Donald Trump took some heat from the Joe Biden campaign on Saturday after the former president gave a speech for the National Rifle Association in Texas, and appeared to mess up his words as well as some key facts.
Trump, who was mocked online for bragging during the speech that he was healthier and a "better physical specimen" than fellow former president Barack Obama, also dealt with a bothersome fly during the political campaign event. He called the fly "brutal" as he swatted it away while speaking.
After the event, the reception was less than stellar from the rapid-response team for the Biden-Kamala Harris campaign.
At one point in Trump's speech, he made a claim about his uncle. This was the Biden-Harris HQ summary of the quote:
"Trump: I say to myself ‘you’re a frickin genius.’ I had an uncle who is the longest-serving president *glitches* uh, professor in the history of MIT.?"
Trump did, in fact, appear to mess up his words during that particular story.
The account also highlighted an apparent discrepancy in Trump's speeches, which were only one day apart.
"Trump yesterday: I won 29 golf championships," the account wrote and included videos as proof. "Trump today: I won 31 golf championships."
In another section of the speech, according to Biden's campaign rapid response team, "A confused Trump" referred "to himself in the third person while reading his teleprompter: 'Yes oh yes and quickly says President Trump,''" the account quoted.
At the end of the speech, when Trump brings in some musical accompaniment and reads from a familiar-but-passionate script, Biden-Harris HQ described it as, "Trump starts playing QAnon music during his bizarre slur-filled NRA speech."
It's months away from Christmas, yet Donald Trump just gave Joe Biden a major gift, according to a MSNBC analyst.
Trump is tied or beating Biden in many swing state polls, but he recently did something that opens him up to attacks, according to James Downie, a MSNBC opinion editor and a former editor and columnist for The Washington Post.
"Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Trump asked oil executives for $1 billion; in exchange he would prioritize reversing Biden-era regulations on the industry," Downie wrote Saturday. "That news broke less than a week after the Federal Trade Commission published evidence that Scott Sheffield, founder of the shale giant Pioneer Oil, colluded with OPEC leaders to inflate oil prices. Pioneer, of course, denied the claims, as well as other price-fixing allegations in nearly a dozen recent class-action lawsuits."
By giving this speech, Trump has made things easier for the current president, according to Downie.
He said Biden should start by endorsing an effort by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee to investigate "the effective sale of American energy" policy in exchange for campaign contributions.
"From there, Biden can give further speeches and release more clips on social media highlighting and expanding his administration’s work against monopolies, oligopolies and price gouging," according to Downie. "(These addresses could also dovetail nicely with warnings about Trump’s inflationary plan for a 10% across-the-board tariff.) The message is simple: Biden is fighting inflation, while Trump protects those who profit from it."
Downie says Biden was talking about these issues before recently stepping back, saying, "That's a mistake."
"Biden should hammer away at exploitative corporations for their role in squeezing Americans’ pocketbooks — and dare Trump to do the same, secure in the knowledge that he won’t," he wrote. "Trump just gave Biden the perfect excuse to double down on this contrast."
Donald Trump and his affiliated PAC's may be raking in hundreds of millions of dollars with the November presidential election less than six months away, but approximately only a third is going to his campaign with a staggering amount being funneled elsewhere.
According to a comprehensive analysis by Politico, Trump's legal woes are "soaking up" a stunning amount of the dollars taken in with the costs of raising even more money coming in second, far ahead of campaign expenditures.
As Politico's Jessica Piper wrote, "Donald Trump’s political operation had a startling weakness as the general election kicked off this year: He had been spending money almost as quickly as he was raising it, leaving him at a significant cash disadvantage against President Joe Biden," adding that things have not gotten much better.
Pointing out that Trump’s "complicated web of political committees spent roughly $217 million through March" the report notes that the former president is basically running in place by bringing in "a bit shy of $220 million in new contributions."
What should alarm those in Trump World is the fact that Trump's Save America PAC "spent more than Biden’s joint fundraising committees — while raising less."
"Put simply: Biden raised more money, spent less of it on fundraising and none on legal costs, saved more, and has more waiting to hit his campaign bank account than Trump did," Piper summed up before adding that Trump's campaign may see a little boost with the takeover by his allies of the Republican National Committee.
That, in turn, could be offset by the threat that some of Trump's legal funding may dry up.
