Travis Gettys

Vice President JD Vance is using his apparent abundance of free time to forge a path to eventually taking over from President Donald Trump, according to MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire.

Jimmy Kimmel fired back at Vance – whom he mocked as “Vice President Maybelline” – in his monologue Monday night, showing a clip of him downplaying the administration's role in getting his talk show briefly suspended, and "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough wondered about the vice president's actual job duties.

"It's crazy, you've got a vice president who's basically troller-in-chief," Scarborough said. "We hardly ever say somebody is lying, somebody is not telling the truth. So many of his statements just demand it because they are so false. You know, like, his, you know, his claim a couple of weeks ago that everybody knows there's more violence on the left politically, then, it's just – everybody knows that's a lie: 75 percent of violence, political violence over the past 20 years has come, you know, it comes from the right."

"If you're talking about domestic terrorism, and that's like Cato [Institute], the Koch brothers, their studies show that, 'CSIS' shows that," he added. "But there's one statement after another statement that's just detached from reality, and I don't know, did you think somebody told him be troller-in-chief?"

Scarborough noted that Vance seems to pick fights with various social media users on a regular basis, and Lemire said the vice president waded into arguments with individuals who weren't necessarily public figures.

"Sometimes just random people or, like, Substack authors," Lemire said. "It's a Washington joke about the lack of responsibilities [for] the office of the vice presidency. But JD Vance clearly has a lot of time on his hands because his number one job description appears to be to, whether doing interviews or particularly on social media, not only pushing forth, you know, false statements, but just picking fights, and I've been told that he sees that, you know, social media obviously worked part of Donald Trump's rise."

"He sees that could be a similar path for him as he is jockeying with others for the MAGA mantle to be Trump's heir apparent," Lemire added. "But it is striking how much time Vance seems to have to just do exactly this, to tweet. He seems to be on his phone all hours of the day."

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President Donald Trump veered off topic during a speech to military commanders with a brief song-and-dance about walking carefully down stairs.

The president joined Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who ordered hundreds of top U.S. military leaders to leave their posts around the world for an unprecedented gathering at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, where Trump spoke for nearly an hour and 15 minutes about a variety of topics – including launching several attacks against former President Joe Biden.

"These were the Washington generals, and I call them the television generals, but 'Raising' [Gen. Dan] Caine did it in four weeks, took out 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate," he said.

"As a result of these actions and many others since my inauguration, we're witnessing the triumphant return of peace through strength. We have great peace through strength, and America is respected as a country, and we were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling down stairs, and every day that guy is falling downstairs, and they said it is not our president and we cannot have it."

"I'm very careful when I walked down stairs, and I go down stairs, like these stairs, I walk very slowly," he added. "Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall, because it doesn't work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became part of their legacy – we don't like that. You do not have to set any record. You have to walk nice and easy, you don't have to set any record. Be cool, be cool when you walk down, but don't bop down the stairs."

He then went on to praise another predecessor, Barack Obama, for his nimble negotiations of stairways — punctuated with some rhythmic scat singing and some dance moves.

"That is one thing with Obama," Trump said. "I have zero respect for him as a president but he would bop down those stairs [like] I've never seen – da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He'd go down the stairs, wouldn't hold on, and I said, that's great. I wouldn't want to do it. I guess I could do it, but eventually bad things are going to happen, and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president."

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sparked concerns with his unusual order summoning hundreds of military commanders to Virginia for an all-hands meeting — but it the speech by President Donald Trump that left onlookers really confused.

The president and his Pentagon chief pledged to end "woke" and "politically correct" policies they believe had undermined military readiness, but neither speech seemed to justify the extraordinary order summoning the top brass from posts around the world to a Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, in the eyes of many observers.

"Pete Hegseth has recalled America's top military leaders from around the world for a meeting that's livestreamed on Fox," said the Capitol Hunters account. "It truly could have been a Zoom call."

"It’s really funny that Hegseth’s little GI Joe fantasy league speech was met with… silence," noted writer Roxane Gay.

