The flagging presidential campaign of Ron DeSantis thought it was a good idea to pay for an ad on X, formerly known as Twitter, encouraging people to wish the Florida governor a happy birthday next Thursday.
The ad comes in the form of a tweet from Casey DeSantis, Ron DeSantis’ wife, and says, “Wish Ron DeSantis Happy Birthday!”
There’s a photo of a smiling DeSantis and his family.
Well, users had wishes for DeSantis, all right, and they weren’t shy about expressing them.
A sampling:
“This card is brought to you by the letters G F & Y” above a Sesame Street gif.
Six puke emojis.
“This is soo lame.”
“Right after I sign the one for Benito Mussolini.”
A gif of thick brown sludge coming out of a pipe.
“Two words, one finger.”
“I doubt you would want him to read what the overwhelming majority of us would write.”
“I’ll go as far as to say I hope he has a SAD birthday!”
“I would rather saw my arm off with a rusty saw.”
“I’m here for the ratio” with two crying laughing emojis. (Comments — 1,385 in all, as of Friday afternoon — were indeed overwhelmingly negative.)
The DeSantis campaign’s birthday card ad is the latest variation on what’s become one of the most clichéd come-ons in digital political advertising, used by prominent Republicans and Democrats alike to collect supporters' personal information and prod them for money.
Those who click on the DeSantis ad, which does not appear publicly on Casey DeSantis’ X feed, receive a form to fill in their name, email and phone number — along with a countdown clock showing (down to the second!) how long it is until DeSantis’ birthday.
A Ron DeSantis presidential campaign fundraising advertisement on X, formerly known as Twitter. (Screenshot)
If you provide a phone number and click the “Sign His Card” button, the fine print says you consent to his robocalls and texts.
Whoever goes that far received a thank-you message for signing the card — and a pitch for a campaign donation, with suggested contributions ranging from $20.24 to $6,600.
“Thanks for signing his card!” it says. “We can’t wait to show him how many Americans are standing beside him.”
In the meantime, six days before DeSantis’ birthday, many Americans have used this opportunity to laugh at him.
Former President Donald Trump continues to laugh, too, as he remains at least 35 percentage points ahead of DeSantis in most recent national polls for the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
WASHINGTON — Each afternoon since last week, former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign has fired off an email titled "ICYMI: Important Articles and Posts from President Trump".
Most of these missives contain predictably Trumpian fare from decidedly far-right outlets peddling MAGA propaganda and culture war outrage.
“Trump is the greatest defender of the Constitution alive today,” declares the headline of a column from the Washington Times’ Charles Hurt.
“Energy sector sees 88% increase in ‘nonbinary’ workers from last year,” reads one story from John Solomon’s Just the News.
But Trump’s daily brag sheets are also peppered with articles from news organizations that — taking Trump at his own word — are straight-up terrible, filled with lying, no-good agents of “fake news” who are hell-bent on harming him.
Among them is “disgusting,” “bad,” “totally biased” and “truly unprofessional” NBC News, which Trump in March called “one of the worst” as he ordered reporter Vaughn Hillyard off his private Boeing 757 jet following a campaign rally in Waco, Texas.
On Wednesday, Trump used his daily email to highlight the reporting of NBC News’ Monica Alba and Carol E. Lee, who wrote that “attorneys for President Joe Biden and the special counsel appointed to investigate his handling of classified documents have been negotiating for about a month over the terms under which he would be interviewed.”
In 2020, Trump issued a blanket Twitter declaration that “WSJ is Fake News!” after the Wall Street Journal chided the then-president for the quality of his daily White House press briefings.
Even the ultimate “enemy of the people” — the “failing,” “inaccurate,” “corrupt,” “sick,” "discredited” and “totally dishonest” New York Times — earned not one, but two slots in Trump’s sizzle reel.
The top of a daily "Important Articles and Posts from President Trump" email that Donald Trump's 2024 campaign began sending out last week. Screengrab
One was a nearly 23-year-old New York Times story about a plan in Florida to appoint George W. Bush electors “with no Jeb Bush signature” — a not-so-subtle tie-in to Trump’s own 2020 fake elector scheme that has landed him and many of his associates in vat of legal magma.
