All posts tagged "White House"

Former President Barack Obama took a brutal swipe at President Donald Trump's taste in decor, and critics of the president couldn't get enough.

Obama appeared in Cleveland on Saturday to support Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton and Senate candidate Sherrod Brown. During his speech to a packed crowd, Obama mocked the gold trim and accents Trump has added to the White House since returning to office. "He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory," Obama said. "It's gold everywhere."

The video clips of the jab quickly spread across social media, where Trump critics cheered the former president's delivery....

An economist checked President Donald Trump's favorite economic brag against a source the White House can't easily wave away, and the math collapsed.

On Saturday's episode of "Platypus Economics," economist Justin Wolfers took on Trump's claim that he has brought $21 trillion in new investment into the country since returning to office in 2025, a figure the president sometimes rounds to $18 trillion or $22 trillion. Wolfers added up every item on the White House's own list of investments and came up with $11.3 trillion, roughly half of what Trump boasts about in speeches.

"When you try, you realize they're just nonsense resting on absurdity supported by lies," Wolfers said. "They're not just contradicted by fact-checkers and wonky economists. They're contradicted by numbers on the White House's own website."...

A watchdog coalition accused the Trump White House of finding a sneaky workaround to keep its promotional blitz going after a judge intervened.

In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, a coalition led by Common Cause asked U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon to expand her order halting the administration's taxpayer-funded TV ads so it also covers White House websites, YouTube and social media. The plaintiffs are represented by the legal group Democracy Forward, and journalist Scott MacFarlane flagged the filing in a Saturday post on X.

Rochon first blocked the ads on Oct. 11, ordering the Trump administration to cancel remaining airtime bought with $20 million that the White House budget office steered to Customs and Border Protection. She later extended the freeze after the spots aired hundreds of times past her deadline and new ones surfaced on the White House YouTube channel....

President Donald Trump's offhand talk of pardoning everyone around him has moved from punchline to legal homework inside the White House.

White House attorneys are reviewing whether to hand out sweeping pardons to lower-ranking staffers, The Washington Sun reported Saturday, citing two people familiar with the discussion. One source said a pardon covering every junior official is unlikely, but Trump could instead issue blanket clemency for everyone involved in certain policy areas, such as deportations, military action or trade.

The scope would dwarf anything previously reported. Trump has openly mused about clemency for his top aides, but the talks now underway could reach the thousands of rank-and-file employees who have carried out his agenda....

The White House is striking back at the reporter who publicly picked apart President Donald Trump's Oval Office meltdown this week.

Andrew Feinberg, White House correspondent for The Independent, was informed Wednesday that he would no longer serve as the print pool reporter on Trump's Thursday trip, media reporter Max Tani revealed on X. According to Tani, Feinberg confirmed the White House gave no reason for the change.

The White House Correspondents' Association condemned the move in a statement posted by Tani, saying it "strongly objects to the decision to restrict a journalist's coverage simply because the president didn't care for their questioning. That is retaliation."...

Katie Zacharia was in the middle of an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday when a knock at her West Wing door effectively ended her five days as White House press secretary, the paper reported.

She was behind her new desk, in an office with few personal touches, when senior adviser Jason Miller stuck his head in.

“JD wanted to chat with us real quick,” Miller said, referring to the vice president....