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White House insiders “frantically” began texting each other during new press secretary Katie Zacharia’s first briefing Tuesday, fearing it made the administration look like it was in complete disarray, according to the Daily Mail.

The Mail reported that some sources believe the new face of the administration "was set up to fail." More than half a dozen Trump officials told the paper they suspect Zacharia was sent into the briefing room "with no preparation."

“She looked as if she was handed a sheet of paper at the last minute and wasn’t prepared properly,” a Trump world source confided. “So who in the building wanted to see her fail?”...

A leaked list obtained by The Washington Post has exposed the major donors behind President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom, and several of them had business before his administration, from regulatory approvals to federal contracts, and one donor’s father received a presidential pardon.

The internal spreadsheet tracks 67 donations above $10,000 totaling $333 million, with at least $77 million from donors who asked to stay anonymous. The Post noted that its reporting does not show the donations led to any government action.

Here are five of the most striking findings....

A MAGA operative who posed as the cousin of Senate nominee James Talarico (D-TX) in a call that fueled a false psychiatric hospital rumor insists he “never lied.”

Rhein Amacher, who says he worked on President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, posted what he called a “final statement” on X early Thursday.

The Lindner Center of Hope, a psychiatric hospital in Mason, Ohio, said on X on Sunday that Talarico had never received treatment there. The rumor spread while Talarico was off the campaign trail with what his campaign called the flu....

President Donald Trump on Thursday scrapped Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, undercutting a promise Hegseth had made publicly and repeatedly just a week earlier.

“He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that did not mention Hegseth. The president said streaming “might have been a strong deterrent,” but that “many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die.” Trump added that the victims’ immediate families may view the execution in person.

Hegseth had personally championed the idea, telling Real America’s Voice last week that “we’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” before Pentagon officials confirmed the livestream. Trump had already been privately backing away from the plan, as it drew bipartisan condemnation and an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll found 8 in 10 Americans opposed it, including 64% of Republicans....

Democrats are preparing to investigate the Trump administration if they win control of Congress, they could have trouble extracting even basic information from federal agencies, Wired reported on Thursday.

A late-September Government Accountability Office report on Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) task force illustrated the problem. GAO found all six agencies it reviewed resisted its inquiries in some way, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Veterans Affairs, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. None would identify DOGE staff they had hosted, including CFPB, where several were already publicly known. CFPB accused GAO of bias and called its report “misleading.”

A GAO spokesperson said obtaining information from agencies has become harder over the past year and a half, which limits how well it can tell Congress whether programs and data are secure. A Democratic aide described the obstruction as “surprising,” saying agencies usually try to meet investigators partway, but this time showed “a complete lack of willingness to kind of get to yes.”...

The decision by the Department of Homeland Security to raid the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as part of a criminal investigation just before the election set off one of key founding members of the MAGA movement.

Jumping on X, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) unloaded on the Trump administration for the needless distraction when Americans are more concerned with the cost of living.

Admitting that she has little in common with Omar, with whom she battled when she was still in Congress, Taylor Greene said she has grown “sick and tired” with the Trump administration breaking its promises to voters — including releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files....

Former MLB superstar Roger Clemens fact-checked President Donald Trump during his Texas rally Wednesday night.

Trump traveled to San Antonio, Texas, to stump for Republicans like Tano Tijerina in his race against Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), whom Trump attacked for what he considered to be a "disloyal act" by not becoming a Republican after Trump pardoned him. At the rally, Trump invited Clemens on stage to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor, because Clemens had not yet been elected to the Hall of Fame.

In typical Trump fashion, the president also rattled off a fact about Clemens that the former big league pitcher was quick to correct. ...

Former White House ethics czar Norm Eisen said he could not believe what he was reading in Kimberly Guilfoyle's newly revealed text messages.

Eisen, who served in the Obama White House and later as U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, appeared on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" on Wednesday to discuss a Wall Street Journal report on Guilfoyle's Signal messages, which The Journal reports show her asking Trump donor Eric Deters to send her $100,000 to pay off her American Express debt. Guilfoyle is the U.S. ambassador to Greece.

"It's one of the worst things that I have ever seen with respect to a U.S. ambassador," Eisen told Cooper. "It stinks to high heaven."...

Stephen Miller says Americans owe their amazing energy prices to Donald Trump. Critics saw it differently.

Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, appeared Saturday on Fox News’ “My View with Lara Trump.” The segment ran under the banner “Miller touts Trump’s sweeping achievements.”

“The reason we have lower energy prices than anyone else in the developed world is because of President Trump,” Miller said, according to a clip posted by Acyn....