"The leadership PAC could receive only $2.75 million more from MAGA Inc. after March. Save America may still be owed some money from Trump Save America, the joint fundraising committee, although that would likely amount to only a few million dollars. Once those refunds dry up, and all the remaining money is sent, it’s unclear whether Save America will have the ability to keep spending on legal bills," she reported.
Even the most far-right members of the House Republican Conference are condemning Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-Georgia) hijacking of a recent committee hearing.
During a Thursday night meeting of the House Oversight Committee, members were debating legislation to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt when Greene suddenly insulted Rep. Jasmine Crockett's (D-Texas) "fake eyelashes." This resulted in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) coming to Crockett's defense, demanding that Greene's words be struck from the record and for the Georgia Republican to apologize. Crockett asked committee chair Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky) if, hypothetically, she would be in the wrong for mentioning that a certain member of the committee had a "bleach blonde, bad built butch body."
Crockett recounted the incident in an interview with the Daily Beast, saying that Greene's comment about her eyelashes was "absolutely a racist thing."
"Any woman that knows anything about makeup and getting done up knows that eyelashes are one of those things that kind of come with it," she said. "MAGA has been trolling on social media for a while and it’s a way of them basically calling me ghetto and things like that, because of my hair and my lashes and my nails."
"It’s almost like, well, we don’t have anything intelligent to counter that with. So instead, we’ll be racist and we’ll attack her and go after her looks. Which, frankly, I am not lacking in my confidence about my looks…. but they do it all the time," she added. "So I think this was just a fundraising ploy for her and it’s also just her brand. Her brand is chaos and ignoring the rules."
The only Republican on the Oversight Committee to vote with Democrats to silence Greene for the remainder of the hearing was Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), who has publicly squabbled with Greene in the past. Boebert suggested the far-right Georgia congresswoman was making other Republicans look bad with her behavior.
"It was embarrassing what was going on," Boebert said on Capitol Hill. "I couldn’t bring myself to stand in defense of that, I wouldn’t do it for the other side."
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) also weighed in on the fracas, saying Greene's outburst was "not a good look for Congress."
The Oversight Committee eventually approved the contempt resolution against Garland, in response to the attorney general refusing to hand over audio recordings of President Joe Biden's conversations with former Department of Justice special counsel Robert Hur. After concluding his investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents, Hur declined to charge the president with any crimes.
Ocasio-Cortez later tweeted that the resolution was approved notably without any votes on any amendments, which she characterized as an extraordinary breach of the legislative process on Comer's part.
"You see, this is the microcosm of what authoritarians do on a larger scale," she wrote. "ID a vulnerable person/community that’s easier to break the rules towards, normalize it (often w/ “both sides” rhetoric), and then use that rule-breaking to undermine deeper processes and rule of law."
Click here to read the Beast's full report (subscription required).
Reacting to Donald Trump's attack on President Joe Biden on Friday night, where the former president suggested the man who beat him in 2020 should have to undergo a drug test, former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele invited Trump to take the lead and go first.
On Saturday morning's edition of MSNBC's "The Weekend," co-host Steele lambasted Trump for creating a needless distraction before the first 2024 presidential debate.
With co-host Alicia Menendez joking about Trump's repeated nodding off during his hush money trial, "The only drug test he seems to be taking is a sleep aid," Steele interjected, "Why do we continue to follow this foolishness this way and take any of it seriously because it isn't?"
"It is all distractive noise leading to nothing," he lectured. "This race is about the competency of both of these men to run this country — one wants to be a dictator, folks."
"Get that through your skulls that this man is a dangerous threat and he is telling you such and so, you know, don't get sidewinded by, 'Oh, Joe Biden needs to take a drug test,'" he continued. "Well, you know what? You do it first. You take the test first and let's have an independent test-taker because we think you will be lying. "
Lawmakers from President Joe Biden's Democratic Party on Friday accused House Speaker Mike Johnson of disrespecting Africa after he did not invite Kenyan President William Ruto to address Congress during an upcoming Washington visit.
Biden has invited the key U.S. regional ally next week for a state visit -- the most prestigious trip a foreign leader can pay to Washington, which includes a ceremonial welcome and formal dinner at the White House.
Leaders on state visits often also address joint sessions of Congress, but Johnson, a Republican, brushed aside an appeal for an invitation to Ruto made by both the top Democrat and Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
In a letter to Johnson, 14 House Democrats told Johnson they were "extremely disappointed" by the decision and said, "The people of Kenya deserve more respect."
