News & Politics

Left Hook host Wajahat Ali and podcaster Danielle Moodie say President Donald Trump’s people — and the media — is struggling to hide the president’s obvious decline before cameras as a startled nation looks on.

“We recently witnessed a public official, Marco Rubio, testify before Congress that a prominent political figure ‘never sleeps’ and is a dynamo of nocturnal productivity,” said Ali. “Minutes later, he was confronted with video evidence from a cabinet meeting showing that very same figure slumped over, eyes tightly shut, completely asleep while Rubio himself was speaking.”

“The response? Universal, unabashed gaslighting,” said Ali. “We are told he was ‘blinking.’ We are told he was ‘resting his eyes.

The sheer contrast between the treatment of former president Joe Biden and Trump is staggering, said Ali, highlighting “a massive structural double standard.”

“The Past Standard: A single stumble, a momentary verbal hitch, or an aging pivot from a conventional politician triggers months of relentless, wall-to-wall editorial panic from traditional media outlets like The New York Times or ABC,” said Ali, while the current Trump Standard involves “daily, glaring displays of physical and mental decline from the populist right met with polite obfuscation, normalized as ‘toddler-like’ eccentricities, or entirely ignored.”

Moodie was equally outraged at the gaslighting, as Rubio insisted in a Tuesday House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that he’d never witnessed Trump falling asleep. Minutes later Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calf.) played a video of Trump nodding off into oblivion directly beside Rubio.

“In what world would you ever be in a meeting and the person that's supposed to be running the meeting is slumped over to the side, eyes closed, and everyone is just standing around and saying that what we are witnessing with our own eyes isn't actually happening,” said Moody. “You can't make this kind of f—— up.”

“Joe Biden, for all of his age, was riding bikes, was working out, looked agile. He had one moment 9during a debate) that cost him a second term. Donald Trump has that moment — let's be clear — every single f—— day and there is no New York Times non-stop coverage,” Moody added angrily. “There is no ABC non-stop coverage. There is no pontificating on why we haven't seen Donald Trump's health records.”

Ali said Trump’s aids and his legion of fake news propagandists and influences are having to work overtime to cover for Trump’s deterioration, but he said their fight has the same inevitable — and fast encroaching — end.

“I think it's important for us keep sight that, yes, MAGA is still a cult, but it is shrinking and he is dying and people are defecting,” Ali assured.

Sources told Daily Mail on Friday that ‘Ice Maien’ Susie Wiles — President Donald Trump’s most loyal staff member — is finally melting, reports Daily Mail.

“Donald Trump's White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is preparing to leave, five insiders have told the Daily Mail. Wiles, 69, has worked for the president since his first campaign in 2015 and, following his November 2024 second election victory, has held the top chief of staff role in his White House.”

But now, reports the Daily Mail, Trump's “right-hand woman – who he has nicknamed his 'Ice Maiden' – is quietly planning her exit after November's midterm elections, notably frustrated by the President's recent Cabinet appointments,” according to sources.

When asked by the Daily Mail, Wiles did not deny that she plans to quit, but she rejected claims that it was tension with the President and his recent appointments driving her toward the exits.

However, allegedly grinding Wiles’ gears is Trump’s appointment of Florida real estate executive, and unofficial dirt digger Bill Pulte to acting Director of National Intelligence.

“Pulte was seen as a direct insult to Wiles, three White House insiders confirmed, after she is said to have 'vehemently' opposed the extraordinary step of allowing the former leader of the Federal Housing Finance Agency to now oversee all of the CIA and 16 other national agencies.

Insiders also say Trump has told confidants that he has increasingly come to resent Wiles telling him what to do, which “apparently led to his decision to promote Pulte.”

“She is loyal to Trump, but he is now basically saying, 'Look, Ma, you are not the boss of me,’” a source familiar with the strained relationship told Daily Mail.

Some of her reasons may also have to do with potentially failing health, the Mail adds.

