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Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin is calling out President Donald Trump’s administration for issuing subpoenas to four New York Times reporters for daring to do the news, according to Mediaite

After the Times embarrassed Trump with an article revealing that security flaws kept Trump from flying his new $400 million luxury plane (gifted from Qatari leaders) his politicized Department of Justice subpoenaed four journalists including reporters Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt on Friday.

The Times blasted the subpoenas as an intimidation move, noting that in some instances the legal documents were administered by federal agents who showed up at the reporters’ homes.

“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” the Times wrote. “… our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used. This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”

But Griffen had her own criticism of the DOJ’s behavior.

“This action by the US government to subpoena reporters for reporting legitimate news on security concerns about Air Force 1 should alarm every American,” Griffen wrote on X.

Other critics joined in under her post, with one demanding: “Why can’t the federal government, regardless who is president, not allow the press to exercise its First Amendment rights?”

Another posted on X that it was “good to see” an honest reaction from a Fox News reporter.

“Welcome to our new police state,” quipped another X user.

“It’s time Republicans grow a pair and stop this nonsense!” howled a fourth. “We have a Constitution to follow, not allow Trump to destroy it!”

Similarly, a statement from the Washington DC-based National Press Club said federal prosecutors’ subpoena of journalists should alarm every American “because it threatens the public’s constitutional right to an independent press.”

The White House remains extremely sensitive about the endangered status of the Qatari gift. White House communications director Steven Cheung also singled out MS NOW reporter Carol Leonnig's social media post about the plane on X last week.

“Carol Leonnig is a liar and this article is complete Fake News. She has no idea what she is talking about,” posted Cheung on X. “She says the White House declined to comment. Not true. We gave comment to The New York Times and many other outlets. Carol is not a real journalist. A complete fraud.”

President Donald Trump appears to be trying to revive the Cold War-era "Red Scare" with his newest line of attack against Democrats, but as one former RNC Chair wrote for MS NOW, his effort falls apart in the face of "history and common sense" — and his own administration's machinations.

In the face of his own withering popularity and Democratic momentum heading into the midterms, Trump has taken to slamming his opponents as "godless communists" in various speeches, most notably his America 250 address at Mt. Rushmore. This tactic appears driven by a recent trend of self-described Democratic Socialists finding strong success in Democratic primaries in places like New York City and Colorado.

"These are not mere political disagreements, like differences over taxes or regulations," Trump said. Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. … The godless communist morality states that anything is justified to bring about inhuman visions. … They don’t want good, they don’t love God, and they don’t want God."

Writing in a piece for MS NOW Saturday, Michael Steele, who led the Republican National Committee from 2009 and 2011 and has emerged as an outspoken conservative Trump critic, argued that this sort of "Red Scare" rhetoric will not play well in the modern context, and dismissed the notion that modern socialists are anything like Cold War-era communists.

"Trump’s speech comes at a very different time than [Joseph] McCarthy’s, however," Steele wrote. "The West won the Cold War decades ago; the remaining communist countries, such as China and Vietnam, have mixed economies, and even Cuba has adopted some market reforms. The 'communists' Trump is attacking are democratic socialists who want to do things like expand Medicare and start city-run grocery stores in needy areas, not seize the means of production."

Steele further noted that, when the original Red Scare began, average incomes were much higher in the U.S. than they are now, meaning that Americans had reasons "to be optimistic about their economic futures and to see capitalism as a system worth protecting." Now, not so much.

"In fact, if anyone is trying to create a government-run economy, it’s not the democratic socialists; it’s Trump himself," Steele argued. "The president has imposed illegal tariffs and is now subsidizing farmers suffering under those tariffs to the tune of $44 billion by the end of this year. He spearheaded partial state ownership of private companies. As recently as this week, the administration even announced so-called 'Freedom Fuel' centers to offset uncertainty at the pump caused by Trump’s war with Iran, which he entered without congressional approval. All the while, Trump has not only insulated his own riches from the disastrous economic policies he’s implemented, but he’s multiplied them."

He added: "Even more sinister, the president has embraced the same authoritarian tactics associated with actual communist leaders. Since Day One of his second term, his administration has worked overtime to purge the federal workforce of anyone he suspects of disloyalty. His Homeland Security Department has detained people for writing op-eds and flooded cities with masked federal agents. His Justice Department has targeted perceived enemies with the full might of the U.S. criminal justice system."

President Donald Trump is traveling considerably less in his second term than he did in his previous one between 2017 and 2021. It was assumed the 80-year-old was slowing down or couldn't hack it with the rigorous schedule he once kept. But it appears there might be another reason, Maggie Haberman teased on Friday.

Speaking to CNN's Audie Cornish, Haberman, co-author of the new book Regime Change, explained that the administration is scared.

Reports are unfolding about the shocking revelations that the reason Trump swapped planes in Turkey to fly part of the way back to the U.S. is there were credible threats of a possible attack on Trump's plane.

"This is a president who has survived assassination attempts," Cornish noted. "Does this kind of concern loom large for him?"

Haberman said that those attempts "really radicalized" him and his team.

"The assassination attempts that he faced, in particular Butler, happened around the time that someone had been charged with being part of a murder for hire plot involving or set up by Iranian officials. Allegedly," she said. "And in his mind and in the campaign's mind at the time, it all became one thing."

It's for that reason, Haberman said, Trump and his team saw the new threats from Iran as serious and concerning. These kinds of threats are part of why Trump isn't seen out and about as much.

