Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance came under fire Saturday after saying he's "sick" of being told to care about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"I've gotten a lot of flak in the last week because I had the audacity to suggest that before our leaders obsess over a Ukrainian and Russian border 6,000 miles away, maybe they ought to guarantee the sovereignty of their own country and their own border first," Vance said during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando. "I’m sick of being told that we have to care more about people 6,000 miles away than we do people like my mom."

Vance's mother, Bev, was a central character in his Hillbilly Elegy book, which documented her struggles with drug addiction.

Last week, Vance told Trump adviser's Steve Bannon's podcast, “I gotta be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine…I do care about the fact that in my community right now the leading cause of death among 18-45 year olds is Mexican fentanyl that’s coming across the southern border.”

But the Senate hopeful appeared to later backpedal, instead using the Ukraine invasion as an opportunity to bash President Joe Biden and praise former president Donald Trump.

Here's how Twitter reacted to his latest statement.

Former president Donald Trump ripped into his own Supreme Court justices on Saturday after they declined to block the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6 from obtaining his White House records.

Trump was particularly hard on Justice Brett Kavanaugh — suggesting that he's afraid to do the right thing because Democrats might impeach him over sexual assault allegations.

The former president said that "at any cost," Supreme Court justices "don't want to be impeached."

"Please don't impeach me. I don't want to be impeached," Trump said, mocking the justices. "Don't impeach me, please, for being with women that I've never heard of before — women that he didn't know, women that a particular justice, Kavanaugh, had no idea who they were but you know what, he's lived through hell, and he's afraid, I believe he's afraid, I believe he's afraid to do the right thing, I really do."

"They said not so long ago, we're going to impeach him for something, and then they found out, the woman got up and said he never did anything wrong," Trump added. "They said, 'We don't care, we're going to impeach him anyway.' These are vicious people, and we can't let this go on. They (Supreme Court justices) have to gain strength. They have to gain new courage, and they have to stand up for freedom and stand up for what is right. They can no longer be afraid of the radical left, our Supreme Court."

Later, Trump vowed that Republicans will "stop the radical Democrats from packing the Supreme Court with far-left justices."

"Although the way the Supreme Court is behaving, perhaps the Republicans should pack the Supreme Court," Trump said, "They are behaving not the way we think is appropriate for our country."

Trump also referred to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden's nominee for the Supreme Court, as "a radical left zealot."

Watch below.

Former president Donald Trump on Saturday dismissed the impacts of climate change as "slightly more seafront property."

"Unbelievably, Biden is now claiming that you must sacrifice through higher energy prices to foot the cost of his failed foreign policy in Europe," Trump said during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando. "I saw (former Secretary of State) John Kerry on television — and we're talking about energy, we need energy, we need oil, we need gas, we need everything."

But according to Trump, Kerry was saying, "No, no, no, global warming."

"We have a world that's ready to blow up and disintegrate over energy, and he's talking about global warming — the ocean's may rise, over the next 300 years, one one-hundredth of an inch, giving you slightly more seafront property. And this is his problem. He's not thinking about the nuclear warming, he's thinking about other types of warming. These people are not living in a world of reality."

Reactions below.

Former president Donald Trump invoked the U.S. Space Force on Saturday in response to a question about what he would do in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

During a news conference before his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump was asked, "If you were president right now, and the situation is what it is right now ... what should Joe Biden do?"

"Well I think I know exactly what should be done," Trump responded. "There are things that he should do, I would rather not tell him under this forum. I don't think it's appropriate to say that. But there are things he could do that would be very strong, very powerful, and I think would end it pretty quickly."

"Remember this, we are the greatest nuclear power — when I was in office, I had it rebuilt, modernized, and also rebuilt our military, also started Space Force, which has a lot to do with what we're talking about," Trump added. "But Russia has an almost equal nuclear power, and China is five years behind, but they have very substantial nuclear power. We all have to be very careful."

Watch below.

Former president Donald Trump on Saturday again praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as "smart."

