A GOP gubernatorial candidate was reportedly "assaulted" in part due to his support of deceased conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
Political consultant Matt Hurley first made the claim on social media, writing, "Earlier this evening, while attending the Northern State University football game, South Dakota Republican gubernatorial candidate Toby Doeden was approached by an agitated individual."
"The individual proceeded to physically assault Mr. Doeden while making multiple threats on his life and repeatedly referencing his support for the late Charlie Kirk," Hurley wrote. "The individual was immediately detained and subsequently arrested. We are grateful for the swift response of both the Northern State University Campus Police and the Aberdeen Police Department."
A secondary report came from controversial Trump ally Laura Loomer, who wrote, "BREAKING: South Dakota GOP Gubernatorial candidate @TobyForSD Toby Doeden was accosted and assaulted tonight at a football game by a man who attacked him over Doeden’s support for Charlie Kirk!"
"The aggressor was arrested. Political violence is out of control in the US," Loomer then added.
Donald Trump's "populist base is starting to push back" against him, according to new reporting.
In an article called "Trump loves AI, and the MAGA world is getting worried," Politico reported, "President Donald Trump’s AI action plan has set off a backlash from some of the biggest figures in the America First movement — a rift expected to shape the next round of arguments in Congress about how to turbocharge the technology."
"Trump’s rush toward AI is exposing an important faultline in the Republican coalition: Many of its voters and leaders deeply mistrust the power of Big Tech, but Trump himself has worked closely with industry CEOs to deliver on their priorities," the report states.
It's true that Trump has been a more bold ally to the tech titans than many of those in his MAGA base would like. Some prominent critics of Big Tech within MAGA include Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene, the latter of whom was mentioned in the piece by Politico.
According to the outlet, "Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) fired off a tirade on X, complaining that AI could create mass poverty by replacing human jobs, and giant AI data centers could have potentially devastating effects on the environment and water supply."
"In the days that followed, GOP strategist Steven Bannon chimed in, comparing the pursuit of AI superintelligence to 'summoning the demon.' And since then, think-tankers and populist conservative outlets have continued to stoke worries about federal policies that turbocharge AI development," according to Politico's reporting.
But that's not all, according to the report.
"On stage at the National Conservatism conference in Washington in early September, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) criticized the AI revolution as a leap towards transhumanism — a human-machine future that he said is currently against 'the working man' and the teachings of the Bible, as well as installing 'a rich and powerful elite,'" it states.
A makeup artist from "The Apprentice" was surprised to see how the Trump administration was failing to conceal the president's health condition.
In an article called "On Trump’s hand, it’s not just the bruise. It’s the (apparent) coverup," the Washington Post reported Saturday, "A makeup artist who worked on the 2024 ‘The Apprentice’ film critiques the president’s much-discussed hand discoloration."
"Few people have spent more time studying Donald Trump’s skin than Brandi Boulet. A Canadian makeup artist for film and television, Boulet helped actor Sebastian Stan transform into young Trump for the film 'The Apprentice' — a job that required intensely scrutinizing archival images of the future president to perfect his skin texture, sweat, capillary veins, and signature tan," the Washington Post report states. "Which is why, when a bruise began appearing on the president’s hand intermittently — first noticed inspring 2024, and more regularly this summer — it surprised Boulet that whoever was applying what appeared to be makeup to the hand seemed to be doing a poor job of covering it up."
Trump has been criticized for appearing in public with the hand bruises, as well as for covering them up with mismatched tones. The White House has attributed the hand bruises to frequent handshaking as well as Trump's use of aspirin.
The report quotes Boulet as saying, “How can you be in that position and not to have somebody be able to cover a bruise?... It looks like somebody just mashed on some foundation.”
According to the report, "In politics, there’s a saying: It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up. Having a bruise is not a crime, obviously; but the apparent attempts to conceal it have captured the attention of close watchers of the president. And this particular phenomenon happens to sit at the intersection of three historically chattered-about Trump topics: his skin, his hands and his health."
According to the report, "Covering up a bruise is not that difficult, Boulet says from the set of her current job, doing alien makeup for 'Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.'"
It quotes her as saying, "You’re using the color wheel... You’re using an opposite color to cancel it out.”
