Donald Trump kicked off his Thursday morning by lashing out atFox News, complaining that they are refusing to share a poll that shows him as the Republican Party's 2024 presidential frontrunner.
While the poll is easily accessible online, that doesn't seem to be enough for the former president who attacked the conservative news network.
Taking to his Truth Social platform, Trump singled out the hosts of the "Fox & Friends" morning show with an all caps: "SHOW THE POLL!!!"
In total, he wrote, "Why won’t Fox (Fox & Friends!) show the National Poll that THEY just did. They refuse to put it up, even after spending all of that money. SHOW THE POLL!!! If they don’t show it, I’ll put it up later!"
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) blasted members of the Freedom Caucus on Wednesday for infighting.
During an interview on Real America's Voice, Greene argued House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) should have suspended the August recess to pass a budget.
But she also took a shot at the Freedom Caucus, the ultra-conservative group that cut ties with her earlier this year.
"Freedom Caucus can't complain too much because there were quite a few of their Freedom Caucus members appointed to the Appropriations Committee and appointed to these committees so that we wouldn't run into this problem," she opined. "Andy Harris is one of them. He couldn't even, he's a member of Freedom Caucus, couldn't even get his own appropriation bill passed because fellow Freedom Caucus members were still fighting him about it."
"So this is a situation that we should be able to move forward, but when everyone's butting heads so much on appropriation bills or a potential short-term [continuing resolution], we can't get anything accomplished," she added.
Infowars host Owen Shroyer offered a conspiracy theory tying his Jan. 6 conviction to the recent indictment of Ray Epps.
While guest hosting the Alex Jones show on Tuesday, Shroyer revealed that he was appealing his Jan. 6 case in an effort to stay out of jail. The host was convicted of breaching a restricted area and making "thinly veiled calls to violence." At one point, he stood atop the Capitol steps and shouted, "Death to Tyrants!"
He pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor and faces two months in prison.
"They have now charged Ray Epps," he said. "One charge for Ray Epps. I got four. Never went in. Never encouraged anybody to go in."
Epps has long been a target of conspiracy theorists who believe he is a federal informant planted to encourage the Jan. 6 riots.
"Folks, there was such backlash from my case, it is likely they've now been forced to charge Ray Epps," Shroyer argued. "This whole thing is so obviously injustice. It's unbelievable. And that's exactly what's going on here. This is injustice."
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) on Tuesday denied he was to blame for fighting among Republicans after he pushed for shutting down the government instead of passing a temporary funding measure.
One columnist noted that McCarthy had "become the not-so-glorified puppet of the House Republican conference's radicals, folks like Dan Bishop, Chip Roy and, most prominently, Matt Gaetz."
Gaetz told Bannon he was seen as "some sort of chaos agent."
"Why am I to blame for the chaos of the fact that these appropriations bills weren't here already?" he gasped. "Right? Like, how come we didn't do defense appropriations right alongside the National Defense Authorizing Bill?"
"You see, this is not a bug of the system," he continued. "It is a feature. They hold everything to the very end so that everyone feels rushed and under the pressure to avoid a shutdown. And that's how the administrative state continues."
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade grilled a Freedom Caucus member set on shutting down the government instead of passing a 30-day continuing resolution to negotiate on funding.
Kilmeade began the 6-minute interview on Tuesday by asking why Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) was "dead set" against funding the government for the next 30 days.
"Brian, I've said for months now that I will not support any continuing resolution that is merely an extension of Nancy Pelosi's spending and Joe Biden's policies that we voted against, Republicans voted against for the last two years," Rosendale asserted. "We were assured by Kevin McCarthy, this Congress is going to be different."
"But this is a continuing resolution," Kilmeade countered. "You're not signing on for any permanent spending caps. You're just saying one more month to negotiate. You guys took the whole, you took all of August off. I don't know why. You didn't pass any appropriations bill."
Rosendale said that he wanted to send a message with a government shutdown.
"What if they just tell you I need another month?" Kilmeade asked. "They just need another month. You fund the government. Republicans will get totally blamed."
But the congressman suggested the continuing resolution was a trick.
"How long has Speaker Pelosi — Speaker McCarthy had the job?" Kilmeade pressed.
"I think you had a Freudian slip just there," Rosendale pounced. "We're seeing the same kind of work ethic come out of Speaker McCarthy as we saw out of Speaker Pelosi."
Kilmeade noted that Rosendale did not seem to like the Republican Speaker of the House.
"It's not about who I like!" Rosendale exclaimed.
"Let me finish, big guy," Kilmeade said. "Scott Perry and Chip Roy said I need another month, and you say I'm not giving you another month, so the government shuts down. Who gets blamed if the government shuts down?"
"This is about messaging," Rosendale insisted. "Let's take the time that we have remaining. Let's develop the appropriation bills, all 12 of them. We could do it in seven days."
"This didn't arise seven days ago," Kilmeade observed.
"I was not sent here to kick the can down the road," Rosendale replied.
