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Senate Republicans removed funding for security upgrades to President Trump's White House ballroom from their immigration package after the provision threatened the entire legislative effort, according to revised text released Wednesday

The Senate parliamentarian had determined the ballroom language violated specific budgetary requirements, which would have allowed Democrats to filibuster the bill and block $70 billion in ICE and border patrol funding, and Senate GOP leaders acknowledged the provision was procedurally problematic and politically risky, reported CNN.

Some Republican senators also expressed concern that allocating funds for the ballroom while Americans faced cost-of-living pressures ahead of midterm elections would project an out-of-touch image.

The original Senate GOP text included nearly $1 billion for "security adjustments and upgrades" to the White House ballroom and related security measures following the spring assassination attempt against Trump.

Administration officials attempted to clarify that approximately $200 million would fund the East Wing project, with remaining funds directed toward other security initiatives.

The revised bill now proceeds without the controversial ballroom security provision.

The mood in farm country is sour, and Democrats are betting that anger boils over at the ballot box in November.

Tariffs have battered agriculture-heavy economy in Iowa, which Donald Trump carried by 13 points just 18 months ago, while Medicaid cuts have shuttered rural health clinics across the state and the Iran war has driven up the cost of fertilizer and diesel — the lifeblood of farm country — pushing some farmers to delay essential purchases until prices became unavoidable, and Politico reported that voters there have had enough.

"We're leading the nation in farm foreclosures," said Josh Turek, the Democratic nominee for Iowa's U.S. Senate seat, speaking after winning his primary Tuesday. "Farm suicide rates skyrocketing. And so the Trump signs and Trump flags are coming down, because they say we've been betrayed."

The sense of disillusionment is spreading beyond Democratic circles. Drew Klein of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative advocacy group, issued a stark warning to his own side. "If voters do not trust Republican elected officials and candidates with the future of the economy, they're not going to vote for them this November," Klein said.

Iowa farmers — a traditionally Republican-leaning bloc — voted heavily for Trump, but the trade wars and tariffs have hit them particularly hard.

Aaron Heley Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union and a fifth-generation farmer, said the pain is widespread and cutting deep. "People are feeling a lot of pain right now and not seeing a lot of action to match rhetoric," he said.

Democrats are now targeting Senate and governor's races simultaneously for the first time since 1968, as well as three of the state's four House seats, and they sense an opening that Trump helped create.

“It feels different,” Sarah Trone Garriott, the Democratic challenger to Rep. Zach Nunn (R-IA) who won her primary Tuesday. “I have been one of the only [Democrats] to win in those years, and that felt pretty lonely. But this feels really good.”

President Donald Trump's top federal prosecutor in Nevada has repeatedly bypassed Justice Department ethics rules, launched investigations to benefit personal associates, and targeted a political rival, according to three sources with direct knowledge of her conduct.

Sigal Chattah, who has led the U.S. Attorney's Office in Nevada for 14 months, is alleged to have intervened in active cases on behalf of friends and former clients, sought status updates on matters from which she had been formally recused, and pushed the FBI to open investigations based on tips from personal acquaintances, reported Bloomberg.

“It’s charitable to call it chaos,” said Rick Pocker, who served as Nevada U.S. attorney under President George H. W. Bush. “I don’t think she quite understands how you’re not supposed to use that office for personal or political purposes.”

Many of those requests were rebuffed by senior FBI and Justice Department officials — but those officials have since departed, raising concerns that Chattah will face fewer checks on her behavior going forward.

“It represents the worst of a small-town politician or mayor,” said Michael Green, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas history professor. “It has to be difficult for people in her office who argue these cases — even if they share her views. If I’m on the other side, I think, ‘Yeah, you’re hurting yourself. Go for it.’”

Perhaps the most striking allegation involves Aaron Ford, the Democratic Nevada attorney general who defeated Chattah in a bitter 2022 campaign for that office. Just 18 days into her federal tenure, Chattah publicized an investigation into a broadband company, with two people briefed on the matter saying the probe was designed to implicate Ford. During that 2022 race, Chattah wrote in a leaked text message that Ford, who is Black, "should be hanging from a f------ crane."

A federal court has already ruled Chattah's appointment invalid on procedural grounds, and despite assurances to the court that she would stop supervising cases during her appeal, three sources familiar with the matter say she has continued to do so.

