NBC host Kristen Welker pressed former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel about her past statements suggesting the 2020 presidential election was not legitimate.
"Ronna, ultimately, there were 250 audits," Welker said Sunday on
Meet the Press. "They never found any corruption."
"Did you not have a responsibility as the RNC chair to say before January 6th that the election is not rigged, that Donald Trump lost given that there were audits, given that there were more than 60 court cases that occurred all across the country, and that Donald Trump lost?" she asked.
"The reality is Joe Biden won," McDaniel replied. "I have always said, and I continue to say, there were issues in 2020. I believe that both can be true."
"But you acknowledge you acknowledge those what you're talking about did not rise to the level in any way of overturning any of the state's election results," Welker pressed.
"You know there were precincts that didn't align," she continued. "That's a fact. That's not propaganda. That's a fact. He's the president. He's the legitimate president."
Welker interrupted: "Let me just let me just stop you because you did say you just said Joe Biden's a legitimately elected president. This is the first time you have said this."
The NBC host then presented a video clip of McDaniel telling Chris Wallace that Biden did not win fairly.
"Ronna, why has it taken you until now to say that?" Welker wondered.
"I'm gonna push back a little because I do think it's fair to say there were problems in 2020," McDaniel quipped. "And to say that does not mean he's not the legitimate president."
Welker pointed out, "Even the Supreme Court, Ronna, didn't take up concerns about the election results in Pennsylvania and a slew of other states."
Former President Donald Trump's Truth Social platform is set for its initial public offering (IPO) as soon as next week after its merger was approved by a special purpose acquisition company. But while Trump himself stands to reap a multibillion-dollar windfall, investors may not be as lucky given Trump's past IPO record.
According to NBC News, Trump's last attempt to go public crashed and burned relatively quickly, with investors getting soaked even as Trump reaped significant benefits. A few months before the 2016 presidential election, the Washington Post reported that when the business mogul took Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts public, it plummeted from a $14 per share IPO to a penny stock in less than a decade.
"In its short life, Trump the company greatly enriched Trump the businessman, paying to have his personal jet piloted and buying heaps of Trump-brand merchandise," the Post's Drew Harwell wrote at the time. "Despite losing money every year under Trump’s leadership, the company paid Trump handsomely, including a $5 million bonus in the year the company’s stock plummeted 70 percent."
NBC reported that Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts performed relatively well for a time, hitting a peak of $35 per share in 1996. However, once it purchased a casino for $100 million more than it was worth, the value of the company's shares started to slide precipitously.
"The year the stock peaked, it lost $66 million. In 1999, it lost $134 million," NBC reporter Dareh Gregorian wrote. "And in 2004 — when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange — it lost $191 million, according to a CNBC review."
Truth Social may end up suffering a similar fate after its parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group, debuts its IPO on the Nasdaq exchange. Even though Trump himself is expected to net roughly $3.5 billion from the deal, it may be a considerably more risky bet for mom-and-pop investors.
CNN reported that Truth Social is "hemorrhaging users" and has just roughly 860,000 active accounts. That's far less than other far more popular social media networks like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, X/Twitter and TikTok. Truth Social is reportedly not even among the top 100 apps downloaded on Apple's App Store, and the company's own management worried it could go belly-up if its merger wasn't approved.
"It's grossly overvalued,” University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter told CNN. "It qualifies as a meme stock for which the price is divorced from fundamental value."
All eyes are on Trump's finances as he struggles under the weight of multiple civil judgments nearing $600 million in total. The former president owes roughly $464 million in penalties and interest to the State of New York after Judge Arthur Engoron found him guilty of artificially inflating the value of his real estate portfolio. He also recently posted a $91 million bond in his appeal of writer E. Jean Carroll's defamation verdict against him. That judgment came down after a 2023 judgment in which Trump was found guilty in a separate civil case of sexual abuse.
Despite his pending $3.5 billion payday, Trump is prohibited from selling any of his shares for six months, meaning he won't have any immediate help from the IPO in paying his legal costs.
Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy expressed doubt about Kate Middleton's cancer because she still has "luscious" hair.
"You know, one thing, just as a layperson," Campos-Duffy told Dr. Mark Siegel on Sunday. "I'm not a doctor like you, Dr. Siegel, but, you know, she said that she's undergoing some preventative chemotherapy."
"I'm gonna, maybe I'm showing my ignorance, but I saw her luscious, you know, full hair, and I thought, well, that's not what I think about when I think about chemotherapy," she insisted.
