Trump's muttering 'in the presence of the jury' riles judge in defamation case

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U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan warned former President Donald Trump after he spoke out in front of a jury hearing a defamation case against him Wednesday.

On the second day of the trial, writer E. Jean Carroll testified about how she had been defamed after Trump denied raping her.

During Carroll's testimony, Trump was heard muttering loud enough for the jury to hear.

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"With the jury out of the room, Carroll's lawyer Shawn Crowley is complaining that Trump is muttering loud enough that the plaintiff's table can hear him," Politico's Erica Orden reported. "Crowley says Trump is saying Carroll's testimony is false and suggesting she has 'suddenly gotten her memory back.'"

Before taking a break from the trial, Kaplan suggested he would address Trump's remarks.

"What about Mr. Trump being vocal in the presence of the jury?" the judge asked. "I'm just going to ask that Mr. Trump take special care to keep his voice down when he's conferring with counsel so that the jury does not overhear it."

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'Rabid MAGA' candidate's 'delicious loss' reveals how far Trump has fallen: analyst

Former Republican operative Rick Wilson signaled that MAGA's reliance on President Donald Trump has backfired in primary elections this week.

In his Substack, the co-founder of the anti-Trump organization The Lincoln Project detailed how Trump ally Mike Lindell's "amusing and delicious loss" in the Minnesota Republican primary revealed just how the president's standing has fallen among voters.

Wilson shared a strategy that he expects will play out come November.

"The lesson of last night, and it’s one that I’ve repeated for several decades now, is that candidate quality matters most," Wilson wrote.

"Candidate fit-to-district is a very close second," he explained. "Don’t run a DSA candidate in a red state, no matter how good that makes you feel. If I were advising the GOP still, the lesson would be 'Don’t run a rabid MAGA screamer in a blue state or district,' not that the MAGA GOP has anything left but rabid MAGA screamers."

And with primary season wrapping up, he suggested Democrats could make serious gains in midterms.

"The final sprint is before us," Wilson added. "The landscape remains strongly favorable for big Democratic wins, as long as they stick to the message of economic affordability and ending the corruption that’s causing it. They win as long as they stick to their guns on tying MAGA candidates to Trump and his deeply, wildly unpopular positions."

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Fireworks as Scott Jennings slammed for wild claim about streamer: 'Clear-cut defamation'

MAGA pundit Scott Jennings sparked fury on Wednesday from a talk show segment in which he falsely claimed that left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker advocated for Black lynchings.

Jennings brought it up to discredit the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who campaigned with Piker during the primary.

"We continue today our exploration of the radical socialist streamer Hasan Piker," said Jennings, describing him as El-Sayed's "best friend." "And African-Americans out there within the sound of my voice need to listen up. And you must listen carefully. This is who socialists like Abdul El-Sayed choose to keep for company. Just listen to this."

He played a lengthy supercut of clips in which Piker raged against political critics or sparred with his Twitch chat, in which he sarcastically said things like, "It's because I'm racist, dude," or "back to a better time when lynchings were happening."

In context, Piker was criticizing people who reflexively call the past a better time, because things like lynchings were more commonplace in the past — but Jennings deceptively edited the clips to make it seem as if Piker was seriously calling for a return to lynchings.

"If you look at the Democratic primaries, Black voters have been voting against the socialists, only to be overruled in many cases by young, privileged white commies," said Jennings. "Might these Black voters find a home in the Republican Party this fall? Well, if Democratic campaigns are adopting the Piker plan of returning our country to lynchings, that just might happen."

Piker did not take this lying down, and hit back on X shortly — subtly hinting he could take legal action.

"I've never seen a more clear-cut instance of defamation than this in my entire life. Blatant disregard for the truth," he wrote.

Piker has become a fixation of Republicans in recent months, due to a number of controversial statements he has made, including a 2019 clip in which he facetiously said "America deserved 9/11, dude" in response to a clip of Republicans denying U.S. foreign policy played any role in radicalizing terrorists. He later apologized for this remark, saying he didn't mean it literally.

Republicans balk at Pete Hegseth's 'brazen' ploy against Dems: 'Extremely short-sighted'

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's attempt to lock Democrats out of Pentagon talks is backfiring after GOP lawmakers expressed concern to Politico.

Hegseth has been keeping congressional Democrats out of classified briefings, according to reporting by Politico, which described Republicans as "shocked by the brazen partisanship."

"He calls himself the secretary of war, but ironically, he doesn't want to go to war and win the argument with nearly half the members of the Senate," Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said, referring to Hegseth's reluctance to invite Democrats into discussions about taking military action. "You got to engage."

According to Politico, Hegseth excluded Democrats twice in recent weeks from closed-door meetings where he pitched his record $1.5 trillion defense budget. Before that, congressional Democrats were also shut out of meetings about the Pentagon's boat strikes in the Caribbean and the decoy Air Force One flight in response to threats by Iran.

"I know that sometimes you want to have smaller groups," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said. "But I think it needs to be bipartisan."

Politico noted that Hegseth blowing off Democrats could doom President Donald Trump's unprecedented Pentagon budget increase. Republicans who support it are "worried" as Democratic support in the Senate is needed for it to pass, Politico added.

"They're preaching to the choir when they have Republicans on the Armed Services Committee, and they're making a case for the budget," an anonymous GOP member of the committee told Politico. "It's a briefing that should be provided to 100 senators."

Congressional Republicans are urging the White House to change its approach and maintain good faith with Democrats, according to Politico.

"The Democratic members need to be brought up to speed," Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) told Politico. "But there has to be a clear understanding that the information that's being provided to them cannot be publicly discussed. And for some reason, some of the administration feels as though there's a possibility that some of it would be leaked."

An anonymous former defense official described Hegseth's strategy as "extremely short-sighted because you have got to have bipartisan majorities over a longer period of time to really build defense capability," adding that "it's not built one year at a time. And some of the more frustrated people are the senior Republicans."

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