Staff attrition has been severe. The office, which typically employs more than 100 attorneys, is now operating at roughly two-thirds strength. The Reno branch, covering 13 of Nevada's 17 counties, is set to be left with no prosecutors at all as its final two attorneys prepare to leave.

Chattah invited MAGA lawyer Mike Davis to address her staff in Las Vegas on May 13 and made attendance mandatory, according to two sources.

“I hope that causes controversy and makes heads explode,” Davis told Steve Bannon on a podcast two days before the appearance.

“Oh my god, she’s the best,” Bannon replied. “She’s the warrior queen out in Nevada.”

The Justice Department declined to address specific allegations, saying only that the office had charged 15 percent more cases than the previous year.

Mike Pence faced some pushback on CNN in his defense of President Donald Trump's policy priorities.

Trump's former vice president appeared Wednesday morning on "CNN News Central" to promote his new book, "What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience," and he justified some of the president's policies, including tariffs, that he personally did not support.

"Look, the president comes by his support for tariffs honestly," Pence said. "I mean, he has supported broad-based tariffs throughout his career. Now, during our administration, we use tariffs as a means of leverage, the threat of tariffs. That's how we renegotiated NAFTA, that's how we we renegotiated a trade deal with South Korea, and we're working on trade deals around the world before we left office. But this administration is different with the 'liberation day' tariffs against friend and foe alike. The Supreme Court turned them back."

Pence pointed out the U.S. Trade Representative announced another round of tariffs this week, and host Kate Bolduan interjected.

"No one's making Trump do anything, right?" she said. "I mean, Donald Trump is supercharging that populism."

Pence disagreed and suggested that outside voices were nudging Trump toward right-wing populism.

"He comes by that very honestly, he really does," Pence said. "But I would tell you, this new cabinet, that new voices, I mean, the idea of literally having the federal government take a percentage share of American businesses would have, I think, never even been discussed in the first Trump administration, and it comes from the outside."

Bolduan interjected again to fact check the former vice president.

"He's so excited about it," Bolduan said. "He just said in an interview he wished he'd taken a bigger stake in it."

Pence chuckled and begged to differ.

"I get that, I understand it, but the point that I make in the book is that Republicans have always believed in limited government and free market economics, in free enterprise," he said. "Those policies, big government policies that have made their way into this administration are at odds with that long-standing tradition, but here's the thing I would say to you, there's no question in my mind that the president remains the leader of the Republican Party and Republican primary voters."

The former vice president praised Trump's success in getting his favored candidates elected in GOP primaries around the country.

"I think that comes from the fact that Republicans are grateful that for 10 years, Donald Trump has been willing to fight the radical left," Pence said. "He did it during our years and through the lawfare times of the Biden administration and since."

Bolduan pointed out that Pence's book explicitly was intended to nudge the Republican Party back to its pre-Trump norms, and asked what part of the MAGA agenda he did not want to endure.

"I want a lot of it to endure," Pence insisted. "Look, I love my country, I want to see the president be successful. But what I don't want to see is people on the populist right conflating the president's personal popularity with with a new agenda that's far afield from the conservative agenda, and that's where I why I wrote 'What Conservatives Believe.'"

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The U.S. Supreme Court is entering its most consequential month in years with a series of significant decisions on the horizon, according to CNN's reporting.

The court is weighing 26 decisions expected to be decided by the end of June, and the Trump administration has taken an active role in all but one of those, and CNN reported that an explosive confrontation is looming.

"The Supreme Court is facing an extraordinary showdown with Donald Trump as the justices scramble to finish more than two dozen opinions before the end of the month — with a president who will lash out if any decisions don’t go his way," the network reported. "All of it will play out amid an odd political dynamic with the president, who has made clear he will use his bully pulpit to strike out at the court in unusually harsh terms if he loses."

The 79-year-old president made history as the first sitting president to attend an oral argument, although he left about 90 minutes later, and he has buttered up the court's conservatives by inviting them to a state dinner with King Charles III and publicly praised the justices who attended the swearing-in of Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh.

“This court has a long-term ideological project and some of these cases are squarely within it,” said Ben Wizner, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “But I do think the court has lines, and I think we’ve seen some of those already.”

