All posts tagged "latest headlines"

Trump hinted at plans to cancel 2028 election while talking to generals: Dem

President Donald Trump's speech to hundreds of the US' top generals on Tuesday hinted at plans to cancel the 2028 election, according to Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York.

In an appearance on The Jim Acosta Show on Tuesday, Goldman said the speech appeared to be preparing the ground for an authoritarian power grab.

"It’s also, I think, really dangerous because it is trying to manufacture a crisis so that Donald Trump can continue to take more and more authoritarian actions and so that he can usurp more and power," said Goldman.

"And ultimately, my view is that he is looking ahead to 2028, where he will say that, for cockamamie made-up reasons like he’s talking to these generals about."

"That 'well, look, we’re being invaded from within from the enemy within and we’ve got to keep our border safe. And that’s what our focus has to be. We can’t possibly have an election under these circumstances.'”

"You really think that could happen?" said Acosta.

"Yeah, I think that’s where a lot of this is heading towards," said Goldman. "I think that's why he's floating a third term. That's why he's using this language of a war, of the enemy within, of securing our border."

Trump, in his speech to the generals at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, said the military's job was to help protect from the "enemy within," and discussed sending troops into Democratic run cities such as Chicago and Portland.

Gavin Newsom trolls JD Vance with new AI couch and makeup videos

California Governor Gavin Newsom mocked JD Vance with an AI video showing the vice president praising couches and an old photograph of him wearing a blonde wig and makeup when he was a student.

Newsom's office's X account has recently leaned into pushing AI content mocking President Donald Trump and other MAGA figures.

Another AI-generated image from the account on Tuesday ridiculed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's speech criticising "fat" generals, with the fake picture showing Trump eating burgers delivered by drones in McDonald's bags.

The Vance videos reference an unfounded rumor that went viral during the 2024 election that he had written about getting intimate with a couch. The pictures of Vance in a wig are believed to have been taken at a party in Yale in 2012.

“Yes, there’s a photo of me in drag from a college party, and that’s normal. Everyone experiments in college, costumes, makeup, whatever, totally normal,” Vance says in one of the fake videos. “But what I don’t understand is why people are so obsessed with this other thing, couch intimacy.”

“Look, couches are comfortable, they’re dependable. They support you when you’re down. If you can’t appreciate that kind of bond, maybe you’re the one with issues.”

Another AI video from Newsom's office on Tuesday showed Vance praising couches and delivering a history of them.

The videos resemble in style those Trump and his allies have pushed mocking Democrats, with a slew from the president this week referencing the QAnon "medbeds" conspiracy theory, and containing racist images of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Trump ally Laura Loomer advises sending 'cease-and-desist' to Larry Hogan to quit mooching

Trump-loving activist Laura Loomer called former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan who is running for the Senate a "jerk" for spurning former President Donald Trump's endorsement, despite raking in fundraising support off of the 45th president's name, image, and likeness.

"If you look at the NRSC (National Republican Senatorial Committee) emails that are going out, Larry Hogan is actually raising money off of Donald Trump's image, name, and likeness," she said during an exchange with Americans for Limited Government's president Rick Manning.

"So if he's going to be jerk and reject Trump's endorsement and then also say 'I'm not going to support the GOP nominee!' — then maybe President Trump should send him a cease and desist so that he can't use his image, name, and likeness for his fundraising emails anymore."

The 45th president went maverick by pledging his support for Hogan to win his bid for Maryland's Senate seat.

"Former President Trump tells me he’s ENDORSING @GovLarryHogan for Senate, despite Hogan’s comments that people should 'respect the verdict' in the NY hush money trial," Fox News Congressional correspondent Aisha Hasnie wrote on X.

ALSO READ: The stunning reason Donald Trump thinks he’s going to win

That prompted a DSCC (Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) statement that read: "Donald Trump wants Republican Larry Hogan in the Senate."

“Governor Hogan has been clear he is not supporting Donald Trump just as he didn’t in 2016 and 2020,” according to a Hogan campaign response.

Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Angela Alsobrooks' campaign is seeing red.

The statement reads: "The stakes of this race could not get any higher. Just last week, Senate Republicans shot down access to contraception. Hours ago, Senate Republicans voted against protecting IVF. And just now, Donald Trump endorsed Larry Hogan so he can have a Republican majority."

