Media

President Donald Trump prompted a firestorm of commentary and speculation after he stormed out of a major interview, but as one certified psychologist argued, his body language also exposed things about his agitated mental state.

On Sunday, NBC News's Meet the Press aired an interview with Trump conducted by Kristin Welker, in which, among other things, she pressed him about the lack of evidence for his longstanding claims that elections in the U.S. are rigged against Republicans. Trump, after growing increasingly frustrated over the tough questions, cut off the interview early, saying that Welker was either "crooked" or "stupid" before storming out.

Much has already been speculated based on this blow-up from Trump, including from Dr. John Paul Garrison, a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist, who maintains a popular YouTube account, "Dr. G Explains," where he gives forensic breakdowns and body language analyses for over 700,000 subscribers. While he typically focuses on true crime stories, he also delves into politics, and recently released a video breaking down Trump's body language during his interview with Welker.

At the start of the interview, Garrison noted that "most" of Trump's visible behaviors were "pretty standard" and in line with his typical demeanor. He did note one brief movement of Trump's mouth that could potentially indicate a change in the president's motor control, but said that not much could be made of it for now. What he did put particular emphasis on, however, was the sound of rain during the interview, as it was being conducted in a Wisconsin barn during a period of extended downpours.

Garrison argued that as the noise from the rain picked up and became more intense, Trump had a harder time focusing and concentrating on the questions from Welker. While stressing that nothing could be said for sure, he argued that Trump having a greater difficulty dealing with background noise could be a sign that he suffered a neurological episode at some point.

From that point, Garrison noted numerous signs that Trump was growing more and more agitated, including him furrowing his brow, bearing his teeth and putting extra emphasis on certain words, eventually escalating to the point of "real anger" and "real fury." While he concluded that it was typical for Trump to be testy with the press, Garrison argued that he showed an "unusual" level of anger during the interview, and suggested that he might having "a harder time than he used to" dealing with things like the background noise from the rain.

Another medical expert and content creator, speech and language pathologist "Hilary M.A. CCC-SLP," also argued that the weather might have been having an outsized effect on Trump's mood, suggesting in a recent video that he was exhibiting symptoms common in dementia patients, who struggle to keep track of the time of day during periods of extended gloomy weather.

After President Donald Trump told a “bunch of lies” on “Meet the Press” — abruptly cutting off the interview and walking out — CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale zeroed in on one of the most consequential: Trump’s claim that he never promised any wars in his second term.

“First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker. “So when you say I promised – I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war.”

On Monday, Dale served up half a dozen examples from the 2024 campaign when Trump said there would be no wars, and several times when he hedged but also declared there would be no wars.

“Trump repeatedly promised in 2024 that the US would not have any wars during his second presidency,” Dale reported. “Though it’s true that he often deployed some nuance on the subject – for example, vowing to end ‘endless’ wars or prevent ‘World War III’ – he unequivocally pledged on other occasions that the US wouldn’t get involved in wars, period.”

In June 2024, as Dale noted, candidate Trump wrote on Truth Social, “As every American saw firsthand, this election is a choice between strength or weakness, competence or incompetence, peace and prosperity or war and no war.”

The following month at the Republican National Convention, Trump declared, “With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness, and chaos will be over. I don’t have wars.”

“Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions, and we will have prosperity and peace for all,” he said in August 2024.

That same month, Trump “approvingly” cited then-Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Dale wrote, who Trump claimed to have said: “Make sure that Trump gets re-elected president and you’re not going to have any more wars.”

Trump himself “reiterated” moments later, “No more wars. No more disruptions. We will have prosperity and we will have peace.”

In October, Trump revisited those remarks: “Viktor Orbán said, ‘If Trump comes back, you won’t have any wars. You won’t have any wars.’ And he’s about as tough as they get, and he said it loud and clear and he said why. But you won’t have any wars.”

Dale continued, pointing to Trump’s “clear promise” in his November 2024 victory address.

“Four years, we had no wars, except we defeated ISIS,” Trump said. “They said, ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.”

Dale concluded that people “can have a reasonable debate about whether these kinds of comments were likely to be interpreted by some voters as a promise not to get the country involved in wars in a second term,” but, as for Trump’s “I didn’t promise anything” claim, “the record shows that Trump explicitly made a no-future-wars promise multiple times.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke with Fox News host Sean Hannity on his podcast Thursday, but at the end of the interview, there was a lengthy disclaimer.

During his interview, Blanche alleged that there was a "room full of evidence" from special counsel Jack Smith's investigation, the video showed.

"It's not fair to say it was a secret room, but it's a room that had a lot of material in it," Blanche said. "It was actually from the Jack Smith investigation, and nobody knew it existed."

Hannity asked Blanche if there was damning evidence inside. Blanche claimed, "Yes, we're looking at it." However, he said that a significant amount of the files had already been turned over to Senate Republicans.

Documents and information pertaining to an investigation at the Justice Department would fall under federal guidelines for record preservation.

According to the National Archives and Records Administration, “Records include all books, papers, maps, photographs, machine readable materials, or other documentary materials, regardless of physical form or characteristics, made or received by an agency of the United States Government under Federal law or in connection with the transaction of public business and preserved or appropriate for preservation by that agency or its legitimate successor as evidence of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, operations, or other activities of the government or because of the informational value of data in them.”

