All posts tagged "ms now"

Jen Psaki rips Melania Trump's 'bizarre' Epstein comments: 'In her own La La Land'

MS NOW's Jen Psaki blasted First lady Melania Trump for her "self-important way" of reigniting the Jeffrey Epstein saga by delivering a rare statement denying involvement with the former financier and convicted child abuser.

Psaki explained how the timing of Melania's comments were unclear, especially since there is evidence of a social relationship between Melania, her husband Donald Trump, Epstein, and his conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, whom Melania had emailed multiple times, according to documents released by the Justice Department.

The public move caught Psaki — and many others — off guard.

"I was thinking, am I hallucinating? What the h--- is going on? Whose ideas was this? I had lots of questions," Psaki said. "I guess one possibility is a sign that the war really is going that badly — I'm certainly going to talk to John Kerry about that. Another is that they are trying to get ahead of a story that a reporter is working on."

Psaki, who has worked in multiple administrations, was confused by what prompted Melania to deliver her remarks.

"She said she wanted to clear her good name. From what exactly?" Psaki asked. "Because again, the unavoidable question on everybody's mind was why now, why at all, why ever?"

White House staffers were apparently caught off guard by the move.

"So the first lady talked a lot about herself, and in her own La La Land, she also tried to present herself, the spouse of the man withholding the Epstein files, as some sort of defender of survivors," Psaki said.

Melania called for a congressional hearing for Epstein survivors, so they could testify under oath — something Democrats have been trying to do and Republicans have pushed back against. A group of survivors and family members responded to her statement in disbelief, arguing that she was taking the attention away from former Attorney General Pam Bondi and the DOJ.

"First lady Melania Trump is now shifting the burden onto survivors under politicized conditions that protect those with power," according to the statement.

Psaki had another suggestion for Melania.

"Maybe the first lady can just saunter over across the hallway, in the residence, and ask her own husband to release the remaining Epstein files," Psaki added. "That would be far more powerful than her performance this morning."

Ex-GOP operative flags Trump admin's subtle shift to appeal to MAGA base

Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson on Monday identified how President Donald Trump has made a quiet change in his messaging approach amid the ongoing Iran war.

Wilson, the co-founder of anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, was speaking on a MS NOW panel with anchor Katy Tur and described how Trump has changed his talking points for his MAGA base. He also referenced Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's criticism of media coverage and how he was frustrated by the way the press has covered the military strikes and Trump administration.

"What you saw Pete Hegseth asking for, he wanted reporters in that room to be stenographers, not reporters," Wilson said.

"I think part of this, Katy, and that propaganda inside of the MAGA universe is often directed at their own base, and they switched very quickly from being antiwar to pro-war," Wilson explained.

Trump changed direction and has been messaging to his base that the war has been going according to his plan, Wilson argued.

"And I think part of this is that Trump feels the need to reinforce his case, that 'this is the perfect war,'" Wilson added. "'It's all great. There's no problems in the gulf. It's all going to be fine. That this is a short-term pain for long-term gain.' I think part of this is an internal base messaging operation because they like it when the administration attacks the legacy media, as they call it."

Tur added that the administration has used this tactic before with MAGA followers.

"It's always when they're on the attack, they can look like the victims," Tur said. "It plays well with the base. 'Look at them. They don't support us. They're always out to get us. They're reporting on the dead American service members. They shouldn't be reporting on that. They should be reporting on all of the victory.'"

Trump cut off mid-ramble as MS NOW's Chris Jansing despairs over claims

MS NOW host Chris Jansing was irritated during a live broadcast on Monday as President Donald Trump spoke to press, cutting him off and initiating a fact-check on the commander-in-chief's comments.

Trump was at a Kennedy Center board meeting with his cabinet and congressional leaders discussing a variety of subjects, including the Iran war, when he started rambling — and Jansing wasn't having it. She cut away from the president and responded to what he said.

"We're going to wait until we hear some questions that are addressed to the president," Jansing said. "But can I have this? Because I just wanted to fact check one thing that the president said, that he had predicted that Osama Bin Laden would hit the World Trade Center. He was referring to a book that was published in January of 2000."

Jansing then read an excerpt from Trump's book.

"One day, we're all assured that Iraq is under control," Jansing read. "UN inspectors have done their work. Everything's fine. Not to worry. The next day the bombing began. One day we're told that shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama Bin Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jet fighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escaped back to some rock. And a few news cycles later, it's a new enemy and a new crisis. And then he says that 'dealing with many different countries at once may require many different strategies, but there isn't any excuse for the haphazard nature of our foreign policy. We have to reinvent the wheel for every new conflict.'"

Jansing pushed back and described why Trump's claims were inaccurate.