"So there's two points there," Siegel replied. "First is people should know that preventive chemotherapy is often done when you get it all out."
"Now, you mentioned her hair," the doctor said. "There's two different types of chemo."
"If she had a GYN cancer, she'd probably be on Taxol, which causes you to lose your hair," Siegel added. "That doesn't cause you to lose your hair. So that's where a lot of the debate is coming."
"It seems that it looks like she has her hair. So that would be implying more, again, a GI type of cancer. Taxol does cause you to lose your hair. Then you would be wearing a wig."
Siegel pointed out that it was "something that it's up to her to disclose."
With Donald Trump all but assured of being the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nominee, one longtime Republican senator hinted at bolting the party during an interview with CNN.
Speaking with CNN's Manu Raju, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) bluntly admitted, "I wish that as Republicans, we had … a nominee that I could get behind. I certainly can’t get behind Donald Trump.”
Murkowski, one of the seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial has long been at odds with the former president and, while speaking with CNN did not rule out leaving the GOP due to the former president's influence on the party.
Asked if she would leave the GOP behind to become an independent, she replied, "Oh, I think I’m very independent-minded. I just regret that our party is seemingly becoming a party of Donald Trump.”
Pressed on the issue, she stated, "I am navigating my way through some very interesting political times. Let’s just leave it at that.”
"Murkowski skated to reelection in her next two elections, even after voting to convict Trump in 2021, voting against Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court in 2018 and supporting Ketanji Brown Jackson in 2022. She had been targeted by Trump and his allies in 2022 but was backed by Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and his high-spending outside group," the CNN report added.
The way the rest of Donald Trump's life will pan out will be in play in New York City on Monday when, as the New York Times' Maggie Haberman put it, the former president will be forced to deal with his "greatest and longest-held fears."
At issue for the former president will be a decision in a Manhattan courtroom on when to proceed with a trial where he faces 34 charges of falsifying business records brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg while at the same time the clock is running out on his attempts to come up with a nearly half-billion dollar appeals bond related to his conviction on financial fraud charges
According to the Times' Haberman and Ben Protess, if there are two things Trump fears, it is jail time and having his entire fortune wiped out and being viewed by the public as broke.
With the clock ticking and no indication that the former president is getting any closer to finding a savior to back his bond that will prevent New Yor Attorney General Letitia James from quickly seizing his assets, the NYT report notes, "Unless Mr. Trump strikes an 11th-hour deal, Ms. James could freeze his bank accounts, and begin the long and complicated process of seizing some of his properties. And barring Mr. Trump’s lawyers achieving an improbable legal triumph, the judge in his criminal case could set a trial date for as soon as next month."
Calling what the former president faces on Monday "twin threats," the report adds they "crystallize two of Mr. Trump’s greatest and longest-held fears: a criminal conviction and a public perception that he does not have as much cash as he claims."
According to one longtime associate of Trump, the knowledge that the public will see him as anything less than filthy rich is one of the former president's greatest nightmares.
Former Trump casino executive Jack O’Donnell explained, "If Trump uses one thing to score the game, it has always been money. If he has more money than someone, he is winning and the other person is losing. And if someone has more money than Trump, he has the fear that someone will say he is losing to that person.”
In one candid interview in June, Trump admitted he has always dreaded facing a criminal indictment by lamenting: "Nobody wants to be indicted. I don’t care that my poll numbers went up by a lot. I don’t want to be indicted. I’ve never been indicted. I went through my whole life, now I get indicted every two months.”
It’s an uncomfortable truth: Jon Stewart and Donald Trump both tapped the same well of latent public disaffection with politics and the media in the 2000s. Trust in media and government had been declining for several decades. But the symbiotic relationship between the White House and the press during the Iraq War highlighted the dangers of a lap dog press.
It was against this backdrop that Stewart and Trump used their positions outside the fray to ally themselves with their audiences and draw pointed contrasts with the artifice of postmodern politics. But they did this – and continue to do this – in opposing ways.
Trump lashes out when politicians and journalists bring us closer to truth. Stewart criticizes them for keeping us in the dark. To Stewart, the solutions to America’s political spectacle are political accountability and increased transparency. To Trump, the solution is far simpler: He alone can fix it.
During the George W. Bush years, Stewart perfected the art of ironic satire, playfully critiquing politicians, the press and the public, while implying something better was possible.