In a separate conversation, Blanche also conceded that if President Donald Trump didn't win in 2024, he'd be facing prison time. Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He likely would have been sentenced with consequences. Another Justice Department also likely would have been able to move forward on Trump's classified documents scandal.

"There's no scenario in which he wasn't going to send President Trump to prison — and he didn't only because the president won," Blanche said of the New York case.

Blanche also tried to rewrite special counsel Robert Mueller's report, in which he said that investigators found it was a "hoax." In fact, Mueller found the opposite. He testified to the House six years ago, explaining that Russia did make outreach to the Trump campaign and meddled in the 2016 election. His full report confirms that.

After all of these allegations, Hannity then ran a disclaimer conceding that everything Blanche said could have been false. New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush discovered it and posted a screen capture of it on X.

It read: "John Brennan, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Matthew Colangelo, Arthur Engoron, and James Clapper have not been charged with any crimes in connection with any alleged conspiracy. Charges against James Comey related to alleged false statements and obstruction of justice have been dismissed. There have been no findings that Rod Rosenstein, Tim Walz, Gavin Newsom or Jacob Frey engaged in professional misconduct," it read according to a screen capture.

Thrush commented with disbelief, "This is really, actually, no-kidding the disclaimer Hannity ran after his interview with Todd Blanche."

Journalist John Harwood said, "Fox is disgusting trash."

"Astonishing disclaimer," said Paul Farhi, who writes about the news media for publications like Vanity Fair and The Atlantic. "Next question: Who made the statements Fox News is disclaiming — Blanche or Hannity? Or both?"

One X user, Greg Spencer, noted, "You do this after you get nailed with a $787 million fine." It's a reference to the lawsuits that Fox and other conservative outlets have faced from voting-software companies such as Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems. Several have settled suits, but the Smartmatic case against Fox remains active.

A mixed martial artist and UFC talent once known as a fierce supporter of President Donald Trump tore apart his planned UFC event on the White House grounds, saying that the event is "desecrating" a government and opening the door for it to become more "corrupted,' per a report from The New Republic.

Bryce Mitchell currently competes in UFC's male bantamweight division and boasts an 18-3 professional win-loss record. He was also an outspoken Trump supporter in the past, once claiming that he would take a bullet for the president. But more recently, he has become harshly critical as his second term has played out.

As the New Republic reported on Thursday, Mitchell once again ripped into Trump, this time as his administration is set to cross over fully with the world of MMA. UFC's Freedom 250 is an upcoming card set to take place on June 14 to mark Trump's 80th birthday, at a venue currently being built on the White House grounds. The promotion's CEO, Dana White, has been a longtime friend and supporter of Trump, and a booster of Republican politics overall. The event has drawn widespread criticism and condemnation as a borderline dystopian corruption of the presidency, even as it has also become a hot ticket among MAGA acolytes.

In a post to X, Mitchell warned that the event was opening up the Trump administration to even more grift, and "desecrating" the purpose of the government in American society.

“What I think, personally, is that our government is desecrating its role in society by entertaining sports,” Mitchell said. “Our government is to protect and serve the people, and really should be as minimal as possible."

He also added: “When you’re doing all of this stuff, hosting sporting events, it’s really outside of the goal of what the government was intended to be because our tax dollars and resources are funding this operation... The government is supposed to protect us, not entertain us"

While admitting the show was a no-brainer for the UFC business-wise, he nonetheless stressed that the federal government should not be getting involved in sporting events.

Another ex-Trump supporting MMA fighter, Sean Strickland, the current UFC middleweight champion, has also been speaking out against the Freedom 250 event. Previously claiming that he would not be participating in a show to entertain the "Epstein list," he also alleged more recently that he was blocked from the event over his critical statements against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He also claims to be the only male champion banned from the event due to his Israel comments.

“UFC at the White House with [Netanyahu] in the audience," Strickland wrote about the event on Instagram. "Straight [Israel] slop.”

He added later: “The only male American champ banned at the White House because I said Trump is owned by [Netanyahu]. That’s not public opinion it’s fact.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include new reporting disputing RadarOnline's report.

In addition to his work on CNN since the early 2000s, broadcast journalist Anderson Cooper spent more than two decades on CBS' News' "60 Minutes" — an association that ended with his farewell broadcast on May 17. CBS News is looking for a replacement for Cooper on "60 Minutes," and according to the Austin American-Statesman and RadarOnline, execs may be considering a prominent figure in the Manosphere: podcaster Joe Rogan.

But according to Senafor's Max Tani, CBS News is disputing that report.

On X, Tani posted a link to the American-Statemen's reporting and wrote, "A CBS News spokesperson tells me this is false."

The American-Statesman's Faith Bugenhagen explains, "RadarOnline, a celebrity and entertainment news site, reported that CBS considering Rogan, who boasts 20.9 million subscribers on his YouTube channel, 'PowerfulJRE,' and millions of viewers of his podcast, 'The Joe Rogan Experience,' would be 'strategy,' not 'stunt casting.' Rogan would bring 'a core connection to over 50 percent of the country,' an unnamed media executive told RadarOnline, saying the 58-year-old media mogul speaks to 'viewers who feel ignored or mocked by legacy media' — a viewership that, if reengaged, would solve the network's ratings and credibility problems."