At the center of the docket are cases examining Trump's power to dismiss officials at independent federal agencies. In one, Trump is seeking to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, over alleged mortgage fraud — a claim Cook denies. In another, he is attempting to remove Rebecca Slaughter from the Federal Trade Commission, arguing presidents should not need to show cause before dismissing such officials. Oral arguments suggested the court may be more receptive to Trump's position in the FTC case than in the Fed dispute, which justices appear to view as constitutionally distinct given the central bank's historic economic role.

Also before the court is Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship — the principle, enshrined in the 14th Amendment and affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1898, that anyone born on American soil is a citizen. The administration argues that precedent has been misread for over a century. Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back sharply during arguments, noting that while the world may have changed, "it's the same Constitution." Trump, anticipating defeat, has already taken to social media to pre-emptively condemn the expected ruling.

On guns, the court appears ready to narrow a federal law barring drug users from owning firearms — putting the administration in the unusual position of opposing the NRA. On transgender rights, the justices are weighing state bans on trans girls competing in girls' sports, with signals pointing toward upholding them.

Perhaps most consequential for November's midterm elections are cases on campaign spending limits and mail-in ballot deadlines. Rulings favorable to Republican positions in both could reshape how Americans vote and how campaigns are funded for years to come.

The Trump administration has diverted at least $90 million in national park entry fees to fund Washington, D.C., beautification projects, including a $1.6 million Fourth of July fireworks display and $76 million to repair city fountains, according to internal National Park Service documents.

The redirection of funds — more than five times the usual expenditure on the annual fireworks celebration — comes as America's park system labors under a $24 billion backlog of deferred maintenance, reported the Washington Post, and critics say the spending priorities represent a dramatic and troubling departure from how park fee revenue has traditionally been allocated.

“That is not how it was designed to work,” said Ed Stierli, a senior director overseeing the Mid-Atlantic region for the National Parks Conservation Association. “It shouldn’t just be all at one park at the expense of the entire national park system.”

Internal documents show that as of late May, the Park Service had approved roughly $105 million in fee money for fiscal year 2026 to be spent on the National Capital Region, compared to just $27 million approved for all other parks combined nationwide. The spending is tied in part to preparations for the 250th anniversary of American independence.

Specific expenditures include more than $13 million on the Lafayette Square Fountain in front of the White House, $5.7 million on the Simón Bolívar Memorial fountain and $47 million on other National Mall fountains. An additional $716,000 from park fees is being used to relocate a statue of Caesar Rodney — a founding father who enslaved hundreds of people — to Washington's Freedom Plaza.

“We viewed America’s 250th as a tide that was going to raise all boats,” Stierli said. "We were hoping to see investments in cultural and historical sites around the country. … Now that could not be any further from our current reality.”

The spending squeeze is compounded by significant staff reductions. The administration has cut Park Service staffing by roughly a quarter — around 4,000 positions — contributing last year to longer visitor lines, closed campgrounds, reduced tours and shuttered restroom facilities.

The Interior Department defended the spending, with spokesperson Katie Martin saying contracts had been awarded properly and that the administration had been tackling deferred maintenance projects across the country. "While other administrations have let the city fall into decay, President Trump has made Washington, D.C., Safe and Beautiful again," Martin said.

Congressional funding authorized in 2020 to address the maintenance backlog expired in October 2025. A Senate reauthorization bill proposes $11 billion over eight years — still less than half of what the Park Service alone requires.

The newly operational Trump Presidential Library claims it cannot turn up a single Twitter direct message sent by Donald Trump during his first term in office — a striking claim given that court records confirm such messages exist.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Washington Post at 12:01 a.m. on January 20, 2025 — exactly five years after the end of Trump's first term — the library stated it had been "unable to locate any records" related to any direct message sent from Trump's @realDonaldTrump or @POTUS accounts. The request covered the entirety of his first administration, during which Trump sent more than 25,000 public tweets.

The no-records response stands in direct contradiction to evidence produced in federal court, the newspaper reported. During special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, Twitter complied with a warrant and handed over at least 32 direct messages sent to or from the @realDonaldTrump account between October 2020 and January 2021. A Twitter attorney confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that "there are confidential communications" in the account.

The gap between what the library claims and what the courts have documented raises serious questions about compliance with the Presidential Records Act — a law enacted in 1978 requiring departing presidents to transfer all official communications to the National Archives. The act explicitly covers messages sent via any software or application, including social media platforms.