The other, in Trump’s Sept. 6 email, is a piece from 2015 by Michael Barbaro about a 1987 letter to Trump from former President Richard Nixon. In it, Nixon says that his wife, Pat Nixon, saw Trump on the Donohue show and finished the program convinced that “whenever you decide to run for office you will be a winner!”
The “ultra liberal” and “failing” Des Moines Register and perennial “total joke” frenemy Fox News — “Fox has become fake news, too,” Trump said in 2020 — also got Trump email shout-outs in recent days.
So, has Trump, who is facing 91 felony counts across four separate criminal cases while maintaining a commanding lead for the 2024 Republican nomination, warmed to the coverage of his sworn media enemies?
The Trump campaign didn’t directly answer Raw Story questions about whether Trump still considers the New York Times, NBC and the rest to be "fake news". Nor did it explain why the campaign decided to highlight news articles from outlets Trump had previously deemed untrustworthy.
But in an email to Raw Story, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote: “When Fake News is forced to print the truth, you know it's dire for Crooked Joe Biden.”
For Kathy Kiely, the Lee Hills chair in free-press studies at the University of Missouri's Missouri School of Journalism, Trump’s desire to have it both ways is a potential teaching moment. She challenged Trump supporters to think critically about when Trump cites mainstream news organizations to his advantage.
“Look at the record. Are they really fake if Donald Trump quotes these outlets?” Kiely said, while acknowledging that Trump’s “contradictions and hypocrisies don’t seem to bother his most hardcore supporters.”
Trump’s hypocrisy is, at least, transparent, Kiely added.
“He bludgeons the media when it’s convenient. He uses the media when it’s convenient. He’s happy to cite the media organizations he hates when they publish something that is helpful to him,” she said.
True to form, Trump’s email on Thursday featured the republication of an Associated Press story about conservative Christians’ attraction to Trump.
The article to which Trump linked appeared in the Milwaukee Independent, a small, nonprofit news organization in Wisconsin that features this quotation in its “about us” page: “As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
While senators’ health ailments are dominating cable shows and social media, the debate has barely penetrated the marble walls of one of the nation’s oldest Senates ever.
That’s by design.
“It is an institution that honors old age. Seniority is everything,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told Raw Story after voting at the Capitol on Wednesday. “The Senate is also a place where one person on the first day can do some really big things, mostly based on their ability to obstruct, but that's the way it's built. It does reward longevity, and, consequently, you end up with a lot of older members.”
Indeed, the position of Senate president pro tempore — third in line to the presidency — is traditionally reserved for the majority party senator who’s served the longest, continuously. Committee chairpersons are often, if not exclusively, given to a majority party senator with the longest service on a given committee.
You also end up with a lot of secrets in an already secretive body. There’s a seemingly impenetrable veil of silence at the Capitol when it comes to lawmakers with failing health.
Seemingly, one of the most enduring bipartisan principles in the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” seems to be that you let your political friends and foes alike die as they please — even if you find them diminishing right next to you as you consider some of the nation’s most critical decisions and cast consequential votes.
When Senate insiders do talk — staffers, in particular — it’s generally in whispers about the lengths some must go to prop up their aged bosses. And it’s not pretty.
‘Out of respect for colleagues’
Six years ago — or one term, according to Senate time — in her piece, “An old-school pharmacy hand-delivers drugs to Congress,”Erin Mershon of STAT News reported that Capitol Hill pharmacist Mike Kim fills Alzheimer’s prescriptions for at least one member of Congress.
That terrifyingly tantalizing admission is news to freshmen senators — “That's pretty wild. I'm gonna look that up and read it,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) told Raw Story — but it’s simply the ways of Washington to senior senators who seem in on the not-so-secret-secret.
“I actually don't want to comment on that out of respect for colleagues,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) told Raw Story after exiting a Senate elevator.
Others shrug off reports of their congressional colleagues being afflicted with debilitating diseases like Alzheimer’s.