But during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Trump claimed the real problem is that NATO and other world leaders are "dumb."

"Yesterday reporters asked me if I thought President Putin was smart," Trump said. "I said, 'Of course he's smart,' to which I was greeted with, 'Oh, that's such a terrible thing to say.' Yes, he's smart. The NATO nations and indeed the world, as he looks over what's happening strategically with no repercussions or threats whatsoever, they're not so smart, they're looking the opposite of smart. 'If you take over Ukraine, we're going to sanction you,' the say. Sanction? Well that's a pretty weak statement."

"Putin is saying, 'Oh, they're going to sanction me? They've sanctioned me for the last 25 years. You mean I can take over a whole country and they're going to sanction me? You mean they're not going to blow us to pieces, at least psychologically?' The problem is not that Putin is smart, which of course he's smart, but the real problem is that our leaders are dumb, dumb, so dumb."

More below.

Former president Donald Trump on Saturday denied any knowledge of Fox News host Sean Hannity's frantic text messages to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and others that were recently released by the House Select committee investigating Jan. 6.

During a news conference prior to his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, a reporter said to Trump, "I have a question for you about one of your pals, one of your friends. Text messages were recently released from the Jan. 6 committee sent by Sean Hannity on Jan. 6. In it, it appears he's contradicting what you were trying to tell your staff that day, at least text messages to one senior staffer. Do you still consider Sean Hannity a friend and ally?"

"I don't know what messages you're talking about, but I think he's a great gentleman, a very talented person that gets fantastic ratings, and certainly he speaks well of me, he agrees with what I'm saying," Trump responded. "So I really don't know, I haven't seen —"

"You haven't read the text messages?" the reporter said.

"I haven't seen them, no, I haven't heard about them or seen them," Trump responded. "No, I think he's fantastic."

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz suggested that the House Judiciary Committee should put an end to the Department of Justice's ongoing investigation into whether he sex-trafficked a minor.

"The Judiciary Committee should stop the DOJ from targeting political opponents whether they are parents, whether they are falsely labeled as extremists, or whether they are lawmakers engaged in the oversight of the DOJ," Gaetz said.

Gaetz, a member of the Judiciary Committee, has previously indicated he would like to chair the panel if Republicans take control of the House in 2022.

During his speech on Saturday, he also accused the FBI of "cheating worse than the Russian figure skating team."

Watch a clip as well as Gaetz's full speech below.

More than a year after he was photographed carrying papers saying "martial law if necessary" to a meeting with former president Donald Trump at the White House, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell still refuses to say where he got them.

On Saturday, CBS News' Robert Acosta tried to ask Lindell where he got the papers at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando.

"One unanswered question from the post-January 6 period inside the Trump White House: who provided Mike Lindell with his 'martial law' papers, photographed on January 15, 2021?" Costa wrote. "Lindell has so far refused to give an answer about who told him to bring those papers and ideas to Trump, or who else was involved in related discussions during Trump’s final days. Today at CPAC, @CBSNews asked Lindell several times to share the name of the lawyers. He says a 'whole bunch of lawyers' gave him the documents, but grew irritated when asked to name them. Eventually he started to chant 'traitor!' at me for asking questions."

In video of the exchange, Lindell initially responds to Costa's question by saying, "That picture will go down in history of helping save this country."

"Who gave you the papers?" Costa says.

"Who gave me the papers? That's none of your business. A bunch of lawyers did. I’ve never read then," Lindell responds.

"Was it John Eastman?" Costa says, referring to the Trump lawyer who was the author of a so-called "coup memo."

"I’ve never read them," Lindell repeats. "I went in there with evidence on Jan. 15. You guys are old news. You're regurgitating old news. Jan. 15, I went in there with four papers that showed Dominion and the election crime of the machines and China attacking our country, cyberattack, all 50 states, over 12 million votes that Donald Trump won by. Eighty-two million to 68 million was the real count."

"Who gave you the papers?"

"I just said, A whole bunch of lawyers did. I've never read them," Lindell responds.

"Did you ever discuss martial law with President Trump?"

