Donald Trump was pumping his fists after being removed from a rally stage by Secret Service in the wake of what appeared to be a shooting that left him with a bloody ear. Social media melted down afterward.
Multiple loud noises and screams were followed by people ducking in cover at the rally in Pennsylvania. After a few seconds, Trump left the stage, with his ear bleeding profusely.
CNN, Right Side Broadcasting Network, and other news outlets were befuddled after the loud bangs were followed by Trump dropping to the ground.
Megyn Kelly, a Trump-supporting media personality, simply wrote, "My god" after the extraordinary event.
Charlie Kirk wrote in response to the video, "As blood drips off his face after what appears to be an assassination attempt, President Trump pumps his fist defiantly into the air as Secret Service escorts him off stage."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also chimed in, "FIGHTER!!!! USA!!!"
Former Trump campaign aide A.J. Delgado asked if the shooter was "tackled and in police custody."
"I would assume so," she added.
Former GOP lawmaker Kevin McCarthy wrote, "I'm praying for President Trump." He then added, "I hope everyone will join me."
Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego called the act "absolutely horrible."
"Political violence should never be tolerated," he said. "I hope President Trump and everyone at the rally is safe. Grateful Secret Service and law enforcement got the situation under control so quickly."
NBC host Kristen Welker is being ridiculed online after messing up President Biden's name during a report about Biden messing up names.
Welker, who has in the past been accused of "jeopardizing democracy" with her coverage of Trump's alleged election subversion efforts, was recently reporting on how Biden flubbed some names, including that of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The president quickly corrected himself.
"The president was clearly comfortable discussing foreign policy issues from Ukraine to China, but he did mix up Vice President Harris and former President Trump's names mere minutes into the event, just hours after mistakenly calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy President Putin," Welker reporter before a commercial break.
Upon her return to the news broadcast, Welker said, "Welcome back. One group that's happy about how president Trump -- President Biden's news conference went last night are Republicans -- especially those around President Trump."
The internet took notice of the mistake.
@MeidasTouch pointed it out for others on social media: "Kristen Welker spent her show hammering President Biden for accidentally getting names wrong and asking if Biden should step aside, and then moments later she called President Biden 'President Trump,'" they wrote late Friday.
@taradublinrocks replied that "Kristen Welker should step aside, unless she’s willing to take a dementia test live on TV."
Charli Huxley, @ImKnotTheOne, said that "Kristen Welker experiencing karma in real time was very pleasing."
Former federal prosecutor Shan Wu asked, "Where are the medical experts offering their diagnosis that this was just a innocuous mistake making cognitive testing unnecessary?"
@gmg825 also said that "slips of the tongue are common."
"How many times do parents call their kids the wrong name? Sometimes growing up my parents would even call us by the dog’s name. It happens. No one says the kids should be removed because parents don’t know their names!" the user wrote. "Indeed, in 2018, while Trump was still serving as President, he introduced Marillyn Hewson, then CEO of Lockheed Martin, as 'Marillyn Lockheed' at a White House event. At another White House meeting the following year, Trump famously referred to Apple CEO Tim Cook as 'Tim Apple.' So how come no one said he should resign?"
Donald Trump is being used by foreign agents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, and they don't even have to go undercover to do it, a New York Times investigative reporter said on Saturday.
David A. Fahrenthold, who often writes about nonprofit organizations, appeared on MSNBC over the weekend to discuss a recent Times report about Mar-a-Lago. Specifically, he and his colleagues wrote about how extremism is good for business at the resort, saying "Mar-a-Lago has transformed into a White House in exile and the nerve center for some of the most extreme elements of the party’s MAGA wing."
On Saturday, the host asked Fahrenthold about what certain entities can get when they "invest" their cash in the resort. She then cited the recent visit by Viktor Orbán of Hungary.
"What have you learned, if anything, about trips to Mar-a-Lago by foreign government agents?" she asked.
The reporter replied that, when Trump was president, he "used it as a way to host foreign dignitaries."
"The president of Japan was there twice," he said, adding that "those made money for Trump" because "his club charged the U.S. government for everything."
"That was a big moneymaker for him," he said, noting that now foreign governments come to meet Trump there to signal their alignment with the former president's policies or vision.