“We're a representative body reflective of the country. There's probably a lot of people in the workforce that are engaged in all kinds of different medications, whether they're for Alzheimer's, mental health, whatever. That doesn't surprise me,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) told Raw Story on Wednesday while walking next to the underground Senate tram.
Capito serves as a part of McConnell’s leadership team. She was in his office Tuesday night for their regular start of the week meeting.
“He was sharp as ever,” Capito said.
How the ravages of age affect the human body is a congressional drama that’s as old as Congress.
In 1846, former President John Quincy Adams suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. Voters didn’t care. The former U.S. senator from Massachusetts overcame its debilitating effects and was then sent back to Washington, only this time as a member of the House.
That’s where, in 1848, Adams collapsed as he rose in his seat on the House floor only to later die in the Speaker’s Room of the Capitol.
More recently, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) remained in office until his 100th birthday.
Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) died in office in 2009 at 77.
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) died in office in 2010 at 92.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) died in office in 2018 at 81.
Such situations can leave millions of constituents without the active representation of a key, duly elected federal lawmaker — or, in the case of those who die in office, no elected representation at all. Governors work to quickly fill their seat, but they don’t consult voters and often tap one of their political allies, some of whom never seem to leave the seat.
‘Medicine shouldn't be politicized’
These days, the nation’s aged politicians are protected by their aides and most of their colleagues whoplay senatorially-supportive roles.
But every now and again, a lawmaker breaks Congress’ unofficially-official code of silence.
We saw that rarity this spring when Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) had enough ofthe congressional veil of silence after his state’s senior stateswoman, Feinstein, told Raw Story, “I’m not announcing anything” — hours after her office had literally announced she wasn’t seeking re-election in 2024.
As Khanna took to social media to call for Feinstein’s resignation, he showed the public what’s common knowledge in Washington: Feinstein stopped making some of her own decisions long ago.
“It’s time for@SenFeinstein to resign. We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty. While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties,” Khanna wrote. “Not speaking out undermines our credibility as elected representatives of the people.”
Of course, it would be unethical, immoral and idiotic for a doctor to divulge their patient’s diagnosis without consent. Consent, however, is not the problem when Washington physicians go out of their way to politically protect politicians.
Glowing physical examinations can transform a physician into a politician. Just ask Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX). He catapulted himself into the U.S. House Representatives after garnering headlines while serving as former President Donald Trump’s White House physician. Politicized medicine is a disease all its own, at least according to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). The Duke-trained ophthalmologist is one of four physicians currently serving in the Senate. He’s openly questioning Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician of U.S. Congress, for reporting McConnell’s showing no signs of a seizure or stroke.
“Medicine shouldn't be politicized, and if you're giving advice on, you know, what someone's potential diagnosis is, really, it ought to be based on the facts. And what I can tell you is that having vacant spells of 30 seconds or more where you’re unresponsive, is not a sign or a symptom of a concussion,” Paul told reporters Wednesday.
Bolstered by the Capitol physician’s report, the 81-year-old Senate minority leader brushed aside health questions Wednesday.
“I’m going to finish my term as leader and I’m going to finish my Senate term,” McConnell told the congressional press corps.
Everything’s … fine?
To many members of the Senate, everything’s fine, even if many read more into McConnell’s health episodes than the congressional physician reported.
“I think people need to actually read his book to understand the guy had polio and polio’s coming back and he's having some serious pain issues,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) told Raw Story just off the Senate floor. “The first time it happened, he was on the floor at 10 o’clock that night having conversations with us. Sharp as a tack.”
At the start of this Congress, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) challenged McConnell’s leadership position, but, like most all others, he’s backing McConnell now.
Support McConnell continuing as leader?
“Absolutely,” Scott told reporters at the Capitol. “Mine was all about how you manage the Congress.”
As for Feinstein?
“Every time I’ve talked to her she’s been really nice to me,” Scott told Raw Story.
In your five years serving next to Feinstein, ever had a good policy conversation with her?
In a building built on seniority, members of both parties have already gamed out what the eventual exits of Feinstein and McConnell — and their combined 70 years in Washington — mean for their respective party’s rank and file.
