Alexander Willis

Vice President JD Vance was torched after he boasted online Monday about having endured a 90-minute training session with Navy SEALs, which journalist Edith Olmsted described as a “recent cosplaying adventure” in an op-ed published Tuesday in The New Republic.

“It’s not entirely clear what prompted Vance’s recent cosplaying adventure. Perhaps it has something to do with his recent presidential endorsement from Erika Kirk, a closely-held friend of the vice president,” Olmsted wrote.

“Or maybe it has something to do with his slipping poll numbers… In order to claim the full support of MAGA, it seems Vance may have decided it’s time to prove himself more than a sniveling debate kid.”

Vance apparently took to social media immediately after he’d completed his training session alongside Navy SEALs at Base Coronado in California, pledging to “post some photos when I get them.” While his promise to “post some photos” was met with ridicule by online critics, Vance made good on his pledge and later shared seven photos of himself jogging, carrying a heavy log and climbing an obstacle course cargo net.

The following day on Tuesday, Vance even poked fun at himself, reposting the photo of himself carrying a heavy log, albeit edited to replace his face with the popular meme version of the vice president, a fatter version of himself with long, curly hair.

“Fixed it,” Vance wrote in a social media post on X Tuesday, alongside the edited photo of himself.

For Olmsted, however, no amount of training with elite military units would help Vance achieve what she suspected was his goal, that being to “win over [the] manosphere.”

“No, JD Vance will not be our first ‘Chad’ president,” Olmsted wrote.

The FBI received an explosive tip in October of 2020 regarding then-President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein and an incident that allegedly took place in the 1990s, a new release from the Justice Department revealed Tuesday.

An FBI report documenting the tip was made public early Tuesday morning as part of the DOJ’s ongoing release of Epstein files, and includes multiple allegations involving Trump and Epstein from at least two sources, though some are second-hand.

The allegations are unverified, and no public record exists that law enforcement investigated or confirmed their authenticity.

The individual who submitted the tip appears to be a limousine driver from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Area in Texas. The FBI report about the tip recounts an incident on Christmas Eve of 1999, when the driver shared a story with their passenger about how they had driven Trump in 1995 to the DFW Airport.

The driver went on to share more details with their passenger about their 1995 drive with Trump.

“[REDACTED 1] reported some of things President Trump had spoken about during the ride while on his cell phone were very concerning,” the report reads.

“[REDACTED 1] reported he was ‘a few seconds from pulling the limousine over on the median and within a few seconds of pulling him out of the car and hurting him due to some of things he was saying’ as caller choose not to. [REDACTED 1] noted Trump continuously stated the name ‘Jeffrey’ while on the phone, and made references to ‘abusing some girl.’ [REDACTED 1] was unsure who he was talking to nor who he was referencing.”

The FBI report goes on to note that the driver indicated, after sharing his story with his passenger about Trump, that the passenger’s demeanor changed abruptly.

“As [REDACTED 1] talked about his time meeting Donald Trump, immediately [REDACTED 2's] demeanor went ‘stone cold’ as [REDACTED 2] stated ‘he raped me,’” the report reads.

“[REDACTED 1] said ‘what’ as [REDACTED 2] replied ‘Donald J. Trump had raped her along with Jeffrey Epstein.’ [REDACTED 2] noted some girl with a funny name ‘took me into a fancy hotel or building, that's how it happened.’”

Earlier references in the report suggest that the “girl with a funny name” was likely Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-conspirator who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.

The limousine driver – presumably, based on context – then advised their passenger to alert authorities about the incident, according to the report, which the passenger objected to on the grounds that “they will kill me,” the report reads.

In a statement released Tuesday, the DOJ said, "The Department of Justice has officially released nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.

"To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already. Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims."

The limousine driver would later attempt to follow up with the passenger, but learned that the passenger had died and was “found with her head ‘blown off’ in Kiefer, OK,” according to the report, which also states that the passenger’s death was ruled “a suicide.”

President Donald Trump floated the idea of ditching the Oval Office Tuesday to instead pursue a career as a television host, asking his followers whether they supported the idea of an abrupt career change.

Whether serious or in jest, Trump made the remarks after announcing that he would be hosting the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony scheduled for Tuesday evening, which he said he’d be doing “at the request of the board, and just about everybody else in America.”

