like they didn’t have one. It greatly upsets me that any fan who has been moved by my music may now feel like I’m abandoning the meaning behind those songs. I assure you, that is not the case.”Slate then broke down why this is relevant in terms of understanding Trump’s place in the current zeitgeist.“This was major news, and MAGA world took notice,” Slate wrote. “Remember that it was only a year ago that contemporary country star Carrie Underwood happily accepted an invitation to perform at Trump’s second swearing-in ceremony, despite not insignificant backlash from progressive fans.”He added that McBride’s public statement “feels bigger than one festival. She isn’t some over-the-hill casino entertainer. The 59-year-old songstress is a traditional, conservative-coded country artist. McBride has sold many millions of records over her decades-long career, with songs that frequently mix classic country themes of God and faith with heartbreak, hope and resilience.”Yet he concluded that “something, clearly, has shifted. And fast. Despite what some of her loudest critics are now implying on social media, McBride does not have a track record of supporting leftist causes. Instead, her decision highlights in the starkest of terms just how culturally corrosive Trump has become during his second term. That’s what a war of choice, soaring gas and food prices, stagnating inflation, and an aggregate job approval rating in the 30s can lead to.”In addition to being controversial because it is tied to Trump’s brand, the festival is also under scrutiny due to allegations of corruption.“For one million dollars or more…donors to Freedom 250 can secure an invitation to a private reception hosted by Trump himself,” reported Washingtonian. “As the New York Times explained earlier this year, Freedom 250 allows ‘people and companies with interests before the Trump administration’ to make ‘tax-deductible donations to gain access to, and seek favor with, a president who has maintained a keen interest in fund-raising, and a willingness to use the levers of government power to reward financial supporters.’”After the report came out, Democratic senators began a probe into the organization’s finances, writing that “government-sponsored civic commemorations should not serve as platforms for political messaging or partisan activity, nor should they create opportunities for donors to exert influence with federal decision-makers under the guise of patriotic celebration.”