"You are already seeing a president who does not travel outside the White House that much. Part of it is that, you know, he would tell aides at the beginning of the of the term, 'I'm done campaigning,' but part of it is legitimate security concerns," said Haberman.

Haberman noted that another challenge she sees for Trump is that he is not surrounded by top experts and experienced professionals. For example, she added, those negotiating with Iran aren't well-schooled in nuclear weapons, much less in diplomatic negotiation. It's Trump's son-in-law and his catch-all "envoy for everything," Steve Witkoff.

The group of influencers is also kept extremely small, meaning if someone like Witkoff isn't in the room, they have no clue what is going on. One of the more significant things that happened as a result of that is that Witkoff felt he was close to a deal with Iran, but Trump decided to bomb them out of the blue. The lack of expertise meant that Trump wasn't properly prepared for what he'd face and never crafted an exit strategy.

"It became very clear that foreign policy — as someone said, and we quote them anonymously in the book, is 'whatever Trump says at any given moment,'" said Haberman.

During his first administration, Trump was rushed to the presidential bunker out of fear as a crowd grew near the White House protesting the police death of George Floyd. In his second term, a major project for Trump has been rebuilding the same bunker beneath a giant ballroom.

President Donald Trump is more and more beholden to a "dangerous addiction," according to his one-time biographer, and it is one that has both defined his entire political career and could endanger his future.

Michael Wolff is a longtime reporter and author, best known for his extensive coverage of Trump's personal and political dealings, including a series of books about the inner workings of his first administration. In the latest edition of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," he touched on Trump's appearance at the latest NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, and argued that his conduct there reveals the addiction that most defines him: attention.

"He’s not about policy. He’s not about accomplishments. He’s not about ‘America first,’ he’s certainly not about cooperation, which is the nature... of NATO,” Wolff explained. “It’s just about attention... He arrives there, and it’s, ‘What do I do to claim all of the attention? Then coming back to Greenland, then coming back to dismissing everyone, dissing Europe. So essentially, how could he not but become the center of attention here?”

Wolff even suggested that Trump might have allowed his recent ceasefire deal with Iran to disintegrate in order to better steal the spotlight at the summit. His visit was marked by attacks against a parade of long-established U.S. allies, including. Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the U.K., taking aim at them for refusing to participate in his war, for allegedly not spending enough on NATO and for opposing his calls to annex Greenland.

"You have to understand that there is no meaning beyond that. It’s not about anything else," Wolff continued. "What has this 10 years of the Trump era been about? It has just been about what gets him attention."

"I mean, it is strange when you hear earnest and utterly sincere journalists trying to make sense out of what he does," Joanna Coles, Wolff's co-host, said, further suggesting that his attention-obsessed nature must stem from a lack of it in his childhood.

In response, Wolff countered: "He has always gotten too much of it, and that has created an addiction which obviously has to be... satisfied with ever more attention."

He added: "Our foreign policy is not to cooperate with our allies because... our allies are irrelevant, we are the focus, we must be the focus, and by we Trump means ‘I’ must be the focus. That then becomes... the profile of America’s place in the world... No other interests matter, no other nations matter, no other leaders matter."

Brigadier General John Teichert handed Fox News a harsh reality that President Donald Trump's new Air Force One plane from Qatar isn't equipped to handle the president's high security needs.

Returning from the NATO summit in Turkey, Trump was forced to use the old presidential plane due to a credible Iranian assassination threat revealed by Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

MS NOW reporter Carol Leonnig likewise revealed Thursday that one former national security official believes the new Air Force One isn't fully secure.

“This plane was built for aesthetics, not mission,” they said. “We know about its paint, its leather seats. But we don’t know its capabilities.”

Speaking to Fox, Teichert made it clear: "No matter what you do to retrofit a Qatari jet, it's never going to have the defensive capabilities of a tailor-made Air Force One built from scratch."

"So, it's clear to me that the Secret Service gave some pretty good advice to the president that there is a very real specific and credible threat and he needs to have the most robust and defended capability as possible, especially when leaving Turkey yesterday," he added.

"It goes back to you're never going to retrofit a plan to be as robust as if you make it. You need censors built into the plane. You need active defenses. You need hardening. And all of that really can come from a tailor-made, built-from-scratch plane," Teichert said.

He added that a new Air Force One system built from scratch will have those things, but a new Qatari "built on" won't.

Indeed, Leonnig's reporting cited national security officials who explained that it typically takes years, as well as billions of dollars, to build an aircraft like Air Force One and guarantee its safety and security. In Trump's case, the time and the money were not there.

Trump was given the plane last May and bragged in June that the U.S. “couldn’t build a plane like this.” The plane was built by the American company Boeing. The interior was designed by Alberto Pinto Interior Design. Pinto was also in Jeffrey Epstein's black book, and Epstein was known to visit his studio when in Paris.

There are currently two Boeing jets under construction to become the new Air Force One planes, but they won't be ready for another two years. So, instead of continuing to use the old Air Force One, Trump accepted the Qatari one and said he intends to keep it for his presidential library after leaving office.

Leonnig revealed Thursday afternoon that the president was embarrassed by his need to swap out the new fancy plane. The spicier Air Force One features a new glossy interior, but it lacks key things like the ability to refuel mid-air and defend itself using its own missile-defense systems.