"Foreign adversaries like China, Russia and Iran are working tirelessly to subvert America's alliances, particularly in Africa," wrote the lawmakers including Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"Your choice not to provide the Kenyan president, a key African partner, the opportunity to address the Congress helps create an opening for autocratic adversaries to make inroads in African public opinion."
Four foreign leaders have addressed joint sessions of the current Congress, in which the Republicans control the House -- the prime ministers of India and Japan and the presidents of Israel and South Korea.
"Failing to offer the same invitation to President Ruto risks sending the message that African partnerships are less valued by Congress," the Democratic lawmakers wrote.
The speaker's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The state visit comes as the US election season enters full swing, with many lawmakers occupied by campaigning.
Kenya has long been a close partner of the United States both economically and diplomatically and has partnered with Washington on security issues including in neighboring Somalia.
More recently, Kenya has volunteered to take the lead in a security mission aimed at stabilizing violence-ravaged Haiti, a relief for the United States after months of searching for a solution.
The last African leader to address Congress was Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the continent's first female elected head of state, in 2006.
Donald Trump has consistently ridiculed President Joe Biden for using teleprompters, but the former president repeatedly complained about the fallen teleprompters at his Minnesota speech.
Trump on Friday gave the keynote speech at the Minnesota GOP's Lincoln Reagan Dinner, where the former leader started his speech with complaints about teleprompters.
"Before I got up, the teleprompter fell down. That's great. Great going, fellas back there," the ex-president said. "Then they want to know why we don't pay the bill. I get a lot of heat. We have a teleprompter that's gone. This one's almost gone."
Trump then imitated Biden, saying the current American president would "leave" if the same thing happened during his speech.
@CCknockout on social media wrote, "He's making casual confessions now."
Seated in the middle of the raging crossfire between Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) — Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) sought a higher power.
The lawmaker was seen crossing herself. Only it appears she didn't get it right.
The motion features five outstretched fingers that symbolize the five wounds of Jesus Christ — on forehead, breast, and shoulders, left to right, and then the lesser sign, made with the thumb alone on the forehead, lips, and breast.
But in Boebert's attempt, the effort was abridged with her skipping the vertical motion to go straight to crossing the shoulders.
And many gave Boebert an unsatisfactory grade, calling it "Paddycake prayer" and comparing it to performing the "Macarena" dance.
Lincoln Project host, Reed Galen posted, "She doesn’t seem like the churchgoing type."
"9 out of 10 idiots can do that correctly," @OurShallowState tweeted.
"She was summoning a car in GTA (her left hand was holding L1 L2)," reads a post by @TheThiny.
Erich Cervantez knocked her for the making shapes. "She just made a triangle," he tweeted.
And Cheryl Parrett wondered how Boebert botched something so rudimentary.
The U.S. Flag Code outlines: "The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property."
Alito blamed his wife for the move, saying she was upset at lawn signs with swear words. Several signs popped up around the election, reading, "f--- Trump." She complained that children waiting for the bus saw the vulgar word.
"If you want to connect the image that you saw, you don’t have to look far," said former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann. "If you look at what Alito said in the immunity argument — the argument was should a president be subject to the criminal laws. And it was unbelievable. Somebody who is a U.S. attorney, now sitting in the Supreme Court of the United States, took the position, we cannot trust DOJ, we cannot trust a grand jury of citizens, we cannot trust the criminal justice system, which by the way, he oversees the constitutional limits on what the government can do, we can’t trust that and that’s why a president should be immune."
She later noted that Chief Justice John Roberts has the power to hold the justices to the same standards as other judges, but he has been unwilling to do so.
She counted off rules such as "employees of the Supreme Court may not engage in partisan political activity, partisan political activity related to elections contested by political parties. For example, employees may not publicly support or oppose a partisan political organization or candidate."
Another is that "employees may not engage in nonpartisan activity if it could reflect adversely on the dignity or impartiality of the court or interferes with the duties."
Wallace said that the "upside-down flag is associated with one of the two parties, Trump supporters, at the Capitol that day and absolutely makes it impossible for that body to be dignified."