During the United States' 2024 presidential election, Rogan's endorsement of Trump underscored the gains he was making with the Manosphere, independents and swing voters.

Although the 58-year-old Rogan leans to the right politically, he isn't ultra-MAGA in his views. Rogan has often been described as libertarian, and he considers himself socially liberal — supporting same-sex marriage and the legalization of recreational drug use. Rogan, however, is critical of liberals and progressives on gun control.

Rogan, as a broadcaster, is sometimes compared to others in the "hot talk" genre, including Howard Stern and Tom Leykis (who also appeal to a largely male audience). However, Stern and Leykis opposed Trump in the 2024 election, while Rogan supported him.

Trump appeared on Rogan's show during the 2024 race — an appearance that, Bugenhagen points out, is credited with helping increase Trump's appeal to young Generation Z men and the Manosphere. The Austin, Texas-based Rogan, however, has recently criticized some of Trump's policies, including mass deportations, the Iran war, and his campaign against late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

"Austin-based actor Matthew McConaughey, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Texas native country star Miranda Lambert and state Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin) are among those who have been featured on the podcast," Bugenhagen notes.

Cooper, now 59, announced his retirement from "60 Minutes" in February. Post-CBS News, Cooper is still hosting the long-running "Anderson Cooper 360°" on CNN.

"60 Minutes" has been on even longer, debuting on CBS in 1968.

An ex-Marine fighter pilot tore into President Donald Trump's Pentagon during a Wednesday appearance on CNN, taking the agency to task over damning new reports about promotions being blocked for women and minority officers.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had, potentially in defiance of military rules, intervened to block nine officers from being added to a list for promotions, half of whom were either women or people of color. This revelation came amidst a growing trend of Hegseth firing, demoting or otherwise disrespecting military officers who are not white men, or those who had previously participated in pro-diversity activities.

During Wednesday's edition of The Situation Room on CNN, co-host Pamela Brown discussed the reports with Amy McGrath, who previously served as a fighter pilot for the Marine Corps and retired after 20 years of service, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel. She has also become a frequent Democratic candidate for Congress from Kentucky, running unsuccessful bids for the House in 2018 and, most notably, to unseat Mitch McConnell in the Senate in 2020. She also sought the 2026 Democratic nomination for McConnell's seat, but lost in the primary to former state representative Charles Booker.

In the interview, McGrath explained how the candidates put forward for this promotion list are already the "best of the best," having "spent their entire careers in doing very hard jobs, very high performance," and added that they face the "toughest scrutiny of performance records of any profession that I know" in order to get there.

"Takes months of review, and these boards, they make sure you've done the tough jobs," McGrath said. "They make sure you've done them very well. All of these officers have done this, or they wouldn't have gotten to this point. And for the names to be pulled by Secretary Hegseth, clearly, because of race and gender, is outrageous, and it's beneath what America stands for. And unfortunately, there's not much that folks in the military can do about it."

McGrath further touched on the broader campaign by Hegseth to purge the military of what Brown called "so-called wokeness."

"Pete Hegseth and his team are trolling the military records and social media accounts of officers, and they're punishing anyone who has ever served on a diversity task force, potentially in the past, or have said anything having to do with championing diversity in the past," she explained. "They're punishing anyone who was involved in the withdrawal of Afghanistan."

She continued later: "And this sends just a chilling message to everyone in the Pentagon and everyone within DOD. They're walking around, people are walking around scared right now... trying not to get fired. And that's, you know, a problem. It's ultimately a problem for our national security writ large."

McGrath also called it "absolutely wrong and outrageous" for officers to be punished for things in the past that they had no choice but to do once given orders, likening it to the purge of the Justice Department of any employees who were assigned to the classified documents case involving President Donald Trump and his Mar-a-Lago residence.

If it seems like President Donald Trump is only getting more and more addicted to posting on social media as his second term rots away, that would be right on the money, as an extensive breakdown from the Daily Beast found his habit is officially spiraling into "mania."

Trump has long appeared to be outright addicted to posting online, dating back to his Twitter attacks against Barack Obama, and lasting all the way through his first term in the White House, when he would seem to direct official policies via personal tweets. Now, after temporarily getting banned from the platform after the Jan. 6 attacks, he does the vast majority of his posting on his own site, Truth Social, and his worst tendencies have only gotten worse during his second term.

Amidst all of that, the Daily Beast has been tracking Trump's usage of Truth Social on a month-by-month basis, and in a new report from Tuesday, revealed that his habit "exploded to an unprecedented level in May," dwarfing his own posting record from past months by a considerable margin, marking his "most prolific month" on social media since the start of his second term, when one would assume he had better things to be doing.

"We calculated that his average posts per day spiked to 27, or the equivalent of just over once every hour of every day," reporter Josh Fiallo detailed in the report. "Our analysis found that Trump posted on Truth Social an astounding 861 times last month, sharing everything from truly deranged AI-generated memes to meltdowns and even an image of him lounging shirtless in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with a bikini-clad woman."