“Skin is not just one color. There’s undertones, you can see blues in there from veins. You can see red from the capillaries. You also have beauty marks,” she added, according to the Washington Post. “So it’s a matter of layering in a way that matches what you’ve just covered to what the rest of your skin looks like, instead of just doing a circle of one color."
MAGA legends on Saturday lashed out a restaurant they claim is "justifying the assassination of Charlie Kirk," but the owners say it's all a misunderstanding.
Whiskey seller John Rich flagged a sign posted by Rosepepper Cantina, a Mexican restaurant in Nashville, TN, which said, "Well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions." The cantina wrote a caption with the sign that reads, "You had a rough week. Come have some queso. You deserve it."
Some in the MAGA movement interpreted the sign to be a dig at Kirk after the conservative commentator was shot after defending the right to bear arms.
Trump ally Rudy W. Giuliani, for instance, said, "Rosepepper Cantina is justifying the assassination of Charlie Kirk."
He then provided a phone number and added, "This number puts you on hold, and they are taking in a lot of calls, so let my team know if you have alternative contact info for the owner or manager of this disgusting place."
Political commentator and country singer Alexis Wilkins said, "Rosepepper in East Nashville...unsurprising and horrible. Flood the Google reviews, the socials."
"These people can't get away with celebrating murder. Not even semi-covertly," Wilkins wrote on Saturday.
For its part, the Mexican grill responded to the MAGA backlash with its own explanation, writing, "Hey there, so we reposted a 7 year old sign picture that was about having a hangover and it was called to our attention that people were taking it as a political statement which it unequivocally was not. What happened is awful and we don't support it whatsoever. So of course, we've deleted the post and we are so incredibly sorry for any confusion we caused with that post."
Donald Trump called a grieving governor to deliver a "warning."
The shooting of Charlie Kirk rocked the state of Utah, where Governor Spencer Cox was personally delivering press conference updates. It reportedly hit Cox especially hard that the suspected killer was a native of the state, and didn't come from another country.
According to the Atlantic, Cox was hit with a brutal and "haunting" warning via a call.
In an article called, "Trump Has a Warning for Spencer Cox," the Atlantic piece states, "Utah’s grieving governor opens up about his state, the country’s dangerous spiral, and a haunting conversation with the president."
"Yesterday morning, Governor Spencer Cox stood behind a podium in Orem, Utah, to announce the end of the 34-hour manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer, and to plead for peace in a nation that seemed at risk of spiraling into further violence," the Atlantic's McKay Coppins reported Saturday. "Shortly after he finished, Cox’s phone rang. The president was calling."
According to the report, Trump told Cox, "You know, the type of person who would do something like that to Charlie Kirk would love to do it to us."
"Trump went on to recite statistics suggesting that the presidency was 'one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet.' Fifteen percent of the men who’d held his office had been shot; 8 percent had been killed," according to the report.
The report continues:
"Cox understood Trump’s concern—after all, the president had narrowly escaped assassination himself just a year earlier. And Kirk’s murder was the latest grim turn in a season of political violence that has terrified America’s elected officials. 'People are scared to death in this building,' a member of Congress told NBC News this week. But as Cox and I spoke yesterday evening, he didn’t seem especially focused on his own safety. He had something else on his mind."
TV host Bill Maher shut down noted right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro with a comment about how news is spread in connection with the shooting death of fellow conservative Charlie Kirk.
It started with Shapiro saying we "know" that the suspected shooter, Tyler Robinson, was "of the political left." Shapiro cited a report from the Guardian, which was later partly retracted.
"How are you so sure?" Maher asks Shapiro as Maher explains various examples of initial reports that later fell flat. Maher then brought up other reports that Robinson could be right-wing, and Shapiro was stopped in his tracks before admitting that was a possibility, too.
After the retraction of part of the Guardian piece, ex-MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan chimed in, "This was Ben Shapiro’s big source last night on Bill Maher for claiming it had been proved the shooter was a leftist."
According to a report from David Lynch of the Washington Post, the president has about 14 months to course-correct the economy or face the prospect that the Republican party will get blown out in the 2026 midterms if he doesn’t get prices down and employment up.
