Conservative anti-Trump attorney George Conway has three words for the president who might try to indict him one day: "Let him try."
Conway, a frequent critic of Trump, appeared on MSNBC on Saturday to discuss the recent indictment of former Trump adviser John Bolton. According to Conway, Bolton's defense has a tough case on their hands, but, at the same time, it might be possible to show that he was retributively targeted.
After giving his analysis of the Bolton case, one of the hosts asks Conway a simple yes or no question.
"Yes or no answer.Are you worried that you'renext on the enemies list?" she asked.
Conway simply laughed and replied with, "No. Okay. Let them try. Let them try."
A Los Angeles "No Kings" protester told MSNBC on Saturday that she and her parents were discriminated against by Donald Trump's family when they tried to rent property in New York years ago.
Trump was accused of bias in renting to Black people in connection with the rentals from his father, Fred Trump, in the 1960s, according to the New York Times. That old story got new life over the weekend, when a MSNBC reporter attended a "No Kings" protest in L.A.
The subject was only identified as Jamie from Rancho Cucamonga, and, when asked why she was there, she said, "Because my daughter's futuredepends on me coming out herelike my mother walked for Martin Luther King. She marched,she walked. And I'm here inhonor of her. And in honor ofmy daughter."
When asked about potential parallels to the past, Jamie said, "Myparents and I came out of Jim Crow."
"While I was at the end ofit, we were the result of whathappened in Jim Crow, becausemy parents, who came up fromthe south, they went into New York and we were discriminatedagainst [by] Trump," she said. "He wouldnot allow us as being Blackpeople to live in hisproperties."
When asked how she feels about recent ICE raids, Jamie said, "It makes me feel like we'regoing back and going back andgoing back, and we will not goback. We fought too hard. Mymother, god bless her soul, shemarched on Washington. And Icannot stand by while shemarched on Washington and menot come out here and standfirm for her. God bless us all."
Following Friday’s revelation that Jeffrey Epstein had a close personal relationship with the prosecutor behind his 2007 “sweetheart” plea deal, former Justice Department attorney Brendan Ballou cast doubt on the likelihood of further legal action in the case, citing in part the Trump administration’s reluctance to release its cache of Epstein files.
On Friday, the House Oversight Committee released another trove of Epstein documents, among them being emails that revealed that Epstein had a close relationship with former federal prosecutor Matthew Menchel, that included a ski trip sometime in the 2000s and multiple meetings and dinners from 2011 to 2017, according to a report from the Miami Herald.
Epstein’s plea deal allowed him to plead guilty to just one count of prostitution and serve 18 months in prison, while being allowed to leave prison on work release for up to 12 hours a day. This plea deal was afforded to Epstein despite the FBI having identified at least 40 potential minor victims in his case.
Appearing on MSNBC Saturday, Ballou was asked whether he saw any room for legal action following the revelation, to which he said “probably not, bluntly.”
“The information revealed doesn't show that there is – at least, based on the initial review – anything actionable against him, and obviously prosecutors are afforded really broad discretion in their decisions about how to prosecute or who not to prosecute here,” Ballou said.
Still, Ballou suggested that even if new evidence emerged showing unethical or illegal coordination between prosecutors and Epstein, any effort to hold those involved accountable would likely be blocked by the Trump administration, which he said has shown “no interest” in releasing additional Epstein files.
“The challenge that I think any victim has, that any potential plaintiff has is that it's the Department of Justice in this administration that holds the vast trove of investigation material from this case, but they have absolutely no interest in revealing that information, so it's going to be very hard for these folks to get that.”
William Nye, better known as the host of the hit educational show “Bill Nye the Science Guy,” was confronted Saturday by a correspondent for right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, who hurled a barrage of questions that Nye largely shrugged off.
Nye spoke Saturday at the ongoing “No Kings” protest in Washington, D.C., part of a series of anti-Trump protests expected to be attended by millions. Confronted while walking away from the Capitol, Nye was approached by Loomer Unleashed correspondent Charles Downs, who immediately started questioning Nye, and issued him a new nickname.
“Would calling you 'Bill Nye the Political Science Guy' be a better nickname since you're speaking at this political No Kings protest?” Downs is heard saying in a video posted by Loomer, a self-proclaimed “proud Islamaphobe.”
“I think the phrase you're looking for is 'no comment,’” Nye responded. “I don't know why you made that up.”
Following Nye as he walked, Downs continued to reference Nye by the new nickname; “That’s what you think,” Nye said as he continued walking.
“Do you like that nickname?” Downs asked.
“Carry on,” Nye said as he began ignoring Downs.
