President Donald Trump alarmed onlookers on Sunday after he went on an hours-long AI picture posting spree on Truth Social. In all, Trump posted more than 40 AI-generated photos over multiple hours on Truth Social. Some of the photos included Trump standing on top of an Iranian oil tanker declaring "It is our oil tanker now!" and three late-night comedians who recently drew the president's ire panhandling on a sidewalk. There was also the all-too-expected jab at Rosie O'Donnell, who has been feuding with the president for nearly two decades. The photos were posted on a day when reporters caught Trump out playing golf and inspecting the White House renovations. Political analysts and observers reacted with concern to Trump's posting spree. "Trump is having a mental health episode on social media right now," posted Harry Sisson, a Democratic influencer with over 394,000 followers on X. "He’s insane. 25th Amendment NOW.""If anyone still believes our president is not an unhinged sociopath, please check out his fake Twitter feed from this afternoon," S.V. Dáte, White House at HuffPost, posted on X. "A man who posts this 'joke' this many times is not joking. This is pure delusion," Vance Wilson, a liberal political commentator, posted on X. "I am confident he will try to find some way to run in 2028. He may not succeed at the Supreme Court, but I am nearly certain he doesn’t see this as a 'joke.'"
The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board sharply rebuked a Republican bill advancing through the Senate on Sunday as "political rent-seeking under the guise of national security."Senate Republicans have advanced a bill that would expand Commerce Department restrictions on Chinese “connected” software in cars. A new editorial argued that the move seems reasonable on the surface because of myriad internet-connected systems in new vehicles, but the bill has been hijacked by "self-serving union and corporate interests." "While political favoritism could bias national-security reviews, the Senate bill is more problematic," the editorial reads. One group the editorial singled out is the United Auto Workers union, which "almost exclusively backs Democrats." That led the editors to question why Republicans would bother to carry water for the union, as proponents of the bill have proven themselves willing to do. The editorial also highlighted how the bill could create political risks for Republicans ahead of the midterms. One auto manufacturer that stands to be impacted by the bill is Mercedes, which employs over 7,500 people in two Republican states, Alabama and South Carolina, the editorial noted. Republicans have also shown a willingness to fight Mercedes over the company's opposition to the bill. For instance, the editorial flagged a letter written by the House Select Committee on China that chided Mercedes for trying to tell U.S. lawmakers "how to set the rules for our own country.""This being an election year, there’s a risk that Republicans who want to flaunt their anti-China bona fides insist on attaching the bill to a must-pass vehicle like the National Defense Authorization Act," the editorial added. "If American workers later lose their jobs, they’ll blame someone else."
A small but growing number of Democrats are embracing their own version of "America First" in response to Donald Trump's ongoing war with Iran in partnership with Israel.Why it matters: Trump's war is scrambling the politics of a slogan he once owned, fracturing the right even as some Democrats — including potential 2028 presidential candidates — embrace it.Driving the news: Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive Senate candidate in Michigan who campaigned with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) last weekend, told Axios: "I'm the most America First candidate in the country, proudly.""When you keep our money here rather than sending it to some other country's war machine, that's America First," he said.California Rep. Ro Khanna, who's weighing a run for the White House, also is embracing the label.In April, he said it's time to "put America first" when he reintroduced a bill to ban gas exports during periods of high gas prices.In February on the House floor, Khanna said that "another war in the Middle East is not America First."And Dan Osborn, a union leader running for Senate in Nebraska as an independent against the Republican incumbent, wrote on Friday: "We need to be putting America first, not Israel first.""We can't undermine the independence of the American military for any ally," he added, "much less an untrustworthy one that's already forced us to throw money at a useless forever war overseas."Zoom out: Some Republicans agree with Democrats that Trump's war with Iran was a betrayal of his pledge to put Americans first — and that it's given Democrats a political opening.Tucker Carlson, who introduced Trump at the Republican National Convention in 2024, lobbied the president against attacking Iran and has since apologized for "misleading people" about Trump.El-Sayed agreed with Trump's critics on the right, saying that "the MAGA version of America First is to make a show out of America First, only to sell you out.""They'll always be beholden to the interests of a foreign interest lobby like AIPAC, and always be beholden to the interests of the corporate war machine, the military-industrial complex, the folks who win every single time we send our weapons abroad," he added.Between the lines: Most national Democrats still stop short of using Trump's phrase, but they increasingly echo its main arguments.Campaigning in Memphis this month, Ocasio-Cortez — who's considering a run for president or the Senate in 2028 — said that "all that money we're spending on bombs abroad could be spent on schools right here."In a speech to Arkansas' Democratic Party in April, former Vice President Kamala Harris said, "To spark an American revival, we must start with a bold agenda where our public dollars go to affordable housing and healthcare and childcare, not spent on reckless foreign wars that no one wants."Trump himself repeatedly decried "stupid foreign wars" during the 2024 campaign.Beyond antiwar statements, many Democrats have embraced domestic industrial policies aimed at reviving American manufacturing.In June, Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Cory Booker of New Jersey — both potential presidential contenders — were among those introducing the Make More in America Act.Kelly argued the bill would "build more things here at home and create good-paying jobs while reducing our dependency on foreign adversaries."Bottom line: Trump will finish his term in 2029, but the politics that led him to embrace "America First" now appear bipartisan, and here to stay.Polls indicate voters are tired of the decades of battles in the Middle East, particularly when they don't feel positive about their economic situation at home. Now politicians in both parties are trying to meet voters where they already are.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) rebuked former Chicago mayor and likely 2028 presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel and establishment Democrats writ large on Sunday, saying “the people are sick and tired of the status quo” while casting progressive Democratic Senate candidates as the future of the Democratic Party. While speaking with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation, […]
President Donald Trump may have just laid down the tracks for one of his boldest election plots yet, according to one political analyst. John Heilemann, an MS NOW political analyst, said on Sunday's broadcast of "Deadline: White House: Weekend" that Trump's recent national address about election security was an attempt to "lay down the tracks" for his next wave of lies about the election results."I think he's just trying to lay down the tracks on which he can make false claims in the future," Heilemann said. "For him, it's enough to have said those things publicly so that when he does what he's going to do, whatever that turns out to be in November, he can look back and say, 'I told you so. I said, this was rigged. You didn't believe me. You didn't listen to me. But it was rigged then, and it's rigged now ... This is an illegitimate election. And here's what we're going to do going forward.'" Heilemann noted that recent polling appears to back up his assertion. A recent poll from The Economist and YouGov found that 67% of Americans, including 77% of independent voters, thought Trump was trying to sow doubt about American elections during his national address rather than back up his claims of election interference with concrete facts. "So, all of this is about pretext, not about persuasion, and not about some kind of good faith attempt to govern," he added. "It's about ... laying the groundwork for what comes nextcomes next."
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) on Sunday said that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is “being too cautious” in his talks with Senate Democratic leaders in an effort to avoid a government shutdown at the end of September. “Look, I mean no disrespect. I love John Thune. He’s my leader. He’s got a big brain.…
GOP Rep. Byron Donalds (Fla.) on Sunday defended President Trump’s handling of the war with Iran. “Nobody wants war. I think if you were going to ask Americans at large, whether they’re MAGA Republicans or any other American, nobody wants to be involved in another military conflict,” Donalds said to host Chris Stirewalt on NewsNation’s…
“Nobody wants war. I think if you were going to ask Americans at large, whether they're MAGA Republicans or any other American, nobody wants to be involved in another military conflict,” Donalds said to host Chris Stirewalt on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday.”