"I didn’t want America to go fascist. I think that is very bad," posted Nicholas Grossman, international relations professor at University of Illinois. "But I take some solace in the fact that we got such stupid, petty fascists, the sort who order an in-person meeting of military leaders not to execute a large-scale purge, but to make them listen to him wax philosophical about gender."

"I'm still thinking it out but it sort of feels like this is the only form a fascist project could take in the America of this century," replied Bluesky user First Wordle Problems. Entirely phony and aspirational, assembled from bits of popular culture and popular pyschology. With no mass following committed to it in any real way."

"Hegseth complained about fatties and beardos, and now Trump is bragging about the quality of stationary [sic] he uses," added historian Kevin Kruse. "Their 'warrior ethos' is all about appearances, nothing more. Which is ironic because Trump looks and sounds like a-- here."

"Trump is now saying (and I am not making this up) that the U.S. should build more battleships because of a black-and-white movie he likes," wrote journalist Philip Bump. "Trump notes than in World War II they were building a ship a day but we don't build ships anymore. Does he … not realize that the military needs of 2025 are different than those of 1945?"

"Everything else aside (and it’s a lot) he sounds 100 years old," noted MSNBC's Chris Hayes.

"A serving member of the military might be court-martialed for saying in public what Trump did here," argued journalist James Fallows, reacting to Trump disclosing the U.S. had recently deployed a nuclear submarine near Russia. "The entire *point* of super-quiet submarines is that adversaries do not know where they are. Navy goes to extreme lengths to conceal any clues to their location."

"Bombing my big stand-up special in front of a totally silent room of generals," joked writer David J. Roth. "'What else, what else. Bagram Air Force Base, we're going to do that again, okay? And we're going to do it the right way: through specific types of tattoos, and haircuts.'"

"Trump opens with a threat to the generals: 'I've never walked into a room so silent … Have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud ... If you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future. but you just feel nice and loose,'" noted MSNBC producer Kyle Griffith.

"There have been a lot of rubicons crossed, norms destroyed, principles abandoned, ideals betrayed over the past 10 months but this seems like a truly significant turning point," added historian Paul Cohen.

"Pathetic," sighed writer Gary Legum, reacting to Hegseth's remarks. "Just a pathetic, weak coward overcompensating for his deep insecurities."

"We all know this 'warfighters' talk isn't about convincing our military to do anything except kill more civilians, specifically American civilians," argued the LOLGOP account. "That's the only new thing here."

"If I were a would-be dictator whose only civilian check on power had been consumed by total-complete partisan loyalty, something I would definitely do is call an unprecedented in-person meeting of the only people who could stop me and then proceed to illustrate why they should stop me," wrote journalist Timothy Burke.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's euphemistic applause line landed with a thud before an audience of top military brass — and the awkward pause did not go unnoticed on social media.

The defense secretary ordered hundreds of U.S. military leaders from around the world for an unusual gathering in Quantico, Virginia, where the former Fox News host regaled them with a pep talk on the "warrior ethos" he believes is currently lacking. A particular portion of the speech stood out to observers.

"Should our enemies choose foolishly to challenge us, they will be crushed by the violence, precision, and ferocity of the War Department," Hegseth said. "To our enemies, FAFO."

Hegseth spelled out the abbreviation, which is a genteelism for the phrase, "f--k around and find out," then paused for a moment surveying the room.

It remained silent – save for one audible "woohoo" – in keeping with Pentagon rules regarding speeches by military commanders.

"If necessary, our troops can translate that for you," the secretary added.

Social media users reacted to the content of Hegseth's speech and the reaction in the room.

“'To our enemies: FAFO,'" said the widely followed Tennessee Holler account. "Holds for applause that doesn’t come. Cringey awkward moment as Hegseth summons all generals to hear him do a one-man show about how strong we are."

"Him spelling out FAFO instead of saying f--k around and find out is parody," agreed Bluesky user Earl Verdant. "That he followed it with a pause and a grin like he was expecting applause is beyond parody."

