Jon Stewart returned to "The Daily Show" on Monday, kicking off a new show since host Trevor Noah left.
"Now, where was I?" Stewart asked at the top of the show. "Why am I back? I have committed a lot of crimes, and from what I understand, talk show hosts are given immunity."
He kicked off a conversation about the Super Bowl and the right-wing conspiracy theory around the 30-year plot to indoctrinate America.
He tried the segment "Indecision 2024: American Demockracy" but then changed it to "Indecision 2024: Electile Dysfunction."
In his signature style, Stewart showed video after video of Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump unable to remember a series of things when being deposed in court.
The segment goes on to show Trump's bizarre comments about magnets being destroyed in water. Trump also warned that whales are being killed by windmills.
Former President Donald Trump's one-time National Security Advisor John Bolton made the prognostication on CNN's "The Source" with Kaitlan Collins.
"I think he will withdraw," said Bolton. "I think you have to take what he's saying is coming directly from what he has long been saying privately and, in some cases, publicly."
Speaking at a Saturday rally in Conway, South Carolina, Trump told a story about an anonymous NATO member asking if he would withhold U.S. support if their country didn't pay their 2% to NATO. It isn't the way NATO funding works, however. Countries are encouraged to contribute to their own militaries as part of a collective effort based on a formula that factors in their own GDP.
Trump said he would cheer on Russia to attack a NATO ally.
“You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?" Trump claimed he said. "No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills."
"Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Sunday.
President Joe Biden called the comments "appalling and dangerous."
Founded in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) formed as a strategic military alliance of country members North America and Europe wake of World War II.
As for the yarn that Trump spun, Bolton doesn't buy it.
"I think he made that conversation up," he said. "I think that's a fairly typical Trump thing to do because it makes it sound very dramatic. And, he's proving his point."
Fabricated or not, the concern for Bolton is that Trump is not inventing his plans to destroy NATO should he return to power.
"People should not think that he's making up the point about withdrawing or that he doesn't particularly care of what Russia does to those who don't spend adequately on their own defense," said Bolton. "I think this is exactly his view of alliances; they're totally transactional.
For Bolton, Trump's central doctrine with world affairs: No alliance is secure.
"If he's willing to knife NATO, then he's willing to knife the relationship with Israel, with Japan, with South Korea," he said. "There's not a us alliance out there that safe with that kind of attitude."
Actor and comedian John Fugelsang shot down ex-Fox host Megyn Kelly's attack against the Super Bowl LVIII's performance of "The Black National Anthem."
"Megyn Kelly says that Jesus is white and black face is alright," he said while speaking to MSNBC's Joy Reid. "I don't take it all that seriously. I mean this is somebody who said the pepper spray was a food and pizza was of vegetable and Fox was news."
Kelly had tweeted her pledged support of the "The Star-Spangled Banner" and suggested the Black National Anthem titled "Lift Every Voice and Sing" and performed by recording artist Andra Day didn't need to be a part of the big game.
"The so-called Black National Anthem does not belong at the Super Bowl," she tweeted. "We already have a National Anthem and it includes EVERYONE."
"Jesus was a white man, too," she said at the time. "He's a historical figure that's a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that. How do you revise it in the middle of the legacy in the story and change Santa from white to black?"
Fugelsang mocked Kelly for her outspoken past.
"It does come back to the fact that Megyn was not a fan of anything that does not cater to her whiteness," he said. "I will give 100 bucks to anyone who can show me a tape of Megyn Kelly ever calling a white lawbreaker a 'thug' or an 'illegal'."
He then compared her to the super-white cartoon royal Elsa of Arendelle.
"I don't want to be too hard on her — I thought she was great as queen Elsa in 'Frozen,' continued Fugelsang. "But at the end of the day, the worst part about Megyn Kelly, if she were to come out and say that 'It was a great game, and Usher did a good job and I like the halftime show' — her base would kill her. They would call her woke. They would call her critical race theory.
"Hate is what she has to sell. It's all she's got."