“Tell me what you think of my ‘Master of Ceremony’ abilities,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

“If really good, would you like me to leave the Presidency in order to make ‘hosting’ a full time job? We will be honoring true GREATS in the History of Entertainment: Sylvester Stallone, Michael Crawford, KISS, George Strait, and Gloria Gaynor.”

An email released by the Justice Department early Tuesday morning as part of its ongoing release of Jeffrey Epstein files revealed that law enforcement had uncovered a potentially new photograph of President Donald Trump with a co-conspirator of Epstein’s as part of its probe into Trump ally Steve Bannon.

The email, sent June 11, 2021, appears to have been related to the criminal probe into Bannon – Trump’s former White House chief of staff – over his involvement with a charity to fund the construction of Trump’s proposed border wall. Bannon ultimately pleaded guilty to fraud charges, but was sentenced to a three-year conditional discharge.

While investigators were forensically searching Bannon’s phone records, however, one made a discovery unrelated to the criminal probe.

“As I was going through the images from that phone, I found an image of Trump and Ghislaine Maxwell on Bannon's phone,” reads the email, the names of both its sender and recipient redacted. “I discussed with Sunny and we wanted to flag this for you, in case it was of any importance to you, since you are on both cases.”

Another investigator responded to the email with thanks, and instructions that there was “no need to do anything with this one.”

Maxwell was Epstein’s girlfriend, and was given a 20-year sentence in 2021 after being convicted of sex-trafficking charges related to him.

There already exist a number of photographs of Trump with Maxwell, and the attached image in the email was redacted in the DOJ’s release.

Maxwell is currently serving her 20-year sentence at the federal prison Camp Bryan in Texas, a low-security prison she was quietly moved to over the summer, despite of federal prisoner rules that prohibit convicted sex offenders from serving in low-security prisons.

The Justice Department released a letter allegedly written by Jeffrey Epstein Monday that it then quickly removed from its website — and its contents, some critics say, “directly implicates" President Donald Trump.

The letter was postmarked “just days after Epstein died” in 2019, according to the progressive media company MeidasTouch. It was addressed to Larry Nassar, the convicted serial sex offender who was sentenced to 60 years in prison for abusing hundreds of children and young women.

In the alleged letter, Epstein addresses Nassar as “L.N.,” and makes a startling reference to “our president,” which would have been Trump at the time it was allegedly written.

“As you know by now, I have taken the ‘short route’ home. Good luck! We shared one thing… our love & caring for young ladies at the hope they'd reach their full potential,” the letter reads.

“Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to ‘grab ------,’ whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair. Yours, J. Epstein”

The letter was first uploaded by the DOJ on Monday, but was quickly removed, with the two web addresses hosting the letter — one showing its envelope and another its contents – now turning up an “error” message reading “AccessDenied.” However, the DOJ appeared to have re-uploaded another copy of the letter and the envelope on its website, albeit under a different file names.

The mention of “our president” in the alleged letter left many onlookers stunned, including Micah Erfan, co-founder of the liberal media network The Siren, who called it a “bombshell” and argued that the “newly released Epstein letter directly implicates Trump.”

Others, like the polling aggregator “Polling USA,” argued that the stunning revelation could pose the greatest threat to Trump’s presidency seen yet.

“It might be the beginning of the end for the big man honestly,” an online post from Polling USA’s X account reads, posted Tuesday morning.

The internet was left stunned Monday night after journalists uncovered a 12-second video buried within the Justice Department’s release of Jeffrey Epstein files that appears to show the disgraced financier in his New York jail cell attempting to hang himself.

The video has been thoroughly debunked as a fake.

“Buried in the Epstein files released by the DOJ is a 12 second video from 4:29 am on the day Jeffrey Epstein died,” reads a social media post from Drop Site News, which uncovered the video alongside entrepreneur Luke Igel and software engineer Riley Walz. “The highly unusual video could be a CGI recreation.”

The video was, in fact, discovered to have been created using computer-generated imagery, and was first uploaded to the internet on the video platform YouTube in October of 2020. As to why the DOJ had the video in its possession and uploaded it online as part of its periodic release of files on Epstein, however, is unknown.

“This is how seriously the DOJ is taking the Epstein Files release,” wrote independent journalist Tara Palmeri, who hosts “The Tara Palmeri Show” podcast. “It's a joke to them.”