Trump also can't do command-and-control functions that the other Air Force One could protect from. In the case of the older plane, it was built as a kind of “flying situation room." Any president could receive a secure and highly classified briefing while flying on the plane.

President Donald Trump is allegedly benefiting from a double standard in which his health issues are not scrutinized as much as those of his Democratic predecessor — at least, according to a child of that same former president.

“I’m never gonna convince Jake Tapper that my father was perfectly capable of executing his charge as president of the United States the entire time he was president of The United States,” Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, told journalist Tommy Christopher for a Substack interview for Jim Acosta in an interview published on Thursday. The younger Biden was referring to Trump’s repeated gaffes and alleged signs of dementia, which became particularly prominent during his recent trip to Turkey.

“What I don’t understand is, I think ... that it really does have these cult dynamics that are part of it,” Biden told Christopher. “Which is that when people are presented with the evidence, ... like the lunar eclipse didn’t occur and the spaceship didn’t arrive and we weren’t all teleported to Venus. Like, when that doesn’t happen with the cult leader ... they just double down. They double down because they’re so invested into the entirety of the narrative that they bought into and made it part of their identity.”

He added that Trump recently appeared to fall asleep while his cabinet stood behind him, closing his eyes and yet, as Acosta put it, being defended by his supporters as supposedly “just blinking.”

“There were moments in time where people said, ‘Oh look at Joe Biden!’ when he would sit down like that and I thought that that was unfair,” the younger Biden told Acosta. “And so what they do is they play the whole tape though. And he literally is sleeping! He’s sleeping. There’s no like a way around it. It is not once, it is not twice. It’s over and over and again now.”

The younger Biden said he suspects Trump's drowsiness has to do with his heart, noting the bruises on his hands and neck, his lengthy absences and a recent period when he had “drooping of the right side of his face.”

“It’s clearly he has a pulmonary issue,” Biden said. “... or something else. I’m not a doctor, but he’s clearly got something. And by the way, that’s okay, too but they’re never gonna tell us the reality of what’s going on because we don’t deserve it. We don’t deserve that.”

Speaking to AlterNet for this article, former Tufts University psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham — who recently lead a letter to Congress expressing alarm over what he claimed were signs of Trump’s cognitive decline — agreed with the younger Biden’s analysis.

“First of all, I think Biden's performance during that one debate was pretty emblematic of a probable dementing process; unfortunately, or fortunately, that was the only real window we had onto his infirmities of old age,” Abraham told AlterNet. “That's not the case with Trump — Trump has given us a huge data set of red flags. It's hard to imagine any reasonable psychiatrist seeing those in any patient and not recognizing them for what they are. So the data set on one side is very small; the data set on the other is the largest we've ever had for any sitting president.”

Abraham added, “More data is better than less data — that's the best I can say. So — is it a double standard? Sounds like a double standard, or — I'd call it a quadruple standard.”

MAGA is getting more and more weird, says the Bulwark crew of Tim Miller, Sam Stein and Will Sommer. But MAGA’s talent for blaming others for their personal depravities remains unchanged.

MAGA social media influencer Gian Rachtelli, 54, was charged with lewd, indecent and obscene acts on the National Mall, allegedly while dressed as Uncle Sam during an acrobatic performance at President Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair, according to police documents.

Three separate witnesses reported seeing Rachtelli, known to his thousands of followers as “Manny,” engage in lewd acts, according to U.S. Park Police documents. But earlier this week Rachtelli said in an interview that Antifa was probably behind it.

At the time, of course, he was talking to a puppet.

“Is it just a misunderstanding, or were you set up?” asked Puppet Edgar on his YouTube show earlier this week.

“I've seen Antifa do crazier things than that. So, I’m not saying I was set up, but I would not say that maybe a phone call was made to somebody,” Rachtelli told Edgar.

“This is actually a pretty important job for [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio and [Attorney General] Todd Blanche and [FBI head] Kash Patel,” announced Miller, between laughter. “They've been very concerned about Antifa and cracking down. And to think that they might have someone on the inside [of the park police].”

“I think it goes further than that,” said Stein. “These are the performers that he was watching on stage when he was [committing lewd acts] from a distance. And I think what he's saying is they infiltrated the [stage act] and they were just too tempting.”

“This is a guy named Edgar the Puppet,” said Sommer, who makes a career of monitoring MAGA shows and intra-party battles. “It truly alarms me to learn that this guy has a big audience. I mean he has like 190,000 followers. He's like a conservative puppet.”

“Like a Newsmax Triumph the Insult Comedy Dog,” said Miller.

“You might think this kind of comes off like a Triumph routine, but he's on Manny's side,” said Sommer. “He supports him. And so, Manny says ‘I'm out of jail. I've avoided violating my release conditions by not quite getting back on the mall. And now I'm giving an exclusive interview to a puppet. I'm not a sicko.’”

“I don't know why he didn't come to the Bulwark podcast. I was available,” quipped Miller, praising his talent for laundering flawed personalities in a public forum.

Throughout the show, Rachtelli insisted on his innocence to his lilac-colored host.

“I just went past my pockets to get something out of them,” Rachtelli told Edgar, while calling witness accounts of his behavior “shoddy at best” and “total hearsay.”

“What is up with that tongue,” complained Stein, watching the video and referring to Rachtelli’s disturbing habit of punctuating statements with a flicking tongue.

“Okay, everybody. It's a weird world out there,” concluded Miller.