But those whispers are kept far away from the cameras, secure within the bipartisan veil of silence.
While Feinstein checked outlong ago, McConnell, who isn’t up for re-election until 2026, seems bent on staying put for at least the next three-plus years.
His colleagues seem fine with that, because, most argue, Kentuckians decided to give him a seventh six-year term back in 2020 — even if voters nationally overwhelmingly support congressional term limits and age limits. Many frustrated voters even support cognitive tests for older lawmakers — something Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has vocally pushed for lawmakers over the age of 75.
In New Hampshire on Tuesday, Haley even suggested 80-year-old President Joe Biden, if elected for a second term, would die before his term was up in 2029.
"There's no way Joe Biden is going to be 86. We all see it. This is about the fact that — you think it it's bad now? This could get so much more worse," Haley said.
Meanwhile, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump would become the oldest person elected president — 78 in November 2024 — were he to win the White House next year.
As for McConnell, many lawmakers just wish he'd get his eyes checked. Because, even as most senators reject proposals like term limits or mental fitness tests, they say Washington’s broken. They just wish those at the top of Washington’s power pyramid could see the ruins they’ve left in their storied wakes.
“It barely functions at all, as far as I can tell,” Cramer of North Dakota told Raw Story. “I think we should get back to some better guardrails.”
Donald Trump's frequent social media attacks on judges and prosecutors have come up already in court proceedings, but he's not likely to face accountability for any individual post.
Instead, the whole wave of posts that the former president spews forth could be used against him.
The former president's status as the Republican frontrunner grants him more leeway than most defendants to publicly threaten the prosecution or courts – but judges have a responsibility to protect witnesses and preserve the integrity of trial proceedings that may eventually conflict with Trump's right to free speech, reported Salon.
"Threats aimed at intimidating judges, prosecutors and witnesses, reduce the fairness and accuracy of the proceedings," said Hofstra University constitutional law professor James Sample. "Preserving and protecting due process – a fair trial – is the most fundamental responsibility of a judge."
Trump has been warned his trial date in the federal Jan. 6 case could be moved up from its current start date of March 4 if his statements potentially compromised the jury pool, but all of his social media attacks pose risks to the cases against him.
"Trump's statements that portray his criminal cases as political plots to interfere with the 2024 election risk tainting the jury pool," said former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and MSNBC legal analyst. "We have seen through his false claims of a stolen election his power to mislead members of the public. Just one juror who buys into Trump's claims can nullify the law and hang the jury, resulting in a mistrial."
Trump may face some type of sanctions or another form of accountability for his comments, but legal experts say one individual statement won't likely land him in hot water.
"If Trump is going to face accountability for past comments, it will be based on the totality of comments occurring on a daily basis in the media," said Nina Marino, a partner with the white-collar criminal defense firm Kaplan Marino. "In terms of impact on the cases against him, the courts will need to weigh his First Amendment right to free speech against the danger of contaminating the jury pool and witness intimidation. Witness intimidation could be demonstrated if potential witnesses were to report that his comments put them in fear."
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she is "demanding" a vote on an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, listing just a handful of Republican members of Congress who support the move. While the far-right Georgia Republican has been ramping up the pressure on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to approve an impeachment inquiry, longtime GOP strategist Susan Del Percio warns if Republicans try it, "it's going to go very badly" for them.
"No evidence has surfaced," The Messenger reports Thursday, "that shows President Biden received any of the funds that flowed to his son. And plenty of moderate and establishment Republicans worry impeachment will backfire on the party."
“It’s stupid. It’s completely made up. They don’t have anything,” Republican strategist Susan Del Percio told The Messenger. “This is not about impeachment for cause. This is a political stunt. And I have a feeling it’s going to go very badly for Republicans.”
Two weeks ago Newsweek published a report titled: "Full List of Republicans Who Support Impeaching Biden." It named less than one dozen House Republicans.
On Wednesday, Congresswoman Greene, who filed legislation to impeach President Biden on his first full day in office, posted video of her speaking to Turning Point USA's Benny Johnson on his YouTube show.