He continued later: "Trump’s posting frequency was a sharp increase over April, when the Daily Beast calculated that Trump posted an average of 18 times a day. That month he could have received a full night’s sleep on only five nights given his late-night and early-morning posting. The Beast’s new analysis found that May was Trump’s most prolific month on Truth Social since he returned to the White House, eclipsing his previous high of 782 posts and reposts in January."

The report further compared Trump's current habits to his first term, noting that in May 2018, he posted on Twitter a total of 238 times, which would have been "widely viewed as a significant amount at the time." Even more damning, the report found that such an amount would actually represent the "quietest" month of Trump's second term if it happened now, and by a massive margin. The slowest month on Truth Social of his second term, September of last year, saw 430 posts in total.

Much of Trump's posting now is helped along by executive assistant Natalie Harp, who reportedly "brings Trump stacks of printed-out drafts of social media posts — many of them recycling content from other accounts—for him to approve."

"Sources tell the [Wall Street] Journal that Trump posts some messages himself while Harp presses publish on others without approval from Chief of Staff Susie Wiles or communications staff — something that has angered some in the president’s inner circle," the report noted. "At a minimum, Trump views every post before it goes public, the paper reported."

A conservative panel guest drew chuckles and derision during a recent CNN segment, with other panelists laughing in his face as he leapt to Donald Trump's defense, claiming that he was the most "betrayed or backstabbed or maligned and lied about" president.

The incident took place during a segment on Wednesday's edition of CNN This Morning, concerning reports that the Trump administration is considering a new policy to require federal workers to sign non-disclosure agreements, part of its ongoing obsession with stemming the tide of leaks. Per the reports, these workers would be required to "safeguard non-public, confidential or proprietary information, created or obtained through their official duties."

Panelist Ron Brownstein, one of CNN's senior political analysts, argued that this NDA proposal was "revealing" about how Trump views the value of a free press in a democratic society, as well as his belief that government employees work for him, and him alone.

"This proposal is actually very revealing, obviously, first, about Trump's view of the media in a free society and a democratic society, and how limited his view of that is," Brownstein said. "But even more importantly, he views the public sector government employees not as working for the public, but as working for him... His vision is that the federal government is there to execute his will, to reward his friends, punish his enemies [and] advance his goals with essentially no obligation to the public. And this is of a piece, I think this is very kind of philosophically consistent with the way he views the Justice Department and the way he views all of the departments... This is his vision of the federal government, his extension of his will with no independent statutory or constitutional obligation."

Later, Terry Schilling, a Republican political strategist and president of the American Principles Projecy, offered his defense of Trump's mindset in approaching this new policy.

"No one has been betrayed or backstabbed or maligned and lied about as president more than President Trump," Schilling said. "I think that's undeniable."

To this, the other panelist in the segment, Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright, was unable to stifle a laugh at Schilling's expense.

"This is all coming in light of the new ballroom, by the way, which needs to have NDAs around it," Schilling continued. "It's a security measure for the White House White House. You can't know everything about the white house and its designs for it."

Host Audie Cornish appeared, at this point, to be incredulous about Schilling's stance, suggesting that he had "100 percent trust in the government at all times." Schilling claimed he did not, but Cornish remained unconvinced.

Speculation is rampant about who might succeed President Donald Trump as the 2028 GOP nominee and de facto leader of the MAGA movement, and according to one prominent Republican pollster, a "shock name" is gaining serious traction with voters across various focus groups.

Sarah Longwell is a noted anti-Trump conservative and publisher of The Bulwark. She also conducts extensive focus group tests with voters to get a better sense of where the Republican Party might be headed in the near future. While most pundits have been busy debating the potential of Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio to succeed their boss, Longwell's focus groups have shown increasing support for a shocking alternative: Candace Owens, the far-right media personality and conspiracy theorist, noted for her recent antipathy towards Trump.

As Longwell explained this week, few non-politicians have gotten the same traction from the voters she speaks with as Owens. She also shared some of the comments she has gotten about her from prospective GOP voters.

“I think Candace Owens is great. I would vote for her in a minute," Mycal, described as a Biden-to-Trump voter from North Carolina, said last year.

“People say she’s nutty, I don’t think she’s nutty," Rex, a California voter, said. "I think she’s very well-grounded."

I follow Candace Owens very closely. I have for years,” Melissa, a Pennsylvania voter who went for Trump in the last two elections, told Longwell in November. “She’s extremely articulate, and she also investigates things.”

“I’m sure I’ll catch a lot of flack for this one, but I am a Candace Owens fan," Kim, described as a Gen-Z Trump voter, said. "I think she’s a very smart lady.”

Owens has floated a presidential bid going back as far as 2021. More recently, in December of 2024, she asked followers on social media if she should run in 2028 or 2032, and floated Rep. Thomas Massie, who has since emerged as a staunch GOP enemy of Trump, as a running mate.

"Owens, 37, got her start as a Turning Point USA firebrand before reinventing herself as a freewheeling broadcaster," The Daily Beast wrote about Owens on Tuesday. "Her popularity surged after the September 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk, when she pushed a series of radical claims, including the theory that Israel was behind his killing. Those claims made her plenty of enemies, but they did little to dent her standing in the focus groups."

