On Thursday's episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, actress Natalie Portman recalled her run-ins with Jared Kushner during their time together at Harvard University.
Colbert and Portman alluded to the idea that perhaps it wasn't only merit that got him into the august institution.
Kushner's admission to Harvard came curiously soon after his father Charles Kushner's $2.5 million gift to the institution.
“Are you saying they let dummies into Harvard?”
"I mean ... ” Portman trailed off.
Portman then remarked on how strange it was to watch a perhaps not-the-brightest bulb at Harvard transform into a super-villain.
"The president himself had a really tough time with the truth this morning," Tur observed. "Let's get to the facts."
"In an unprecedented appearance on the White House lawn, the president spoke to reporters and Fox News for 58 minutes," she reported. "In that time he lied or misled the American public at least 19 times."
The anchor then proceeded to fact-check Trump over his attempts to distance himself from his campaign chairman, his misleading claims that the FBI Inspector General report exonerated him, his assertion Mike Flynn may not have lied, and his claim that Democrats are to blame for the Trump administration policy of separating children from their parents. She also fact-checked which party controls Congress and the history of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
"So our big question is -- why are Republican leaders okay with the President of the United States lying?"
On Friday, former Trump campaign adviser Paul Manafort headed to jail, perhaps for a very long time. Manafort had his $10 million bail revoked after special counsel Robert Mueller charged him with witness tampering and now he faces up to 20 years in prison.
Legal experts pointed out that this is a significant development in the Mueller probe: Manafort might either offer more information in exchange for a reduced sentence, or, if he doesn't have any, the threat of a long prison sentence might sway Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to cooperate.
A viewer tuned into Fox News may have missed the significance of Manafort being hauled to jail, because host Harris Faulkner was still hammering away on yesterday's release of the Inspector General report, which detailed misdeeds and instances of unprofessionalism in the FBI.
When Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wa) tried to switch the subject to Manafort, Faulkner became visibly agitated and demanded he keep talking about the most important story of the day.
"If you tuned into another station, you'd be seeing the top story about how Paul Manafort was sent to jail," he says.
Faulkner snaps, "We started with that" then changes the conversation to keep talking about what she said was the most important story of the day.
President Donald Trump insisted Paul Manafort had "nothing to do" with the Republican presidential campaign he chaired -- but an old Sean Hannity clips suggests otherwise.
The president's cable news cheerleader and late-night confidante hosted Newt Gingrich, another prominent Trump apologist, to discuss what they described as "Trump's most powerful week since entering race" on Aug. 19, 2016 -- the day Manafort resigned as campaign chairman.
"I thought Paul did an important job, getting through the convention and getting the campaign more of a national campaign, more of a professional campaign," Gingrich said. "My guess is Paul was being very generous in recognizing that although the news media was never going to let up on whatever happened in Ukraine, unlike their willingness to ignore Podesta and Clinton and Russia. So I think, probably, in that sense that this was the right outcome."
"Nobody should underestimate how much Paul Manafort did to really help get this campaign to where it is right now," Gingrich added.
Hannity signaled his agreement before moving on to a Trump campaign speech on black unemployment, but he thought enough of Gingrich's praise for Manafort that he highlighted a quote on his personal Twitter account.
Manafort was jailed Friday after a judge agreed he had violated the terms of his bail by attempting to influence witness testimony in the special counsel case against him, and the president distanced himself from the former campaign chairman once praised by his close allies.
“I feel badly about a lot of it because I think a lot of it is very unfair,” Trump said. “Manafort has nothing to do with our campaign. But, I tell you, I feel a little badly about it.”
Trump also claimed Manafort worked only 49 days on his campaign -- which was inaccurate.
Manafort, in fact, worked -- without pay, despite his mountainous debt at the time -- for the Trump campaign for 144 days, starting March 28, 2016.
That's about two months longer than either Steve Bannon or Kellyanne Conway, who each worked 84 days on the Trump campaign.
The same week Manafort joined the Trump campaign, newly named foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos emailed other campaign associates to discuss his efforts to set up a meeting with Russian leadership.
MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi surprised viewers on Friday by "taking them to church" with a factcheck of claims made by the Trump administration to rationalize their new policy of separating parents from children at the border to deter immigration.
While Velshi is best known for his business and economics reporting, he earned a bachelor's degree in religious studies from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
"We're about to go to church," Velshi explained. "Sticking with the spirit of what would Jesus do, we actually did dig through the Bible to find passages that lent themselves to the current border practice of separating migrant children from their parents."
Velshi said the White House "has forced this discussion upon us, because they have said it's the biblical thing to do."
"I don't think there is a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew in this country who can find me in their holy book references that suggest that that is appropriate," Velshi concluded.
"I think you're right," said James Martin, a Jesuit priest. "I think what they're doing is called proof texting, you take a verse of the gospels or the Old Testament out of context and throw it at people, weaponizing the Bible."
A news program on Russia's state television network celebrated this week after seeing a report about President Donald Trump standing up for Russian interests at last week's G7 meeting in Quebec.
Julia Davis, who runs the Russian Media Monitor website, reports via Twitter that Russian TV show host Olga Skabeeva and her colleagues this week were very happy to see a report from BuzzFeed News about President Donald Trump telling G7 leaders that Russia should be allowed to annex Crimea on the basis that the majority of people in that province speak Russian.
The argument that Crimea should belong to Russia because most of its citizens speak Russian is an argument that has been frequently used by Putin as a justification for its annexation.
What’s more, Trump reportedly asked the G7 leaders why they were so insistent on standing up for Ukraine, which he described as "one of the most corrupt countries in the world."
Skabeeva and co-host Evgeny Popov relayed this news excitedly to their audience, and they clearly approved of Trump's actions.