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow began her Monday show by connecting the dots between Jair Bolsonaro, Donald Trump, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his hatred of NATO, including his claim that perhaps Poland deserved what happened when Adolf Hitler invaded them, starting World War II.
Putin gave an interview with disgraced former Fox host Tucker Carlson that began with such an extensive history lesson that Maddow said the majority of the American audience checked out and clicked off.
"For a part of the history lecture where Putin got to 1939," Maddow said of the Putin interview. "At which point, he then claimed in this interview that it was Poland who started World War II. Poland did it because even if Poland was cooperating with Hitler — they stopped cooperating with Hitler when Hitler needed them to cooperate most, and then they made Hitler attack them. We haven't had that sold to the American public. That happened in 1939. It hasn't happened since until now. And the reason Putin is trying to sell us this bizarre line now, is more worrying than it is interesting."
Maddow confessed it might have been a boring interview, but it's still worrying.
She quoted from a New Yorker piece that summed up the interview, describing Putin's conspiracy about Poland and Hitler. Poland, he claimed, forced Hitler to start World War II. Hitler had no choice but to attack Poland. They forced him to, Putin claimed, because they refused to do whatever Hitler demanded. It's a description that Maddow found shocking.
"The idea that the victim of the attack serves as its instigator by forcing the hand of the aggressor is Putin's explanation. This is the first time Putin described Hitler's aggression in these same terms," Maddow explained. "The way Putin described the beginning of the Second World War suggests that in his mind, he might see himself as Hitler but perhaps one that can make inroads into the United States and create an alliance with its presumed future president."
Right now, Putin is fighting with the one country between Russia and Poland because they refused to allow Russia to invade and take over the country.
"To Americans, he's saying that Poland is the real aggressor that we should blame for World War II, and he's starting to use the same language," Maddow continued. "Starting to cite the same reasons he did to invade Ukraine as Germany invaded Poland. We're a NATO country, and if Putin decides that he doesn't just want to invade Ukraine, which he's done twice now since 2014, and he just doesn't want to invade Georgia and Moldova as well — if he decides, as he's been threatening, that he is going to start shooting at Poland too or take land from Poland — that will be Putin and Russia attacking NATO. Which would oblige the other 30 NATO countries to attack Russia."
Then she paused.
"Or maybe not," she said, pointing to Trump's comments less than 24 hours later saying that he would "encourage" Russia to attack a NATO ally.
Special counsel Robert Hur's report on President Joe Biden declined to press any charges, but controversially veered into a number of personal attacks on the president, at one point even suggesting he was unable to recall crucial life information and that he was unchargeable because would put on the act of an enfeebled old man for any jury.
That's not at all accurate to how the interview really went, said Biden's personal lawyer Bob Bauer in an interview with MSNBC's Jen Psaki, herself a veteran of the Biden administration.
"You are in the room sitting next to him," said Psaki. "I know you said you're not gonna answer about when the transcript of that five-hour interview could be released, but I want to know more, if people were to read that transcript, what you think their takeaway would be about the performance in conversation."
"He engaged in a vocal operation in the special counsel's report and that is very clear," said Bauer. "I was there, I was sitting next to the president and the interview was consistent with that posture of cooperation. He engaged; I had mentioned before that they indicated to him that the international events must be on the president's mind. That he would take the president many years back, and that is what the president did."
As for the characterization of Biden, Bauer said it isn't at all what he witnessed.
"I could tell you that his insinuations or the suggestions in the report simply don't correspond with my recollection of how that interview went," he explained. "And frankly, I don't understand why they are in that report. This is a case that was open and shut from the very first day. He hadn't engaged in any wrongdoing. It was a case of full cooperation. He was turning over the documents that were found."
"I did want to ask you," Psaki continued. "I think on that day, it was lost in the reporting — it was the day after the October 7th attack [by Hamas]. And obviously, the country saw how much that impacted the president. I know from working with him that he is often making calls with foreign leaders, getting updates. Was that part of the day? Did he take breaks, what else was happening that day?"