President Donald Trump cheered the death of "The Late Show" in the early morning hours of Friday after Stephen Colbert closed out the 33-year run of the show crafted by comedian David Letterman in 1993.

For the past 11 years, Colbert has been at the helm of the show, and has enjoyed top ratings for late-night every season from 2016 until Thursday night.

Trump ally and funder David Ellison and his father Larry Ellison merged "Skydance Media" with CBS Paramount and immediately began making cuts to the news division and announced the end of the popular late-night program that the president has spent years attacking.

CNN media analyst Brian Stelter told Wolf Blitzer that he expects Kimmel to get a bump of viewership in the absence of Colbert.

"But competition has historically made late-night better. It makes these shows funnier and more interesting. So, this is a bleak moment for the late-night TV industry at large," Stelter said.

He explained that it's ultimately an advertising problem as viewership shifts from network television to streaming media. "The Late Show" boasted 2.7 to 2.8 million viewers per night. In his final week, Colbert scored higher ratings than Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon combined, the LateNighter reported. But on YouTube, Colbert enjoys over 10.7 million subscribers. Still, the network claims that the ultimate cost to put on "The Late Show" wasn't worth the profits. It claimed it was losing $40 million, the New York Times reported.

At 1:52 a.m. EST, Trump posted, "Colbert is finally finished at CBS. Amazing that he lasted so long! No talent, no ratings, no life. He was like a dead person," Trump said, though he didn't explain how. "You could take any person off the street and they would be better than this total jerk. Thank goodness he's finally gone!"

"That's the president cheering the loss of American jobs," said Stelter. "About 200 staffers will be out of work. Now that 'The Late Show' lights have been turned off."

If Trump thinks that he managed to silence Colbert, Stelter explained that it isn't entirely the case.

"Analysts believe Stephen Colbert will have no shortage of options if he wants to set up shop and start a new show somewhere else," he said.

Colbert welcomed fellow late-night hosts to the show this week, where they poked fun at each other and discussed the future of late-night. On hand was Jimmy Kimmel, who had his own run-ins with Trump and was nearly canceled. He was brought back days later after an uprising so huge that parent company Disney panicked as millions canceled their Disney+ subscriptions.

"I will tell you, when I got knocked off the air for a few days, people canceled Disney+. Why aren’t people canceling Paramount+? Because you never had it in the first place?” Kimmel mocked the CBS network overlords.

Paramount+ continues to lose subscribers each quarter, according to Media Play News. They boast over 77 million subscribers. By contrast, Netflix has 325 million paid subscribers and Disney+ has approximately 131.6 million subscribers.

Since taking over, the Ellisons have overseen the continued decline in CBS News' ratings. The family now has its eyes on buying the media giant Time Warner. The conservative slant of the family leads critics to expect they will turn CNN into another far-right news network to split aging conservative demographics who watch Fox News, OAN and Newsmax.

There has recently been a "creepy" new addition to President Donald Trump's inner circle, one that he reportedly insists on keeping close to him frequently, and according to his one-time biographer, First Lady Melania Trump was instrumental in linking up the two men.

Michael Wolff is a longtime reporter and author who has had significant access to Trump over the years, notably writing a series a of tell-all books about the chaos behind the scenes in his first term. Earlier this week, he discussed Trump's new friendship with disgraced director and movie producer Brett Ratner, explaining that the president needs new allies due to all of his other officials becoming scapegoats for his failing administration. He also argued that they are cut from the same cloth, given their past associations with Jeffrey Epstein.

During the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," Wolff expanded on the situation and revealed how Ratner's connection to a top aide for Melania Trump, Marc Beckman, was the key to gaining entry into Trump's inner circle. Beckman has served as an adviser to the first lady for two decades, according to The Daily Beast, and also served as a producer on her recent documentary, which Ratner directed.

"The guy who has become Melania’s sort of main adviser, chief of staff, marketing guru, COO of Melania Enterprises... apparently knew Brett Ratner, and that was the connection,” Wolff explained.

Wolff noted further that Ratner was a baffling choice for the first lady associate with, let alone to direct a feature film about her, given his sordid history and her desperate desire to distance herself from Epstein allegations. Photos from the Justice Department's Epstein files disclosures show the filmmaker alongside the late sex trafficker with his arms around an unknown woman. Ratner claimed that he was engaged to the woman at the time, and that he "had never been in contact" with Epstein before or after the photo.

Allegations of Ratner's improper behavior predate the Epstein story, however. His career was put on ice in 2017 after numerous women, including actress Olivia Munn, accused him of sexual misconduct. It has only been in recent years, thanks to his connections to Trump, that he has found his way back to major projects. He is set to return to the Rush Hour franchise soon, after the president reportedly demanded that a new sequel be greenlit.

“Can you imagine any other first lady’s office approving Brett Ratner?” Wolff's co-host, Joanna Coles, said. “I mean, I’m not saying that Steven Spielberg would have done it, but there are so many directors that could have done this.”

She added later: "I got a note from a producer friend yesterday who’s been at the Cannes Film Festival saying that she... saw Brett Ratner showing everybody his photographs of his new best friend Donald Trump in China."

