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President Donald Trump appeared to deny he'd made a previous, controversial claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a "dictator" at a press conference following his White House meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer — a claim that triggered widespread outrage from U.S. allies given the united front NATO countries have shown up to this point in supporting Ukraine against Vladimir Putin and the Russian invasion.

Trump also continued to reiterate his stated belief Ukraine cannot join NATO — a security goal Ukraine has sought so desperately that Zelensky even offered to resign in exchange for his country's accession to the alliance.

The New York Times has identified 45 individuals working in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency formed by Elon Musk with Donald Trump's blessing.

The quasi-government advisory board has recommended sweeping cuts to federal agencies and tossed thousands of federal employees out of their jobs after Trump established DOGE through an Inauguration Day executive order, but the group's leadership structure and staffing remains murky enough that White House Press Secretary Katherine Leavitt was reluctant to reveal the top official in charge.

The co-hosts of "The View" attacked new Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after they said he got basic facts wrong during the Wednesday Cabinet meeting.

An outbreak in Texas claimed its first life this week, leading to questions about what the federal government is doing to help stop it.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was ridiculed by one of his Democratic colleagues on Thursday for going on CNN Wednesday night and telling host Kaitlan Collins that angry voters appearing at town halls have been Democratic activists.

That led Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) to openly scoff during an appearance on MSNBC after host Ana Cabrera shared a clip of Johnson pushing back at Collins and telling her furious town hall attendees were "paid protesters in many of those places. These are Democrats who went to the events early and filled up the seats."

Asked for comment, Houlahan bluntly stated, "That's enormously paranoid."

ALSO READ: 'Gotta be kidding': Jim Jordan scrambles as he's confronted over Musk 'double standard'

"I think that the reality is –– listen, I just had a town hall. We had 700 seats filled. We had hundreds, I estimated about 5 or 600 who were turned away and they were all very concerned," she added. "And I live in a purple community of roughly 40 percent Dems, 40 percent Republicans and 20 percent independents and people are anxious and they are worried."

"And listen, that's their job," she said of GOP lawmakers. "Their job is to have these town halls and to listen to the feelings and concerns of their community and the idea that somehow these are plants is ridiculous."

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Real America's Voice correspondent Brian Glenn, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-GA) boyfriend, used a racial epithet to describe new MSNBC host Eugene Daniels, who is Black and serves as president of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA).

During Thursday's War Room broadcast, host Steve Bannon praised White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt for stripping control of the briefing room from the WHCA.

A Democratic congressman accused president Donald Trump of selling out to Russia and its president Vladimir Putin.

Trump will meet Friday with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss a proposed peace deal that would establish a jointly managed “Reconstruction Investment Fund" involving the war-torn nation's natural resources, but Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) told "CNN News Central" the agreement sounds like it could have been drawn up by the Kremlin.

Building upon a speech he gave on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Angus King (I-ME) lashed out at billionaire Elon Musk for gutting the U.S. government and questioned his motivations on Thursday morning.

During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," King pounced on Republicans in the Senate who have been standing by and letting Musk and his DOGE staffers arbitrarily fired federal workers and canceled funding for government programs with no oversight.

Speaking with "Morning Joe" regular Katty Kay, King complained, "If Donald Trump doesn't like USAID, come to Congress, pass a bill. He's got a majority in both houses to abolish it, but don't do it in the middle of the night with this guy, Musk, and nobody knows who he's working for or what his authority is."

ALSO READ: 'Gotta be kidding': Jim Jordan scrambles as he's confronted over Musk 'double standard'

"You know, we've got a bunch of 25 year-olds deciding cutting programs," he added. "Here's another example, the other day, and this tells you where we are, someone pointed out that the ebola prevention program was cut in the USAID cuts. Musk said, 'Oh, that was a mistake, we're going to fix it.' Think of the implications of that?"

"What he's really saying is 'I get to decide which programs we fund and which we don't' –– that's not the way our system is set up," he argued. "That's not the way, the way this thing is supposed to work. Again, to protect our freedoms, people who are cheering, all of this going on."

"Boy, they're going to have some second thoughts when the eye of Sauron turns to them," he added with a "Lord of the Rings" reference.

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Max Bergmann, the director of the Stuart Center at the Center for strategic and International Studies, told CNN's Sara Sidner on Thursday that President Donald Trump is increasingly making the United States irrelevant as an international power.

When asked about the mineral deal that Trump has reportedly reached with Ukraine, Bergmann downplayed it as more aspirational than a real contract.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) admitted that he voted for a Republican budget that would cut thousands from the Medicaid rolls without lowering the "quality of care" for those who are left.

During a Thursday interview on C-SPAN's Washington Journal program, host Mimi Geerges noted that Bacon had been critical of Medicaid cuts but voted for them anyway.

CNN political analyst Mark Preston on Thursday said that President Donald Trump appeared to be openly threatening his own cabinet officials not to get in the way of X owner Elon Musk's efforts to take a wrecking ball to the federal government.

During an interview with host Sara Sidner, Preston said that Trump's first gambit to shut down the United States Agency for International Development looks like just the opening salvo in a broader attack on the government as a whole.

According to Pulitzer Prize winner David Remnick, the Washington Post is facing the possibility of an exodus of hundreds of employees who have no faith in owner Jeff Bezos after his latest controversial move.

Moments after legendary Washington Post editor Marty Baron appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" to criticize the billionaire Amazon owner's ruling that the venerable paper's editorial page will only parrot his "particular point of view," Remnick, who got his big break at the Post, joined the pile-on.

While speaking with the MSNBC hosts, Remnick claimed more employees with follow editorial page editor David Shipley out the door as soon as they land jobs with the Post's competitors.

ALSO READ: 'Gotta be kidding': Jim Jordan scrambles as he's confronted over Musk 'double standard'

"The thing that concerns me the most about what Bezos announced yesterday, and you mentioned the word fear, was that the fear that he must have that he obviously does have and other billionaires have it, other tech pros have it that it creeps onto the reportorial product," MSNBC regular Mike Barnicle prompted Remnick. "That is a real fear that I have. Do you share?"

"Of course, I have that fear," Remnick exclaimed. "I haven't seen it, to be honest, in the newsroom of the Washington Post, but I do know that the fear and anxiety has leached onto the newsroom floor so that, according to people at the Washington Post, not a few people have applied to flee the Post for the New York Times, but hundreds of people at the Washington Post have applied for jobs elsewhere, particularly the Times, the Post and so on."

"They know that this is just not one event in the same way that killing the endorsement of Kamala Harris was not just one event," he added.

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CNN's Kate Bolduan remarked on a commentator's "sour" reaction to a conservative's justification for Elon Musk's sweeping cuts to the federal workforce.

Republican political consultant Terry Sullivan, who helmed Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential bid, argued on "CNN News Central" that current levels of federal spending were unsustainable, and he celebrated the unelected tech mogul's seemingly arbitrary cuts to wide swaths of the government.