"I tell you what, Kevin McCarthy is a yes vote for an impeachment inquiry. Jim Jordan is a yes vote. James Comer, Jason Smith. Many, many Republicans are a yes vote for an impeachment inquiry right now," Greene said. "And I'm going to argue that we will see it put into action when we go back to Congress, possibly as early as next week."
"I'm demanding it," she told Johnson. "I'm so serious about this because I know the evidence is there, and I'm so disgusted and embarrassed for our country that we have such a corrupt president that we have allowed to remain in power and that they have colluded and conspired to cover up his crimes."
"It is purely disgusting to me, and I will not tolerate it and that's why I came out very boldly to it to my constituents at home at a town hall and I said I'm not voting to fund the government until we have an impeachment inquiry," Greene continued, threatening to vote to shut down the federal government unless her demands are met.
Her other demands include not funding "the government for any kind of COVID mask vaccine mandates, future vaccines, COVID insanity, it's a mental illness at this point," Greene declared, as COVID cases rise.
She also said she would not "fund the government for Ukraine to further a war that's just murdering people," which she also alleged was "lining the pockets of Democrats."
Ultimately, she declared, "I'm not going to vote to fund the weaponized government," as she lashed out at Wednesday's sentence of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the January 6 insurrection. Greene said others who participated are being "persecuted."
"It's time for us to get serious and I'm telling you things are about to get real when we go back to Washington next week."
Last month, USA Today reported, the House Oversight Committee, "said in [a] report that it plans to continue to investigate Biden to find evidence of corruption, even as it acknowledged that it had no evidence that he financially benefited from the myriad foreign business dealings of his son Hunter."
As the editors wrote, Trump's assertion that his policies were a "success' don't match up with reality and the editors have the graphs to prove it.
As they wrote, "The goods trade deficit with China did dip somewhat after Mr. Trump launched his global tariff campaign in 2018. At the same time, however, the deficits with Mexico and the rest of the world went up."
Case in point, they note, "Since 2017, when Mr. Trump entered the Oval Office, goods imports to the U.S. in nominal dollars have increased 174% from Vietnam, 116% from Taiwan, 96% from Bangladesh, 89% from Thailand, 76% from India, and 62% from South Korea. Maybe Mr. Trump should start giving out campaign hats that say 'Make Vietnam Great Again.'"
As the editors noted, Trump had a chance to make real inroads on a positive trade policy but he rejected it out of hand.
"If Mr. Trump’s goal was to nudge businesses to friendlier locales, a better U.S. policy was to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that excluded China. But Mr. Trump rejected that deal," they wrote, "This approach would have avoided the collateral damage from Mr. Trump’s blunderbuss tariffs, and here we part ways with him again."
As for Trump's new proposal to slap a 10 percent tariff on competing countries, the editors wrote, "Slapping 10% tariffs on everything made by Vietnam, South Korea and other U.S. partners would have the effect of abandoning them to China’s economic sphere, which is the opposite of America’s geostrategic interests."
"Mr. Trump’s great mistake is his belief that trade is a zero-sum exercise. But countries and companies trade because they see a mutual advantage. When American consumers buy clothing and Scotch on a global market, while American producers sell soybeans and Boeing jets, the magic is that both sides benefit," they concluded.
Donald Trump was directly warned to comply with a subpoena from the Department of Justice or face an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home, but his attorneys backed off because they feared an outburst from him.
Evan Corcoran, his then-lead attorney in the classified documents case, told the former president in person in May 2022 that the FBI might obtain a search warrant for the estate if he didn't voluntarily return the materials sought by the DOJ, but another attorney warned him not to push Trump to comply, reported ABC News.
"He's just going to go ballistic," that attorney said, according to Corcoran.
Corcoran recorded a series of voice memos -- which special counsel Jack Smith has obtained and ABC News has reviewed -- on his phone the following day that show how Trump allegedly tried to defy the federal subpoena and engage in what prosecutors have called a criminal conspiracy to hide classified materials from the FBI and his own attorney.
"We've got a grand jury subpoena and the alternative is if you don't comply with the grand jury subpoena you could be held in contempt," Corcoran recalls telling Trump, according to one of the memos.