"So he def keeps dropping lines he expects applause for and in the clips I watched there's dead silence every time. Has he gotten a zilch reaction the whole speech?" noted tech consultant Aram Zucker-Scharff. "A single person gives a lackluster cheer for FAFO."

"Enjoying myself imagining the thousand yard stares that all the four star generals must be greeting this with," posted The Atlantic's Helen Lewis.

"Major ROFL says FAFO. China responds YOLO. Rest of the world FUBAR," replied Bluesky user lucidbeaming.

"This is, no exaggeration, some of the most loser s--t i have ever seen in my life," said New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie.

"These clips from the secretary’s speech have the same energy as a 9 year old boy who decided to start a secret club and is explaining to his friends why they should all call themselves 'the vipers' from now on," quipped Vox's Elias Isquith.

President Donald Trump went on a midnight gloat after winning a massive settlement with YouTube over his post-Jan. 6 ban from the video platform.

After YouTube agreed to pay him $24.5 million, all of the Big Tech companies have now settled lawsuits the president filed against them in 2021 over bans imposed in the wake of the deadly U.S. Capitol riot. Trump shared an AI-generated post calling for other conservatives to be paid for their own bans from social media platforms.

"YouTube SURRENDERS! Pays Trump $24.5 MILLION for illegal ban!" Trump's post on Truth Social reads, along with an emergency siren emoji and an image of a smiling Trump and what appears to be YouTube CEO Neal Mohan holding an oversized check. "This MASSIVE victory proves Big Tech censorship has consequences. Every shadowbanned patriot deserves justice!"

The House Judiciary Committee, led by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), published multiple reports on alleged efforts to suppress conservative viewpoints on social media, but Twitter owner Elon Musk allowed Trump and other banned right-wing accounts back onto the platform after he bought the company and renamed it X.

"Trump fought for free speech and won!" the post adds. "Repost if ALL banned conservatives should be paid!"

Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, agreed in January to pay $25 million after similar bans, with most of that sum going to Trump's presidential library. X agreed to pay $10 million, with most of it going directly to the president.

Executives at Google, which owns YouTube, had hoped to keep their settlement below the amount paid by rival Meta. About $22 million from the amount toward a nonprofit fund set up to pay for construction of a ballroom at the White House.

Another $2.5 million will go to other plaintiffs on the case, including the American Conservative Union and writer Naomi Wolf.

The Trump administration apparently engaged in its own suppression of speech earlier this month when Federal Communication Commission Chairman Brendan Carr publicly pressured ABC to drop talk show host Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made about slain right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, but the late-night host returned to the airwaves a week later in the face of public backlash.

President Donald Trump's trade war is squeezing small business owners as increasing costs for the materials they need cut into their profits.

Many larger companies absorbed higher costs from the president's tariffs without passing the difference on to consumers, but smaller businesses often lacked the money and storage space to stockpile materials before the levies kicked in — and they fear raising prices could alienate customers, reported The New York Times.

“It’s hard to breathe,” said Brandon Mills, chief executive of Las Vegas-based Total Promotion Company.

Mills, whose company makes promotional products and custom apparel, imports many of his materials from China, and since the tariffs snapped into place, he has laid off one of his seven employees, asked a bank to extend a line of credit so he could continue paying his bills, and raised prices on some items.

“It’s difficult to have to survive because of poor policy,” Mills said.

A recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found 86 percent of companies import goods by sea and have fewer than 50 employees, and those smaller firms typically import materials from just one supplier and one country, which puts their profits at risk from sharp increases in tariff-related costs.

“It’s just a matter of time before some businesses that are right on the margin anyway are having to scale back,” said Andrew Chamberlain, the principal economist at the payroll services company Gusto.

Gusto's annual survey, conducted in August and September, found 50 percent of their customers thought tariffs had hurt their business this year, and 56 percent expected them to do so next year.

“We don’t have that same buying power or negotiating power that a lot of large corporations have,” said Lori Andre, who owns Lori’s Shoes in the Chicago area. “It’s small independents like us that are really feeling the squeeze.”