He feigned incredulity as he critiqued the Bush administration’s political hypocrisy and cynical invocation of Sept. 11 in its justification for the Iraq War.
Stewart used irony to describe failures of American policy as though they were fabulous successes. Like on July 16, 2007, when he said enthusiastically, “As you know, we are now entering our fifth year of making … very good progress in Iraq. Obviously the president defining ‘progress’ now as ‘moving forward in time.’” Stewart invited his young, politically interested, liberal/moderate audience to conclude the opposite: “Things should not be this way, and we deserve better.”
Around the same time, Trump was also criticizing Bush, but through hyperbole and outrage rather than ironic satire. In 2007, he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “everything in Washington has been a lie. Weapons of mass destruction – it was a total lie. It was a way of attacking Iraq.”
Trump’s critiques of the press echo an authoritarian perspective, too. When Trump lambastes the press as “fake news,” it is in response to negative coverage of himself or fact checks of his own false statements.
To Stewart, though, journalism’s failures are not ideological or personal, but professional. He criticizes them for not getting us closer to the truth. He has critiqued how journalists leave political spin uninterrogated, give time to “both sides” and “leave the conversation there,” even when one side is demonstrably wrong. He has criticized politicians’ reliance on communications professionals who obfuscate the truth to get more favorable coverage.
Stewart’s new old role
Though a political outsider two decades ago, Stewart now finds himself inside the political and media institutions whose roles include making the public aware of – and thus safeguarding them from – the antidemocratic and destabilizing forces of populist authoritarians like Trump.
Jon Stewart does a segment on freedom of the press, cued to Donald Trump saying he would jail certain journalists.
Through these conversations, Stewart showcases guests who espouse a pluralistic liberal vision of democracy. And through his satire, Stewart himself shows that democratic institutions and processes may be messy, but their ability to protect the will and liberty of the people makes them indispensable.
Or, as Stewart said in a February episode, “The difference between America’s urinal-caked chaotic subways and Russia’s candelabra’d beautiful subways is the literal price of freedom.”
Stewart explained his 2024 return to “The Daily Show” as wanting to “have some kind of place to unload thoughts as we get into this election season.”
But having studied the content and effects of political satire since Stewart became “The Daily Show” host in 1999, I see his return as evidence he recognizes the protective role he can play for American democracy. Because even if ironic satire isn’t great at persuading people to change their minds, research shows it does subtly shape how we think about and engage with our political world.
When satirists cover an issue, viewers become more likely to see that issue as important. Satire also shapes how people think about politicians and issues. In the early 2000s, I conducted a series of studies that revealed that exposure to jokes about presidential candidates provided study participants with criteria they then used to evaluate those candidates – like Al Gore’s lack of charisma or George W. Bush’s lack of intellect or performance on Iraq. And when study participants didn’t have a lot of political knowledge, satire helped them fill in the gaps.
Satire encourages audiences to pay attention and discuss politics in new ways, motivating them to seek out other information or talk about politics with friends. And even though satirists like Stewart may be critical of journalism, their programs highlight the importance of an independent press to a democratic society, increasing viewers’ perceptions of the importance of news.
There’s always a role for the satirist
Because Trump’s rhetoric is so explicit and outrageous, some have suggested it may rob satirists of the ability to deconstruct his messaging. But despite its explicitness, there is still a lot that authoritarian populists like Trump don’t ever say.
This is where satirists like Stewart can help fill in the gaps: By juxtaposing populist authoritarians’ glittering generalities with the ugly reality of life under authoritarianism.
For example, in a recent episode of “The Daily Show,” Stewart deconstructed Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Carlson’s glowing reviews of Russia’s grocery stores and sparkling subway system.
“Perhaps if your handlers had allowed,” Stewart says as though addressing Carlson, “you would have seen there is a hidden fee to your cheap groceries and orderly streets. Ask likely assassinated opposition leader Alexei Navalny or any of his supporters.”
In a 2021 discussion on CNN about American democracy, Stewart lamented Democrats’ endless hand-wringing over Trump’s threat to democracy. Instead, Stewart proposed: “Action is the antithesis of anxiety.”
What we see in Stewart’s return is him reminding us that American democracy is never done. It takes constant action.
Stewart may still be “a tiny, neurotic man,” but far from throwing tomatoes at the chalkboard, now he’s standing tall in front of the class, and school is in session.