"I can say this," said Bauer. "We had an appointment, and a decision was made. It was the president's decision — he was going to keep this. When he arrived to the room ... he understood that it was important to the special counsel that we try to stay on schedule. Scheduling two days, five hours — it's not easy to do, and rescheduling them is not easy to do. He gave that interview."
He explained that Biden had been on the phone with world leaders prior to the meeting. Israel is also seven hours ahead of the U.S. so Biden's ongoing conversations in the Situation Room could go into very late hours or start very early.
When former President Donald Trumpfiled a request for the Supreme Court to stay the D.C. Circuit's ruling against his immunity claim from the federal election conspiracy case, he suggested that even the Supreme Court itself should wait if they can get the D.C. Circuit to rehear the case en banc, or by the entirety of the judicial body on the circuit.
But Trump should be astonished if he gets the appellate court to do that, former federal judge Nancy Gertner told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Monday.
"Judge, what would be the likelihood that the full D.C. appeals court would overrule that three-judge panel ruling on immunity?" asked Cooper.
"Extremely unlikely," said Gertner. "In fact, I think that the time it took for this decision to come out was time that they took to make sure that there would be no dissenters, not only on the three-judge panel, but also on the D.C. Circuit."
In other words, Gertner said, the panel already made sure that the whole circuit would agree with their decision to rule out any need for an en banc ruling.
"I would imagine that that was what was going on," she said. "That the others on the full panel were even seeing this decision to make sure that it was bulletproof. So, I don't think that that would be a very substantial delay."
The Supreme Court has the whole nation watching it, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told CNN's Anderson Cooper — and they need to make the right decision and not drag out former President Donald Trump's criminal trial for election conspiracy any further than they need to.
Additionally, she added, Justice Clarence Thomas — whose wife was heavily involved in the effort to overturn the election — needs to bow out of this altogether.
"So, the former president's trying to rewrite history," said Cooper. "Ludicrously now claiming you were behind the insurrection at the Capitol, saying he should have total immunity. You've seen a lot of presidents up close. If a president had total immunity, as Trump claims, what would that mean? What would that actually look like?"
"That would mean that this president thinks that he is above the law," said Pelosi. "And I think that he is on trial for certain things. I think the Supreme Court is on trial as well to see if they would uphold the decision of the D.C. District Court. And while the four votes to hear it, five votes for a stay, how could they possibly give a stay for justice to proceed, how could they possibly give a stay? So this is really — again, he always thought he was above the law. He's trying to make that a case. That's not what our founders had in mind. They knew there could be a rogue president. I don't think they thought that could be a rogue Supreme Court as well."
"Do you have confidence in the Supreme Court?" said Cooper. "Should Clarence Thomas have recused himself, given his wife's activities?"
"Absolutely," said Pelosi. "Well, you should have for a long time ... he should have been recusing himself, or they say the rule is that it's up to the person to recuse themselves. They have no peer pressure or anything to address that, but his wife is so involved in everything that was happening on January 6, bragging about it. And there he is."
Trump's attempt to win over the Supreme Court to press pause on his immunity claim as it relates to his federal election subversion case in the lead to Jan. 6, 2021, was so "eviscerated" by the three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals that it's hard to see how they could override them.
"This brief, this petition, per se, is pretty weak, and it's repetitive," said former Trump attorney Ty Cobb during an appearance on CNN. "Their briefs which the arguments that they presented were not only soundly rejected, but eviscerated both in oral argument and in the opinion."
Cobb said it is why he can't foresee how the Supreme Court is going to "find those arguments compelling in any way."
On Monday, Trump formally filed a 39-page petition to the Supreme Court seeking to put in place a "stay" of the lower court's unanimous rejection of his sweeping claims that he is immune from any criminal prosecution whatsoever.
Trump's filing described the D.C. Circuit panel's decision blowing up his immunity argument as representing "a stunning breach of precedent and historical norms."