"No," Lindell says.

"Then why were you carrying those papers into the White House?"

"I just told you, but you didn't listen," Lindell responds. "Why don't you go back and watch your own rotten news? You guys are the worst journalists — "

Costa wrote above a second video, "This is how my exchange today with Lindell ended. Calmly asked him to provide names of lawyers, the lawyers who he says provided him with papers that included the mention of 'martial law.' Papers he carried into a meeting with Trump."

The second video begins with Lindell shouting in Costa's face, "Traitor, traitor!"

"Robert Costa is a traitor to the United States of America!" Lindell says. "Why do you protect a company called Dominion and attack a company called MyPillow?"

"Traitor, traitor, traitor!" Lindell yells, as a few people around him join in the chant.

"Answer the question," Costa says.

"You're disgusting. CBS, you're one step above Fox. He's asking me about the picture at the White House a year ago. You're disgusting. You're disgusting. Are you a communist?"

Watch below.

Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene sparked outrage on Friday night when she appeared as a "surprise guest" at a white nationalist event being held in conjunction with the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando.

"Greene, a QAnon conspiracist and rabidly anti-trans Republican, was the surprise speaker at the third annual America First Political Action Conference in Orlando, organized by white nationalist figurehead Nick Fuentes, leader of the 'groyper' movement," the Huffington Post reports. "Fuentes, an antisemite and racist who attended the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and who was recently subpoenaed for his involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, excitedly introduced Greene as the featured speaker from behind a lectern inside the Marriott Orlando World Center, according to a livestream of the event."

Ben Lorber, an analyst for the social justice think tank Political Research Associates, noted on Twitter that in embracing Fuentes, Greene joined Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar, who spoke at the conference last year.

"Fuentes claims alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos made it happen," Lorber wrote of Greene's appearance. "Shortly before bringing up MTG, the camera showed a sizeable and raucous crowd. Fuentes praised 'our secret sauce...young white men.' Fuentes then solicited a round of applause for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, and the groyper crowd chanted 'Putin, Putin.'"

Conservative Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain, reacted on Twitter to Greene's appearance by noting that she is "more welcomed by Republican leadership than" Wyoming Republican Congressman Liz Cheney.

According to a report from the Daily Beast earlier this week, the AFPAC conference is "meant to showcase (the white nationalist) movement’s numbers and its successes courting Republican Party influence in the post-Capitol riot landscape."

"CPAC regularly attracts and courts large groups of young conservatives from around the country, offering them networking and job-hunting opportunities," the Daily Beast reported. "Fuentes’ evident strategy is to siphon away an amount of those young faces to his burgeoning hate movement in hopes of strong-arming the conservative movement more broadly toward an unapologetic far-right bent."

More below.

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Donald Trump's declining popularity among Republicans presents a "rare opportunity," according to comedian Bill Maher, and Democrats should take advantage by showing "graciousness" toward former MAGA fans.

"Finally, there are signs that the Trump fever is starting to break," Maher said during the New Rules segment of his HBO Real Time show on Friday. "Attendance is down at his rallies, and his press release brain farts don't make news like they once did with the tweets. When he brays for attention, now it feels like Madonna singing, 'B*tch, I'm Madonna.' If you have to say it, maybe you ain't 'it' anymore."

Maher pointed to poll numbers from October 2020, when 54 percent of Republicans said they were more loyal to Trump than the party, compared to 38 percent who chose the party over Trump. But now, Maher said, those numbers have essentially flipped.

"OK, this can't all be coming from the raw animal magnetism of Mitch McConnell," he said, adding that polls show Trump's support declining in key groups like "people without college degrees" and "white evangelicals."

"That is a description of the very people who made him a star in politics — men, people over 65, Jesus freaks and white guys who didn't go to college," Maher said. "But more and more even the poorly educated are looking at Trump with a mixture anger and 'what the f*ck was I thinking?' Even the QAnon shaman is now saying he was duped by Trump. "

Maher noted that two-thirds of Republicans now approve of former Vice President Mike Pence certifying the 2020 electoral votes, before playing clips of McConnell and Pence condemning the Capitol insurrection and Trump's effort to overturn the election.