"We don't know any examples of spies, undercover agents there. But you don't need to be undercover. If you're just someone who represents that government, it's better for you to be seen. We saw during Trump's presidency and after... politicians and elected leaders from other countries that want to show their alignment with Trump, that is where you go. You take that thumbs-up picture just like Viktor Orbán did."
In a video taken from a body cam worn by a Colorado law enforcement officer, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) can be seen trying to talk her way out of a speeding ticket and blaming it on her car.
The lead-footed Colorado Republican was pulled over on May 12 for going 84 in a 65-mile zone in a snowy landscape on Mother's Day, ticketed for speeding and later dinged for not paying her fine on time -- a situation she later corrected.
In the Colorado State Patrol body cam video obtained by Fox31 Denver, Boebert can be seen speaking to the officer from the driver's seat where she tried to plead her case.
"I was messing with my gears and I know I ended up going, like, way too fast," she claimed which led the officer to reply, "Because you hit 90 [MPH] for a second, but you were on the brakes pretty quick."
According to Fox31, Boebert later told the officer, "... she was having issues with her transmission, which is why she didn't realize she was speeding."
This is not Boebert's first brush with the law — followed by excuses — after a car accident.
In 2023 a friend of her son Tyler accused the lawmaker of covering up an accident when Tyler was at the wheel, leaving Noble D'Amato, 19, with a hand injury.
The report noted, "Boebert's son was issued a careless driving ticket, which was later reduced to 'defective vehicle for headlights,' the Garfield County Court Clerk's Office told Westword. Tyler was ordered to attend an 'Alive at 25' driver's awareness program. Westword said Boebert's office issued an April 4 statement in which it said, 'The injury reported was superficial at best and was addressed by medical professionals out of caution."
You can watch video of her latest escapade below via Fox 31 or at the link:
Video: Lauren Boebert gets a speeding ticket
youtu.be
On MSNBC on Saturday morning, a political analyst laughed at Donald Trump and called him a "slumlord" over recent comments he made when attacking President Joe Biden.
Speaking with the co-hosts of "The Weekend," MSNBC's Richard Stengel compared Biden meeting with NATO leaders while the former president hosted Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán at his Mar-a-Lago luxury resort in Florida.
As he noted, there are rumblings that NATO nations will refuse to share important intel with the Trump administration should the convicted felon return to power over fears of what he will do with it.
That, in a roundabout way, led New Yorker Stengel to remind viewers about Trump's history as a real estate developer and his history, as reported by CNN, when he cut off heat and water to tenants in one of his properties that led to lawsuits and a settlement.
With regard to Trump's strained relationship with NATO, Stengel stated, "The Europeans are appalled. They see Donald Trump as the greatest security risk on the planet. They are not going to be sharing their information with the U.S."
"This idea of weakening NATO, you guys mentioned it, it makes me laugh too when I hear Donald Trump say, those NATO nations are delinquent, like they are paying rent," he added before joking, "Once a slumlord, always a slumlord. He does not understand it is about contributing 2% of their GDP for their military budget."
Stengel was citing Trump saying this week, "NATO members 'were delinquent, having paid very little.'”
On Saturday morning, MSNBC host Michael Steele called out Democrats who want President Joe Biden to step aside as the party's presidential nominee and noted the elephant in the room they seem to be ignoring with their demands.
Steele, the former RNC head who has remained a staunch supporter of Biden despite his presidential debate debacle, used his perch on MSNBC's "The Weekend" to put the Biden-dumping Democrats on the spot for their seeming aversion to declaring their full-throated support for Vice President Kamala Harris should Biden step down.
Speaking with his co-hosts, he explained, "You have all of these people out here flapping their lips about Joe Biden getting out of the race but I don't hear any of them talking about elevating the vice president to replace him. It makes you wonder, what is that all about?"
"I was talking to a couple of Democrats who were saying that chatter was, 'Well, we can probably — we will negotiate that later.' Negotiate what?" he exclaimed. "How do you negotiate that later? There is no later in this thing."
"So what do you think is going on here, where folks just think they are just going to still be able to bypass, if they are successful in getting the president out, which it does not look like that will happen because he has drawn a line in the sand, and no one has met him there so far," he added. "Let's play it out and say they do, what do they think happens next?"
Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner raked Rudy Giuliani over the coals on his latest "Justice Matters" episode after a judge dismissed Giuliani's bankruptcy proceedings, proclaiming that he "can't even do bankruptcy right."
