MSN

President Donald Trump has ushered disgraced filmmaker Brett Ratner into his inner circle, and his former biographer offered an explanation.

The 57-year-old director accompanied the 79-year-old president to China last week ostensibly to scout filming locations for "Rush Hour 4," a franchise reboot Trump helped greenlight last year, and author Michael Wolff told The Daily Beast's "Inside Trump's Head" podcast he had an idea why Ratner been added to his orbit.

Sen. John Cornyn briefly shared a post calling Donald Trump the "Commander-in-Cheat" on Tuesday — then deleted it — in a stunning moment of apparent candor from a Republican incumbent fighting for his political life one week before a Trump-backed primary runoff.

As first reported by The Federalist's Sean Davis, Cornyn retweeted a post from advocacy group Pastors for Children that ticked through Ken Paxton's long list of scandals — his impeachment, felony indictment, and divorce on grounds of adultery — before landing on the kicker: "Endorsed by our Commander-in-Cheat."

The in-studio audience for Tuesday night’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC burst into cheering and raucous applause after the host shared a clip of Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) putting acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in his place earlier in the day.

According to Kimmel, it was “perfect.”

A former police officer arrested by Tennessee officials for making a Facebook post about right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's murder will receive $835,000 as part of a wrongful incarceration settlement, CNN reported on Wednesday.

"Under the deal announced Wednesday, Larry Bushart, agreed to drop the five-month-old case alleging that his constitutional rights were violated when officials in Perry County, Tennessee, held him in jail," said the report, noting that the lawsuit, brought with help from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), had been set to go to trial in two months. "'I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated,' Bushart said in a statement Wednesday. 'The people’s freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy.'"

Two of the most recognizable police officers from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday seeking to kill the Trump administration's $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" before it can pay out a single dollar to the rioters who beat them.

Former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, calling the fund "the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century."

CNN's Harry Enten found evidence to suggest Democrats have a real shot at picking up a Senate seat in deep-red Texas.

President Donald Trump announced his endorsement Tuesday of state attorney general Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in a May 26 runoff election, and Enten told "CNN News Central" that Republicans were right to question the move.

President Donald Trump uncorked an unfocused, rambling attack on Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico on the tarmac on Wednesday morning to reporters.

"He believes in six genders, he takes hits at Jesus Christ, he's wearing a mask six months ago. Anybody wearing a mask six months ago doesn't get it," said Trump. "And he's a vegan! He's a vegan in Texas."

Jeff Bezos tried Wednesday to thread a needle that's gotten increasingly hard to thread — insisting he's no Trump lackey while simultaneously heaping praise on the president — and it showed.

In a wide-ranging live interview on CNBC's Squawk Box from the Blue Origin Rocket Factory in Merritt Island, Florida, the Amazon founder and world's second-richest man pushed back on the perception that he's become just another billionaire in Trump's pocket — but his own words complicated the case.

A Florida man who once ran a notorious "ex-gay" ministry has been arrested in a sting operation for soliciting someone he thought to be a 14-year-old boy.

According to WESH, "Alan Chambers, 54, faces charges of solicitation of a minor via computer, transmission of material harmful to minors, and unlawful use of a two-way communication device, records show." The arrest affidavit from the Orange County Sheriff's Office, part of a probe that began in February, "states he and the detective spoke via Snapchat and Telegram between then and May of this year, during which Chambers allegedly sent sexually-explicit messages while attempting to arrange a meetup."

MS NOW host Joe Scarborough began shouting about Donald Trump's $1.776 billion “slush fund” on Wednesday morning and hammered Republican lawmakers for saying nothing about handing out cash to Jan 6 insurrectionists who “beat the hell out of cops.”

Using Vice President JD Vance’s comments on Tuesday defending the president’s so-called “compensation fund” as a leaping off point, Scarborough went off on an increasingly louder tirade that led him to apologize to one guest for getting “hot” moments later.

Former prosecutors who built criminal cases against the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters are sounding the alarm over a Trump administration fund that would compensate people convicted in the attack — including those found guilty of assaulting police officers.

The administration has set aside $1.776 billion in taxpayer money for what it calls victims of government "weaponization," and former prosecutors and domestic extremism researchers say the dollar figure sends a dangerous signal to insurrectionists who rallied around the revolutionary year of 1776 as they worked to overturn the 2020 election, reported MS NOW.