“Visitors to Trump's inner sanctum are warned not to approach or even touch Wiles – who revealed an early-stage breast cancer diagnosis in March – because of the risk of infecting her with other illness during ongoing treatment,” said the Mail, which added that “her poor health coincides with Trump, 79, testing her iron grip on White House personnel with the appointment of ultra-MAGA loyalists whom she opposes, sources say.”

“She is getting cancer treatment and is completely drained, and now Trump is taking more and more control of the White House, which he wanted,” one White House insider said.

Former intelligence analyst and ex-FBI official Michael Feinberg said the spate of firings, dismissals and retirements in President Donald Trump’s second term is not so one-sided.

Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is “unnecessary and or too big,” and would “like to see it smaller”

“I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump said, about those who worked in the Joe Biden and Barack Obama administrations.

But Feinberg said serious employees, those with intelligence and a hint of patriotism, are already a step ahead and likely leaving for their own reasons.

“[I]n the intelligence community, bad leadership drives out good leadership because the people who take on those roles at the FBI, the CIA, … other places, they're principled, they're patriotic, they're idealistic. And when they see somebody come in taking a wrecking ball to the agency's ability to manifest and epitomize those qualities, they realize it's not somewhere they could work anymore,” Feinberg told MS NOW anchor Nicolle Wallace. “And all of a sudden you get a lot of lackeys. And as I said earlier, you get people who are not going to tell the president when he's wrong and the president's going to make bad decisions.”

Wallace made a reference to a recent New York Times article reporting that Trump largely ignored his entire national security team and instead took trusted the claims of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu in the run up to Trump’s disastrous war in Iran, which has lifted gas and food prices and put Republicans’ hold on the House and Senate in jeopardy.

“It's going to get worse,” Feinberg assured as more professionals evacuate federal rooms filling up with imbeciles.

“The intelligence community … are Ph.D. holders. They are people who acutely understand social science research methods. They are people who speak multiple languages, who understand how to use cultural norms, to recruit somebody to want to work with the United States. There are more soft skills than hard skills … but the former is overwhelmingly more important and intelligent people, patriotic people, and they don't want to work for partisan idiots,” said Feinberg.

“I don't know how to put it more straightforward than that,” Feinberg added. “And not only do they not want to do the work, they can't do it because people like Bill Pulte or Tulsi Gabbard or Kash Patel or John Ratcliffe don't want to let them.”

Yeah,” agreed Wallace. “Yeah, it's about as blunt as that.”

- YouTube youtu.be

A judge on Friday tossed out a lawsuit brought by the Kennedy Center against an artist who withdrew from a performance after the organization’s board voted to add President Donald Trump’s name to the venue, The Washington Post reports.

The artist, jazz musician Chuck Redd, pulled out over what he called “the defiant and illegal name change happening to the Kennedy Center,” according to the Post.

But, as D.C. Superior Court Judge Tanya Jones Bosier found, Kennedy Center officials had not made a legally binding agreement with Redd, and there could be no breach of contract claim as a result.

“There’s no dispute that he did not sign the 2025 agreement,” the judge said.

In a statement, Redd’s attorney, Lisa Banks, said Redd had been sued “because he publicly and rightly objected to adding Donald Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center, a living memorial to former President John F. Kennedy.”

Banks called the lawsuit “political retribution, pure and simple, by the Trump Kennedy Center,” and said that “the Court correctly saw it as such in dismissing the case with prejudice.”

According to the Post, after Redd withdrew, then-Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell said in a letter to Redd, “This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt.”

In December, Redd told the Associated Press, “When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert.”

On Thursday, the general counsel for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ordered Trump’s name to “immediately” be removed from the building after a federal judge found adding the president’s name to the Center was unlawful, The New York Times reported.

“The memo gave staff members detailed instructions on the materials that needed to be updated, including social media accounts, email signatures and voice mail messages,” the Times reported. “It specified that outdoor and indoor signage with the barred name must be altered by June 12.”

Late last month, a federal judge ordered that President Donald Trump could not rename the Kennedy Center, nor could he close it for what the Trump administration said were two years of renovations.