CNN anchor Kasie Hunt appeared staggered by her own Thursday supercut that the network assembled of President Donald Trump’s countless claims of Iranian surrender.

Hunt played the massive clip after Trump’s latest claim on Wednesday that Iran’s leaders were yet again slavering for an end to the war that Trump began — despite the regime’s apparent acceptance of more U.S. air strikes and the closing of the pivotal Strait of Hormuz.

Trump claimed Wednesday that Iranian leaders had “called a little while ago,” and they wanted “to make a deal so badly.” But this boast was nothing new. And network videographers had plenty of material to choose from to prove it.

“We went back and took a look, of course, at what … Trump himself has said over the period of days. I want to play for you what that has sounded like over the course of the last several months,” said Hunt in a tone of warning.

And then it came.

“They want to make a deal.” — Trump, March 23

“… and they want to make a deal so badly.” — Trump, March 24

“They want to make a deal so badly.” — Trump, March 25

“I do see a deal in Iran.” — Trump, March 29

“It's looking very good that we're going to make a deal.” — Trump, April 16

“This process should go very quickly.” — Trump, April 17

“We're going to end that war very quickly.” — Trump, May 19

“We're in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal.” — Trump, June 9

“And they want to make the deal a lot more than I do.” — Trump, June 11

“We have our deal done with Iran, and it should be successful.” — Trump, June 16

“We're, uh, making an amazing deal with Iran.” — Trump, June 23

“They want to make a deal with us very badly.” — Trump, June 25

“They're dying to make a deal. They're giving us a lot.” — Trump, June 26

“They want to make a deal so badly.” — Trump, July 8

With a short laugh, Hunt then turned to National Review Online founder and conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg.

“Uh, Jonah Goldberg, on that note. I mean, what kind of deal has the U.S. gotten out of this?”

“There's no deal,” Goldberg said flatly. “Even the MOU wasn't a deal. It was a deal to talk about coming up with a deal that was going to last 60 days, that was never going to be extended.”

Trump, meanwhile is catching mounting rage from American voters, legislators and the international community over the war he started, which is driving up global and U.S. energy prices. And as gas prices again creep up due to Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz, Trump and the Republican Party’s chances of surviving the November mid-terms appears increasingly dicey.

- YouTube youtu.be

A Republican lawmaker noted for his support and defense of President Donald Trump was not feeling any love from his constituents at a recent town hall, with The Daily Beast reporting that he was mercilessly heckled and booed by the "hostile" crowd as he attempted to tout Trump's agenda.

Rep. Mike Flood is a Republican who has represented Nebraska's 1st District since 2022. On Tuesday evening, he held a town hall for voters in the city of Bellevue, where he attempted to win them over on the supposed accomplishments of Trump and the GOP-led Congress. While the district swung for the president by 12 points in 2024, nearly two years later, they were not having what Flood tried to sell them.

"When asked about benefits for people with disabilities, Flood was promptly booed after mentioning the Trump administration’s signature legislation—the Big Beautiful Bill—that the president signed into law a year ago," the Daily Beast's report detailed.

“Well, under the One Big Beautiful Bill, we protected—we protected a system that, if it had gone unchecked, it would not have been long-term available for the very people that are the most vulnerable: the developmentally disabled, the persistent mentally ill, people that are of advanced age," Flood said amidst the hail of boos. “We protected Medicaid in a bipartisan, common-sense way. That was the result.”

Flood was booed further when he attempted to tout the partnership between the U.S. and Israel while discussing Trump's conflicts in the Middle East, issues that have become increasingly toxic within the GOP base. In its report, The Daily Beast noted that the congressman "has received over $48,000 from pro-Israel political action committees [like AIPAC] as of April."

"Flood also faced vocal resistance when he praised the SAVE America Act, the legislation that requires proof of citizenship for voter registration but largely does away with mail-in ballots," the report added. "At another point in the town hall, a participant asked Flood, 'When are you going to call up President Trump before he bankrupts this country?'”

Hostile town halls have become a consistent trend for Republican lawmakers during Trump's second term, with Flood himself suffering through several already. Most recently, he held a May town hall where he was ruthlessly "jeered" by voters, according to a NOTUS report, over Trump's Iran war and threats to Medicaid. This also followed on from another heated town hall from last summer, which NOTUS described as having "a contentious environment by booing, jeering and even interrupting him at times."

Flood is seeking reelection in the forthcoming 2026 midterms, and despite the heat he has gotten from constituents at these events, he remains heavily tipped to win again in his ruby-red district.

Far-right economics expert and ally of President Donald Trump Stephen Moore, was momentarily stumped when he went up against CNN host Jim Sciutto on Monday.

As Sciutto reporter, a bombshell report published Monday revealed that investors of Trump's cryptocurrency lost $3.8 billion while Trump raked in profits. It's a 98 percent drop in the value.

Moore acknowledged that losing that much value is certainly not a good thing, but that he knows "people" who have "gotten really, really rich off of crypto." Trump, in particular, made approximately $1.1 billion off of crypto ventures, according to his financial disclosure.

But Sciutto asked about the ethics and allegations of corruption as well. "But what's different about it?" Sciutto asked. "He's not just any other person. He's the president of the United States with an enormous political following. People bought it because of him, right? And if you or I started a meme coin, we wouldn't get that many people to invest and be able to walk away with $500 million in fees. Is that not taking advantage of the office?"