The move puts Giuliani back on the hook for paying a nearly $150 million civil judgment to a pair of Atlanta election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, that he was found liable for defaming with election conspiracy theories following former President Donald Trump's loss in 2020. It follows a number of other legal problems facing the former New York City mayor and close Trump ally, including a RICO indictment in Georgia, disbarment in New York, and a lawsuit from his own lawyer for nonpayment of fees.
Giuliani, said Kirschner, is "nothing if not consistent" in "lying, cheating, stealing, breaking the law." He's in this situation because he "wouldn't even be truthful with the bankruptcy court judge."
The judge in the case, Sean H. Lane, cited Giuliani's failure to adhere to basic financial transparency standards, not answering questions about his assets, and missing key filing deadlines — and said he failed to do anything to correct these problems when the court alerted him to them.
With Giuliani denied bankruptcy protection, creditors will have free reign to pursue other legal avenues of collecting the money he owes, which according to reports is considerable, and may be able to seize his apartment. As a small consolation, it also allows him to appeal the civil judgment against him.
It's a fitting end for a saga that began with Giuliani attacking the poll workers with racial dog whistles, noted Kirschner, saying "look at them, they look like drug dealers passing vials of heroin or cocaine back and forth."
In a statement to Raw Story, Giuliani's attorney Ted Goodman said, "This whole bankruptcy case was burdened with many of the same voluminous and overly broad discovery requests and other actions — including regular leaks of information — intended to harm the mayor and destroy his businesses. It is yet another example of the effort to punish Mayor Rudy Giuliani as the person most responsible for exposing Hunter Biden's laptop and to deter anyone else from asking questions or getting to the truth."
Heritage Foundation chief Kevin Roberts, the man overseeing the far-right Project 2025 plan to transform the entire federal government into a loyalist army for the Republican Party, is "projecting" his own authoritarian impulses when he attacks the Democratic Party, said former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele on MSNBC Friday evening.
Roberts, who also recently called for a "second American Revolution" that will be "bloodless" as long as the left doesn't resist, proclaimed at the National Conservatism Conference, "The left's new America will have no written Constitution and no rule of law, no independent judiciary, no democratic accountability or national sovereignty. It will be a global theocracy with Marxist fundamentalists sitting in its thrones, menacing its enemies."
"He's full of crap," said Steele. "He's projecting exactly what they want to do. Just swap up Marxist and put in fascist. And just flip the script."
"Look, they're now backtracking on Project 2025," Steele continued. "I've been hearing there may have been some reporting on this that a lot of folks in the inner, inner circle are pissed as hell right now because they're getting tagged on this project. This was supposed to be the secret platform thing they had rolled up even though Donald Trump was talking about it in 2022 and has been praising Heritage, who's going to put together the plan, the foundation of my second administration. And now he expects us to be the stupid ones when he says, oh, Project 2025? I don't know anything about Project — what is Project 20 — I've never heard of it. What is that? Who, me?"
"Yeah, stop it," said Steele. "Donald, you're the stupid one, not us, if you think that we're believing this crap. So, now they're trying to distance themselves. No, baby, we're wrapping all 900 pages around you because you own it. You know this is your foundation. You know this is what you want to do to the country. So, we had the president of Heritage on the weekend, and he started, again, laying that stuff out there. So, now they're trying to backtrack and act like we didn't hear what we heard or we're reading what we're reading. But own it."
"It is the foundation on which they will launch the deconstruction of America," he added. "I mean, Donald Trump, he said, let's terminate the Constitution. Quote. His words ... and you're worried about Joe Biden? Have you ever heard Joe Biden say, I want to terminate the Constitution?"
In the debate over how President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are aging, two experts agree: "It's a tale of two brains."
Dr. Harry Segal and Dr. John Gartner, both longtime psychology experts, came to the conclusion Friday on their podcast "Shrinking Trump."
Contrary to what MAGA world would have many believe following Biden's disastrous debate performance in Atlanta, Segal started the show off by throwing a curveball: It's Trump who has shown early signs of dementia, Segal said, citing Trump's language, tangential thinking, and physical gait.
Furthermore — and perhaps even more alarmingly — "Trump suffers from what we can observe as a severe personality disorder often called malignant narcissism," Segal said.