The video depicts what appears to be Epstein in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, New York, near the ground and on his knees attempting to strangle himself using an orange inmate uniform. Other inmate uniforms can be seen strewn across the floor, and in a similar manner as depicted in legitimate photographs of Epstein’s cell the morning of his death. The cell layout in the debunked video is also identical to that of Epstein’s real cell.

The DOJ has since removed the video after its discovery, with the link now directing users to a page that reads “AccessDenied.”

“Nothing about this video makes sense and it’s unclear why it is included in the DOJ files,” wrote Drop Site News founder Ryan Grim in a social media post on X Monday.

Vice President JD Vance made an unusual pledge Monday to share photos of himself taken during a supposed training session he participated in with U.S. Navy SEALs, a pledge that sparked a wave of jokes from online critics.

“Just finished PT with the Navy SEALs for 90 minutes (I'll post some photos when I get them),” Vance wrote Monday in a social media post on X.

“They took it easy on me and I still feel like I got hit by a freight train. So grateful to all of our warriors who keep us safe and keep the highest standards anywhere in the world!”

Will Fritz, a self-described journalist and student at the University of London, told Vance that photos of his training session were unnecessary.

“Dawg, we don't want your workout pics,” Fritz wrote Monday in a social media post on X.

“Reality TV instead of effective government,” quipped another X user, “Philly Puppy,” a frequent political commentator who’s amassed more than 17,000 followers, in response to Vance’s post.

Vance served as a military journalist in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2003 to 2007 before entering politics with his successful bid for Senate in 2022, and was tapped by Trump to serve as his vice president just two years later.

It’s unclear why or where Vance had participated in a 90-minute training session with Navy SEALs, but that lack of details didn’t stop online critics from poking fun at the bizarre social media post.

The Trump administration appears to be returning the favor to those who made major donations to groups or projects supported by President Donald Trump in the wake of his 2024 election victory, with nearly 200 top Trump donors scoring huge “benefits” over the past year, a New York Times investigation found Monday.

“In this town, money talks, and that is going to give you an opportunity to at least have a seat at the table,” said Harrison Fields, a former Trump official who left the administration in August to become a lobbyist, speaking with The Times. “These people are not getting coerced. They are making business decisions.”

According to The Times, 197 individuals who donated to Trump causes after the president’s election victory received “benefits” from “policies or actions of Mr. Trump or his administration,” which included pardons, quashed legal cases and “favorable regulatory moves,” among other benefits.

For example, Venezuelan banker Julio M. Herrera Velutini received an “unusually lenient deal” for allegedly bribing the former governor of Puerto Rico after his daughter – a resident of South Florida – made a $2.5 million contribution to MAGA Inc.

Another example uncovered by The Times is Trump’s appointment of Howard Brodie as the U.S. ambassador to Finland, an appointment that came just months after Brodie’s parents made a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural committee, and a $500,000 contribution to MAGA Inc.

The Times lists countless other examples, including many that were “previously unknown,” including the Trump administration awarding the Peter Thiel-founded Palantir Technologies – which is heavily involved in helping develop surveillance technology – government contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The company donated $10 million to Trump’s ballroom project.

The White House fired back at The Times’ reporting, and refuted the idea that Trump donors received any special treatment.

“[Trump’s] only motivation as the president of the United States is improving the lives of the American people and making our country greater than ever before,” said White House spokesperson Liz Huston, speaking with The Times. [Donors who support him] should be celebrated, not attacked.”

Mark Epstein, the brother of Jeffrey Epstein, lobbed an explosive claim at the Trump administration Monday as its Justice Department continues to face scrutiny over its botched release of files on the disgraced financier.

The DOJ released a trove of Epstein-related files on Friday, but has faced backlash over failing to adhere to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the agency release all of its files on Epstein by Friday, and with limited redactions. Instead, only a fraction of the agency’s files on Epstein were released, and redactions were made that critics have called unlawful.

President Donald Trump also initially opposed efforts to compel his DOJ to release the files, dismissing inquiries around Epstein as a “hoax” created by Democrats, though ultimately flipped in support of the effort after it became clear that enough Republicans were disregarding his objections.

“I’ve been recently told [that] the reason they’re gonna be releasing these things, and the reason for the flip is that they’re sanitizing these files,” Mark Epstein said during an appearance Monday on NewsNation.