As Lynch wrote, “Consumer prices rose 2.9 percent over the past year, the fastest annual pace since January. Shopping for groceries, in particular, is becoming a traumatic experience,” before adding, “The combination of price pressures and employment worries is reminiscent of the double-whammy that kneecapped Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid last fall and threatens Republican hopes of retaining control of Congress in the 2026 elections.”
Should Republicans lose majority control of one or both of the House and the Senate, Trump will find himself handcuffed as a lame duck president for the last two years he is in the Oval Office, which has the White House concerned.
Despite the Trump White House claims that Biden’s economy was a “disaster” for workers, Lynch wrote, “what the new [job] numbers actually showed, economists said, was that the labor market last year was starting to downshift to a level where fewer new jobs were needed each month to prevent the unemployment rate from rising — a development that has intensified under Trump.”
According to former Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein, “The problem with this affordability crisis is that every incumbent gets blamed for it, and not just here, but in lots of other countries as well.”
He then dryly added, “And that’s Trump’s problem now.”
FBI Director Kash Patel’s parting words to slain right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, that he would see him “in Valhalla,” the utopian realm from Norse mythology, may end up jeopardizing the prosecution of Kirk’s suspected killer, one former prosecutor said Saturday.
“You have to be careful when you're running an investigation as a law enforcement officer,” said Robert James, former district attorney for DeKalb County in Georgia, speaking on CNN Saturday.
“Impartiality is very important when you're looking at facts and determining who did what, what the motivation was and that sort of thing. So you never want to put yourself in a position where lawyers get involved and then you open yourself up to cross examination in a courtroom about your perception or perspective, and it happens in high-profile homicide cases all the time.”
Kirk was shot and killed Wednesday speaking at an event at Utah Valley University, with the suspect, 22-year-old Utah resident Tyler Robinson, being apprehended on Friday. Also on Friday, Patel, speaking during a press conference following Robinson’s arrest, made the remarks in question: “To my friend Charlie Kirk, rest now brother, we have the watch and I’ll see you in Valhalla.”
Patel’s comments sparked confusion online, largely over the use of Norse mythology given that Patel is Hindu, and Kirk, an evangelical Christian. On the legal side, however, Patel’s comments could raise questions in court as to whether the FBI’s investigation was compromised – or at least, impacted – by impartiality, James warned.
“For instance, I've prosecuted cases where police officers were killed, and the same police department investigated those cases and it's always a question when the officers are on the stand, whether or not their opinions are slanted or motivated by the grief or anger of what happened, and so it's the same type of scenario here, so you have to be careful,” James said.
Reviewing what has transpired since far-right conservative Charlie Kirk was gunned down on a Utah college campus on Wednesday and his alleged killer was taken into custody on Friday, one MSNBC host pointed to comments made by Donald Trump in the aftermath and what was missing.
Discussing what followed after 22-year-old Tyler Robinson was taken into custody, “The Weekend “ co-host Jonathan Capehart engaged Politico’s Rachel Bade on what to make of criticism of FBI Director Kash Patel’s performance and if the controversial Trump appointee still has the confidence of the White House.
“He's [Patel] absolutely seen an erosion with support with the base,” Bade remarked and later added, “People are not happy and you can see it if you look on Twitter, a lot of conservative commentators on Twitter who are saying it's time for us, people who support the Trump administration to have a discussion about whether he's the right person to lead the FBI.”
“So what will it matter, I guess is the question,” she continued. “It didn't matter with Attorney General Pam Bondi. I mean, we saw even more heat from her on [Jeffrey] Epstein and the president stuck with her. So all that really matters is what Donald Trump thinks and it's not yet clear if Trump would be displeased with him at this point. They're still putting out statements for a lot of these stories saying that they're with him.“
Noting a New York Times story on Patel’s shaky status, Capehart pointed out, “In that story that it was noted that when the president was talking about, I think it was the capture of the suspect, he talked about, he mentioned everybody, particularly Pam Bondi didn't mention the FBI director. “
A prominent New York Times reporter said President Donald Trump seems to be struggling with the killing of MAGA ally Charlie Kirk, and acknowledged that fellow ally Steve Bannon was right about one big thing.