It's this disorder that leads to Trump's "chronic pathological lying," "immoral behavior," and criminal misconduct. Trump was indicted on election-related charges in several states and convicted in New York earlier this year for falsifying business records in a hush-money scheme.
Gartner has argued that Biden had a normally-aging brain, while Trump had a "dementing brain." That came into question, however, following Biden's debate struggles in which he appeared to freeze, fumble, and otherwise fail to make his points.
"It left me wondering and others, 'How is Biden really doing?'" asked Segal.
Initially following the debate, he thought it could be linked to "trauma."
"But when we looked carefully at that debate, Biden's responses were better than they sounded when you read them — and Trump's responses were much worse than they sounded when you read them."
Segal offered a model that he believes may explain Biden.
"Biden has been an extremely active president. Two wars in the world. Negotiating incredible victories in Congress, handling any number of things. And I think over the past year or so, he's been assuming that of course he'll beat Donald Trump because he's a good president," Segal said.
But perhaps, he was a tad overconfident.
"This happens to a lot of incumbents before their first debate after at the end of their first term," Segal noted. "This is not unusual. "That's why they often fail their first debate. So I believe what happened was Biden really wasn't campaigning yet — he was being president. And he showed up at the debate being president."
Furthermore, Segal said it's entirely possible that the 81-year-old Biden was simply telling the truth when he told ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos about his debate performance: "I was exhausted. I didn't listen to my instincts in terms of preparing and -- and a bad night."
Segal said that Biden is extremely experienced and has shown he's in control of setting policy for three years, but that as he's aging, "he is starting to have periods where he is exhausted."
"When he begins to get tired, he mangles his words," said Segal. "He can't organize his thoughts. At the end of the day he tells staff that's it for today, let's do it tomorrow."
Even still, he believes Americans are still getting a high-functioning Biden 80 percent to 90 percent of the time.
Gartner agreed with Segal, calling the debate a "shock" and that information from those close to Biden reinforced that it might not simply be a bad night — it could be that he really does have trouble at night articulating his words, and that sometimes, "it's time for him to rest."
"That's what happens when you get old. It does not mean you are not competent."
Gartner said they had a scientist come on the show and provide ample evidence in charts and data that Trump is showing "demented speech on a regular basis."
Biden, however, is not.
"Biden is showing more signs of aging. The quiet voice, the raspy voice. The coughing. That was part of what disconcerted people during the debate."
President Joe Biden delivered a fiery rally in Detroit on Friday, laying out both his policy accomplishments and his contrast with former President Donald Trump — when he was confronted by a heckler who attacked him for the U.S. support for Israel in the war in Gaza.
The crowd tried to drown out the protester with chants of "Four More Years!" but after several moments of chaos and chanting, Biden moved to quiet the audience down and respond to the criticism.
"Folks. Look. Give me one second," said Biden. "Folks, look. I understand her passion. I understand her passion. That's why I put together a detailed plan that the United Nations accepted, that the Israelis accepted, that the Palestinians accepted, to end this war."
"This war must end," Biden proclaimed to the crowd of his supporters, as they erupted in cheers. "It must end."
The Israel-Hamas war, which flared up after a brutal attack by Hamas terrorists in October of last year that marked the largest individual murder of Jews since the Holocaust, has inflamed political tensions all over the world as cities in Gaza have been leveled and civilians caught in the crossfire, and has led to protest in particular by Muslim-American voters, some of whom have threatened to withhold support from President Biden for not acting quickly enough to rebuke alleged Israeli war crimes and secure a ceasefire.
Biden, for his part, has been working behind the scenes for months to try to broker a permanent peace deal, which was repeatedly set back by both Israeli far-right hardliners refusing to accept movement toward a two-state solution and Hamas leaders walking away from U.S.-mediated Israeli offers.
Earlier today, Biden announced that Israel and Hamas have agreed to a framework for a ceasefire, although many more steps remain for a true end to the war to materialize.
Elections lawyer Marc Elias of Democracy Docket desperately wants America to "wake up" and pay attention to the people working each day trying to circumvent the 2024 election.
In a shocking Thursday report, the Heritage Foundation claimed that President Joe Biden wouldn't turn over power. Further, they claimed to have walked around and asked people if they were citizens and if they were voting in the 2024 election. The information they gathered is used to justify a series of conspiracies the group is pushing. For example, Biden is using undocumented immigrants to win the election illegally and Hamas has kidnapped Barbra Streisand.