"For weeks, I’ve predicted that the Supreme Court likely will not take up this case, letting the D.C. Circuit ruling stand. After reading this poorly-written application for a stay, I’m feeling good about my prediction," he posted on social media.
The former president needs five judges to back his request for the pause, Cobb explained, which Trump's lawyers say they need to pursue a review of the ruling, whether it be from the full D.C. Court or possibly the Supreme Court.
He confessed he isn't confident the Supreme Court will opt to get into the immunity case business.
"I personally don't see them taking this case. Although, I do think it's possible they could consider the state petition as a petition for cert and stay the case for... 24 to 48 hours," Cobb continued.
And because he suspects they won't go against the D.C. Circuit ruling, Cobb said the case "could be over this week."
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley slammed former President Donald Trump in a CNN interview on Monday afternoon for the former president's recent comments disparaging her active-duty husband's military service in a campaign stop in her home state over the weekend.
Haley is the last major Republican candidate challenging Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination, although polling currently suggests Trump has a near-insurmountable advantage over her.
"Your husband, Michael, is a major with the South Carolina Army National Guard, currently deployed in the Horn of Africa," said anchor Jake Tapper. "In those remarks on Saturday, President Trump also questioned your husband's whereabouts as part of his campaign speech ... why do you think this is what Donald Trump is choosing to focus on right now, and were you surprised at the cheering from the South Carolina audience for a smearing of a South Carolina servicemember?"
"The first thing I'll say, it's disgusting," said Haley. "And let's take it and move me and Michael out of it. If you're going to go and criticize a combat veteran, you criticize one veteran, you're criticizing all of them."
'But this continues to be a pattern of what he's doing, whether he is sitting there calling them suckers, whether he's in Arlington Cemetery saying, why would they do this?" Haley continued. "Not understanding that, no, my husband has not been with me in a presidential campaign because he's serving our country. I'm incredibly proud of him, and every man and woman that serve our country and are willing to shed blood for our country."
She went on to say that it's unacceptable to think he can speak about such things "so carelessly."
"If you don't understand that it's their shoulders that we stand on — if you don't understand that — everybody knows someone who has either lost their life or served this country in a way that's allowed us to keep our freedoms — that is not someone who deserves to be commander-in-chief because if you don't respect our military," Haley explained. "How should we think you're going to respect them when it comes to times of war and prevent war and keep them from going," she continued. "It's just — it was awful. Everything about it was awful, everyone should condemn it."
"This is nothing partisan," added Haley. "If you don't have respect for our military and our veterans, God help us all if that's the case."
Weissmann was shocked that a Supreme Court filing — which argues Trump enjoyed absolute freedom as a sitting president — began with an oft-quoted quip from famous former New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra; “This application is ‘déjà vu all over again.”
“Their position is that the President of the United States can kill people,” Weissmann said on MSNBC. “If you were going to be snarky, they might as well have cited Yogi Bear.”
That the former president's lawyers had time for jokes surprised Weissmann, considering Trump stands accused in Washington D.C. federal court of criminally attempting to overturn a presidential election in 2020.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution has been put on hold as Trump, who pleaded not guilty, pushes his presidential immunity argument through the appeals court system.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has already ruled Trump’s argument doesn’t hold water, which spurred the former president to take his case to the Supreme Court on Monday.
Smith, hoping to speed up proceedings, also asked the Supreme Court to consider Trump’s argument in December. The justices turned him down. Whether they will consider the argument now that it's been heard in an appeals court remains unclear.
What is clear is their decision will have ramifications beyond the court system.
“For something this serious,” Weissmann said, “that is a bizarre, really bizarre first sentence.”
The former prosecutor, who expects the Justice department to respond this week, said he also took umbrage with Trump’s opening with an argument previously rejected by a well respected judge.
“This is just my initial impression,” Weissmann hedged but admitted, “both of those are not terribly, in my view, strong ways to start.”