Moore dismissed it, saying that people "wanted to believe in these coins" and that Trump was acting "in good faith." Trump, he claimed, truly believed it would be a "good investment." For him, it was.

That's when Sciutto asked about all of the other ventures that Trump has profited from in the past year.

"Here's the thing, though. If this [were] isolated, you could say it was one bad investment. But you have the president and his sons investing in companies that have government business before them. You have a lot of questions about President Trump making trades prior to or connected to decisions he made that benefit those companies," the host said. "It's not just one bad crypto bet for for the majority of people, it's a question of profiting from the office."

Moore demanded an example, but Sciutto called his bluff. He cited the billion-dollar mining deal in Kazakhstan. The project was being pushed by Trump's administration while his sons were pressing the same project, with the family poised to profit.

It created a glaring conflict of interest as public power was being used to help along a deal that ultimately enriched the president's businesses. The timeline also looks bad, as Trump's sons got involved as it was starting to advance, making it appear that access and influence were being used to help the family profit. Ethics rules and anti-corruption laws are supposed to bar this kind of self-dealing, a TIME analysis explained.

But Moore claimed that Trump had nothing to do with his sons' businesses because he's too busy being president and their companies are a "big industry."

"It's a multibillion-dollar industry. I would separate out what the Trump industries are doing versus what President Trump is doing in the Oval Office," Moore said.

Moore asserted Trump isn't benefiting at all from his presidency.

"He's not he's not using his position to get rich off of these investments these investments, in my opinion," Moore said.

"In your opinion," Sciutto repeated.

The nearly 1,000-page financial disclosure shows that he has increased his wealth by at least $2 billion since taking office.

One of President Donald Trump’s most prominent defenders in the mainstream media, British broadcaster Piers Morgan, got into a tense exchange with an American conservative commentator on Tuesday after he was accused of sucking up to Trump.

“You have decided you know better than me what you think is important, and I would say that is not necessarily true,” Morgan told The Bulwark’s Tim Miller in a podcast that appeared on Tuesday. Morgan, who met Trump when in 2008 he appeared on the future president’s reality TV show “The Celebrity Apprentice” (Morgan ultimately won), went on to say that “a lot of the woke issues actually are things of legitimate mass concern. I'll give you an example: the ongoing furor around trans athletes in women's sports.”

When Miller asked “Who cares?” to Morgan’s concern, the broadcaster replied that “if you actually go out in the street and ask a thousand people what they think about that, (a) they would care, and (b) they think it's complete nonsense. And what my liberal friends do — the terrible mistake you make, I'm afraid, when you try to say nobody cares — is you're missing the fact that they do care. And, you know, it was people like Joe Biden — when he made it clear he thought it was fine for trans women to compete in women's sport, Americans actually went, ‘This is nonsense,’ which is why he lost.”

Miller responded by saying, “My point is not that nobody cares. My point is that, in the grand scheme of things, you're covering a news show, having so many segments about the fifth-place performer in a women's high school swim match.” To illustrate his point, Miller accused Morgan of creating “false balance” between Trump’s policies and Biden’s policies.

“On one hand, Trump got us into a stupid war,” Miller said. “On the other hand, oh my goodness, there was a lacrosse match that had a girl in it, in West Virginia.” When Morgan tried to change the subject, Miller accused him of “walking past my criticism” of how Morgan focused on “crazy liberal s——” while ignoring “crazy, random conservative s——” such as that happening in Miller’s state of Louisiana. Then the two men pivoted to discussing Trump.

Miller pointed out that in November, Morgan wrote a New York Post editorial in which he claimed Trump is “ready to be one of America's great presidents,” asking if Morgan still believes that. While qualifying his defense by saying that Trump “unfortunately has reverted to type” and compromised his legacy by breaking his promise to not start new wars, he then insisted that Trump could still be remembered as a great president. He also repeatedly insinuated throughout the interview that those who harshly criticize the president have “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Miller eventually admitted he was “frustrated” with the conversation.

“My counterpoint to that is: okay, what do you want me to do, be a liar?” Miller asked Morgan. “Shine his turds? Pretend like he's something that he's not? I mean, look — the honest truth is, everybody who goes to work for Trump and then has a falling out with him and leaves sounds like me in the end. I mean, [former chief of staff] John Kelly — thought he's a fascist. [Former Secretary of Defense Jim] Mattis. [Former communicators director Anthony] Scaramucci. We go down the list, they all sound like me, because I'm saying the truth about him.”

After initially citing the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and a variety of Muslim-majority countries (including Bahrain, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco) but failed to address the Israel-Palestine conflict, Morgan replaced that policy with praising Trump for shutting down the US southern border.

“You said the thing you wanted to say, Piers,” Miller told Morgan. “The numbers are so great because at the border they came in and got turned around, and that counts as one. What Trump is doing is not only shutting down the border, but also menacing people in cities, in the interior of the country.”

Ultimately Morgan declared that Trump should not be judged until the end of his second term.

“If you had a referendum aspect to your presidential system, fine,” Morgan said. “You don't, you elect a president for four years, and I think presidents should be judged at the end of four years.”

This is not Morgan’s first flirtation with controversy over his opinionated takes on American politics. For instance in February he defended Trump’s suppression of the Epstein files, which include details about his longtime friendship with the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, by saying Trump has not been proved to have done anything criminal and that “a lot of stuff in those files that are clearly fantastic and malicious.”