GOP activist Leonard Leo is co-chair of the influential Federalist Society, which has produced all six of the Supreme Court of the United States' (SCOTUS) conservative jurists — including Chief Justice John Roberts. And ever since the office of Washington, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb started investigating the Federalist Society for alleged violations of its nonprofit status, Leo's allies have been attacking him every step of the way.
Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla wrote Saturday that Schwalb has been steadily battling an onslaught of GOP attacks that include conservative media, 12 Republican state attorneys general and even Congressional committee chairs. This assault began last August, after Schwalb announced he was investigating the Federalist Society for alleged self-dealing. Leo is accused of using millions of dollars in tax-exempt organization funds to prop up his private consulting firm, CRC Advisors.
According to the outlet, both Reps. James Comer (R-Kentucky) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who chair the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, respectively, announced their own investigations into Schwalb on October 30 — shortly after Schwalb announced his own investigation into Leo's group. One of Leo's organizations is the Concord Fund (previously known as the Judicial Crisis Network), which has donated $20 million to the Republican Attorneys General Association since 2014. And Przybyla noted that 10 days before Comer and Jordan announced their investigation, Concord hired a Virginia-based lobbying firm to handle issues relating to "law enforcement" and "oversight."
"The decision to launch a probe was not influenced by the lobbying firm," a spokesperson for the House Judiciary Committee told Politico. "Any suggestion that it was is lazy, in bad faith, and completely ridiculous. It’s well-known that this probe is part of a broader portfolio the congressmen are pursuing related to the weaponization of the federal government."
While the suggestion that Leo's money and connections are influencing the attacks on the man investigating him makes Republicans bristle, it's difficult to ignore the timing of large sums of money changing hands. Just one day after both Comer and Jordan threatened to subpoena Schwalb, a House Republican leadership-aligned political action committee received a $250,000 contribution from the Concord Fund. Politico reported that it was Concord's first donation to a federal PAC in nine years.
Republicans' ferocity in attacking Schwalb could be attributed to Leo's outsized influence over today's GOP — particularly as it concerns the GOP's efforts to cement a conservative SCOTUS majority for decades.
"[Leo] has been called former President Donald Trump’s 'court whisperer' for helping to choose and advocate for his Supreme Court nominees," Przybyla wrote. "His aligned network of tax-exempt nonprofits is also a major contributor toProject 2025, an initiative seeking to create a 'government in waiting' for another Trump term."
Caroline Ciccone, who is president of anti-corruption watchdog group Accountability.US, directly attributed the various attacks on Schwalb to Leo's far-right organizational muscle.
"Leonard Leo is working to implement policies with a vision that’s far too extreme for most Americans," Ciccone said. "Now, members of Congress have weaponized their government power against his critics."
In addition to being investigated for self-dealing by Schwalb's office, Leo's group is also being investigated by the Senate Judiciary Committee for its alleged facilitation of lavish gifts to far-right justices like Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. In late November, the committee sent subpoenas to both Leo and billionaire business magnate Harlan Crow, who took Justice Thomas and his family on several exceedingly expensive getaways.
A state senator who was the 2022 GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor has proposed legislation to outlaw experimental weather modification techniques falsely associated with the “chemtrail” conspiracy theory.
The false belief that condensation trails left by high flying aircraft are actually trails of chemicals released by the government for nefarious reasons has become conflated with techniques being explored to reduce the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the atmosphere.
In a memo seeking support for his bill, Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Franklin) said new technology and a proliferation of weather modification patents “owned by a combination of Federal Government Agencies, Non-Governmental Organizations, and large multinational corporations” have brought forward the need to update Pennsylvania’s law.
Mastriano notes the Pennsylvania Constitution guarantees the “right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment.”
“Spraying unknown, experimental, and potentially dangerous chemicals into the atmosphere without the consent of the people of Pennsylvania is a clear violation of Article 1, Section 27 of the PA Constitution,”
Mastriano’s memo states.
The legislation would ban the release of substances within the borders of Pennsylvania to affect the temperature, weather or intensity of sunlight. It would mirror legislation that passed in the
Tennessee Senate on Wednesday.
Mastriano, an
election denier who lost his 2022 gubernatorial bid to Gov. Josh Shapiro, has made repeated references to the chemtrail conspiracy theory on social media.
In a November Facebook post with a photo of condensation trails in the sky above Chambersburg, Mastriano wrote, “I have legislation to stop this … Normal contrails dissolve / evaporate within 30-90 seconds.”