Records show the failure to preserve Trump's direct messages was not accidental. A January 2021 government notice revealed plans to use ArchiveSocial software to capture presidential social media activity. However, then-Archivist David Ferriero confirmed in a 2022 letter to Congress that the Trump administration had "opted not to enable capture of direct messages" within that system.

The issue has been further complicated by the current Trump administration's aggressive posture against the Presidential Records Act itself. In April, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel published an opinion calling the law unconstitutional, arguing that Congress had overstepped its authority in passing it. White House counsel subsequently issued guidance telling staff that preserving text messages was only required when they represented the sole record of an official decision.

Legal challenges to that position are now before the federal courts, with a judge having already ordered the White House to comply with the law while litigation proceeds. The Washington Post has appealed the library's no-records response and requested a more thorough search.

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) blamed a staffer for a homophobic post that drew widespread condemnation, even from his own party.

The Tennessee Republican's account wished followers a “Happy Nuclear Family Month" a day after Pride Month began, and added that "homosexuality has no place in America," but he deleted the post after Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and former GOP congressman George Santos, who is openly gay, called him out.

“Homosexuality exists. In America,” Lawler posted on X. “In fact Andy, you have family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and constituents who are gay and lesbian. It doesn’t make them less than or somehow unworthy of being an American."

Ogles later posted on his account that he had been away from his office when a staffer made the post, but he did not apologize.

"Earlier today while working on the farm, my phone began going crazy because of a post made by a member of my comms team," Ogles posted. "The post was stupid, hurtful and a complete distraction from my America First focus. The employee has been reprimanded."

Other social media users expressed doubts and told Ogles, who has been widely criticized for similar social media posts about Muslims, that he seemed to be missing the bigger point.

"You have a staffer who thinks gay people shouldn’t be allowed to exist," pointed out political scientist Rachel Bitecofer.

"Everyone knows you posted it, you bigoted f---," seethed the Blue Georgia account.

"This is not an apology," added Democratic activist Seth Taylor. "You called the post 'stupid' and 'hurtful,' but you still haven’t said the one thing that matters: gay Americans have a place in America. Whether you wrote it or your staff wrote it, it came from your official account. Own it, apologize clearly, and say gay Tennesseans belong here too."

President Donald Trump has built his political brand on defying limits, but a series of high-profile reversals in recent days suggests that even he cannot indefinitely outrun the consequences of his most outlandish gambits.

The Trump administration signaled Monday that it plans to abandon its $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" following an adverse court ruling — a significant retreat on an initiative that had already sparked a revolt among Republican congressional leaders, and he beat a retreat on renaming the Kennedy Center after himself, reported CNN's Aaron Blake.

"In both situations, it remains up in the air precisely how much Trump has capitulated," Blake wrote. "But he’s at least telegraphing retreat. Both ideas were wild to begin with — and now the president appears to be dealing with the consequences."

On the so-called slush fund, Senate Majority Leader John Thune had called on the administration to "shut it down themselves," while other GOP senators demanded the White House explicitly rule out reviving the fund in the future.

The fund, created as part of a settlement resolving Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, was intended to compensate allies who claimed they were victimized by the Biden-era Justice Department. Critics — including a federal judge — questioned whether the two sides of the settlement were colluding, and the fund drew outrage when the administration acknowledged it could benefit Jan. 6 defendants who assaulted police officers.

That announcement followed Trump's Friday retreat on the Kennedy Center, where he said he would transfer control back to Congress after a judge ruled that plastering his name on a building memorializing a dead president was illegal. Trump had previously purged the center's board to install loyalists before the renaming — a move that a court found violated federal law.

The two reversals fit a pattern. Earlier this year, Trump abandoned his push to seize Greenland amid bipartisan opposition, and his plan to fund a lavish White House ballroom with taxpayer money was stripped from a spending bill after Republican panic over the optics.

"In all of these cases, Trump was asking the courts and/or Republicans to sign off on what seemed to be impossible requests," Blake wrote. "He was asking them to stomach something drastic because he’s Trump, and they’re supposed to do what he wants."

"But when his wild gambits push the envelope too far — and increasingly seem to jeopardize the GOP’s chances in November — they reinforce that Trump isn’t the unrestrained leader of his political movement that he’d like to be," Blake added.

Trump, for his part, shows no sign of moderating his ambitions — his appointment Tuesday of a controversial housing official as acting director of national intelligence suggested the envelope-pushing is far from over.