During Joe Biden's presidency and the 2024 presidential election, Michael Cohen was a blistering critic of Donald Trump and even said he would leave the United States for safety reasons if Trump returned to the White House. But the New York Port is reporting that Cohen has a new radio gig in the Big Apple, where, on Sunday, July 12, he will take over the WABC radio show formerly hosted by ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And Cuomo appears to have made peace with Trump.

WABC owner John Catsimatidis, a Trump supporter, told the Post, "I checked with the White House, and they had no objection. I understand everything is fine."

When Lewis pointed out that Trump was reportedly "OK with the hiring of Michael Cohen," Sykes noted an "insight that he got" from conservative former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) — which is that Trump "will forgive you" and "bring you back if he wants to."

Sykes told Lewis, "Adam, I think said this on one of my podcasts. Adam said, 'You know, if I called up Donald Trump tomorrow and said I'm really, really sorry — I would like to get on the team — Donald Trump would invite me down to Mar-a-Lago.' He would create the big tent, while Democrats are saying, 'No, Matt Lewis wrote something 15 years ago that I find offensive. We don't need Matt Lewis.' For Donald Trump, it's like: Come on in, I love it when people admit they're wrong. I love the sinners who come home for more sin. Apparently. And this is something to keep in mind."

Sykes continued, "For Republicans, that door is almost always open. There are some lines you cannot cross, I mean, as (Rep.) Thomas Massie found out. (But) you know, if Marjorie Taylor Greene called him up tomorrow and said, 'Hey, Daddy, can I come home?," what do you think he would say? Absolutely, come home. Get on your knees."

Lewis interjected argued that "if Michael Cohen believes half of the things he said about Donald Trump," he "wouldn't want anything to do with him" — to which Sykes responded, "But Trump loves the groveling. He loves that."

Sykes continued, "It works for him. It does. It's a part of that transactional nature…. You would think that some of the things Michael Cohen has said would make any normal human being's bright line. You know what, they're off the Christmas cards. Donald Trump: not necessary."

When Donald Trump narrowly won the 2024 presidential election, he did so with the help of both his hardcore MAGA base and independents who were feeling frustrated over inflation and liked his promise to lower prices "on Day 1." Now, with the 2026 midterms less than four months away, many polls are showing Trump in trouble with independents, while hardcore MAGA voters are still loyal to him. And according to MS NOW, there is another type of one-time Trump voter: former MAGAs who were once fierce Trump loyalists but have grown quite disenchanted with the MAGA movement.

MS NOW's "Morning Joe," on Monday following the 4th of July Weekend, aired a segment with five former Trump voters who explained to reporter David Noriega why they have turned against the MAGA movement.

Noriega noted that former Trump supporter Rich Logis founded a nonprofit group called Leaving MAGA, which consists of other ex-MAGA voters and includes "deradicalization" resources. And all five of the voters Noriega interviewed are Leaving MAGA members.

Logis told Noriega, "What MAGA does provide is a place where people feel seen and heard and validated. We used to say, 'We're not the cult. The outside world is the cult.' And 'We're not the crazies. The outside world are the crazies."

Leaving MAGA member Tori Hurst told Noriega that being a part of MAGA goes way beyond political ideology — it becomes a part of one's core identity.

Hurst explained, "It was very much this conversation of: if you want to have nice things, be a Republican."

Another Leaving MAGA member, Steven Francisci, told Noriega, "I really wanted acceptance with my father, and my father was very much into Fox News. So, that was something we could connect on."

Another interviewee told Noriega that the MAGA Republicans she was close to favored "household voting," which is when a husband dictates who is wife votes for.

"I became heavily indoctrinated into tradwife culture. We were all absolutely fine with household voting," she noted.

Noriega asked the five Leaving MAGA members if, back in 2020, they believed Trump's claim that the presidential election was stolen from him — and all of them said that they did.

Leaving MAGA member Ron Kelley told Noriega, "I did believe that the election was stolen. I believed that the riots, that those were patriots — until I actually switched off Fox News and started getting my news from other places. My information, that's when it finally hit."

After "Morning Joe" aired the Leaving MAGA interviews, Never Trump conservative Elise Jordan told MS NOW's Jonathan Lemire, "I would say, though, that I would hesitate to call this a widespread trend at all. Because you look at the polling, and his hardcore MAGA base is, overall, not leaving him. But this is an interesting sliver and subset of showing just the earthquakes that have happened."

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Republican strategist and Bluestack Strategies founder Maura Gillespie warns Republicans are wringing their hands over the spectacle of President Donald Trump fighting old age while the party staggers into the mid-terms.

“It will be hard for them to defend that aspect of it,” Gillespie told a CNN Friday panel, speaking of Trump nailing his name on everything in D.C. and broadcasting his face on news. “But I think for the president, who you know, he has long talked about his admiration for leaders who have full control over their country. I think he looks at his approval ratings, which are record lows, and that for someone who, like Trump, loves having power, loves appearing strong and powerful — he’s 80 years old. His decline is starting to really show physically, also cognitively … [with] some of his slurred speeches and things of that nature. And so, he's starting to realize the best way for him to make a legacy is to put his name on everything.”

Plastering your image on public spaces and making billions while being president is not a good look for the party, but Gillespie said Trump knows no other mode in his second term.