Andre started her company 43 years ago, and she's struggling to keep her company afloat through the president's trade war, which cost her $7,400 in duties on fall orders from Italy – twice as much as those materials cost last year.

“When we look at the total picture, we are going to survive,” Andre said. “Will we make as much profit? No, we won’t.”

President Donald Trump's social media activity over the weekend raises troubling questions about his ability to tell fact from fiction, an analyst wrote Monday.

The president posted a baffling AI-generated video of himself in a fake Fox News segment announcing a miraculous — and fictitious — "med bed" device that can restore full health to anyone. Meanwhile, his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, ordered 200 members of the Oregon National Guard into Portland based on 2020 footage broadcast by Fox News, wrote Salon's Sophia Tesfaye.

" Trump defenders, as they are often wont to do, rushed to laugh off the incident as a harmless joke," Tesfaye wrote abou the Med Bed post. "But a quick social media search reveals that a lot of people who are dying or watching a loved one fade away with cancer and other illnesses really believed it. QAnon-type spaces were excited at the possibility that Trump would finally release all the hidden cures."

"Many MAGA believers have refused medical treatment because they believe med bed tech will restore their health in minutes," she added. "This is both depraved and heartbreaking."

The post was made as Trump seems ready to allow the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced health insurance subsidies expire, and his tax bill has already put rural hospitals at risk, but his moves against immigration protests are just as delusional, wrote Tesfave.

"As the med bed example demonstrates, Trump is growing more vulnerable to being influenced by selective or sensational media coverage — and less likely to vet whether what he is seeing or hearing on those segments is grounded in current facts," Tesfaye wrote.

"In another instance from Saturday, he took Fox News visuals and narrative frames — this time real, although outdated — to order consequential real world action in Portland."

Trump told Gov. Tina Kotek the city was "under attack," which she assured him was not true, and a lawsuit filed by the city and the state of Oregon referred to a recent Fox News report cited by the president that used footage recorded during 2020 protests.

"Perhaps most bizarrely, Trump seems to understand the perils of his media diet," Tesfaye wrote. "Evan Watson of Portland’s KGW8 reported that the president told NBC News’ Yamiche Alcindor during a Sunday interview that pushback from Oregon’s governor on his troop deployment caused him to briefly question things. 'I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,' Trump said. 'But I said, Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different. They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.'”

A retired U.S. Army general questioned the motivation for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordering military commanders from their posts around the globe to a lecture in Virginia.

The Pentagon chief is calling hundreds of senior military leaders to a Marine Corps base in Quantico for a pep talk about the warrior ethos, along with President Donald Trump. And retired general Barry McCaffrey told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" the plan was ill-conceived at best.

"Look, you know, this will be a very respectful audience tomorrow," McCaffrey said. "Our culture, our political culture in the country says there's two civilians, only the president and the secretary of defense, who give orders to the armed forces.

"I think Secretary Hegseth had no idea what he was doing calling a no-notice meeting without specifying what the topic would be. I think he did want to harangue the senior enlisted and military leaders of the country about warrior culture."

"It's a hard one to pull off," he added. "These people, as you say, grew up in 20 years of combat, from lieutenant or E-1 to the end of their career they're now serving, and then I think President Trump had no idea what was going on, learned of it, horns in. This ought to be a very unusual, almost comical session. Why did he draw attention to this, as if we were going to go to war over what, Greenland or something? So it's a real mess."

Hegseth should not expect a rousing reception from the military brass, McCaffrey said.

"A lot of civilians don't understand a military audience doesn't applaud or take enthusiastic recognition of a speech by a senior officer," McCaffrey said. "I have a feeling they're going to pass a word it had better look like that on TV on this one. Look, this is all such an unusual situation. The day the American people make a final determination on an elected president, the military completely, 100 percent switches over to being respectful and supportive under the law with this new administration."