The Maryland Democratic Party also pounced on Hogan's Trump backing.

"Donald Trump wants Larry Hogan because Trump knows Hogan would be the deciding vote to put Republicans in charge of the U.S. Senate. It could not be more clear what is at stake," according to its statement.

Hogan didn't make nice with the GOP after respecting the verdict by a New York City jury who unanimously found former President Donald Trump guilty of falsifying business records, making him a convicted felon while also being the presumptive Republican nominee.

"You just ended your campaign,” announced Chis LaCivita, a veteran Republican operative who serves as a senior campaign adviser to Trump and a Republican National Committee official slamming Hogan's run for the Senate. A recent fundraising email is already capitalizing off of Trump's surprise support for Hogan.

Trump and Hogan have butted heads before during the COVID pandemic and also over criticizing Baltimore and the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD).

Alvin Bragg has 'devastating' evidence to knock out Trump's last-minute challenges: Expert

While former President Donald Trump has already been convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Manhattan hush money case, he has one more card to play: submitting a motion asking Judge Juan Merchan to "set aside" the verdict, a maneuver used to try to convince judges that the jury's decision to convict was so egregious it should be disregarded.

But District Attorney Alvin Bragg came prepared to shut that down, legal expert Lisa Rubin explained in a new article for MSNBC's MaddowBlog.

This comes as House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) prepares for a congressional hearing with former Justice Department official and Manhattan prosecutor Matthew Colangelo for immediately after Trump's sentencing. Trump's allies have theorized that Colangelo was a sort of backchannel from Bragg's office to the Justice Department, allowing President Joe Biden to dictate the outcome of the trial — but the DOJ has rebuffed the idea.

"I suspect ... that even if Trump’s team does file such a motion [to set aside the verdict], it would almost certainly fail," wrote Rubin. "And that’s not because of the now-standard GOP refrain that Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the case, is impermissibly conflicted and/or biased against Trump. Rather, it’s because the evidence collected and then presented at trial by the DA was not only extensive, but was interwoven together by the DA’s team to devastating effect."

ALSO READ: 8 ways convicted felon Donald Trump doesn't become president

Rubin is confident of this, she added, because she attended the trial and saw more than 400 slides of evidence and arguments that Bragg showed the jury.

"Collectively, the slides illustrate the breadth and depth of the DA’s evidence," wrote Rubin. "From his own words, whether written or recorded, and his signature, on the one hand, to his pattern of phone calls right as other significant developments and communications unfolded, it was the weight and quality of the evidence that did Trump in with the 12 jurors. The slides also highlight how to the extent that others helped ensure Trump’s current fate, those others are not named Alvin Bragg or Matthew Colangelo. They are David Pecker and Hope Hicks, two of Trump’s closest allies once upon a time and people whose affection for him is still palpable, even through just a cold read of the trial transcript."

The slides hardly break new ground, concluded Rubin — however, "as Trump confronts his first post-trial deadline to contest the verdict, they are nonetheless a powerful reminder of how the person Trump should most blame for his current predicament is Trump himself."

MAGA Senate hopeful defends 'mouthy' women complaint: James Carville hates them too

A controversial GOP-endorsed senatorial candidate who notoriously opined women have become "too mouthy" came up with a novel defense of the divisive claim: James Carville thinks so too.

Royce White — a former basketball player with ties to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and endorsed by the Republican party to challenge Sen. Amy Klobuchar — took to X Friday to share a video of Carville mouthing off to former MSNBC host Donny Deutsch about "preachy females."

"Did liberal icon and thought leader James Carville just say Democrat women have gotten too ‘mouthy’?" White wrote. "Hey New York Times, quick, misogyny!"

In fact, Carville's comment mirrors White's own, which was made last month to War Room podcaster Steve Bannon.

"We have a huge male problem...particularly in communities of color," Carville claims. "I think democratic culture has too many preachy females. It's too much don't eat hamburgers, don't watch football, wear a condom."

ALSO READ: Republican dodo birds have a death wish for us all

Deutsch bursts into laughter. Carville leans back.

"S---, leave me alone," Carville says. "I got a g--d---ed life to lead."

Carville argues that such rhetoric is "cosmopolitan condensation," which one can only assume was supposed to be cosmopolitan condescension as water vapors in urban settings are not known to make women "preachy."