“It's what he knows how to do. As somebody who is in real estate and who does business and puts his name and branding on everything, this is his way to make a legacy impact because he doesn't have all the time that many presidents do post-presidency for legacy at the age of 80. And so it creates a challenge for him,” said Gillespie, who worked for the Republican campaigns of former Rep. Adam Kinzinger and former House Speaker John Boehner. “But I don't think Republicans are going to be able to explain to their constituents about spending constituent money on things like that when grocery costs are high and gas is high.

Former U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman advised Trump to make his legacy more about strengthening the economy stronger and lifting working-class Americans out of poverty because a president is too easily remembered for his mistakes whether it’s a $1 billion-a-day on a war on Iran, high gas prices or an insurrection.

But Gillespie dismissed that possibility outright, saying Trump isn’t interested in that.

“I think he's not interested in that. Sorry. I just think he's not interested. I think he really is interested about what everything means to him,” said Gillespie. “He's not a Republican or a Democrat. Donald Trump is someone who is egocentrically focused, and so it really just matters how it looks to him, not to anybody else.”

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The Daily Beast reports Emmy Award-winning host W. Kamau Bell fears fellow comedian Nate Bargatze is going to take a financial hit for his alliance to President Donald Trump.

Bell recently called out Bargatze in a Substack post as one of the many “nice white guy” celebrities who suddenly act “confused when they are judged for their own actions.”

Bargatze recently got himself photographed with MAGA campions Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cheryl Hines, among others. A source close to the comedian told the Daily Beast that there was nothing “political” about being at the event “that he is merely a big UFC fan.” But Bell told Obsessed: The Podcast that he doesn’t believe that — and neither will many of Bargatze’s fans.

“I’ll say this, his accountant doesn’t want him to be a MAGA comedian,” said Bell, predicting that Bargatze emerging right-wing product will ultimately “hurt Nate’s bottom line, because he’s bigger than every MAGA comedian.”

“There’s nothing he’s going to gain from losing people who are like, I just think that guy’s funny,” Bell said. “He cuts across race and ethnicity and religion and socioeconomic background and politics. So why would you suddenly put that in a box?”

But there’s likely no coming back from this, Bell admitted, and Bargatze is already going to lose the fan base he’s destined to lose.

“Throughout the history of the White House, going to the White House is a political decision. But now it is not only a political decision, but it is a caustic and toxic decision based on what this administration is doing,” said Bell. “… when you put it at the White House, at Donald Trump’s house, there is no way I’m going.”

Daily Beast reports Trump has inextricably tied himself to the sport with MAGA enthusiasts like Joe Rogan and UFC boss Dana White both helping Trump reach young male voters in 2024. It also did not help that former football player Josh Hokit spat a racist insult at former First Lady Michelle Obama by shouting: "… Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?" during an interview with Rogan.

Bell said he probably wouldn’t even attend a regular UFC match now.

Bell then offered a word of assistance: “If anything, Nate, this is me trying to help you. Who are the people around you who are supposed to say, don’t do that? Whether that’s your politics or not, that’s not a good business decision for you, Nate. It’s not good. It doesn’t help your brand in any way.”

President Donald Trump is drawing a great deal of criticism from a combination of Democrats and Never Trump conservatives for mixing the federal government with his private business ventures — which, detractors say, is a blatant conflict of interest. And a CNN panel went off the rails on Thursday night when Trump supporter Ben Ferguson went out of his way to defend the president.

Ferguson argued, "We have a president that was really wealthy when he came in, and keeps doing business with his family. There's nothing wrong with it."

But host Abby Phillip and others on the panel pushed back against Ferguson's argument.

Phillip told Ferguson, "You would have been fine with the so-called Biden crime family if Biden had just been transparent — if Hunter Biden had just been transparent? If he had just been transparent and said, 'I'm using my dad's name to make money,' you would have said, 'Totally above board?'"

Ferguson, however, doubled down on his defense of Trump, saying that "Burisma was massive corruption" and insisting that Hunter Biden's business activities couldn't be compared to those of President Trump or his son Donald Trump Jr. Ferguson also mentioned stock trades made by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California). But when CNN's Bakari Sellers jump into, he argued that Ferguson was jumping through hoops to defend the Trumps while making a point of demonizing Democrats.

Sellers told Ferguson, "You ask, what did he do that was unethical or illegal? And I wanted to answer that plain and simply. I take…. yoga, and I feel like you're doing a little yoga too for that pretzel that you got yourself into…. To utilize your phrase, the president makes $400,000 a year. This quarter, he's made over $1 billion — $1.2 to $1.4 billion — on crypto alone…. What I want to tell you that's unethical is the fact that when you make 3500 trades in one year, and you go up and you invest in a company, and then you sit in the Oval Office and you tell people, 'Wow, this company is great. This company is going to do X, Y, Z' or you ease regulations on this company and you trade and purchase stock in that company. That fundamentally is unethical. You can call it what you want."

Racism is an act of self-destruction, warns podcaster Wajahat Ali and independent reporter Joy Ann-Reid. But that destruction extends to everything around them when they manage to grab the levers of power.

“I mean there's a big hole in the White House. The lawn where they built that ugly UFC ring is now brown. They've destroyed the Jackie Kennedy garden. [President] Donald Trump is supposed to be a builder but he physically destroyed D.C.,” said Reid. “And then that the poor pathetic little fair that he had, his little world's fair with the fake arch made of plastic. And they painted it. America right now is a laughingstock. I think we created 57,000 jobs last month. That is sad. It's a sad birthday.”