"Congressman, you just know the government gets shut down," Kilmeade said. "Republicans get the blame because they're not even providing even a CR, a pathway to a CR. You're saying I'm not going to go over 30 days. So the government shuts down. That means your investigation stopped. That means the border funding doesn't happen. And that's OK."
"Who are you getting your talking points from, Brian?" the lawmaker complained.
"It's called research!" Kilmeade shouted back. "If you don't agree with what I'm saying, it doesn't mean talking points. You just don't agree with what I'm saying."
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) could cost Republicans control of the U.S. House of Representatives after a scandal over her behavior at a "Beetlejuice" performance.
In a report published on Monday, Insider explained how Boebert jeopardized GOP control of the House.
Boebert won her 2022 race against Democratic opponent Adam Frisch by only 600 votes, and her 2024 race is considered a toss-up by the Cook Political Report.
"If Frisch successfully unseats Boebert, his election could very well help flip the House of Representatives in favor of the Democratic Party," Insider noted. "Republicans only hold ten more seats in the House than Democrats, but after recently court-mandated redistricting in states like Alabama and New York, that slim majority is in peril this upcoming presidential election season."
For her part, Boebert attributed her misbehavior at the theater to recent divorce proceedings.
"There's no perfect blueprint for going through a public and difficult divorce, which over the past few months has made for a challenging personal time for me and my entire family," Boebert insisted in a Friday statement. "I've tried to handle it with strength and grace as best I can."
Boebert was accused of vaping after a pregnant woman asked her to stop, and she was caught on security camera making crude gestures at the staff after she was ordered to leave.
Steve Sadow, an attorney for Donald Trump, reportedly expressed concern on Monday as a federal judge questioned lawyers for co-defendant Jeffrey Clark.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones presided over the hearing to determine if Clark's election interference trial could be moved from Fulton County Superior Court to federal court.
CNN correspondent Marshall Cohen reported Sadow's remarks, which were shared on social media by Zachary Cohen.
"Trump's Georgia lawyer Steve Sadow is in courtroom for today's hearing in Atlanta," Zachary Cohen wrote. "At one point, Sadow whispered, 'This is not good' as the judge pressed Jeffery Clark's attorney for answers about Clark's connection to Trump."
Former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman suggested Clark was "planning on losing" his bid to remove the case to federal court because he did not attend the hearing.
Attorney John Eastman expressed gratitude on Monday because his former client Donald Trump has not turned on him in a Georgia case where they are co-defendants accused of attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
In an interview on Monday, Eastman was asked if he "felt support from President Trump" since being charged in Fulton County.
"Well, we're now under court order not to speak to each other, so I can't do that," Eastman pointed out. "But I was very pleased to see his current legal team out there, instead of throwing me under the bus as some news articles were trying to say, citing anonymous sources, what's going to happen, to say, look, Eastman is one of the best constitutional attorneys in the country."
"What he did was creative and aggressive, but it was certainly within the realm of permissible constitutional interpretation," he added. "And they're going to rest on that. It's very important."
Fox News host Eric Shawn challenged Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NY) after he backed an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and his family.
While speaking to Shawn on Sunday, Van Drew asserted the impeachment inquiry was warranted because Biden family members had allegedly received money from foreign entities.
But Shawn wondered why the same standard did not apply to other presidents.
"I mean, Billy Carter signed up as [a] representative [for] Muammar Gaddafi," the Fox News host recalled. "You know, the Trump's Ivanka had Chinese copyrights and patents. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics says that the president, while he was president,
received $160 million from foreign entities."
But Van Drew forgave those presidential families because they received money "openly."
"Those are different issues because that was all done openly and publicly, not behind closed doors, not with necessarily corrupt individuals," he explained. "I mean, we knew, remember, President Trump had a business and was a very established businessman for many years."
"That's different," he remarked. "And so he did seclude himself from those businesses. But his family were involved in all those businesses. But that was open, and we knew all about it."
"Trump made a spate of false and misleading comments about immigration, foreign policy, abortion, and more" on "at least" eleven occasions, Timm writes. "Trump's presidency was marked by repeated false, exaggerated, and misleading claims. Some of those claims drove policy, while another triggered an impeachment. Trump's false view that the election was stolen helped land him and dozens of others in legal trouble in Georgia. One senior aide — during a Meet the Press interview — even coined the phrase 'alternative facts' in defense of the president."
Trump: "Millions of illegal immigrants coming into our country, flooding our cities, flooding the countryside. I think the number is going to be 15 million people by the time you end this, by the end of this year. I think the real number is going to be 15 million people."
Timm: "There's no evidence that 15 million people will cross the border this year. That's more than the total number of people, 11.4 million, that the U.S. government estimates are here without legal authorization."
The January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol:
Trump: "These people on January 6th — some of them never even went into the building, and they're being given sentences of many years."
Timm: "This is missing critical context. Some of the defendants who received some of the longest sentences of any January 6th participants — including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — did not enter the Capitol building themselves but received lengthy sentences after they were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Some of the most vicious assaults of the Capitol attack were committed by January 6th participants who never stepped foot in the building, and some of those individuals received significant sentences, too."