Seven Democratic-led states filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging the Trump administration's decision to pay nearly $1 billion in taxpayer funds to a French energy company to abandon plans for a major offshore wind project.

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, joined by the attorneys general of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont, challenging an agreement reached by the Department of Justice, reported the New York Times.

"This administration cooked up a sham deal to pay a foreign energy company hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to abandon offshore wind and invest in oil and gas instead," James said in a statement.

The lawsuit targets a March agreement in which the DOJ paid $928 million to TotalEnergies to surrender its lease for the Attentive Energy wind farm, a project 54 miles off Jones Beach that would have powered more than one million homes and businesses and supported over a thousand union jobs.

The states argue the deal was illegal on two counts. First, the Justice Department used the Judgment Fund — a congressional account designed to settle lawsuits against the federal government — even though TotalEnergies had never sued the United States. Second, the administration allegedly bypassed the required hearings and review process mandated under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act before canceling an offshore wind lease.

In exchange for the payout, TotalEnergies pledged to redirect the money toward U.S. oil and gas infrastructure, a priority of the Trump administration, but it's not clear whether that investment will produce any new projects beyond those already in the works.

The president has opposed offshore wind since at least 2012, when he unsuccessfully tried to block a wind project visible from one of his Scottish golf courses. His administration has pursued multiple strategies to dismantle the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, including a December halt to East Coast construction orders that federal judges later struck down.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Timothy Mellon, a banking heir and major financial backer of both President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., donated two sprawling Connecticut properties valued at $5.5 million to the anti-vaccine organization founded by the Health and Human Services secretary.

Property records show the donation, made in August, transferred approximately 300 acres in Lyme, featuring a pool, tennis court, and multiple buildings, to Children's Health Defense, although it's not clear what the New Jersey-based organization intends to do with the property, reported the New York Times.

"In a text message to The New York Times, Mr. Mellon, who cultivates an aura of distance and mystery, said the donation was none of its business and declined to comment," the newspaper reported. "Children’s Health Defense did not respond to requests for comment, nor did its president, Mary Holland."

The properties sit at the confluence of the Connecticut and Eightmile Rivers. Mellon, 83, retained access to parts of the estate, including a family cemetery, and agreed to cover maintenance and improvement costs through a Wyoming-based limited liability company.

The transaction demonstrates the deepening financial and ideological connections between Mellon and Kennedy. During the 2024 election cycle, Mellon contributed $150 million to Trump's super PAC and $25 million to Kennedy's super PAC. He was also reported to be the anonymous donor who gave $130 million to the government during last year's shutdown to pay military salaries.

Children's Health Defense generates between $15 million and $23 million annually in revenue, according to tax filings. The organization, originally called the World Mercury Project when Kennedy joined in 2015, has aggressively promoted vaccine misinformation, including unproven claims linking vaccines to autism.

Kennedy's financial ties to the organization extend beyond his leadership role. He received a salary from the group, was paid by a law firm handling its work, and donated book sale proceeds to it. He and Mellon share publisher Skyhorse Publishing, whose founder sits on Children's Health Defense's board.

Kennedy stepped down as chairman in December 2024 before his confirmation hearings. In his resignation letter, he praised the organization's work "defending the health and rights of children."

The Trump administration is pushing deep into new territory in its immigration crackdown, moving beyond deportations to target the citizenship of naturalized Americans in a campaign that legal experts warn could ultimately be weaponized against political opponents.

The Justice Department has filed more denaturalization cases in the last 16 months than were filed across all four years of the Biden administration, according to federal data, and attorneys general offices across the country have been tasked with identifying hundreds of additional targets, reported NPR.

Department leaders pressuring lawyers to generate cases quickly — sometimes by scanning news stories and social media posts – and while the cases filed so far largely involve serious criminal conduct like drug trafficking, child sexual abuse, terrorism-related activity and war crimes, legal scholars say the infrastructure being built around this effort is far more alarming than any individual case.

"Once it becomes easy to take somebody's citizenship away — it becomes easy to take anybody's citizenship away," warned Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University who has studied denaturalization.

What makes the program particularly troubling to civil liberties advocates is how little protection defendants have. In civil denaturalization proceedings, Americans are not entitled to appointed counsel if they cannot afford it. There is no statute of limitations, meaning the government can reach back decades for evidence, and several cases reviewed by NPR were resolved with little or no court appearance by the defendant.