“There’s a facility in Winchester, Virginia where they’re scrubbing the files to take Republican names out. That’s what I was told by a pretty good source.”

While Mark Epstein provided no additional evidence supporting his claim, his remarks were partially consistent with previous reports that suggested FBI agents had been instructed to “flag” mentions of Trump within the DOJ’s trove of Epstein files for potential redactions or suppression.

Mark Epstein has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and has said he was unaware of his brother’s crimes until 2006. Mark Epstein has also cast doubt on the circumstances surrounding his brother’s death in 2019, which, while officially ruled a suicide, has sparked speculation due to several oddities surrounding the incident.

MAGA figurehead Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, demanded Monday that the Trump administration deploy U.S. Marshals to Georgia to seize ballots as part of a relitigation of the president’s false claims that the 2020 election was “stolen.”

This week, a committee of Georgia Senate Republicans pressed Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis over her office’s criminal indictment of Trump over his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Additionally, Georgia’s leadership is facing renewed scrutiny from conservatives after it was revealed that some 2020 ballots lacked poll-worker signatures, even though such signatures are not required for a ballot to be considered valid.

Speaking on his “WarRoom” podcast, Bannon championed those inquiring into Willis’ conduct – as well as those inquiring into the state’s signature-less ballots – as “heroes,” and compared them to the “revolutionary generation” that supported Founding Fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

Furthermore, he complained about the lengthy process of adjudicating Willis for what some Republicans allege was a politically motivated prosecution of Trump, as well as the lengthy process of investigating why some Georgia ballots weren’t signed, and offered an alternative – and much quicker – solution.

“When you look at what went on, it is so awful on so many other levels,” Bannon said. “I realize you've got to go to court and there's rules... send the freakin’ Marshals down there and just grab the ballots! It's time now you've got to take hard action.”

Bannon also went on to complain how Willis, through her prosecution of Trump and alleged co-conspirators, had bankrupted former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was also indicted alongside Trump.

“[Willis] was sending Trump to prison but she broke so many people; hell, it's one of the reasons Rudy went bankrupt,” Bannon said. “Rudy's beautiful 16-room apartment in New York City, I think he had to sell and didn't take any cash out of the deal because he had to pay it off to other things.”

The Justice Department is preparing to publish another trove of files related to Jeffrey Epstein Monday afternoon, according to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who shared the news on social media Monday morning.

“We hear there will be another DOJ Epstein release this afternoon,” Khanna wrote in a social media post on X Monday.

The DOJ was hammered over the weekend for failing to comply with the newly enacted Epstein Files Transparency Act, a bill sponsored by Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) that required the DOJ to release all of its files on Epstein by Friday, and with limited redactions. Instead, the DOJ released only a fraction of its files on Epstein in its possession, and redacted files beyond what the law permitted.

Ahead of the DOJ’s Monday release of more files on Epstein, Khanna laid out four inclusions he wants to see in the release.

More than a dozen survivors of Jeffrey Epstein are demanding immediate congressional action Monday following the Justice Department’s botched release of files on the disgraced financier — a release they said failed to comply with a newly enacted law.

“We call upon Congress to stand up for the rule of law. We urge immediate congressional oversight, including hearings, formal demands for compliance, and legal action, to ensure the Department of Justice fulfills its legal obligations,” reads the joint statement signed by 18 Epstein survivors, released on Monday.

“This is not a partisan issue. Just as the Epstein Files Transparency Act was supported across party lines, we now ask elected officials from both parties to take decisive action to enforce the law, compel full compliance, and ensure meaningful transparency without further delay.”

The DOJ has faced scrutiny over its release of the Epstein files, which were mandated by law to be released, in full and with limited redactions, on Friday. Instead, the DOJ released only a small percentage of its files on Epstein, withholding hundreds of thousands of files, and made redactions outside the scope of what the Epstein Files Transparency Act permitted.

The DOJ has also been accused of accidentally exposing the identity of one of Epstein’s victims, with growing calls among lawmakers and survivors for Attorney General Pam Bondi to be held in contempt and forced to fully comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“Survivors deserve truth,” the joint statement reads. “Survivors whose identities are private deserve protection. The public deserves accountability. And the law must be enforced.”

One Epstein survivor, Jess Michaels – who also signed the joint statement – said recently that she and other victims have knowledge of Epstein-related files that they believe should be in the DOJ’s possession, but were not included in the agency’s file release on Friday.