The 2020 election:
Trump: "If this were ever before a court, we would win so easy. There is so much evidence that the election was rigged."
Timm: "Trump and his supporters brought more than 50 lawsuits aimed at overturning the results of the election; none were successful in overturning the results."
The cost of bacon:
Trump: "Things are not going right now very well for the consumer. Bacon is up five times. Food is up horribly — worse than energy."
Timm: "Inflation has absolutely raised the cost of many consumer goods, including food. But Trump's exaggerating the the price of salt-cured pork: In U.S. cities on average, the cost of sliced bacon is up by about 12% from the end of Trump's term in office, though at one point in 2022, it was 30% more expensive than it was at the end of 2020."
To some political observers, the new interview --where Trump talked over his questioner and received little pushback -- was yet another debacle that led American Enterprise Institute scholar and Atlantic contributor Norman Ornstein to declare it was a huge error in judgment.
According to Ornstein, "Oy. Trump says the Capitol Police testified against Nancy Pelosi, and then burned all the evidence. Lie upon lie upon lie. Unchallenged by Welker. Every word out of his mouth is a lie, and he talks over any questioner. Just a colossal mistake to showcase this sociopath."
After viewing clips from the "Meet the Press' interview, media critic Dan Froomkin complained, "In these clips, Trump utters about 30 different lies, and there's zero pushback from Kristen Welker, who instead calls him 'fired up' and 'defiant' – and 'the president.' This is, actually, worse than the CNN town hall in terms of normalizing a maniac."
Popular Sirius XM host Michelangelo Signorile chimed in with, "Even with a taped interview Welker lets Trump get away with calling Jack Smith 'deranged' and a 'lunatic.' That bullsh*t needs to be checked. She failed, and still let him push propaganda he repeats over and over."
"OMG. I just heard Kristen Welker tell viewers they can go to NBC’s website for a 'fact check' of the Trump interview. It would be better if Trump was fact checked live, directly to his face during the interview. But, no, too many anchors just don’t know how to do that. Shameful," Trump critic Victor Shi wrote before adding, "What we just saw is honestly an insult to viewers. If Trump can’t be fact checked live on air, during a one on one interview, then maybe that’s a sign that the person interviewing hasn’t done a good enough job preparing? I’m at a true loss of words for our media. Embarrassing."
Conservative Atlantic columnist Tom Nichols knocked a teaser for the interview by quoting new host Welker. He wrote: "'Fired up about a lot of these issues and is obviously trying to draw a sharp contrast with President Biden' and he really wants that UAW endorsement, and... Good Lord. Trump isn't 'trying to draw contrasts,' he tried to subvert the Constitution to stop Biden from taking office."
Political commentator Keith Olbermann singled out Welker, writing, "So here’s the boast @jparkABC deleted Now: @NBCNews - delete Kristen Welker’s @kwelkernbc ’s career as host of @MeetThePress Or at least: change the name of the show to more accurately reflect her work: @MeetTheStenographer."
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger added, "Allowing Trump to lie on @MeetThePress and leaving 'fact checking' to the website is not how we should be treating a man who launched an insurrection. It’s 2023, we should have learned this lesson over 7 years. Ratings aren’t worth our democracy."
"Chris Licht always knew that someday he’d be vindicated. He just didn’t realize it would be so soon," wrote conservative lawyer George Conway.
ABC News host Jonathan Karl repeatedly corrected Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) as she claimed there was evidence that President Joe Biden was guilty of receiving bribes.
"Was this premature, going all the way with an impeachment inquiry?" Karl asked Mace during a Sunday interview on
This Week.
"I don't believe so. The facts are everywhere," Mace insisted. "There are text messages, there are emails, there are witnesses, there are whistleblowers, there are meetings, there are phone calls, there are dinners. And you can't say, hey, there's a little bit of smoke, we're not going to follow the fire."
"We're talking about a significant sum of money," she continued. "We are talking about bribery. And in the Constitution, Article 2, Section 4, that is the basis for impeachment."
"There's no evidence of bribery," Karl pointed out.
"There are witnesses," Mace claimed without proof. "You can't say that there's no evidence when there is evidence."
"There's no evidence connected to Biden," Karl noted again.
"It was the media and journalists when [President Richard Nixon] was going down that helped do that investigation, helped bring down the president when he broke the law," Mace replied. "And you guys wanna deny that there's evidence."
"It's everywhere," she added. "And the bank records will prove it out."
"All right, we will see," Karl concluded. "I haven't seen much yet."
Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed Democratic candidates want an abortion policy that will "kill the baby after birth."
During her first interview as host of Meet the Press, Kristen Welker asked Trump if he took responsibility for women who could no longer get abortions after he installed Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.
"Because of what's been done and because of the fact that we brought it back to the states, we're going to have people come together on this issue," Trump claimed. "Nobody wants to see five, six, seven, eight, nine months. Nobody wants to see abortions when you have a baby in the womb."
"Rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month," he continued. "You shouldn't be allowed to do that."