Shortly after his loss to Shapiro in 2022 Mastriano posted on Twitter — now called “X” — four photos of condensation trails above his district. In a reply to his own tweet, he linked to an article detailing a proposal to distribute reflective material in the atmosphere to reflect more of the sun’s energy back into space, implying the two are linked.
Calls to Mastriano’s offices in the state Capitol and Chambersburg were not returned Friday.
Condensation trails, or contrails for short, form when the hot moisture-laden exhaust from aircraft engines hits the frigid air at the altitudes where commercial and military jets cruise. The moisture condenses and becomes visible in the same way you can see your breath on a cold day.
A claim among chemtrail believers is that condensation trails dissipate immediately and trails that persist consist of chemicals. The longevity of the trails depends on the amount of moisture already in the air, with drier air leading to shorter-lived contrails, according to the
National Weather Service.
Cloud seeding, in which particles of silver iodide are sprayed into clouds, has been used since the 1950s in attempts to induce precipitation or to prevent damage to crops from hail. The
crystalline silver iodide particles attract water droplets which cluster together until they grow too heavy to stay in the air and fall to the ground as rain or snow.
The practice has spawned its own chemtrail-adjacent conspiracy theory, in which California residents blamed flooding and landslides during a pair of February storms on a local water authority’s cloud seeding pilot program. The agency said there was
no cloud seeding during the record-setting rainfall, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In Pennsylvania, a 1967 law inspired by unauthorized attempts to suppress hail in central Pennsylvania requires anyone who wants to try cloud seeding to get a license from the state Department of Agriculture.
The department’s Weather Modification Board has never received a license application and has never investigated unauthorized cloud seeding, Deputy Press Secretary Jay Losiewicz said in an email.
The process referred to in Mastriano’s tweet is even more experimental. Called solar geoengineering, it could provide a method to mask global warming as a result of accumulated greenhouse gasses. But if it is ever used on a large scale, there’s a risk of physical harm and socio-political impacts, according to Harvard University Applied Physics Professor David Keith, who leads a group researching the idea.
The group said on its website it is confident that there is no program testing solar geoengineering outdoors.
Mastriano’s memo cites a February
Wall Street Journal article, claiming the newspaper had confirmed active field tests of the proposal in Israel and Australia, however the article states that the substances used in the tests are smoke and sea water.
“We are not now involved in outdoor experimentation, though we are indeed actively developing proposals for field experiments. This experiment will proceed only if it is conducted in a fully transparent and public manner, and only if it passes a comprehensive independent safety review,” Keith said in a
response to letters and emails from people concerned about chemtrails.
On the subject of chemtrails, Keith said there’s little evidence to support the conspiracy theory, with the main claim being that “airplane contrails look different.” Keith added that if such a program existed, it would require a vast operation and tens of thousands of people. Keeping it secret would be impossible.
“If such a program was intended to cause harm to their fellow citizens — as is alleged by people who believe in the chemtrails conspiracy — then people working in the program would have very strong personal motivations to reveal it,” Keith said.
Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kim Lyons for questions: info@penncapital-star.com. Follow Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Facebook and Twitter.
MSNBC reportedly has no plans to use Donald Trump's close ally, Ronna McDaniel, on its airwaves.
Raw Storyreported Friday that NBC News was hit with widespread criticism for hiring former Republican National Committee chair McDaniel as a political commentator.
But according to a new exclusive article from The Wall Street Journal, the president of MSNBC isn't interested in ever using her.
In an effort to "address employee and talent backlash over" the decision to hire McDaniel, Rashida Jones, the cable network’s president, reportedly issued an alert suggesting McDaniel wouldn't reach MSNBC.
"Jones told employees the cable network has no plans to have McDaniel on the channel, according to people familiar with the conversations," the report says. "A number of MSNBC anchors and producers have voiced concern internally about McDaniel's ties to former President Donald Trump and the RNC's role in his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results."
"Everything was going fine for Judge Cannon. And then, in August 2022, she was assigned Trump v. United States—the civil case that former president Donald Trump filed against the federal government, challenging the seizure of documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate and seeking the appointment of a special master to review them," according to the investigation. "In September 2022, Judge Cannon largely ruled in Trump’s favor, ordering the appointment of a special master. Her ruling was widelycriticized, and in December 2022, she was unceremoniously reversed by the Eleventh Circuit."
This, according to Lat, spurred the first clerk to depart.