“And you donated to Kamala, right?” Downs shouted at Nye as he began to walk further away. “So not very authentic Mr. Nye. Kind of disappointed, I watched you growing up, you're kind of a let down!”
Nye has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump in the past, particularly on his remarks denying climate change, once stating “with as much respect as I can muster, the president doesn’t seem to want to keep a thought in his head for very long.”
The No Kings protests may very well end up being the single-largest protest in American history, at least according to former Republican lawmaker Joe Walsh, with around 2,700 separate No Kings protests taking place across the nation.
Republican strategist Tim Parrish struggled to defend President Donald Trump’s military strikes on suspected drug trafficking boats Saturday after being confronted with facts from CNN’s Abby Phillip that flew in the face of the Trump administration’s purported rationale for the military campaign.
“Any family in this country who's lost someone to fentanyl use would absolutely agree with President Trump that we are, in fact, at war with the cartels, and they would appreciate the president taking every action he can to stop the flow of drugs into this country,” Parrish said during an appearance on CNN’s “Table for Five” Saturday.
Trump has ramped up attacks on suspected drug traffickers, announcing this week that another six people were killed after he ordered a strike on a sea vessel in the Caribbean Sea heading toward the United States. This follows other military strikes in the region ordered by Trump in what critics have condemned as amounting to murder.
The Trump administration’s rationale for the strikes is that Trump had designated drug cartels as foreign terrorists via an executive order, and therefore, the execution-style killings – without affording the suspected drug traffickers due process – is warranted, given that they pose an immediate threat to national security.
Phillip, however, accurately noted that Mexico is the overwhelming "dominant source” of fentanyl in the United States, the leading cause of overdose deaths in the nation in 2024.
“If Trump is saying we are in a war against the cartels to stop drug trafficking, that war with be with the Mexican cartels, not with fishermen coming on boats out of Venezuela, so I'm just asking for a real justification that I think we ought to ask for every president when they start dropping bombs around the world for what is the actual reason?” Phillip said.
“Do we actually know who these people are, do we know that they're even Venezuelans? Because some of them, reportedly, were from other countries, and when we start bombing citizens of other countries, we don't want other countries bombing our citizens in international waters, so what are the rules of engagement here?”
Parrish attempted to dismiss Phillip’s statement in arguing that Americans weren’t “bringing drugs from the United States into South America by boat.”
“On the Mexican border, the president has designated several Mexican drug cartels as a terrorist of our country, and there are special forces elements on the ground addressing those,” Parrish said.
“But we’re not bombing them!” Phillip fired back.
“Well, because that's a little bit of a different scenario when we talk about bombing right next door in Mexico,” Parrish said.
According to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, President Donald Trump's latest moves all share the same goal: Keeping Americans distracted from the ongoing fallout over his administration's handling of unreleased documents pertaining to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
In an atypical Friday night broadcast (the longtime host hasn't had a regular weekly show since the end of Trump's first 100 days), Maddow used her opening monologue to argue that the president's distraction agenda is coming off as increasingly desperate. She touched on how Trump has quietly withdrawn appointees to key government positions, and not announced replacements — as he did with former Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commissioner nominee E.J. Antoni last month. And she pointed out that despite the BLS having the ability to publish a September jobs report despite the shutdown, it had not done so.
Maddow also observed that, 17 days into a government shutdown, Trump has yet to broker a deal to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies due to expire at the end of the year that Democrats have all agreed are a necessity to gain their support in reopening the government. She noted that should the ACA tax credits not be extended, people in Republican-dominated states would be on the hook for the biggest health insurance premium increases.
"So clearly that's a president operating from a position of strength, right?" Maddow said while laughing. "This is what he wants to be known for. I mean, his only moves right now are big distraction moves. We're on day 17 of a government shutdown. He's refusing to release the jobs data or the inflation data about what he's doing to the country's economy, while all the private sector data that we have to look to, to try to understand those things, is terrible."
"His paramilitary and would-be military assault on his own people in cities across the country is being pushed back: Not only on every street corner where he's trying it, but in every courtroom where he's trying to get away with it — including in front of judges he himself appointed," she continued. "He is pulling out all the last stops he can to try desperately to avoid the Epstein disaster he is still mired in. He is quietly, quietly pulling his nominees and hoping no one notices, and asks why the health care policy on which the Democrats are totally unified and taking their stand against him, is about to be a full-blown economic disaster for literally tens of millions of American families."
"He is 24 points underwater in his job approval, 24 points," she added. "And his big idea to change the subject is to free America's comedic poster child for compulsive lying and stealing. I mean, for a supposed strong man, this is all pretty weak, right?"