The administration has also signaled the program could expand beyond criminals. Trump and administration officials have publicly threatened the citizenship of political figures including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar — comments Robertson calls evidence of a real risk of "political retribution."

A former DOJ attorney who spent nearly a decade in the office that handles these cases said the mandate under Trump has shifted dramatically. Where lawyers once had discretion to pursue only strong cases, they are now directed to go after anyone potentially eligible — including those with minor paperwork errors or immaterial discrepancies.

"The retaliatory nature of this administration and using the law in any type of legal maneuvering to go after its enemies — that is a serious concern of mine," the former DOJ attorney said, speaking anonymously for fear of government retaliation.

Legal experts note that federal judges — not administration-controlled immigration courts — still oversee these cases, providing some check on potential abuse, but with hundreds of cases now in the pipeline, that guardrail may soon face its first serious test.

A foreign policy expert raised alarms that President Donald Trump has been fantasizing about using nuclear weapons.

The president will turn 80 years old in two weeks and has shown signs of age-related health issues, according to The Daily Beast's David Rothkopf, and he flagged evidence that Trump is itching to unleash a nuclear weapon as he nears the end of his life.

"He can't stand up," said Rothkopf, founder and CEO of TRG Media and The Rothkopf Group. "When he was standing with XI Jinping, his legs were played in three different directions. He could, you know, he can't walk at the same pace. He can't hold himself up. You know, he only goes short distances. He gives long speeches, and he has to prop himself up on the podium in a way, you know, that reveals that he is losing it physically. So I don't think there's any doubt about it now, and he's 80. Should we be surprised?"

"He's had a good life and he should be at Mar-a-Lago sitting by the pool, having a margarita, talking to his friends about things he used to do," Rothkopf added. "Unfortunately, he is a disturbed, sick lunatic who holds the most powerful job in the world and is at a stage of his existence where, because he's a narcissist, the only thing he cares about himself, and if every single one of us ceased to exist, he wofuldn't care because the world is him."

Aside from his apparent pathologies, Rothkopf pointed to other evidence that Trump is considering the unthinkable.

"There are other things we don't talk about," he said. "Look at the defense budget, where there's hundreds of billions of dollars in there for new nuclear weapons programs, where he wants to have nukes that he can use that are more usable, that, you know, these building, he thinks he can build a 'golden dome.' He thinks he can build a White House bunker where he can be safe, and yet people on the roof can be firing at people down the streets of Washington."

"This guy's got some dark fantasies," Rothkopf added, "and in all of those fantasies, the role we play is victim, and that's scariest s---."

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A culture war conservative got an abrupt fact check on foreign policy from President Donald Trump's former ambassador to the European Union.

Anti-trans crusader Terry Schilling appeared Tuesday on "CNN This Morning," where he joined a panel discussion on the U.S. president's reportedly profane confrontation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the bombing campaign in Lebanon, and he argued that Trump was facing pressure to end his war in Iran.

"This is what happens when you get $5 a gallon for gas," Schilling said. "Republicans are very frustrated. We did not vote for this at all, and I think a lot of the discrepancy is coming because Trump's trying to get a peace deal. He's trying to tone this down and get out of this, and meanwhile take away Iran's nukes. But Israel doesn't want Iran to exist, right? That's the reality, and that's why they keep doing these things and screwing up our peace talks. But you're going to see that number continue to tick up the longer this conflict goes on, and that's why it's very important that President Trump gets –"

Gordon Sondland, the former EU ambassador, stepped in to correct Schilling.

"I don't agree with that at all," Sondland said. "You're saying Israel does not want Iran to exist? Israel very much wants Iran to exist as a partnership. What they don't want is the clerical regime to exist.

The smile drained from Schilling's face as the ambassador continued his lesson on geopolitics.

"There are about 90 million people in Iran, and about 88 million of them would love to be a peaceful partner of Israel," Sondland said. "The 2 million that don't happen to have all the money and the weapons."

Schilling attempted to save face after straying outside his depth.

"Well, I think actions speak louder than words," Schilling said. "I'll defer to you. You are the foreign policy expert. But I think that there's a lot of really bad things that we're seeing coming out of this entire conflict, and the quicker we can get out of it, I think the better it is going to be for our country and for the future of America."

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