"Can we consider for a moment what Justice Alito's defense is here?" he said. "Understanding that because of the photo, he can't just say it didn't happen. Let's even assume his wife put it up, and take that as a given. Even though we just have the statement, there's lots of reasons to think — it's his lawn. But he didn't see it?"
Wallace noted that Alito never said in the statement that he didn't see it, only that his wife did it.
"It's up for days. He never saw that? I mean, he didn't talk to his wife? He didn't see the flag? He didn't think, maybe I should take this down? Remember the environment we were in. Let's go back to Jan. 6th. What was going on in Washington? I mean, I keep saying this about the judges who have these cases; everyone who was in Washington lived it. It was happening there around them."
He explained that he doesn't think people who weren't there can fully understand how central Jan. 6 was to those who live in America's capital and "how shocking" it was "even for us just watching it on TV."
"And he didn't think, maybe I should take this down?" asked Weissmann. "I mean, and then the response, I'm doing this in response to what? How is putting a 'Stop the Steal' flag that you know about, you are not taking down, how is that somehow justified by a neighbor?"
Weissmann wondered what would happen if the neighbor promoted Joe Biden.
"That means you put up this flag as a sitting Supreme Court Justice? It is so much, 'Might makes right.' It is such a denigration of what should be a court that people revere."
Former President Donald Trump challenged Vice President Kamala Harris to a debate with his as-yet-not-chosen running mate in a post on Truth Social Friday afternoon.
"On behalf of the future Vice President of the United States, who I have not yet chosen, we hereby accept the Fox Vice Presidential Debate, hopefully at Virginia State University, the first Historically Black College or University to host a Debate - Date to be determined," Trump wrote. "I urge Vice President Kamala Harris to agree to this. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"
This comes after Trump and Biden agreed to a set of two debates, with one set to occur in just a matter of weeks.
Trump's allies are privately disgruntled that the president agreed to a debate, having hoped he'd refuse and the Trump campaign could hit him over running away. Meanwhile, some of Trump's supporters are privately worried the debate will be a trap.
Additionally, Trump has put out another statement this week that appears to both criticize Biden for not wanting third party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the debate, while also attacking Kennedy for wanting to be in the debate at all.
"Crooked Joe Biden does not want RFK Jr. in the debates because Junior’ is far left him and they would be debating over the same territory, like ridiculous Open Borders and the Green New Scam, both of which are killing our Country. He’s also sharper and far more intelligent than Joe, all making for a bad combination of ingredients," Trump wrote, adding, "I don’t care if Junios’ joins the Debate, but right now his polling numbers are very low, he is not properly qualified in the States, and he seems to be on a downward path," Trump added. "Junior’ needs more than his name to get on the 'stage!'"
The Commission on Presidential Debates knows that it endured a "potentially mortal wound" after presidential candidates circumvented the group to navigate their own debate schedule and rules.
Speaking to Politico, lobbyist and former Republican Party chair Frank J. Fahrenkopf, who also chairs the debate commission, whined he's not happy with the Democratic president.
In a letter, the campaign called the commission's debates “noisy spectacles” that are far too late in the election season.
Early voting means that in some states, voting begins Sept. 20, so the debates wouldn't have much of an impact.
Scientific American revealed in 2020 that the debates have "shockingly little effect on election outcomes." But four years later, the commission proposed the same schedule with the same rules, which the Biden campaign alleged go unenforced.
The Biden team didn't want that this time around.
In the 2020 debates, Donald Trump continued talking over Biden, making it impossible for Americans to hear about certain policy issues.
At the same time, Biden's team complained that the traditional debates are nothing more than a ratings spectacle, with each side packing the rooms to see which could yell the loudest.
Fahrenkopf said the claim was “false,” and the campaign didn't know what they were talking about regarding early voting. He then said that Biden advisers Anita Dunn and Ron Klain don't like the commission.
This time around, however, the network will attempt to stop Trump from cutting in by shutting off his microphone. Trump still has the ability to scream at the top of his lungs and try to throw Biden off.
Fahrenkopf also wants Robert Kennedy Jr. on the stage. There are other candidates under the Green Party or Libertarian Party, and others, that will have candidates ballots. However, they wouldn't have the ability to be on the stage.
After the New York Times reported on Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flying an upside-down flag following the January 6 insurrection, one top Senate Democrat is calling his ability to fairly adjudicate January 6 cases into question.