"OK, something must be shifting if gutless wonders like Pence and McConnell are daring to say out loud, finally, that the emperor has no clue," Maher said.

"The question now is for Democrats, how are you going to handle that?" he said. "Trump's bond with his supporters is hatred for people they think look down on them. Now that these supporters are wavering, let's not nudge them back into Trump's embrace by showing no graciousness."

"That'll drive them right back into Trump's arms," he said. "We've all had a friend who dated a psycho, and when they come to their senses, the last thing they want to talk about is how they dated a psycho. It took Trump voters a long time to make it all the way down the MAGA rabbit hole. To jump on them the second they poke their head out would ensure many more years of political winter. Instead of saying, 'Nice work, you stupid racist sh*tkicker, maybe try, 'How you been? Welcome back to the wonderful world of reality. You got taken by a salesman, happens to all of us.' And don't talk politics at all. ... Little things that will make them think, hey, maybe Democrats don't all eat babies."

Maher pointed to positive examples from history when U.S. leaders showed grace toward defeated enemies, such as President Abraham Lincoln after the Civil War and President Harry Truman after World War II. He noted that after World War II, the U.S. staged wrestling matches in Japan between American and Japanese wrestlers, making sure to sometimes portray the American wrestler as "the bad guy." This provided a huge morale boost to the Japanese, Maher said, and indirectly led to the TV industry that made the country an economic powerhouse.

"Even though we dropped nuclear bombs on them, so much was forgotten simply by letting their wrestler kick our wrestler in the nuts," Maher said. "We need hugs, nots smugs, and if that means having to swallow the impulse of saying 'I told you so' and take a couple of fake kicks to the groin, well then I regret that I have but two nuts to give for my country."

Watch below.

Real Time with Bill Maher 02/25/2022 | Real Time with Bill Maher HBO (February 25th 2022) FULL NEW www.youtube.com

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Former president Donald Trump's praise for Russian president Vladimir Putin leading up to the Ukraine invasion is like "manna from heaven for (President Joe) Biden," according to one expert.

"Democrats decried Trump's praise this week for Putin's 'savvy' and his 'genius' tactics in Ukraine as 'undermining national security' and 'near treasonous,'" Insider reported Friday. "But his statements also represent 'a great opportunity for Democrats,' Democratic pollster Celinda Lake wrote in an email to Insider."

"It reveals Biden to be a strong, patriotic leader," Lake told the site. "And Trump to be a self-centered politician who will sacrifice anything for his own advancement."

Lake also noted that most older Americans won't side with Russia, and said Trump is reminding people of his "dangerous ties" to Russia.

Democratic pollster Brad Bannon agreed, saying that from a political standpoint, "it's manna from Heaven for Biden."

"Here you've got Putin invading a fledgling democracy that can't defend itself," Bannon said. "And meanwhile, you have the most prominent and visible Republicans in the country, you know, taking Putin's side and so it's a major political hit against the Republicans."

Democratic strategist Joe Trippi said, "I think Trump did amazing damage to himself."

Read the full story.

A golden statue of Donald Trump at this week's Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando reflected the former president's "supreme reign" over the event — despite "auditions for the MAGA mantle" by other 2024 GOP hopefuls," according to the Daily Beast.

"Trump’s presence loomed large throughout the confab even before he was scheduled to deliver Saturday evening’s keynote address," the site reported Friday. "Throughout the conference’s main hall, exhibitors prominently displayed Trump’s likeness to sell their products, including a large golden statue of the former president hawking Patriot Mobile, 'America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider,' along with the usual assortment of MAGA wares including hand-stitched hammocks embroidered with Trump’s name and '45.'"

Meanwhile, rumored presidential hopefuls including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "pitch(ed) their own vision for America—to an audience that seemingly only wanted to live in Trump’s," according to the Daily Beast.