"So it's a hyperbolic claim that the president just made," she said. "The rest of the statements about the war, I think, are very much familiar to anybody who is following it, that the United States is far ahead, that they've decimated much of what Iran has. And yet he asked for help from NATO allies to get the Strait of Hormuz open. So far, no takers."

'The president is an idiot': Senator unloads on Trump's 'really dumb' obsession

A Democratic lawmaker Thursday shot down President Donald Trump's push to take over Greenland.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) had a stern response to Trump's threats to take the island nation and Danish territory, despite the country's foreign minister and Danish foreign minister pushing back and saying Trump lied in his main claim about why the United States should seize the country.

Gallego was asked in an interview with MS NOW if there was a way to address Trump's security concerns without handing over Greenland — and he didn't hold back.

"No, because this has nothing to do with actual security concerns. This is the president being an idiot, and he is really excited about the idea of taking this big piece of land that's on a map, and he's using any excuse to actually cover up his idiotic idea," Gallego said.

Gallego accused Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — whom he referred to as "court jesters" — of green-lighting the move without understanding the real repercussions the move could have on the country's relationship with other nations.

"And then you have people like, you know, JD Vance and Marco Rubio, they're coming up with all these weird excuses. 'We have access to Greenland, we have a base in Greenland. The kingdom of Denmark has said you could expand all the bases you want. They have they have agreed to to work with us on economic issues. They've agreed to any type of economic treaty that to secure mineral rights,' whatever it is, they'll do anything because they certainly don't want to work," Gallego argued. "But this is just a fit of fancy this president is having. And then all his court jesters around him are coming up with an excuse, because the real excuse is because the real reason is really dumb."

Gallego added what he really thought of the ordeal, which experts have said could signal the end of NATO if the U.S. were to attack a key ally.

"It's just the president is an idiot, and we're all trying to come up with excuses. But the fact is, at the core base, this president is an idiot," he said. "And now he's putting that foreign policy into effect, which is going to negatively affect us and the long run in terms of our national security."

MS NOW host mutes JD Vance mid-speech to fact-check wild ICE shooting claims

MS NOW cut off Vice President JD Vance's aggressive speech, where he blamed the Minnesota mother fatally shot by an ICE agent for her own death, and started fact-checking him on the live broadcast.

Vance had suggested that federal law enforcement agents would have immunity over fatal shootings and attempted to justify the killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a mother and poet shot dead in her Honda Pilot just after dropping off her 6-year-old child at school.

That's when MS NOW host Chris Jansing muted Vance and cut to a discussion with a panel about his claims, including his accusations that the media has contributed to the escalated rhetoric over ICE agents and heightened immigration tactics targeting American citizens.

"While there are these calls to turn down the temperature, the vice president of the United States just called Gov. Tim Walz 'a joke,' suggested he may have committed crimes himself, and again, blamed the victim, seemed to blame the victim in this terrible shooting," Jansing said.

The move from Vance and the Trump administration was strategic, MS NOW reporter Laura Barron-Lopez reported.

"Yeah, Chris, I mean, I think you really hit the nail on the head here when you were breaking down what the vice president is doing here, which is often the administration in situations like this, goes on the attack," Barron-Lopez said. "They are attacking the press. And it reminds me, actually, of prior comments made by a number of the president's allies, including Steve Bannon, who said, who is the real opposition? The media is the real opposition. And in cases they try to flood the zone."

Vance was using the moment to try and distract — pulling attention away from the administration, she added.

"And right now the vice president is at the podium in the press room saying that they are going to create a new position, a new assistant attorney general position that would look into fraud because they are taking what were very clear examples in cases of fraud dating back to the Biden administration in Minnesota," Barron-Lopez said. "And over the course of the last, more than the last month or so, they have started to use those very specific cases of individual cases of fraud to go after the Somali community, the legal immigrant community in Minnesota. And that is why they increased the number of ICE agents of CBP agents on the ground in Minnesota at the start of this year."

'I'm not going to say that': Morning Joe host balks at going on-air with slur from Trump

Reacting to a Washington Post report that Donald Trump is now admitting to using an ugly word to describe third-world countries, MS NOW’s Mika Brzezinski refused to use the term on-air on Thursday morning.

According to the Post, at the president’s lightly-attended rally in a tiny Pennsylvania resort town on Tuesday, the president recalled for the crowd he had said, “Why is it we only take people from s—thole countries, right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden — just a few, let us have a few. … But we always take people from Somalia. Places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”

Previously he denied using the profanity.

MS NOW’s Brzezinski flat-out refused to during her report.

"President Trump admitted on Tuesday night that he used the phrase, I mean, I just don't want to use it. I saw people using it on the air and I'm not going to say that,” she stated as co-host Wille Geist interjected, “They know it.”

With a grimace she continued, ‘It’s S-hole countries ... I guess it comes after years of denying a Washington Post report that he used that specific description for Haiti, El Salvador and other African countries.”

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