Trump replied with a remark that has been included in the indictment: "What happens if we just don't respond at all or don't play ball with them?"
Corcoran told the former president the FBI could seek a search warrant, which could then results in agents showing up at his home -- but, according to the memos and the indictment, Trump repeatedly suggested they should not cooperate.
"The indictment says that although Corcoran -- who ABC News believes to be 'Attorney 1' in the indictment -- and [Jennifer] Little -- believed to be 'Attorney 2' -- 'told Trump that they needed to search for documents that would be responsive to the subpoena and provide a certification that there had been compliance with the subpoena,' Trump still insisted to them, 'I don't want anybody looking through my boxes,' and, 'Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?'"
Corcoran's recordings offer insight into how the documents ended up stashed in boxes at Mar-a-Lago and Trump's understanding of the declassification process, and the former president's habit of bringing newspapers, notes and classified documents to his White House residence to review.
"That's the only time I could read something, and I had to read them so I could be ready for calls or meetings the next day," Trump told Corcoran, according to the recordings.
Trump told his attorney that he made clear to anyone around him that "anything that comes into the residence should be declassified," according to the recordings, but the ex-president told Corcoran that he wasn't sure of any additional actions taken to officially declassify them.
"As for how classified documents ended up in boxes, Trump 'had a lot of boxes' in his bedroom, and when he was done reading a newspaper article or a classified document, he'd 'throw them' into one of the boxes, according to Corcoran," ABC News reported.
Corcoran turned over the recordings to Smith's office after a federal judge ordered him to do so, finding that the special counsel had shown that Trump had committed criminal violations by deliberately misleading his attorneys about the classified materials.
Former Trump White House aide Peter Navarro, criminally-indicted on contempt of Congress charges for refusing to hand over documents and testify before the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, is now complaining about the cost of his trial after claiming initially he would represent himself.
Navarro, who wore numerous hats during the Trump administration, had claimed he did not have to comply with the legally-produced congressional subpoena because he had executive privilege, allegedly an extension of the privilege Donald Trump had asserted. A federal judge threw that argument out, leaving the former Assistant to the President and Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy with little to support his reasons for not complying.
Legal experts have said that even if Navarro’s claims of privilege had been legitimate, he still would have been legally required to assert that privilege during his testimony before the Committee.
Professor of law and former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade commented, “Navarro prosecution is important to our system of government. Even if you believe a congressional investigation is driven by political motives, you must show up when you receive a subpoena. That’s what’s on trial starting today.”
When first indicted by a federal grand jury last year in May, “Navarro said that he still wants to represent himself without a lawyer and accused prosecutors of using ‘hardball’ tactics by arresting him at an airport and not allowing him to make a phone call,” CNNhad reported.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday, “the 74-year-old economist, still a loud proponent of the ‘stolen election’ falsehoods of his ex-boss, remains noteworthy in this sense: After right-wing provocateur Stephen K. Bannon was convicted last summer of contempt of Congress, Navarro on Tuesday became the second top official in Trump’s White House to face a criminal trial related to a scheme to undo Joe Biden’s 2020 victory at the polls.”
“And Navarro, who has pleaded not guilty, said it is costing him plenty. ‘My legal bills just went up by another half-million dollars,’ he said last week as he departed the federal courthouse in Washington, having failed in his last-ditch attempt to have the case against him thrown out.”
“By the time the trial finishes, I expect those legal fees to hit $750,000,” Navarro, who has been called a “conspiracy theorist,” said last week.
“Rarely given to understatement, Navarro cast his legal fight with the Justice Department as an epic constitutional battle over ‘the separation of powers between the legislative branch and the executive branch,’ which ‘is probably going to the Supreme Court.'”
By Tuesday afternoon, Navarro, a “fringe” economist, upped that number substantially.
“This will be the most expensive week, thus far, of this journey,” he told reporters outside the courthouse, as a protestor stood behind him. “The legal fees, because we’ll have attorneys in the courtroom, for what’s likely to be the full week, will run up the meter once again, this will be, at the end of the journey, a case costing over $1 million or more.”