Trump took to his Truth Social platform to announce he was commuting the seven-year prison sentence for Santos, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Trump said Santos would be released from prison immediately, citing what he described as harsh treatment and extended solitary confinement.
Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper the president just made a mockery of the criminal justice system.
"This is just the latest instance of Trump making an utter joke of justice in this country," said Walsh.
The staunch Trump critic warned Trump just broadcast a dark message.
"If you're a friend of Trump's, if you're a Republican — I mean, think about what Trump said in his post tonight. What did he say about Santos? He had the courage to vote Republican. What does that have to do with any crimes he committed or anything he pled guilty to? But that's Trump sending a signal to every Republican out there, every friend of Trump. This is what the 10th former republican member that he's pardoned or commuted the sentence of? He has utterly politicized justice in this country and made it clear, send a really overt signal that if you're a friend of his man, come on, knock on my door. I'll be there for you," Walsh said.
A former pardon attorney was taken aback Friday night after President Donald Trump announced he was freeing disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) from prison after the expelled congressman pleaded guilty to fraud.
Trump took to his Truth Social platform to announce he was commuting the seven-year prison sentence for Santos, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Trump said Santos would be released from prison immediately, citing what he described as harsh treatment and extended solitary confinement.
The move became the topic of discussion Friday night among legal analysts on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," with former Justice Department pardon attorney Liz Oyer saying Santos' victims may never see repayment.
"We'll have to see the exact paperwork, but in most of Trump’s commutations thus far, he has forgiven all of the money portion of the sentence, so the folks who've gotten commutations to date do not have to pay back any of the money that they owed to the victims of their frauds," she said.
"What Donald Trump has done here is really extraordinary," Oyer added.
Trump has not followed any process for granting pardons and commutations, she said.
"He is granting them as he sees fit, sort of off the cuff, whenever he wants to. And he's bypassing the traditional process for review and vetting of pardon applicants, which would include consulting with the victims to see if they have an objection to a pardon, which they very well might in this case," she added.
Oyer said doing such a move typically involves consulting with the U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case. Santos' case was prosecuted and sentenced under Trump's own Justice Department, she noted.
"A press release that was issued back in July or May, when he was sentenced, was touting this as a really excellent result for the justice system, where a public official is finally going to be held accountable for a serious crime. And that was issued by an interim U.S. attorney appointed by Donald Trump. So it's pretty extraordinary to see this about-face that has happened," she concluded.
President Donald Trump's commutation of former Congressman George Santos' prison sentence, based by his own admission in large part on him being a loyal Republican, was stupefying to conservative attorney turned anti-Trump activist and Society for the Rule of Law founder George Conway.
Speaking to "The Weeknight" on Friday, Conway detailed the crimes for which Santos was sent to prison — and laid into Trump for showing no concern for justice at all.
"I want to ask you, George ... George Santos. Seriously?" said anchor and former GOP chairman Michael Steele. "Is this the crap that we've come to at this point, where this administration, this president finds every convicted felon that went through a process that laid out a case, juries decided you guilty, and now we wrap around and he just sort of like,okay, we're just commute your system, yoursentence, it doesn't matter. And then at the same time,he's out here clamoring to get individuals who havenot committed crimes, allegedlyarrested and profiled ascriminals. I don't understand."
"It's completely nuts, but he's completely nuts, and so is Santos," said Conway. "And maybe that's the thing that joins them all together."
"I mean, look, under any normal pardon or commutation system, this guy is not eligible, okay?" Conway continued. "He committed flat-out fraud. There was no question about his guilt. And at the end of the day, he shows no remorse, no acceptance of responsibility. And he, you know, there is no reason to give him a break on his sentence. He committed flat-out fraud of his campaign, on his campaign books."
"And — but Trump, you know, I don't, he's not even liked by Republicans. He wasn't liked by Republicans. Nobody liked this guy. Even Trump, I don't think, really liked the guy," he added. "But there is something about, I guess, Trump finds appealing. A fraudster, I don't, maybe some kind of kinship. Maybe there's a kinship thing."
The Bulwark's publisher, Sarah Longwell, criticized President Donald Trump for "humiliating" himself and the United States with his handling of classified documents and information.
Trump was found to possess a number of top-secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago country club and refused to return them to the government. The Justice Department subsequently indicted him, but in July 2024, Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, dismissed the entire case in a controversial ruling, finding the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional.