The Hill reported Friday that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) is now demanding Alito recuse himself from all January 6-related cases following a report in which he said his wife, Martha-Ann, flew the upside-down flag as part of a dispute with neighbors. Martha-Ann was reportedly upset about a neighbor in their Alexandria, Virginia community displaying a lawn sign featuring a derogatory phrase directed at former President Donald Trump.
"Flying an upside-down American flag — a symbol of the so-called ‘Stop the Steal’ movement — clearly creates the appearance of bias," Durbin told the Hill. "Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, including the question of the former President’s immunity in U.S. v. Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court is currently considering."
“The Court is in an ethical crisis of its own making, and Justice Alito and the rest of the Court should be doing everything in their power to regain public trust,” Durbin added. “Supreme Court justices should be held to the highest ethical standards, not the lowest.”
Supreme Court justices are encouraged to avoid even the appearance of bias in order to preserve the Court's reputation as a neutral interpreter of the Constitution and adherence to the rule of law. The Times reported that whether the flag issue is a violation of the Supreme Court's new self-imposed ethics guidelines isn't as clear-cut given the context of the event. But because there is no enforcement mechanism behind those ethics guidelines, it isn't clear what, if any consequences Alito will face for the flag dispute.
“It really is a question of appearances and the potential impact on public confidence in the court,” former federal judge Jeremy Fogel told the Times. “I’m on the hawkish side of most ethical questions, and I think it would be better for the court if he weren’t involved in cases arising from the 2020 election. But I’m pretty certain that [Alito] will see that differently.”
While displaying the flag upside down has been seen as a universal signal for distress, the Hill reported that the upside-down flag was co-opted by the "Stop the Steal" movement to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Justice Alito notably did not disavow the actual act of flying flag outside of his house on January 17, 2021 — less than two weeks after the January 6 insurrection and days before President Joe Biden was inaugurated — in his response to the controversy.
"I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Alito told the Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”
The New York Times' Michael Barbaro, who was not involved in the article that first broke the news of the incident, noted that the conservative jurist "doesn’t deny the flag was flying upside down, doesn’t deny its meaning, doesn’t express any disapproval for it and doesn’t disavow it."
Two of the bigger January 6-related cases Alito has yet to recuse himself from include both Trump's claim of absolute immunity for official acts, and another case involving a January 6 defendant charged with "obstructing an official proceeding" — the same charge Trump was hit with in Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith's indictment. If the Court rules in the defendant's favor, that charge against Trump could be dropped.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) just admitted that his latest moves against Attorney General Merrick Garland are a purely partisan exercise, wrote Steve Benen for MSNBC's MaddowBlog.
The apparent confession came after Comer's committee demanded the Justice Department turn over raw audio recordings of President Joe Biden's interview with special counsel Robert Hur in the classified documents probe, which ended without charges.
"Officials realize that Republicans are simply looking for a political toy they can play with ahead of Election Day 2024. Former Republican Rep. Ken Buck admitted as much this week, explaining that Congress already has the transcript and relevant information, adding that his former GOP colleagues are 'just looking for something for political purposes,'" wrote Benen.
"Given that there’s no legitimate or legislative reason to release the audio, Team Biden has asserted executive privilege. White House Counsel Ed Siskel told congressional Republicans in a letter yesterday, 'The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal — to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.'"
The Oversight Committee, along with the Judiciary Committee, has now moved forward with recommending a contempt of Congress referral for Garland for not turning over the tapes — but this was undermined swiftly when Comer admitted in a fundraising email that they only want the tapes to cut campaign material against Biden, not for any legitimate investigative purpose, Benen wrote.
"Comer’s latest fundraising appeal reads in part, 'Biden and his advisors are terrified that I will release the recordings, forcing the media and Democrats to answer for the dismal decline of Biden’s mental state.' The Kentucky Republican added that audio recording 'could be the final blow to Biden with swing voters across the country,'" wrote Benen.
"In other words, the White House’s counsel’s office accused Comer and his colleagues of wanting to use Biden’s interview 'for partisan political purposes,' after which Comer put in writing that he’s focused on using the audio recording to target 'swing voters.'"
Since this fundraising email was made public, multiple Democratic lawmakers, like Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) have brought it up in committee, hammering Comer with his own words.
"The public doesn’t have to take Comer’s critics’ word for it," concluded Benen. "Comer’s own letter was effectively a confession that this entire charade was — and is — a partisan stunt."