Maggie Haberman joined CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins on her show, "The Source," to discuss the fallout of Kirk's killingon Wednesday at an event at Utah Valley University.
Collins played clips of Trump and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R), in which Trump said "radicals on the left" are "vicious" and "horrible," while Cox used his speech to urge Americans to "find an off ramp" rather than point fingers at "the other side."
"I mean, the contrast there is evident," said Collins.
I think it depends on when somebody catches him as to exactly what he is going to say," said Haberman.
She noted that Trump and his circle were very close to Kirk.
"President Trump faced two assassination attempts, one near miss last year. And so all of that is a lot of the context for how people in the White House and the president are responding to this. I think that he is struggling with this in terms of how to deal with it," she said.
She added: "I think that we have seen moments when President Trump has, over time, episodically, been calmer and more of a traditional leader at various points in term one. I think that he is never going to be the person who is going to be sort of the clearest talker about this. I don’t think you’re ever going to hear him say something like what Governor Cox said. I think that he is saying what he thinks, and he is who he is. And I think that people knew that before they voted for him."
Haberman noted that Kirk was as "close as a sibling" to many in Trump's orbit.
That includes Donald Trump Jr., who said Kirk was like a brother.
Collins played a clip of Steve Bannon bashing Patel.
"I don’t know why Kash flew out there — you know, thousands of miles — to give us, hey, working partnerships and our great partnership in Utah. Okay, I got that. No offense to the law enforcement guys and the future of this. The public assumes that you’re working together as partnerships. Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood by a left-wing, Antifa-affiliated or aligned person. Okay, we want to find out about him. We want more details about him," Bannon said in the clip.
While authorities haven't mentioned anything about Antifa, Collins asked Haberman her thoughts on Patel's unusual actions. Patel flew to Utah and shared "confusing messages" about a suspect in custody and a person of interest, which contradicted what other authorities were saying.
"You have somebody like an FBI director who is very online, who comes from an online world and is pretty new to law enforcement from this side. And there is a lot of frustration among Republicans that I have heard, and with administration officials, that there was such a lag time in capturing this person who, as we said earlier, was not caught by law enforcement directly or by their work," she said.
Haberman added, "A lot of time lapsed between the shooting and the first claim that there was somebody in custody, which was all over the internet. And then that wasn’t the person. Then Kash Patel posted on X, 'We have the person in custody.' And then two hours later it was actually, 'That person is released.' There is a reason that things like that don’t happen. There is also a reason—Steve Bannon is correct — that usually you see the FBI director kind of head down, trying to figure out what's what, not flying around this way."
President Donald Trump's Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte has been on a tear accusing various critics of the administration of mortgage fraud — most recently Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, whom he claimed improperly took out mortgages on two separate properties as primary residences. However, a new Reuters report throws this in serious doubt, by revealing that preliminary loan documents indicate she had disclosed to her credit union one would be a vacation home.
The apparent misfire, which could significantly complicate Trump's attempts to fire Cook from the Fed, resulted in an explosion from commenters on social media, who broadly mocked Pulte — particularly since separate reporting suggested his parents had in fact committed the same fraud he tried to pin on Cook.
"Wait, so the entire claim that Cook claimed two primary residences was…false?" wrote Maryville College history professor Aaron Astor.
"I’ve been saying all along, as someone who’s handled extensive mortgage litigation, that these loan files are very complicated and can be thousands of pages," wrote veteran and former trial lawyer John Jackson. "Now it appears Lisa Cook did nothing wrong and was actually defamed by @pulte. What an idiot."
"So the bad faith pretext was also just fake?" wrote Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias.
"Wowow, @pulte!! Is this why even right wingers think you're a loose canon [sic]?" wrote national security journalist Marcy "emptywheel" Wheeler. "Will you go to prison for lying to the FBI?"
"I really do hope she sues every single person possible, so that there is as much discovery as can possibly be provided, and that she keeps right on suing even after that," wroteMSNBC columnist Kali Holloway.
"Catching up on FHFA Director Bill Pulte's efforts, it sounds like Lisa Cook did not claim two primary residences at the same time, but Pulte's dad did?" wrote Mother Jones reporter Dan Friedman. "Tough week for that guy."