President Donald Trump has a shady new "BFF" he has been keen to keep close to him at all times, and as his one-time biographer told The Daily Beast, this decision reveals that he is well aware of how badly all of his massive failures are going.

Michael Wolff is a longtime author and journalist who has had extensive access to Trump and his officials over the years, famously writing several books about the tumult behind the scenes of his first term. During the latest episodes of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," he discussed the odd scenario playing out between the president and his Hollywood "BFF," director Brett Ratner. The disgraced Melania filmmaker accompanied Trump on his recent visit to China, with Wolff calling him the president's "security blanket."

“So when the trip in China finished — and, again, why was Brett Ratner in China? Other than to be there as Donald Trump’s BFF and security blanket, and the guy he could talk to?“ Wolff said. ”And in fact, when the trip ended, Donald Trump said to Brett Ratner, ‘I’ve got to be able to get in touch with you at all times.’”

Ratner was, at one point, a prolific, if critically maligned, director of major studio films, before allegations of sexual assault in 2017 made him a pariah in Hollywood. He has recently made a minor comeback as a close ally of Trump, notably directing the documentary about his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, which flopped at the box office after Amazon spent an unusual amount of money to produce and market, prompting allegations of bribery.

Ratner claimed that his visit to China with Trump was related to location scouting for Rush Hour 4, the comedy sequel he is returning to direct, which only exists because the president demanded that it be made.

Daily Beast editor and podcast co-host Hugh Dougherty called the situation with Trump and Ratner "crazy" and "ironic," given that it is famously easy for people to speak with the president by phone.

"He answers his phone at 6:30, at 2:30 in the morning. He’s on his phone at four in the morning," Doughterty said.

"Well, I think the issue here is Brett Ratner,” Wolff said, then imagining that Trump's mindset is essentially. “'You’re on point, you’re... my BFF, so I’ve got to be able to speak to you whenever I need to speak to you.’”

On a deeper level, Wolff explained that Trump needs new friends around him, as all his other allies are becoming figures that he is blaming for the ongoing failures of his administration.

“Well, there’s no one around him. I mean, literally. Everybody is now someone to blame,” Wolff said. “That’s the important thing — I think — takeaway here. Well, actually, there are a couple of takeaways here. But one of those takeaways is that he understands how bad things are... Now, in his way of processing that, is to blame someone else. But, of course, that doesn’t change how bad things are. And things are very bad.”

He added later: “And then, the other takeaway is a character takeaway, that the friendship with Brett Ratner exactly goes to the character of it all, or the Epstein of it all, or the Trump of it all, or the grab them by the p—— of it all.”

President Donald Trump's latest posting binges on Truth Social reveal how much he is "out of control, bizarre, unhinged [and] irrational," according to his one-time biographer, who said that his behavior under most other circumstances would warrant an "intervention."

Extended posting sprees have become a hallmark of Trump's second term in the White House, with many raising alarms about his sleep schedule, as they come during the dead of night. These instances can see Trump sharing dozens of Truth Social posts at a time, many with alarming messages to be seen coming from a sitting president. In a recent posting binge from Monday, for example, Trump shared a post calling former President Barack Obama a "traitor" and calling for his arrest.

Michael Wolff is a longtime reporter and author who has had extensive access to Trump in the past, famously writing a series of tell-all books about the chaos of his first term in office. In the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," Wolff was unsparing in his take on Trump's posting habit, and what it says about his mental stability.

“Right now, you can look this up and find the president of the United States saying things—regularly saying things, continuously saying things — that are out of control, bizarre, unhinged, irrational, that have in every possible way departed reality,” Wolff said. “How do you react to that? Nobody actually has quite reacted to this. There are no headlines in The New York Times that say, ‘The president of the United States has flipped his lid,’ which in any reasonable, fair-minded reading of what he posts on social media... that’s the conclusion that you would come to.”

He continued later: "If this were a family member of literally anybody, anybody who stayed up all night and posted — sometimes in a night, a hundred posts — this kind of wingnut stuff, that would be a mental health crisis."

The Daily Beast noted, after having "extensively chronicled Trump’s social media posts," an alarming statistic about his recent habits. According to their findings, throughout the entire month of April, there were only five nights in which he posted nothing on Truth Social between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., with the rest of the nights seeing him sharing things like "a since-removed depiction of himself as Jesus Christ, more election denialism, and AI slop of a lunar Trump Tower."

“What do you do with a situation in which you have the president of the United States who is openly — without any kind of inhibition whatsoever, in print, in black and white, in his own hand — delivering these statements, which are off the beam constantly?” Wolff continued. “What do you do with the clear evidence that the President of the United States is behaving in a way that for anyone else — your own family members, CEOs of other companies — would beg for an intervention?"

President Donald Trump accusing a highly-respected journalist of “treason” and “treasonous” behavior has exposed his “anxiety, insecurity and desperation” over how the Iran war is going, says New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

Trump targeted New York Times White House and national security correspondent David Sanger aboard Air Force One, after the journalist asked him what the “use” of “repeating the bombing” of Iran would be.