Elias told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that Donald Trump's so-called "Big Lie" isn't about selling hats. It "has become the central plank of the Republican Party."
"The fact is, since 2020, there have been efforts to refuse to certify the accurate election results in this country in five states," warned Elias. "In Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, and Pennsylvania."
He said that he represented Biden in fighting and winning 60 elections cases. At one point in 2022, he said that they had to sue an Arizona county because they were refusing to certify the election results. In that same state, Kari Lake is running again, fresh off of her 2022 loss where she claimed she actually won.
"We had to sue Pennsylvania for refusing to -- I'm sorry, two counties in Pennsylvania for refusing to certify election results in 2022," Elias explained. "As we speak in Georgia, there is a rule to allow election deniers to certify accurate elections this November. And in Nevada, the Washoe County Commission has refused to certify the election results in local elections, and they are being sued in the Nevada Supreme Court."
He explained that almost every week, he tells Wallace that people have to wake up to the theft of their votes.
"Week after week, for more than a year now, you and I have a back and forth in which we say, when will people wake up to — not the theory of what may happen — but what is actually happening," Elias cautioned. "I am here to sound the alarm one more time, that everyone needs to understand, that in a few months, we'll have an election, and Republicans are looking to undermine it through voter suppression, but also through election subversion and refusing to certify Democrats the win."
The heated discussion unfolded on "The Situation Room" with host Wolf Blitzer, who hosted former Hillary Clinton spokeswoman Karen Finney and David Urban, former senior advisor to Donald Trump.
Blitzer first asked the panel why Black voters strongly support President Joe Biden in the race, "more than a lot of other groups."
Finney responded first by saying Black voters are "pragmatic."
"People tend to think, 'Oh, well, a Black voter is going to vote for a Black person,'" she said. "No. We're going to vote for the person who we think can deliver."
She said Biden has worked hard to deliver on his promises, but that there's also a "very real fear" in America about a possible second term for Trump.
"We've seen what's happening in states around voting rights, around criminal justice reform, around a lot of the issues that Black Americans care about. And despite what the former president touts, the feat is palpable among Black and brown voters."
Blitzer pivoted to Urban, who pushed back on Finney, saying Trump worked with Van Jones on criminal justice reform. He then criticized Biden for repeating that he got in the race because Trump went to Charlottesville and said after violence erupted at the rally that there were "good people on both sides."
"He's using a debunked talking point, still!" an angered Urban said.
Finney can then be heard in the background pushing back on Urban: "It's not debunked."
"Yes it is!" Urban shoots back. "No, no, no, no, Karen. Look at Snopes. Watch the tape, Karen. I challenge you to watch the tape, Karen, from start to finish. And if you can come back on here and say, 'the way this has been categorized is truthful,' then I think that's mistaken."
Urban cut Finney off again as she tries to interject. "Watch the — watch the tape."
Snopes called the claim "false" that on Aug. 15, 2017, Trump called neo-Nazis and white supremacists who attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, "very fine people."
The fact-checking service found that Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides," referring to the protesters and the counter-protesters, but that he said in the same statement he was not talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be "condemned totally."
Snopes later defended objections to its fact-check, insisting that it only aimed to confirm what Trump actually said, not whether what he said was true or false.
"For the record, virtually every source that covered the Unite the Right debacle concluded that it was conceived of, led by and attended by white supremacists, and that therefore Trump's characterization was wrong," the site noted.
Hollywood actor Alec Baldwin's indictment has been dismissed and he reportedly cannot be recharged after the actor accused state investigators of wrongdoing in a case involving the death of a cinematographer.
The stunning development came after Judge Mary Sommer sent jurors home. She found the state acted in bad faith and that there was wrongdoing by the prosecution.
As Sommer dismissed the case, a tearful Baldwin took his glasses off and buried his head into his hand. He then hugged his attorney.
The dismissal came after one of the two special prosecutors in the trial, prosecutor Erlindo Ocampo Johnson, resigned Friday in the middle of a long, dramatic hearing over how law enforcement treated bullets.
“The late discovery of this evidence has impacted the fundamental fairness of the proceedings,” Sommer said in dismissing the case, according to Hollywood Reporter. “There is no way for the court to right this wrong. The sanction of dismissal is the only warranted remedy."