" Trump fired a Black woman economist from the Federal Reserve based on a lie pushed by a Twitter influencer, and the documents prove it," wrote investment banker Evaristus Odinikaeze. "Lisa Cook did not commit mortgage fraud. There was no double primary residence. Just another smear campaign used as political cover. Will there be accountability for the people who lied? Or does character assassination now pass as policy?"
"So, the only mortgage fraud discovered in all of this was Bill Pulte's family? May she sue the hell out of everyone," wrote former congressional staffer and Democratic campaign strategist Rhonda Elaine Foxx.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox offered some clarity about markings discovered on ammunition recovered with a rifle that investigators believe was used to kill Charlie Kirk.
Law enforcement sources had told the Wall Street Journal that messages engraved on unspent casings in the .30-caliber hunting rifle indicated the shooter, now identified as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, expressed support for antifascist and so-called "transgender ideology," but the Republican governor offered new details after the suspect's arrest.
"Investigators discovered a bolt-action rifle wrapped in a dark-colored towel," Cox said. "The rifle was determined to be a Mauser model 98 .30-06 caliber, .30-06 caliber bolt-action rifle. The rifle had a scope mounted on top of it. Investigators noted inscriptions that had been engraved on casings found with the rifle."
Inscriptions on a fired casing read, "Notices bulges, OWO what's this?" and inscriptions on the three unfired casings read, "Hey, fascist! Catch," "If you read this, you are gay, lmao," and "Oh, bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao," while another was inscribed with a series of arrows that appear to be a reference to a maneuver in the video game Helldivers 2.
"We are indebted to law enforcement across the state who has worked seamlessly together," Cox said. "Local law enforcement, state law enforcement and our federal partners with the with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We're grateful for everyone who worked together in such a short amount of time to to find this person and to and to bring justice. I want to thank the public who has been so engaged reviewing, reviewing videos, helping us with sending in tips, and helping us get to this point. I want to thank the the family members of Tyler Robinson who did the right thing in this case and were able to to bring him into to law enforcement, as well."
"I especially want to thank the family of Charlie Kirk, [his wife] Erica, Charlie's parents, his children," the governor added. "I want us to be thinking of them as we bring justice in this case. They will be involved in that justice. We will be working very closely with them as we move through this process as well. This is a very sad day for, again, for our country, a terrible day for the state of Utah."
President Donald Trump broke the news Friday that the suspected killer of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk had been apprehended after leading investigators on a manhunt lasting two days, and as of Friday morning, law enforcement has released some key details on the alleged assassin.
The suspected killer is 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, a resident of Utah, according to law enforcement sources who spoke with the New York Post.
Trump revealed that the suspect was identified after investigators received a tip from someone “who was very close to him.” He also suggested that the person who tipped off investigators was the suspect’s father, who he said was “involved with law enforcement” and “a person of faith, a minister,” and had turned the suspect over to a United States marshal.
Reporting from the Daily Mail also corroborates Trump's claim that the suspect confessed to the killing to their father, who the outlet identified as Matt Robinson, a 27-year veteran of the Washington County Sheriffs Department, according to sources who spoke with the outlet. The Daily Mail goes on to identify the suspect's mother as Amber Robinson, who works for a company that provides care for people with disabilities that is contracted by the state o Utah.
Robinson was also a student at Utah State University, lived in a $600,000 six-bedroom home in Washington, Utah, and was taken into custody at around 11 p.m. Thursday night, according to "insiders" who spoke with the Daily Mail.
Kirk was killed Wednesday while speaking at an event at Utah Valley University by a shooter, who police believe had fired on Kirk with a bolt-action rifle from 200 yards away atop the roof of a campus building. Law enforcement scrambled to track down the shooter but stumbled repeatedly over the next two days, including with premature claims from FBI Director Kash Patel that the suspect had already been caught.
Trump went on to say he hoped Robinson received the death penalty, and when asked if he believed the assassination to be part of a broader plot, he indicated there was no evidence to suggest the suspect acted with others.
“Well you don’t know, I mean, you don’t know,” he said during an appearance Friday on Fox News.
Internet sleuths have already begun digging through the suspected killer’s internet history, but as of Friday morning, no additional details on Robinson have been verified by media outlets.