“David is the dean of national security reporters,” Kristof said, calling him “experienced, meticulous and fair.”

“Blaming the messenger underscores that the reality itself is pretty bad,” he observed.

“I got, I had a total military victory,” Trump told Sanger, “but the fake news, guys like you, write, incorrectly, you’re a fake guy, guys like you write about incorrectly.”

“We had a total military victory,” he continued. “We knocked out their entire navy. We knocked out their entire Air Force. We knocked out all of their anti-aircraft weaponry. We knocked out all of their radar. We knocked out all of their leaders, number one, and then we knocked out all of their leaders in the second division, and we knocked out numerous of their leaders in the third division, and they’re very confused.”

“We’ve had a total victory, except by people like you that don’t write the truth, you know?” Trump said.

“I actually think it’s sort of treasonous, what you write,” Trump declared, “but you and the New York Times and CNN, I would say, are the worst.”

“Your editors tell you what to write and you write it,” Trump said. “You should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it’s treason.”

Prominent right-wing or right-leaning media operations are hemorrhaging money and viewers, but according to a breakdown of the situation from The New Republic, the billionaires keeping the lights on at these companies still do not care.

In a piece published Friday morning, veteran media reporter Parker Molloy gave an overview of the woes currently besetting these more high-profile media operations. CBS News, recently taken over by conservative columnist Bari Weiss and reshaped into a much more MAGA-friendly mold, is bleeding viewers at a rapid rate and taking hits over the sloppiness of its operations. Ben Shapiro's The Daily Wire, meanwhile, has seen its YouTube traffic "collapse" by 70 percent since the end of 2024, and recently cut about 13 percent of its staff. This came after the tepid launch of its expensive high-fantasy TV series, The Pendragon Cycle, as part of its abortive attempt at being a mainstream production studio.

Molloy's piece was mainly inspired, however, by the Washington Post, which has garnered attention — if not views — for its new podcast. The video series, "Make It Make Sense," is fronted by the paper's opinion section, which has been foregrounded after owner and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos slashed the outlet's newsroom to the bone. The series is 20 episodes and 186 YouTube videos deep, and boasted only a meager 515 subscribers at the time Molloy published the piece. (It is currently up to just 527, even after its flagging viewership went viral on BlueSky.)

The series — which includes videos claiming to debunk the claim that the rich do not pay enough taxes and that colleges are giving away top grades too easily — has numerous posts on YouTube that have failed to crack 100 views and does not seem to be doing much better on dedicated podcast platforms, boasting just four scathing reviews on Apple Podcasts.

"The new opinion section’s video push is failing publicly, and so are the other billionaire-funded prestige-media operations that share its model," Molloy explained. "The content is dull. The numbers are microscopic. And the men paying for it have been telling us all along that they don’t care. For all the talk of 'the marketplace of ideas,' 'Make It Make Sense' looks like yet another right-wing influence operation that exists solely because a billionaire is willing to subsidize it."

The Post has seen a notable shift under Bezos that has seen its once solid subscription base fizzle. The outlet lost 250,000 after it broke with years of tradition and declined to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024, with a report indicating that an endorsement of Kamala Harris had already been prepared. A month after Trump returned to office, Bezos announced that the opinion section would take on a new focus on "personal liberties and free markets," which prompted 75,000 more subscribers to bail.

When pressed about potential concerns that this shift would alienate paying readers, Bezos is reported to have told opinion editor David Shipley: "I don't care."

"The Post is down 24 percent. The Daily Wire is down 50 percent. CBS Evening News just posted its worst-ever April in the 25–54 demographic," Molloy observed. "The men funding all of it could read the numbers if they wanted to."

She concluded: "What’s on the screen, meanwhile, is what they think doesn’t need to work. Four mid-tier opinion writers on a couch under wood paneling and a framed cowboy. Recent topics: hantavirus, pension padding, the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. The trailer view count and the channel subscriber count that you have to do the math to believe. Nobody is watching. Bezos doesn’t care."

The FBI has been "hemorrhaging" some of its most experienced and valuable agents amid President Donald Trump's chaotic and messy return to the White House, with an MS NOW report revealing the development as the bureau's director has been caught inflating arrest numbers.

On Thursday, MS NOW's Ana Cabrera hosted a segment delving into the outlet's recent revelations about FBI Director Kash Patel using sneaky methods to inflate the data pertaining to the bureau's success. Ken Dilanian, the reporter who broke the story, explained that Patel's recent boast about the FBI arresting twice as many violent felons in 2025 compared to when Joe Biden was president in 2024 was the result of a change in policy about what sorts of arrests are included in the statistics.

"What that doesn't explain is that Kash Patel changed the policy so that the FBI began, in 2025, counting arrests where FBI agents were present," Dilanian explained. "But other agencies made the arrests and led the investigation, whether other federal agencies or state and local agencies, including the immigration raids that Patel has been requiring FBI agents to go on. So these stats do not reflect additional suspects being taken off the streets, is what our sources are telling us."

Dilanian also deflated Patel's claims about the FBI getting better at arresting targets on its most wanted list, explaining that he has essentially been "gaming the system" by having fugitives added to the list when it is understood that they are soon to be captured anyway.