"By the way, they all come in nervous about these generals with all their ribbons, and are they going to pay any attention to us?" McCaffrey added. "Normally, in about three to six months, they realize, no, these people actually know what they're doing and they are going to be compliant with our policy directives. This administration has been chaotic. Now, Secretary Hegseth actually has a combat infantry badge, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Princeton grad, there's every indication that he could have been very successful, but so far it looks shallow, sort of chaotic. It's a drama going on constantly."

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President Donald Trump is weakening the criminal cases against his political enemies by talking publicly about his desire to seek retribution against them, an expert said Monday.

The president openly pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to step up Department of Justice moves against former FBI Director James Comey, and his hand-picked replacement as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia secured an indictment that Trump's comments could undermine once the case moves into the courtroom, reported CNN.

“It’s a better case for Comey, because the president won’t shut up, and that’s admissible," said retired federal Judge John Jones. "So he’s got a fighting chance, I think, on vindictive prosecution.”

Trump has also identified New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) as possible targets for prosecution, and senior DOJ officials are advocating charges against former national security adviser-turned-Trump critic John Bolton. Those public statements could eventually help them persuade judges to drop their cases.

“It’s clearly vindictive," said former federal Judge Shira Scheindlin. "It’s clearly his enemies list."

“He’s made it so obvious that he’s targeting them, regardless of the evidence, that I do think a judge would be far more receptive to probably both concepts, selective prosecution and vindictive,” Scheindlin added.

Selective prosecution claims usually go nowhere because prosecutors are given broad discretion in charging decisions, but the president is providing strong evidence that the government has singled out his enemies for their political positions.

“You’ve really got to prove bad motives on the part of the prosecution – that they’re really coming at you for some completely improper reason," said former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason.

Comey could argue that his prosecution was selective in hopes of getting his case dismissed, but Scheindlin said that strategy could prove perilous.

“That’s like admitting that, yeah, you did it, but how come the other 10 guys who did it aren’t being charged?” she said. “So a defense lawyer for somebody as high-profile as Comey I don’t think is going to want to make that argument that, ‘Well, I might have lied, but everybody else lies, too.’”

Experts suggested that Comey should request a dismissal by arguing that he was being vindictively prosecuted, using Trump's public grievances against him as evidence.

“You see the animus,” Jones said. “What else do you need? It’s a great test case to kind of examine the contours of a true vindictive prosecution claim – you know, ‘I got indicted because the president United States doesn’t like me and wanted me to be indicted.’”

Comey and other Trump targets could also point to the president forcing out Erik Siebert as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after he refused to bring charges against James and questioned the case against Comey before replacing him with White House aide Lindsey Halligan.

“They’re picking their guy and then trying to find something they can charge him with, versus investigating these facts on the law and deciding whether charges are appropriate,” Eliason said. “The whole flip-flop thing and picking a new U.S. attorney who will do what the former U.S. attorney won’t, I mean, that sets off all kinds of red flags.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has summoned the U.S. military's most senior leadership from their posts all around the globe to an all-hands meeting Tuesday in Virginia, and a retired general said the Pentagon chief's stated reasons were "insulting and condescending."

Hegseth ordered hundreds of generals, admirals and their senior enlisted advisers to attend the meeting at a Marine Corps base in Quantico, where both he and President Donald Trump will address them in a talk intended to boost their spirits and promote the defense secretary's "warrior ethos" — which MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said was richly ironic.

"That must be rich coming from Pete Hegseth to generals and admirals who have fought, risked their lives, served in uniform and war for decades now, some of them for decades, and they're going to get a lecture on warrior spirit," the "Morning Joe" host said.

Mark Hertling, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, said those officers and senior enlisted personnel were already deeply familiar with the topic of Hegseth's lecture, which Scarborough referred to as a "rah-rah-speech," because it's one of the four elements on which military culture is based.

"The warrior ethos is just one part of the professional triad that the military has," Hertling said. "You have the oath to the Constitution, the service's values. I can still name the Army values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, integrity, honor and personal courage. All services have that, and then the warrior ethos is just a performative method of actualizing that. Well, it started out that way and then it became well, no, there was an announcement that someone in the Pentagon said this was all about getting the horses into the stable and whipping them into shape. That's insulting and condescending."