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough mocked Donald Trump for burying renewed concerns about President Joe Biden by making outrageous and nonsensical remarks over the weekend.
The Biden team spent the weekend pushing back on concerns about the president's age and memory that were raised by special counsel Robert Hur's report, but the "Morning Joe" host ripped Trump for stomping all over that political gift by invitingRussia to invade NATO allies and rambling incoherently during campaign rallies.
"This is a perfect example of why Donald Trump – and this has happened throughout his career – why he didn't win in 2020," Scarborough said. "Every time he was given an opening, every time there is a news cycle working in his favor, he would open his mouth, do his fat Elvis routine, say something completely off the wall, and then everybody would be talking about that."
"Nobody is talking about Friday and the press conference that didn't go well this morning," Scarborough added. "Why? Because Donald Trump made sure they would talk about him by saying he would encourage Russia to invade our European allies, our NATO allies. He knew that was going to take the story off Joe Biden. Sure enough, this is why he can never get ahead and stay ahead."
Donald Trump is fond of telling self-aggrandizing stories where otherwise strong individuals throw themselves at his mercy, gratuitously calling him "sir," and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said his latest version shows the former president is "losing it."
The ex-president told a rally crowd that he told a foreign leader that he would let Russia to "do whatever the hell they want," in violation of the NATO treaty, and the "Morning Joe" host said that was an obvious lie.
"By the way, it was one of those crazy, and someone stood up and said, 'Sir, sir,' and he said they were from a big country – 'Sir, sir, if we don't pay, what will you do, sir?'" Scarborough said. "Nobody is saying that! What a jackass. How stupid would you have to be in the audience to go, 'Oh, well, did they really say that? That's amazing.' I didn't believe a big country president would say that. It's just stupid."
"Like, he is now so desperate to support Vladimir Putin and undercut America's allies in Europe, he's making up a 'sir' story?" Scarborough added. "It's not even a good lie for Donald Trump. Like, you can tell he's losing it. like, he's losing his touch. This is when Elvis couldn't even get -- he's so fat, he couldn't even get the scarves from around his neck to throw to the audience. He kind of sat there, looked down, and sang. Remember when they had to hold the microphone for fat Elvis when he was playing piano? He lost all his moves. This is Donald Trump. It's a story that a third-grader would go, 'Why is he lying to me?' You know, the people in the audience, they can't be that dumb to say, 'Oh, big country person said, 'Sir, what if we don't?' This guy will do anything to justify defending and supporting Vladimir Putin and getting us all ready for -- this is the dangerous part, when he is president again, he's getting us ready for him to be an autocrat, a dictator and a guy who is going to tell Vladimir Putin, sweep in."
Robert Kennedy Jr.'s super PAC ran an ad on the Super Bowl that copied his uncle's 1960 presidential campaign spot and one long time political expert is calling it "plagiarism."
The ad swaps out photos of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, with photos of himself. The color has a reddish hue and is shown in the original television aspect ratio before high definition. It replays the same song and logo.
"This RFK Jr. Super Bowl ad is a straight out plagiarism of JFK ad from 1960. What a fraud- and to quote Lloyd Bentsen with a slight amendment, 'Bobby, you’re no John Kennedy.' Instead, you are a Trump ally," said the director of USC Center for the Political Future, Robert Shrum.
"Just a reminder: the Kennedy family is not supporting Robert Kennedy, Jr. To watch this mediocre excuse for a leader co-opt President Kennedy’s iconic campaign ad is predictably craven. This is what RFK, Jr. does. He’s a hall-of-fame charlatan," posted Charlotte Clymer.
"A super donor who supports Trump donates to a Super Pac that runs a commercial during the #SuperBowl to remind voters of the man RFK, Jr will never, ever be," he said.
"Hey Qanon I heard a rumor that JFK actually did come back today, but then he saw RFK Jr's Superbowl ad and died again," said the account Liam Neeson aka @TheLiamNiessan, once mistaken as actor Liam Neeson by Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) in an anti-Hollywood rant.