"The Trump v. United States debacle seriously damaged Judge Cannon’s reputation—and it also created a clerk problem. An incoming clerk from a top-three school, worried about a Cannon clerkship being a drag on their résumé, withdrew from the clerkship shortly after the Eleventh Circuit smackdown," Lat wrote. "This left Judge Cannon with a clerkship slot to fill for the 2023-2024 judicial year. So she asked one of her 2022-2023 clerks, whom I’ll call 'Kari,' to extend her one-year clerkship into a two-year position."
But Kari, too, would ultimately quit, according to Lat's probe.
And another clerk purportedly made the same move.
"As fall turned to winter, conditions in chambers continued to worsen. Mary, whose clerkship had gotten off to a bad start, was working 80-hour weeks and having interpersonal conflict with the judge, whom she described to friends as 'mean,'" the report states. "Mary began plotting her escape."
Lat tells the story of a Florida federal judge who became "increasingly worried" and "started to change" after the Trump cases, and clerks who couldn't put up with her new "micromanaging" management style.
There's an additional element to be considered regarding the connection between Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and the Republican House Speaker she just threatened to remove from his post, according to a House insider.
Greene recently floated a motion to remove Mike Johnson (R-LA), similar to the one used to oust her former ally, Kevin McCarthy. Dem House aide Aaron Fritschner on Saturday noted a complicating factor there.
Fritschner, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), highlighted a report from February suggesting that Greene had said there wasn't a clear timeline for impeachment articles to be passed to Senate in connection with the impeachment of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
"SOOOOOOO about this," he said about the February report.
He continued:
"MTG is still ostensibly leading the impeachment of a cabinet secretary at Mike Johnson’s behest. Awkward!!" Fritschner wrote. "Oh had you totally forgotten that Republicans impeached a cabinet secretary? May be because their first vote failed and then they refused to transmit articles to the Senate."
He added that Greene appears to have turned the tables on Johnson after he empowered her to take down Mayorkas.
"They’ve just been sitting on it this whole time (amid ceaseless freakout over the border) and most of DC just forgot about it," Fritschner wrote. "Now the person Johnson deputized to lead the effort to remove Mayorkas is instead working to remove Johnson. Can’t wait to find out how this plays out!"
Donald Trump may have just undercut his own legal defense with a posting on Truth Social, and the site's users were quick to point it out on Saturday.
Trump, who is currently petitioning the Supreme Court for full presidential immunity even in instances where conduct "crosses the line," took to his soon-to-go-public social network this weekend to decry what he has labelled political prosecutions against him.
Trump has claimed without proof that all his civil and criminal cases are brought because of President Joe Biden.
"At what point are the actions of a sitting President, using LAWFARE against his opponent for purposes of Election Interference, considered ILLEGAL?" Trump asked Saturday.
He then continued:
"I believe, as do various highly respected legal scholars, that Crooked Joe Biden has long since crossed over that very sacred threshold!!!"
The pushback came immediately, and it was coming from inside the house.
In the comments of Trump's Truth Social post, an account by the name of "TRUTH" said the following:
"Ohhh so you don't want full immunity for presidents??! hahaha"
An account by the name of Mr Magoo added, "How can it be illegal? He has complete immunity according to you?"
Frannie echoed those same sentiments:
"Shouldn't presidents have total immunity according to you?"
Willson, who identifies as a "McCain Republican," was even more blunt:
"DONALD, as long as Biden is president, nothing he does is illegal!"
A user named Tom said, "According to you, nothing the President does is ILLEGAL."
Another user, BruceLee2022, said they are a Republican seeking proof of Trump's innocence.
"Where is the proof Biden is behind your troubles? Release the proof," they wrote on Saturday. "Why are you trying to constant[ly] delay? I'm a Republican and I need proof of your innocence."
Donald Trump will soon be taken to task regarding his boast about having almost $500 million, a move that contradicted arguments his attorneys are making in court, according to a former prosecutor.
Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner went on The Legal Breakdown, where he talked about all the possibilities of what could happen in the Trump fraud case in which he was ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars.
One of those possible outcomes, according to the legal analyst, is that everything will come to a head on Monday this coming week.
"I think we're going to be hearing about all of these matters probably as early as Monday. Why?" he asked. "Because Monday is the drop-dead date. That is the day that, if Donald Trump doesn't put up the money or put up a bond, that Tish James begins seizing his assets."
Kirshner goes on to say the potentially false claim he posted on social media could possibly hurt Trump in the court of public opinion.
Further, Kirschner raised the possibility of Trump becoming compromised due to foreign payments supporting his legal bills.