Amid this leadership mess, Dilanian revealed that the bureau saw its attrition rate skyrocket in 2025, losing some of its most valuable agents to the private sector. He also noted that this is an issue that cannot be resolved quickly, leaving the FBI in an prolonged quagmire of its own making.

"There's been a hemorrhaging of experienced agents," Dilanian said. "So there are around 13,000 special agents out of the FBI workforce of around 38,000. And generally, there's been around a 5 percent attrition rate, so around 700 agents a year. But in 2025, the bureau lost 2800 agents, according to internal FBI statistics. "

He added later: "And that may actually understate the extent of the damage here, because they are some of the most experienced agents and some of the most senior agents who have left. And it's continuing to happen. And it's a huge problem that is not fixable in a few years or with the next presidency, because those people are gone. They're in the private sector, and it takes many, many years to train people as good as... [these] special agents who have left the FBI."

The Donald Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), under former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and now, Acting AG Todd Blanche, hasn't been shy about targeting the president's adversaries for criminal investigations — from New York State Attorney General Letitia James to outgoing U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. And former FBI Director James Comey is now facing a grand jury indictment — a prosecution that, Bloomberg News argues in a May 14 editorial, "marks a new low" for the Trump-era DOJ.

"Comey's purported crime came a year ago, when he posted a photograph on social media of seashells arranged as '86 47,' and writing, 'Cool shell formation on my beach walk,'" the Bloomberg editorial board explains. "The Justice Department alleges that the photo constituted 'a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States.' According to the president, eighty-six is 'a mob term for 'kill him.' Trouble is, most Americans use the slang term in the same way that Merriam-Webster defines it: to eject or ban a customer (i.e., 'eighty-six them'), or 'to reject, discontinue, or get rid of (something).'"

The editorial continues, "As Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged, the phrase 86 47 'is used constantly' by Americans who aren't indicted for it. Comey's post may have been in poor taste, but to state the obvious, it doesn't equate to a murder hit."

Bloomberg's editorial writers stress that the Comey indictment fits into a "troubling pattern" of "dubious" and politically motivated Trump DOJ investigations of everyone from former CIA Director John O. Brennan to Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California).

"The message the administration is sending — crossing the president risks criminal charges, while playing ball can get you out of trouble — is a destructive one," the Bloomberg board warns. And it may yet get worse. ... Some of the president's loyalists contend that he's merely treating his enemies the way they treated him. Not so."

The writers add, "It's fair to debate whether several local and state cases brought against him were tainted by politics, but the blatancy and scope of the political retribution now being pursued by the federal government has little precedent in American history."

A Republican lawmaker has been caught on tape agreeing to a racist remark directed at House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in which he was referred to as having "cotton-picking hands."

Jeffries, the House Minority Leader since taking over from Nancy Pelosi, has been outspoken in response to the Virginia Supreme Court's latest ruling, shooting down a new congressional map designed to create four new Democratic seats. The effort, approved by the state's voters in a special ballot measure, was undertaken in order to counteract gerrymandering campaigns done in red states at the behest of President Donald Trump, with the aim of rigging the 2026 midterms in their favor.

Jen Kiggans is a Republican representative for Virginia, who on Monday appeared on the latest episode of the "Richmond Morning News" podcast with host Rich Herrera. During the interview, Herrera made a comment about Jeffries, a New York representative and a black man, staying out of Virginia politics, and included a phrase with racist origins.

"If Hakeem Jeffries wants to be involved in Virginia politics, then I suggest he does what a bunch of New Yorkers are doing," Herrera said. "Leave New York, move down here to Virginia, run for office down here. You could represent us. If not, get your cotton-picking hands off of Virginia."

"That's right, ditto," Kiggans said. "Yes, yes to that."

Virginia Democrats, opting against a nuclear option, have appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to have the new map reinstated. The court previously allowed California's pro-Democratic new district map, also passed by voters via ballot measure, to proceed against a GOP lawsuit, though that suit's reasoning alleged that the map was an unlawful racial gerrymander. The lawsuit that tanked the Virginia map, meanwhile, argued that proper procedures were not followed.

Despite the setback in Virginia, Jeffries this week remained confident that Democrats will retake the House in the midterms, albeit by a slimmer margin than they had hoped. Other election experts and observers have reached a similar conclusion, while also noting that the Senate majority is also increasingly in play.

"We remain undeterred," Jeffries wrote in a letter to his Democratic colleagues. "The cost of living is out of control, grocery bills are skyrocketing, gas prices are surging, healthcare has been ripped away from millions and a reckless war of choice is raging in the Middle East. Donald Trump is deeply unpopular and Republicans have failed to make life better for the American people. Instead of changing direction, GOP extremists are scheming to change the electoral composition of districts throughout the country.

He continued: "Republicans only hold a three-seat majority in the House of Representatives. This is the narrowest margin of any party since 1930. During Donald Trump’s first midterm election in 2018, House Democrats flipped 40 seats. To take control this Fall, we only need to flip a fraction of that total. That is why right-wing extremists have been in full panic mode since they passed their historically unpopular One Big Ugly Bill last July. Our effort to forcefully push back against the Republican redistricting scheme will not slow down. We are just getting started."