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Republican says McConnell fired a warning shot to Trump nominees — you're not 'automatic'

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) just fired a warning shot at President-elect Donald Trump's nominees, a Republican strategist opined on CNN late Friday.

McConnell has taken swipes at President-elect Donald Trump in recent days, and Friday, blasted an aide to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has pushed to revoke approval for the polio vaccine.

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NY Times’ Maggie Haberman: Trump couldn't find one person who liked DeSantis for Pentagon

President-elect Donald Trump’s idea of naming Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a potential backup pick to lead the Department of Defense reportedly fell apart because nobody in his inner circle got behind the idea, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said.

And a call from former Fox News host Pete Hegseth persuaded Trump to allow him to make the case for his defense secretary nomination in the media and on Capitol Hill as allegations of public drunkenness and sexual assault piled up – and produced negative headlines that angered the incoming president, Haberman added.

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'How dare he': Fox News hosts say they're 'suspicious' of Justin Trudeau after comments

A tit-for-tat between the Canadian prime minister and President-elect Donald Trump is brewing – and Fox News hosts didn’t waste time weighing in on the international back and forth.

Canadian Prime Minister Justice Trudeau made waves in MAGA world after he declared earlier this week that he is “and always will be a proud feminist,” Fox News Digital reported. The remarks came during a speech in Ottawa where he grumbled about the United States’ failure to elect a female president for a second time, according to the network.

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'I'm at a loss for words': Doctor baffled by bizarre RFK Jr. vetting questionnaire

An MSNBC panel was left confused and uncomfortably laughing Friday afternoon during a discussion over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s curious questionnaire he's using to vet candidates to work under him at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Last week, Puck News reported on Kennedy's “Make America Healthy Again” website, where people who want to work for him can respond to questions with odd pre-written responses.

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'Stop messing with things': CNN conservative panics over RFK Jr.  blowing it with senators

Conservative CNN contributor Shermichael Singleton implored Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Friday to extricate himself from the efforts of a key adviser to get the FDA to revoke the decades-old polio vaccine approval.

Appearing with host John Berman, Singleton was asked about a report in the New York Times that RFK Jr's advisor, Aaron Siri, "is waging war against vaccines of all kinds."

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Unknown Trump 'foot soldier' becomes 'most powerful man you've never heard of': report

Donald Trump has named the so-called "mayor of Mar-a-Lago" to the powerful but unglamorous position of director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, where he will essentially serve as "the general manager of the government."

Sergio Gor is an ingratiating presence at the Palm Beach, Florida, resort, where he’s known as one of Trump’s most loyal foot soldiers, having earned the former president's trust by standing by him after the Jan. 6 insurrection and winning over the rest of the MAGA movement.

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Trump’s ‘power move’ fizzles as China’s Xi blows off inauguration

No foreign head of state has attended the inauguration of any U.S. President, at least not in modern recorded times, but this week, President-elect Donald Trump invited the President of China to Washington, D.C. for the January 20, 2025 event. His invitation has been rebuffed.

"This is a power move to intimidate the Chinese leader—if he declines, it's disrespectful, and Trump will take it personally," Fox News host Jesse Watters trumpeted on Wednesday, praising the President-elect (video below). "And if he accepts, he'll be forced to observe President Trump at his most powerful moment with all the presidential pageantry America can muster. You put Xi Jinping in a subservient position, plus you can spy on him the whole time he's in D.C."

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'Stay vigilant': Ex-FBI profiler warns to expect CEO shooting copycats

A former FBI profiler warned that copycat killers may be motivated to act after the reaction to the assassination of a health care executive.

United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down last week in Midtown Manhattan, and many social media users justified — or even lauded — the killing. Suspect Luigi Mangione has been celebrated as something like a folk hero, and a pair of experts appeared on CNN to analyze the public reaction.

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Trump Commerce pick’s firm to pay millions for federal law violations

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a top financial services firm led by President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to become Secretary of Commerce with violating federal law, according to multiple reports.

Cantor Fitzgerald, led by its CEO and chairman Howard Lutnick, was charged by the SEC with "violating laws related to disclosures by so-called blank-check companies before they raise money from the public," CNBC reports. "The SEC said that Cantor agreed to settle the case by saying the firm would not violate the relevant securities laws again and pay a $6.75 million civil penalty."

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'Ontario is not having it': Trump reportedly set stage for Canada to cut off U.S. energy

With MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire pointing out that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been surprisingly sanguine about Donald Trump's insults and tariff threats, CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin claimed the president-elect's taunts are not going unnoticed north of the U.S. border.

With Trump wielding tariff threats against Canada, Mexico and China before he even takes office, the "Squawk Box" host reported that there is the danger that some Americans could end up scrambling to keep the lights on if Canada's leaders choose to cut off power supplies to the U.S. provided by their country.

"Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, at least to this point, has not really fought back against Trump's taunting, whether about tariffs or the suggestion he would annex Canada and be our 51st state, calling him Governor Trudeau in a social media post," Lemire prompted his guest. "But all eyes turns to the province of Ontario and Doug Ford which is floating the idea they're going to hit back, they may bar American-made alcohol and other restrictions if Trump follows through on these tariffs threats."

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"Ontario is not having it," Ross Sorkin bluntly replied. "And they're throwing down the gauntlet on the alcohol front because it would make the export of alcohol from the U.S. complicated and much more expensive.":

"But more importantly there's this electricity piece," he continued. "Ontario delivers electricity to about 1.5 million homes in the United States and suggesting maybe they would consider cutting that off."

"You know, this is when people talk about the tariffs and the uncertainty the tariffs could create, it's –– it wasn't just the cost of the tariffs, it's the retaliation," he elaborated, "and this is an example of the kind of thing that could happen and, therefore, a kind of different leverage points you think either the U.S. has or, in this case, Canada, may have."

You can watch below or at the link here.

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Trump being sent signals it's 'going to be ugly' if some nominees don't drop out: NBC

According to Ryan Nobles of NBC News, Donald Trump is getting dire warnings from Republican lawmakers that some of his more problematic nominees for his Cabinet are in for rough sledding if they don't drop out before their nationally televised confirmation hearings.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," and speaking with host Willie Geist, Nobles explained that there are fears about what will come out if nominees like Fox News personality Pete Hegseth and ex-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard are forced to explain their views under hostile questioning.

"These Republicans want him to win and when they go through the advise and consent role here it's not because they want to trip him up, not because they want to make his life difficult," Nobles reported. "It's because they want him to have the best people around him in these Cabinet posts when he takes office on January 20th and beyond."

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"So what they would like to see happen is, behind the scenes there is a conversation, they talk to the administration, they talk to these sherpas that are working with these candidates and they say, 'Do you know what? It's just not going to happen. If you go through this confirmation process it's going to be ugly, we're going to have a hearing where, remember, Democrats get to ask questions, they're going to expose a lot of these issues that have come up in media reports. Your nominees are going to have to deal with all of this and it's ultimately going to look bad for you, and then, at the end of all of it, after this brutal situation, we may have to vote against you and make it look like we are in opposition to you," he added.

"The other path is behind the scenes we quietly talk about how this isn't necessarily the right person for this job for a whole range of reasons, why don't you find someone else and let that person bow out on their own," he elaborated. "That's how it worked with [failed attorney general nominee] Matt Gaetz because it was clear that under any circumstance Matt Gaetz was not going to get the votes," he elaborated before remarking, "Trump got that message. '

Watch below or at the link here.

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'The quackery': MSNBC analyst goes off on Trump ally for questioning polio vaccine

Reacting to a New York Times report that a lawyer representing Robert. F. Kennedy Jr. has asked the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk in 1955, MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle angrily called out the potential Donald Trump Cabinet member.

With Kennedy selected by the president-elect to head up the Department of Health and Human Services despite having no expertise in the sciences, Barnicle recalled growing up in a time when polio was a scourge that crippled countless children.

With the Times reporting that RFK Jr. attorney Aaron Siri has been waging war against vaccines for years, and is now actively advising Kennedy on staffing his department should he pass Senate approval, Barnicle launched into a diatribe.

ALSO READ: A dark mystery from America's past could save us from Trump's tyranny

"I went to grammar school with kids who came to the same grammar school classroom I sat in who were wearing braces and sticks to carry them through the day, to walk, they had polio," the 81-year-old Barnicle told the panel.

"The idea that we're going to eliminate that Salk vaccine and take a look at vaccines that all infants and children get to prevent measles and other really radical diseases that could cause harm to them, the idea that we're talking about eliminating them based upon the quackery of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. –– and it is quackery –– and he is a very smart guy and he ought to know better but he clearly doesn't know better."

"But the idea that we're still seriously talking about eliminating vaccines for many children is almost beyond belief," he added.

Watch below or at the link.

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'We'll see who wins': Trump nominee reportedly sparks power struggle by cashing in favor

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is looking to cash in a favor with Donald Trump to help prove a conspiracy theory about his uncle's assassination.

The president-elect nominated Kennedy to oversee public health after Kennedy dropped his own long-shot bid for president and endorsed the Republican nominee, and now the political scion is pushing to get his daughter-in-law Amaryllis Fox Kennedy as deputy director of the CIA, which he believes had a role in the 1963 killing of president John F. Kennedy.

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