A polling firm working with the Wall Street Journal has also been on the payroll of former President Donald Trump and his 2024 campaign and received more than $600,000 from his campaign, legal analyst Allison Gill first reported.
Raw Story confirmed on the Federal Elections Commission website that, since the beginning of 2023, Fabrizio Lee & Associates has pocketed huge expenditures with the largest being $208,000 for "polling expenses and the least being $2,372.98 for "polling consultant expenses: travel." There were two other expenditures over $100,000.
The website for the group openly declares its connections, boasting: "Fabrizio, Lee & Associates has worked directly on the campaigns or independent expenditure efforts that successfully elected 20 U.S. Senators and 9 Republican Governors. And we were honored to have the privilege to serve as Chief Pollsters for President Donald J. Trump’s Presidential campaigns."
Tony Fabrizio is a long-time Republican pollster and worked with Trump's campaign in 2016, as well as recently. But the most recent poll from the Wall Street Journal lambasting President Joe Biden for being too old to run for president was also conducted by Tony Fabrizio, in conjunction with another pollster, Michael Bocian, who works with some Democratic candidates but not the Biden campaign.
Trump is just three years younger than Biden. Several Republican members of the U.S. Senate are older than Biden.
Taking into account former Donald Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis' highly publicized griping that Donald Trump and his PAC have given her the cold shoulder when it comes to paying her legal fees as a racketeering co-conspirator in Georgia, one former prosecutor claimed that makes her a prime candidate to flip on the former president.
According to a report from Newsweek's Ewan Palmer, Trump's greatest concern as he faces off with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is that Ellis makes a plea deal now that she is faced with the possibility of legal fees that could run into the high six figures.
Ellis, who has become an avid supporter of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' bid to replace Trump as the face of the Republican Party, has given every indication that she is done with Trump and has taken to X, formerly known as Twitter, to express her displeasure.
"Has Trump defended the J6ers [January 6, 2021 accused]? Has Trump defended the indicted lawyers? Has Trump defended the pastors jailed or threatened with fines over [former Chief Medical Advisor Anthony] Fauci's failed covid policies Has he paid for anyone's legal defense except himself (oh and Jason Miller's child support lawyer)?" she wrote before adding, "I have no problem with Trump using donations to fight a weaponized government. I Encouraged people to donate after the first NY indictment. I do have a problem with Trump using little grandmas' pensions to pay for Jason Miller's child support battles."
After noting she is getting no help from Trump after being accused of being part of a scheme to help him steal the 2020 presidential election, more than one legal observer has singled her out as the one who could do the most damage to the former president.
As Newsweek's Palmer pointed out, a post from former assistant attorney general for New York Tristan Snell proclaimed, "Watch Ellis carefully now. When Trump cuts someone off, it's the tipping point that results in the person flipping on Trump. My bet: Ellis will cooperate."
That lines up with comments made by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who has become a major critic of Trump after he ended up going to jail for lying on the ex-president's behalf.
Speaking with CNN, Cohen stated, "Donald's an idiot. Let me just be very clear, when it comes to paying money he is truly an idiot He has not learned yet that three people you don't want to throw under the bus: your lawyer, your doctor and your mechanic, because one way or the other, you're going to go down the hill, and there'll be no brakes."
In a rant posted to X on Monday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) doubled down on her previous demands to release all the security footage from the Capitol during the January 6 attack — this time suggesting it could help "patriots" prove a conspiracy theory that federal agents were planted in the crowd to incite the violence.
"I called for releasing the tapes and stopped doing so when it was explained to me that groups like sedition hunters would use facial recognition software to go after more vulnerable people," wrote Greene.
"After seeing the horrific inhumane treatment of pretrial J6 defendants in the DC jail in 2021 and being one of the few members of congress that is against the persecution of J6’ers, I was afraid the DOJ would unjustly target more people."
However, she continued, those who sympathize with the accused and convicted rioters should turn the tables – and use facial recognition software themselves to unveil government employees she said encouraged the insurrection.
"If they can use facial recognition, why can’t we?" she continued.
Greene's idea is to have "patriots" employ the same tactic to identify the "feds and/or provocateurs" who were supposedly responsible for entrapping Trump supporters to commit violence at the Capitol.