Replied White to this interview, "You can’t make this up. I promise I don’t have a crystal ball over here, I’m just a regular guy."

It's been a big week for White. The senatorial candidate was seen publicly attacking a reporter who covered his outstanding $100,000 child support payment and an MSNBC host who commented on his latest social media blunder.

"You pencil necked dweeb," White roared at Keith Olbermann, who had called him "a "f---ing idiot."

The gaffe saw White mistakenly declare water fountains were proof that crime was out of control in Minneapolis.

'Gun fetish fan fiction': Legal columnist on Clarence Thomas ruling redefining reality

A Slate legal analyst pointed to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' latest majority decision on Friday declaring the gun attachment bump stocks different from machine guns because the trigger must be depressed.

Speaking about the ruling on MSNBC, Dahlia Lithwick explained that there are two different stories. First there is the ruling. Second, she said, there is a determination of reality.

"I don't think there's any other way to read Clarence Thomas' page after page of, sort of, gun-fetish fan fiction," Lithwick explained. "He accompanied the [ruling] with photos and images and lots of substituting of his own understanding of how guns work for that of the ATF. It's their job to do this. It's his job to be a justice."

However, she continued, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace was "saying really an essential thing, which is this is of a pattern we've seen over and over and over again, where justices take it upon themselves to decide what clean water is. What swamp land is. What is air pollution? What is a particle? What is COVID?"

The executive agencies that oversee such issues are staffed with experts in their fields, but in its attempt to decide on a ruling, "the justices can sort of read a quick tutorial and become experts on all things." And it "is really at the sort of [the] beating heart of what is so very scary about this opinion and so many others. It is a systemic effort to dismantle the administrative state as we know it and to substitute the ideas that justices get principally from amicus briefs from interested parties as truths."

She and Wallace discussed the two stories plaguing the court, one of which is an ethics concern, and the second is the fears of what they'll write into the legal framework of the United States through their docket.

On the former, Lithwick argued that people should not say that the "Supreme Court has an ethics problem, but that the United States has a Supreme Court problem."

Legal analyst and former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann remembered hearing from conservative lawyers eager to cast a ballot for Trump because they wanted a Supreme Court with "judicial restraint."

"For those people, I would say look at this decision. This is the complete antithesis of that," he said.

Watch the discussion in the video below or at the link here.

'Gun fetish fan fiction': Legal columnist on Clarence Thomas ruling redefining realitywww.youtube.com

Irate GOP candidate throws volunteer under the bus for 'stupid' AI MLK endorsement

A Republican primary candidate for a congressional seat in Michigan is coming under fire over a controversial TikTok video featuring an AI voice of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. endorsing him.

The video from the campaign of Anthony Hudson, who is white, has already been taken down. However, the left-leaning Midwest-based news service the Heartland Signal reposted it to X.

"I have another dream! Yes, it is me, Martin Luther King," said the AI-generated voice in the ad. "I came back from the dead to say something ... Anthony Hudson will be Michigan 8th District's next congressman."

"Okay, now I am going back where I came from, goodbye," the AI Dr. King concluded.

Amid widespread outrage over the video, Hudson took to X to claim that it was all just a mistake and he had never approved the ad.

ALSO READ: Republicans weaponizing ignorance is a dangerous game

"A volunteer gave my social media credentials to one of his friends who then posted an AI video without my knowledge. It appears that they not only used AI for MLKjr’s voice but also with my voice to make it appear more authentic," wrote Hudson. "The volunteer has been released and all my social media credentials have been updated. I would have NEVER approved such a STUPID and DISRESPECTFUL video! I sincerely apologize that all of you have seen this and I’m extremely furious about this situation. This could happen to any of us so please be cautious and aware of who has your person information."

Hudson, an ardent Trump supporter, has previously stirred controversy by proclaiming that only people who speak English should be allowed to vote, and ballots in other languages "waste taxpayer dollars."

Michigan's 8th Congressional District, which includes a number of east-central Michigan cities like Flint, Bay City, and Saginaw, is currently represented by Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee.

Republican becomes latest to announce he's quitting Congress

A Louisiana Republican said Friday afternoon he won't seek re-election after his own party drew a new map that hampered his chances to win.