But this is the mess that comes of a nation that “refused to acknowledge and uproot its dark sin of white supremacy,” said Ali. “We whitewashed our history books, made heroes of racist traitors, and decided to elect the most incompetent, corrupt vulgarian after electing the first Black president.”

“Refusing to learn our lesson, we re-elected Trump, even though we could have had a competent Black woman as President. Now? America is turning into a s——hole,” Ali lamented. “Just look at the Reflecting Pool as a tragic example of our downfall. Take a trip to Washington, D.C., and see the absolute mess that is the White House. Our infrastructure is collapsing, our economy is ailing, and our public health is deteriorating. Measles, death, gun violence, and suicide are on the rise. But it doesn’t matter. White supremacy will destroy everything, including itself, instead of sharing power. It will burn everything down.”

“The right wing is not satisfied with just having physically destroyed the country,” said Reid. “[They] destroyed the morale of the country on our birthday where we're sad and pathetic and can't even pull off a world's fair.”

The Supreme Court, meanwhile, barely protected birthright citizenship with a six-to-three vote when all the justices had to do was read the Constitution and see that if you're born here, you're a citizen, said Ali.

With the war on birthright citizenship and MAGA cries to sterilize brown immigrants, Reid said MAGA and Trump are laboring for a very specific kind of America.

“If they were successful at removing everyone who looks like you and me — all the Blacks, all the browns, all the Muslims all the AAPI, all the Latinos — if they got their way, you know what America would look like? It would look like Trump’s pathetic American state fair,” said Reid. “That was a place where there were no Blacks. There were no gays. There were no brown people. It was just MAGA white folks. The one’s who weren’t broken by [Trump’s] economy, who could afford to get on a plane or drive to DC with these gas prices. It was an estimate that the first day was like a 1,000 people — only tens of MAGA could even afford to go there. … [because] they are the poor. They are broke. They're bored. And they're boring.”

“There was no musical entertainment,” Reid raged. “That cultural anti-phenomenon that we saw at that pathetic Trump celebration supposedly of America’s birthday and Donald Trump — that is what's left when you get rid of all of us. If you really get rid of people of color then American culture is like sad Europe.”

“Like a crusty, crusty mayo sandwich that has been left in the sun for two days,” added Ali.

“One-hundred percent,” confirmed Reid. “You'd get no Janet Jackson, no Michael Jackson, no Prince, no Whitney Houston, no Aretha Franklin, no jazz, no gospel, no hip-hop. What do you actually have? What is your culture? What is this white culture that you're trying to preserve at all costs, at the cost of your own economy?”

Ali added that even MAGA doesn’t like MAGA America.

“When they move to the Southern states where do they move to when they move to Texas? Austin! When they move to Tennessee, they move to Nashville,” said Ali. “Even MAGA influencer] Nick Fuentes was like ‘yeah, I don't want to really move to a red state. So, they know that their mayo sandwich is s——. They know their potato salad sucks. They know their chicken is dry and has no spice. They know that they're bland and pasty and that they have no culture and no rhythm.”

A large panel fell seemingly dozens of feet from above onto the stage during a rehearsal for a performance at an event for President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250, according to video posted by attorney Aaron Parnas.

“The stage is falling apart at the rehearsal for Freedom 250’s July 4th celebration,” Parnas wrote.

After the panel fell, someone can be heard on the video saying, “I was waiting for something like that to happen.”

Critics blasted the administration while others issued warnings.

“This is incredibly dangerous stuff,” wrote journalist Ryan Grim. “Trump cutting safety corners with stage building is the kind of thing somebody can genuinely be prosecuted for if someone dies, which is not uncommon if you slap it together like this. This equipment is deadly when falling from those heights.”

“Literally a miracle no one was hurt here,” noted journalist Philip Lewis.

“In all seriousness, that actually looks really dangerous for the performers. It’s scary how unsafe this all seems,” observed journalist Pablo Manríquez.

“The sheer incompetence of this administration is really rather astonishing. Everything these people touch is shoddily done. This era is replete with evidence that experience and professionalism actually matter,” wrote author Jennifer Erin Valent.

“If there was ever a metaphor for how historians will look back at Trump’s presidency at this moment in time, it’s this,” wrote health care consultant and National Organization for Women vice president Melanie D’Arrigo.

“The Freedom 250 rehearsal stage falling apart is the perfect analogy for the Trump administration,” The Lincoln Project commented.

“Glad everyone’s ok — it’s also hard to imagine a better metaphor for the current state of [America] than this,” wrote the progressive media outlet The Tennessee Holler.

“Trump’s state fair is *literally* falling apart,” remarked liberal political commentator Harry Sisson.

One commenter added, “Those performers are incredibly lucky. That falling piece of debris looked heavy, sharp and came down at incredible speed.”

Trump’s Freedom 250 July 4th event is also besieged by a massive heat wave enveloping part of the country.

“U.S. Capitol Police have already restricted Thursday night’s rehearsal for ‘A Capitol Fourth Concert’ to essential personnel, posting on X that they came to the decision after consulting with the Capitol’s Office of the Attending Physician,” The New Republic reported.

“For safety reasons, the public will not be able to attend tonight’s rehearsal concert,” the Capitol Police’s post read. “Everyone is sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused. The National Weather Service is forecasting an extreme heat watch with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.”