"Enough of this kabuki theater, it’s time to end this. Everyone needs the truth and the weaponized government must be stopped," she wrote.
Republicans have long been pushing for a full release of the January 6 tapes, which they were hopeful would happen when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) handed over 41,000 hours of surveillance footage to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
This release formed the basis of a Carlson segment in which he cherry-picked footage to try to exonerate high-level participants — a move that blew up in defendants' faces.
In an interview going into the Labor Day weekend, former Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen explained away the flurry of videos and memes that the ex-president has been posting on his Truth Social platform as a defense mechanism that shows he is scared out of his mind over his rapidly expanding legal woes.
Speaking on the “Political Beatdown” podcast, Cohen – who is currently being sued by the former president who claims he violated an employee agreement and broke attorney-client privilege – said Trump "technically knows his a-- is cooked" as he faces four criminal indictments as well as a handful of potentially costly civil suits.
Speaking with the host about the flurry of Truth Social links and posts from Trump, Cohen explained, "Donald is running scared and this is what he does, he needs to vent and the only way that he can vent right now is to do it through his postings on Twitter or on his Truth Social situation.”
After watching a clip of the former president calling President Joe Biden a "mental catastrophe" and then adding Biden "is leading our country to hell," Cohen fired back, "Yeah, he is leading our country to hell while diaper Donald is sitting there crapping in his Pampers."
Cohen later went on a tirade about Trump believing he knows better than anybody else, with the ex-Trump attorney saying, "The truth is he doesn't know s--t from Shinola. And it is so amazing that he's still got that stronghold over MAGAts who actually think the guy has half a brain."
The former Trump attorney also asserted that his former boss can't shut up and continuing to spew "the s--t" he comes out with is one of his "dumbest" moves ever.
The Christian nationalist leader of a California megachurch is behind the takeover of a local school district board that has led to Proud Boy appearances and police being called in to keep meetings from turning violent, a report claimed Monday.
According to a report from the Daily Beast's Kate Briquelet and Decca Muldowney, pastor Jack Hibbs of the Chino Hills Calvary Church is proud that three of the five members of the Chino Valley Unified School District are affiliated with his church, where they are pushing the type of policies that are dear to the hearts of the growing number of far-right Christians across the country.
Case in point, the election of school board president Sonja Shaw, a fitness trainer who was on the receiving end of national scrutiny after a video of her meltdown on the state schools chief went viral.
As the Beast is reporting, Shaw is not hiding the fact that her brand of Christianity is the guiding force behind her proposed public school policies, telling a crowd of admirers, "Today we stand here and declare in his almighty name that it’s only a matter of time before we take your seats and we be a God-fearing example to the nation, how God is using California to lead the way. We already know who has won this battle. You will be removed in Jesus’s name! You, Satan, are losing.”
As the report notes, megachurch pastor Hibbs helped Shaw land her position – and he is not done yet.
"Calvary Chapel has boasted on social media of collecting tens of thousands of ballots for state and local candidates endorsed by Hibbs. The church’s ballot collection, a practice it’s engaged in for years, is conducted with help from Hibbs’ political organization Real Impact," the Beast reports, adding, "To concerned observers in Chino, Shaw’s tack is not unlike what’s happening at school boards across the country, with brawls over curriculum, social-emotional learning, and the banning of books that focus on race and LGBTQ issues."
As for Hibbs, he's not settling for just backing a local school board take-over.
"Hibbs has emboldened supporters to fight progressive education bills and prop up Christian candidates. In his sermons, he has tearfully prayed on stage for Donald Trump to win the 2020 election, said COVID-19 vaccines would lead people into accepting 'the mark of the beast,' and called 'transgenderism' a 'sexually perverted cult' and 'an anti-God, anti-Christ plan of none other than Satan himself,'" the report states.
A Ron DeSantis presidential campaign fundraising advertisement on X, formerly known as Twitter. (Screenshot)
The top of a daily "Important Articles and Posts from President Trump" email that Donald Trump's 2024 campaign began sending out last week. Screengrab