Top White House officials are in full-blown panic over a growing “fracture” within the MAGA movement, led in large part by right-wing influencer Candace Owens, according to a senior Trump official who spoke with Zeteo.

“I have gotten so many texts asking: what are you guys gonna do about Candace Owens?” said a senior Trump official, speaking with Zeteo under the condition of anonymity. “What can I do? Delete the internet?”

Once a staunch defender of President Donald Trump, Owens has since soured on the president and has become among his most vocal critics, joining the likes of other prominent right-wing figures like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly who have created a rift in the MAGA movement.

That rift was on full display last week during Turning Point USA’s annual America Fest conference, where right-wing figures like Ben Shapiro openly attacked Owens, Carlson and Kelly for promoting “conspiratorial nonsense.” And, while Trump-aligned figures have often tried to dismiss Owens and Carlson as irrelevant and not part of the MAGA movement, behind the scenes, Trump officials are taking the rift seriously.

“Our MAGA civil war is spreading,” a senior Trump administration appointee told Zeteo, also speaking anonymously.

The division among the MAGA movement has grown so prominent that Vice President JD Vance felt compelled to address it on Sunday during America Fest, but couched his commentary in a message of unity, a different approach when compared to figures like Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), who have instead called for figures like Carlson to be expelled from the MAGA movement entirely.

“President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests,” Vance said to a crowd of thousands of young conservatives at the America Fest in Phoenix, Arizona on Sunday. “We have far more important work to do than canceling each other.”

While overall job creation in 2025 saw a “sharp slowdown” when compared to the previous year, President Donald Trump did spark a boom in one industry: the pardon lobbying business, which law professor Kim Wehl wrote was “booming” thanks to the president having "converted a constitutional safeguard of mercy into a tawdry instrument of corruption and grift.”

Trump has drawn scrutiny over his use of his pardon authority. He pardoned 1,600 Americans involved with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on his first day back in the White House, he pardoned a major drug trafficker amid his administration’s supposed war on drugs, and he pardoned a cryptocurrency billionaire who helped enrich his family by as much as $1 billion.

The authority to issue pardons is granted to the president by Article II of the Constitution, and has been used controversially by past presidents; former President Bill Clinton pardoned major Democratic Party donor Marc Rich on his last day in office, and former President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, and after pledging not to.

However, Trump’s use of his pardon authority was a “far cry” from past uses, Wehl argued in an analysis published Sunday in Zeteo, and made possible by a conservative-controlled Supreme Court that has expanded the power of the executive since Trump took office in January.

“Thanks to an enabling Supreme Court majority and a supplicant Congress, the language of Article II has been recast as a transactional favor – priced in loyalty, extreme wealth, and proximity to power, not merit – like a cynical prop in a grotesque spectacle of impunity,” Wehl wrote.

“So far, the damage is mostly legal. Not for long. When clemency is wielded as a commodity for personal self-enrichment and power, it sends a clear message: compliance with the rule of law and reciprocal justice are optional. Trump is the ‘law’ now. It’s disgusting.”

Vice President JD Vance fired off at Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) Sunday while speaking at a conservative event in Arizona, ridiculing her for what he said was her “street-girl persona” and fake nails.

“Jasmine Crockett!” Vance said, speaking at Turning Point USA’s annual America Fest conference in Phoenix. “Oh, Jasmine Crockett, the record speaks for itself. She wants to be a senator, though her street-girl persona is about as real as her nails!”

Vance’s remarks were met with thunderous applause at the event venue packed wall-to-wall with young conservatives, an event organized by the right-wing advocacy group launched by his late friend, Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in September in Utah.

Crockett has become a rising star in the Democratic Party, largely due to her frequent and fierce attacks on President Donald Trump, which has prompted him to respond by calling the congresswoman a “low-IQ person.” She has since launched a bid for Senate, looking to unseat Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) with a campaign launch ad featuring audio of Trump insulting her.

Among progressives, however, Crockett has drawn scrutiny largely over her voting record as it pertains to Israel, voting for an appropriations bill that included a temporary prohibition on U.S. funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA), the largest aid provider in Gaza amid Israel’s military siege.

America Fest was first launched in 2021, and featured Trump, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois man who became a prominent figure among conservatives after fatally shooting two people during protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the previous year.