One CPAC attendee, 76-year-old rancher William Riggle, told the site he made the hour-long drive from Volusia County to see DeSantis, whom he has long supported, speak on Thursday. But Riggle "wasn’t sure he could bear a potential battle between Trump and the Florida governor in 2024."

“Donald Trump has done so much for this country and he's sacrificed so much,” Riggle told the Daily Beast. “We are blessed to have him. If you’re asking me is a toss-up between the two, I really don't have an answer for that.”

Read the full story.

Trump adviser Steve Bannon claims he's not guilty of contempt for defying Jan. 6 subpoenas because he was acting on an attorney's advice.

"His lawyers advised him not to show up for his interview with congressional staff or turn over the requested material because former President Trump wanted to claim executive privilege," CBS News reported Friday, noting that Trump's claims of executive privilege have since been rejected by multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a court filing Friday in the criminal case against Bannon for contempt, his attorneys wrote, "Reliance on advice of counsel fundamentally negates guilt."

But federal prosecutors disagree, saying Bannon's "purported reliance on his counsel's erroneous advice otherwise is no defense to the crime charged."

"The deliberate failure to comply with a congressional subpoena—regardless of motivation—constitutes the crime of contempt," prosecutors wrote.

According to CBS News, the filings are a potential preview of arguments during Bannon's trial, which is set for July.

"Bannon's attorneys wrote Friday that (Bannon lawyer Steve) Costello asked the House committee to delay proceedings while the executive privilege question made its way through the courts, but the committee refused," the network reported. "The November indictment out of the U.S. attorney's office in Washington, D.C. alleges that Bannon 'made no substantive submission for the Select Committee's deliberations, did not produce documents and communications, did not provide a log of withheld records, did not certify that he had conducted a diligent search for responsive records, did not appear for a deposition, and did not comply with the subpoena in any way.'"

Read the full story.

Republican Party canvassers tricked more than 100 South Florida voters — many of them elderly and/or immigrants — into switching their party affiliation to the GOP last year, according to a bombshell investigative report published Friday by the Miami Herald.

The newspaper sent a team of reporters to eight low-income housing projects in Hialeah and Little Havana, where voter registration data showed unusually high numbers of switching from one party to another.

"The reporters knocked on every door where someone’s party affiliation had changed," according to the Herald. "Four out of every five voters who spoke to the Herald — 141 in total — said that their party affiliation had been changed without their knowledge. In all but six cases, records show they were registered as Republicans by canvassers from the Republican Party of Florida."

The average age of the residents was 76, and many of them were first-generation immigrants from Cuba or Latin American countries, the newspaper reported. One election attorney called it "elder abuse."

READ MORE: Georgia Republican implicates Trump campaign in scheme to install fake electors during Jan. 6 testimony

"Many described being misled by canvassers who said they needed a new voter ID card, to update their addresses or to verify their signatures," the Herald reported.

Some victims have reportedly given statements to the State Attorney's Office in Miami as part of a criminal investigation of voter fraud. Submitting false registration information is a third-degree felony.

One former Republican strategist who has since left the party said he believes the GOP may have switched the registrations "to reinforce the idea that South Florida’s Hispanic voters were fleeing the Democratic Party." Many of the voters live in a state Senate district that was won by a Republican by 32 votes, and was also at the center of a "ghost candidate" scheme.

Former Florida GOP Congressman David Jolly, who has since left the party, called on Gov. Ron DeSantis — who wants to create a special police force to oversee elections — to launch an investigation.

“For a governor who believes election integrity is a major problem, there is no greater opportunity to prove that than to come down on the Republicans in South Florida who appear to have done this,” Jolly said. “If Ron DeSantis is serious about voter fraud in the state of Florida, he’d be the leading voice on this."

"What occurred, based on your findings, is one of the two major parties in Florida switched voter registrations to benefit itself in an election, regardless of how far up in the party hierarchy that knowledge went,” Jolly told the newspaper. “That is graft. That is fraud.”

DeSantis office declined to comment on the results of the newspaper's investigation.

Read the full story.