This week, the indictment of former National Security Advisor John Bolton was announced after he was found possessing classified information in his home. While Bolton was in the first administration, it drew attention to the Trump administration's cavalier attitude toward such information while also targeting Bolton.
"Is it the fact that the economy is also a big suck, according to large majorities of the American people? So this looks like a distraction?" asked MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace.
"Yeah, it's that latter piece. I mean, boy, I just can't tell you. You ask people how things are going in the country, including Trump voters, and they do not think things are going well. You know, and this is where vibes over substance tend to come in. Like they just — they see the chaos. Right? It's the shutdown. There's the National Guard in different cities. And people will sort of put things on either side of the ledger. Right? They'll say, 'Well I'm glad Trump is securing the border, but I really need prices to come down. And I'm really frustrated with it.'"
She explained that's where the frustration is coming from among Americans.
"You've got Trump himself using his janky social media site, Truth Social, to communicate with his attorney general. Our op-sec in America is not clean," Longwell said. "We have a problem. And if they're going to prosecute John Bolton for this, then my hope is that they use that to reestablish some real guidelines for what people are doing, because it appears that nobody is taking these things seriously, and that I can't imagine there isn't a foreign country now who isn't looking at the way that we are handling our classified information and laughing at us."
President Donald Trump segued into a bizarre rant during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, about how Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) supposedly wants a train to be built from the mainland across the Pacific Ocean to her state — a plan she has never advocated for.
“She wanted a tunnel from the mainland to Hawaii," said Trump. "Then she said, ‘Well, we can’t do that, so we’re gonna build a railroad to Hawaii.’ Do you remember? She’s a current, sitting senator, a Democrat. She wants a railroad to go to Hawaii. You know who that is, right?”
The New Republic reported on the incident, speculating that it may be another potential indication of the president's cognitive decline.
"The president’s statement is a nesting doll of inaccuracies, stemming back to a 2019 joke Hirono made regarding misinformation about the content of the Green New Deal," wrote Robert McCoy. "At the time, conservative media outlets and politicians were spreading the false claim that the Green New Deal would eliminate air travel and replace it with high-speed rail."
This claim itself was based on a bad-faith interpretation of a whitepaper from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), which explained the Green New Deal allowed for some emissions to be offset rather than eliminated “because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.” Even though this line was a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement that some emissions would be inevitable even with aggressive climate reforms, it was seized and quoted out of context by a number of right-wing commentators, including Trump himself, to claim the Green New Deal prohibited air travel and beef, neither of which it did.
When Hirono, a supporter of the proposal, was asked about all of this at the time by a Fox News anchor, she sarcastically replied, “That would be pretty hard for Hawaii,” which appears to be the source of Trump's latest false claim.
MSNBC host Alex Witt questioned a GOP congressman about whether it's true he's gone into "legislative witness protection" to dodge constituents amid the government shutdown.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) lashed out after being asked about comments from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Friday morning.
Speaking to the press, Jeffries blamed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for keeping his members away from Washington. Johnson announced the congressional break would begin a week early in June for the "summer recess."
"No one can find them here in the Capitol, and no one can find them in their districts. They're not holding town hall meetings. They're not visiting federal employees. They're not engaging with their constituents. They've been on vacation for three weeks," the Democratic leader said.
While some in the GOP caucus leadership remained in Washington, many have been in their districts.
Johnson, along with the rest of his delegation, Sen. John Thune (R-SD), and Mike Rounds (R-SD), were criticized in March after refusing to hold in-person town hall meetings. Johnson explained that Jeffries is falsely claiming that members aren't speaking to constituents because he had a telephone event where people could call in.
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) faced criticism from naysayers after hosting a live-streamed event on Facebook. Several people reported that they signed up for the tele-town hall but never received a response from his office or the call-in information. Some alleged that the calls were screened.
In August, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) hosted an event where her team asked attendees to leave if they weren't supporters of Mace and Trump. One Trump voter was even jeered by her fellow voters because she didn't clap at Mace's comments.
Johnson said that his tele-town hall was hosted while he was in Washington, D.C. He claimed he's tried to speak to Democrats, but they've been "more interested in political theater."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared at the White House on Friday as part of the ongoing conversations with President Donald Trump over ending Russia's years-long invasion.
"He has offered everything," the reporter said as part of his question.
Trump agreed, "He has offered everything. He's offered everything. You're right. You know why? Because he doesn't want to f--- around with the United States. Thank you, everybody!"
The press then ushered the press out of the Cabinet room.
"Donald Trump, um, using a word we don't usually hear on television there, to put it that way," MSNBC's Katy Tur said after hearing the obscenity, letting out a sigh.