"Krym nash, Trump nash!" Skabeeva says jubilantly at the end of the show, which in English translates to "Crimea is ours, Trump is ours!"
Watch the video below -- Skabeeva says "Trump is ours" at the 9:58 mark.
In a bombastic interview with CNN's Kate Bolduan, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) cursed on live television when decrying those who criticize him for working with President Donald Trump.
The Friday conversation began with a discussion of the latest White House news of the day: the inspector general's report about former FBI Director James Comey that Trump says "totally exonerates" him and the Justice Department's controversial family separation policy for undocumented immigrants.
It was when Bolduan asked the South Carolina senator how he can "trust the words coming out of his mouth" that he began offering qualified defenses of the commander-in-chief.
"Whatever he decided to do on a given day," Bolduan asked, "do you trust him now?"
Graham initially responded that he trusts Trump, but then clarified that "it's not about trusting" the president.
"I trust him in terms of trying to do things that are big and matter," the senator said. "I’ve got a relationship with the President at a time when I think he needs allies."
Bolduan suggested Graham was opening himself up to accusations of being "two-faced" given his past criticisms of Trump — and then he went off.
"When I worked with President Obama––and I did on occasion––I was a hero," the senator said. "Now when I work with President Trump, I’m two-faced. I know how the game’s played and I don’t give a damn."
"I’m going to do what’s best for the country, I like the President, I want to help him, I hope he’s successful, he’s been a friend to me and he says some things I don’t agree with," Graham continued. "So if you don’t like me working with President Trump to make the world a better place, I don’t give a shit."
An apparent white supremacist won a Republican primary in Virginia, and "The View" host Meghan McCain is throwing herself a pity party.
Neo-Confederate candidate Corey Stewart won a Republican Senate primary this week, and he clashed Thursday night with CNN's Chris Cuomo over his racist past.
"It's an outrage that this idiot is even running for the Senate in this country," said co-host Behar said. "Who's he running against? Tim Kaine? He will lose."
Co-host Sunny Hostin complained that discussions about race were always dismissed as a card to be played, rather than a topic to be better understood.
"I am so tired of when you want to talk about race, and when you want to talk about someone's views on it, they accuse you of playing the race card," Hostin said. "I think it's a big game of dodgeball -- and he should be ashamed of himself. And I think the people that voted for him for the primary, I hope they watch that exchange, and I hope they care about it."
"He's incapable of being ashamed of himself, just like a lot of people we know in this political system," Behard chimed in.
McCain agreed that Stewart would lose to Kaine, but she suggested the media was slandering the Republican Party by interviewing the right-wing radicals who keep winning GOP primaries.
"I for one am sick of the radical candidates being put up on cable news as some sort a representation of the party in its entirety," McCain said. "I know that he's running and it's fair, but it's exhausting for me to see people with Confederate flags behind them somehow representing my party."
On Friday, a federal judge revoked former Trump campaign advisor Paul Manafort's 10 million dollar bail in response to charges of witness tampering.
In an appearance on MSNBC, former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman wondered how Manafort could have been so brazen as to try to intimidate witnesses while already facing serious charges.
Akerman also noted that Manafort could face as much as two decades in prison. Manafort is 69-years old, that could amount to a life sentence.
"Paul Manafort, if he does not cooperate, may never ever see the outside of a jail cell," Akerman said.
Earlier Velshi observed that Manafort appeared to have been "poking the bear."
An incredulous Akerman retorted that he wasn't "poking the bear. This is taking a hatchet and pounding it on the bear."
Palm Beach county Deputy Sheriff Javier Lasso has been suspended as the department investigates allegations that he threatened his daughter's boyfriend and handcuffed her, forcing her into a police cruiser to "teach her a lesson."
According to a report by internal affairs, Lasso strolled into the boyfriend's place of employment, in uniform, with his gun clearly visible and told him to stay away from his daughter, who he'd been dating for approximately two years.
When the boyfriend retorted that it wasn't up to him, the Deputy Sheriff threatened to shoot him and his mother.
"Last chance or I will blow your fucking head off," he warned. He also told him he knew where he lived.
On Friday, as President Donald Trump gave a bizarre, rollicking press conference on the White House lawn, former Trump campaign adviser Paul Manafort made his way to federal court in New York City.
Manafort faces charges of witness tampering.
Special counsel Robert Mueller claims Manafort reached out to potential witnesses, violating the terms of his bail. Currently under house arrest, Manafort might end up in jail today if the federal judge sides with prosecutors. The threat of a lengthy incarceration might sway Manafort to share more information with Mueller's team.
As Manafort walked to court, a crowd of demonstrators shouted "Lock him up."
President Donald Trump on Friday told Fox News that he wants American citizens to show him the same reverence that North Koreans show leader Kim Jong-un.
During a surprise interview with "Fox & Friends" on Friday, Trump said he was impressed by the respect that Kim commanded from his people.
"He's the head of the country -- and he's the strong head, don't let anyone think anything different," Trump said during the interview. "He speaks and his people sit up in attention. I want my people to do the same."
Kim Jong-un runs a totalitarian dictatorship in which people face imprisonment or execution if they criticize him. According to human rights watchdog Amnesty International, North Korea has imprisoned an estimated 120,000 people based on political grounds across four separate camps dedicated to imprisoning political dissidents.
The organization further says that people living in these camps are "subjected to forced labor as well as torture and other ill-treatment."
Despite this, the president has praised Kim for being a "very tough" leader who "loves" the people of his country.
When asked by Doocy why he was heaping praise upon Kim despite his country's atrocious human rights record, Trump replied, "I don't want to see a nuclear weapon destroy you and your family."