Hertling believes the president got involved after his defense secretary faced immediate blowback for calling the highly unusual meeting.

"It appears the president is going to show up and talk to them, as well, and that's probably because this event has become such a lightning rod over its staggering costs, the security risk of bringing so many people in to one place and the disruption of ongoing operations," Hertling said.

"So the president will talk. We have seen the president talk at several military functions. First, there was the Fort Bragg function, which is embarrassing to the Army, the way those soldiers acted. I then attended personally the West Point graduation, and the cadets were told, as they were sitting on the parade field getting ready to get their diplomas, that they better keep a poker face and remember their professional activities."

"I don't know what he's going to say to this audience, but they have to be adaptable," the retired general added. "Again, put on a stoic face, have a poker face, not show any emotion. But I'm sure, depending on what the president says, what the secretary of defense has said, it may cause certainly some emotional reaction from the crowd. But they've got to remain professional because that's what the military is. They are the force for the country, and there's an attempt to not only use them in these, in these actions, like we were talking about earlier, but also the potential whipping them into shape in this meeting that they're having in Quantico tomorrow."

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President Donald Trump's budget director came into office with a "radical" agenda to give the executive branch more power — but Elon Musk's efforts to cut government spending clashed with his vision, according to a report.

Vought, a former congressional staffer and policy wonk who co-authored the Project 2025 blueprint, was frustrated by the haphazard chaos injected into his efforts to shrink bureaucracy by the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, according to sources who spoke to the New York Times.

“We’re going to let DOGE break things, and we’ll pick up the pieces later,” Vought told his staff at one point, according to three sources.

Musk, the tech tycoon who spent more than $250 million to help get Trump re-elected, infuriated Vought by sending out a mass email requiring federal workers to justify their jobs by listing five accomplishments from each week, because he believed the message skirted the legal process for personnel matters and created needless liability.

“DOGE would have been far more effective from day one had they bothered to ask Russ and team how to achieve their goals,” said Joe Grogan, a friend of Vought’s who led the White House Domestic Policy Council in the first Trump administration.

Vought was also annoyed when DOGE moved to shut down the Education Department's data office because the administration needed that information on academic performance to roll back race-based college admissions and cut programs for poor and disabled students, sources told the Times.

"In the months since Mr. Musk fell out with the president, Mr. Vought has at last begun to put his plans into action — remaking the presidency, block by block, by restoring powers weakened after the Nixon administration," the newspaper reported. "His efforts are helping Mr. Trump exert authority more aggressively than any modern president, and are threatening an erosion of the longstanding checks and balances in America’s constitutional system."

Vought is setting up a U.S. Supreme Court battle that could give the president a new legal precedent to block spending for any congressionally authorized policies or programs he dislikes, which many legal experts believe would threaten the foundations of democracy.

“One of the main sources of power that Congress has over the executive branch is the budget,” said Eloise Pasachoff, a law professor at Georgetown University. “If the executive branch isn’t controlled by the power of the purse, then there is very little that will control the President. It’s a fundamental challenge to liberty for every single person in America.”

Vought is laying the groundwork for the Trump-shaped court to overturn the post-Watergate Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which he believes is unconstitutional, by intentionally provoking a clash with the Government Accountability Office.

“Russ absolutely believes he is on sound legal footing and that he will be vindicated at the Supreme Court,” Grogan said.

The GAO's legal counsel strongly disagreed, saying "the president does not have the unilateral power to change the laws," but a longtime veteran of the Office of Management and Budget said Vought had reason to feel confident the court would overturn the law.

“What he’s doing is radical, but it’s well thought out,” said Fairweather, who spent 42 years in the budget office and wrote a book about its operations. “He’s had all these years to plan. He’s looked clearly at the authorities and boundaries that are there, and is pushing past them on the assumption that at least some of it will hold up in the courts.”