Rep. Garret Graves, who represents the Baton Rouge area, said Friday that representing South Louisiana was "an incredible honor." In explaining his decision not to run again, Graves said in a statement: "After much input from constituents, consultation with supporters, consensus from family, and guidance from the Almighty, it is clear that running for Congress this year does not make sense."

Graves previously said he would seek reelection in either the new 6th District or another district. However, he switched course Friday and said running in a temporary district would cause "actual permanent damage" to the state's congressional representation.

"Campaigning in any of these districts now is not fair to any of the Louisianians who will inevitably be tossed into yet another district next year," he said.

The announcement comes after Nola.com reported he received advice — and warnings — about which districts to run for this year. He reportedly said he planned to run, but wouldn't say where. Two of the six available districts are held by major party leaders: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Benton.

ALSO READ: The stunning reason Donald Trump thinks he’s going to win

Graves's announcement opens the door in the new 6th District. Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields is running in that race. In the 5th District, Republican Rep. Julia Letlow is now all but certain to win re-election.

His is the latest in a series of Republican resignations which put the party's razor-thin majority in the House in jeopardy.

Rudy Giuliani's legal woes lighten as Hunter Biden ends data hacking lawsuit: report

Rudy Giuliani has one less lawsuit to stress about.

President Joe Biden's 54-year-old son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted of lying about buying a revolver in 2018 while hooked on crack, has agreed to squash a civil lawsuit he brought against former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Giuliani's former lawyer Robert Costello, Reuters reported.

Last year, Hunter blamed Giuliani and Costello of being hackers by violating computer fraud and data access laws, alleging they manipulated data from his "devices or storage platforms."

He claimed they violated his rights by trying to breach his electronic devices.

“Plaintiff has demanded Defendants Giuliani and Costello cease their unlawful activities with respect to Plaintiff’s data and return any data in their possession belonging to Plaintiff, but they have refused to do so,” the complaint read. “Defendants’ statements suggest that their unlawful hacking activities are ongoing today and that, unless stopped, will continue into the future, thereby necessitating this action.”

ALSO READ: Republicans weaponizing ignorance is a dangerous game

The scheme, according to the lawsuit, amounted to a “total annihilation” of Hunter Biden's rights, as well as a violation of federal and state computer privacy laws.

Attorneys for all three parties came to a deal filed in Manhattan federal court, under which Biden agreed to drop the lawsuit and each must pay their own legal fees.

Hunter's lawsuit initially sought more than $75,000 in damages as well as reimbursement of his attorneys’ fees and other penalties.

Giuliani has been riddled with legal and money woes.

He filed for bankruptcy last year after he was ordered to pay $148 million to a mother-daughter Georgia election workers that he defamed by falsely accusing them of committing fraud following Trump's 2020 presidential election defeat.

'Cult to a thug': Democratic leader slams GOP and 'master of projection' Trump

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) thinks former President Donald Trump needs to have his head examined, and laments that his party ought to stage an intervention.

"This guy, [who] is a former president, he is a master of projection," she said during an interview on MSNBC's "The Last Word" with Lawrence O'Donnell. "Everything he says about somebody else — whether it's a judge in the courtroom, a witness, a juror, a member of Congress, a woman, an opponent in an election."

Her take occurred after odd claims out of the former president's mouth during his meeting in Washington D.C. with congressional Republicans on Thursday.

In an especially wandering stream of consciousness, Trump ranted in front of fawning Republican members about a supposed fairytale romance with the political Democrat powerhouse in another life.

"'Nancy Pelosi’s daughter is a whacko, her daughter told me if things were different Nancy and I would be perfect together, there’s an age difference though," he reportedly bragged.

Pelosi appeared to brush it off as drivel and instead aimed at Trump's mental fitness.

"Everything he says is a projection of his own shortcomings," she said. "Crooked this person — he's crooked! Lazy this person! — he's lazy. Name any subject, any subject you can name — Wacky this person.! He knows he's wacky.

"He knows he's an imposter."

She then welcomed someone to help him deal with his head-scratching statements.

"So if we're gonna do psychoanalysis of him, I think we're going to have to him in-person before some health care professionals."

She then encouraged Trump's family to swoop in to save him from himself.

“I do wish there would be an intervention from his family, assuming they loved him, she said. "That they would intervene, that the Republican party would have an intervention, they have become a cult to a thug.”