“The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so,” the judge wrote, CNBC reported. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”

Intelligencer writer Ed Kilgore says just being unpopular isn’t the thing that’s blowing up President Donald Trump’s approval and setting up Republicans for a mass ejection from the House and maybe the Senate in November.

Trump made some very big boasts on his way to the 2024 election about how much winning was going to be underway when he stepped back into the White House. He made them loud — and now most every disgruntled voter remembers those broken promises.

“The single most important measurable variable affecting the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections is likely the president’s job-approval ratings, which have been slowly but surely achieving new second-term lows for months now,” said Kilgore. “But being generally unpopular probably isn’t Donald Trump’s (or his party’s) biggest problem. When you dig into polling on assessments of presidential performance on particular issues of concern, one jumps right off the page and kicks the GOP like a donkey: Trump’s handling of living costs and/or inflation.

Trump’s approval on most every topic has hit the landfill, said Kilgore, “but far worse is the hole he’s in on inflation (net approval of minus 45.4 percent).”

When compared with Trump’s overall net job-approval average of minus 19.1 percent, Trump’s popularity drag becomes obvious, said Kilgore, while adding that the numbers may underestimate the real impact that unhappiness is having on living costs, which not only ranks at the top of voter concerns in almost every survey, it also “bleeds over into” voters’ negative feelings about the war, which is directly whacking energy costs.

An Economist-YouGov survey reveals only 18 percent of respondents approve of how Trump is handling inflation. And this thing is going to stick on him like it did on his predecessor.

“This is the issue, more than any other, that doomed Joe Biden’s running-mate Kamala Harris in 2024; a lot of voters appear to have bought Trump’s promise that he would lower living costs — not just reduce inflation but return prices to pre-pandemic levels. It’s boomeranging on him and his party right now,” said Kilgore. “To put it bluntly, if Trump wants to get his overall job-approval numbers out of the 30s before November — and he really needs to do so to give his party a fighting chance — he has to get his job-approval numbers on handling living costs out of the 20s or it will be too heavy a lift.

Kilgore points out that Democrats learned in 2024 that rationalizations about inflation being temporary or a sign that prosperity’s around the corner definitely does not work with voters, and Republicans may be learning the same lesson right now.

“But until their maximum leader gets it, it’s the anchor that is likely to drag them down to defeat in 2026 and perhaps beyond,” Kilgore said.

President Donald Trump is desperate to maintain his hold on the Republican-dominated House, so he’s personally fighting for plenty of embattled seats. But some seats are going to be a much harder sell for him and his Republican Party.

"The Republicans are just in absolutely huge trouble in Wisconsin. I think that more so than any of the polls would say … the fact that all those Republicans are leaving the state Legislature, they're sort of telling us with their actions what they expect," said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan political newsletter at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

Trump is making his first trip to the Badger State since he won here nearly two years ago, visiting one of the nation's few battleground congressional districts, but the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says he’s coming at a time “when his approval among Wisconsin voters is at an all-time low.

“The visit comes at a time when the president's tariffs and recent attacks on Iran have produced gale-force headwinds for Republicans in their effort to preserve their power in Congress and in state government in Wisconsin, an effort made more complicated by the retirements of the Legislature's two GOP leaders and key members of both houses,” reports the Journal.

Nevertheless, Trump is planning to discuss agricultural issues during a Friday roundtable event at a farm in Chippewa Falls, which lies in the 3rd Congressional District − a swing district held by Republican incumbent Rep. Derrick Van Orden. Van Orden's district is one of just 18 congressional districts considered a toss-up in the upcoming midterm election, and the Trump administration heavily focused upon it. The paper reports Trump's visit comes days after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. held an earlier event with Van Orden.

Van Orden won the district twice, but he defeated his opponent by about 3 points two years ago. Now one of those opponents, Democrats Rebecca Cooke, will be on his heels again this year, if she surpasses Democrat Emily Berge in the primaries.

“But the political environment this year favors Democrats, who have won governor races and special elections in other parts of the country since Trump took office,” reports the Sentinel. “In Wisconsin, liberals won a seat on the state Supreme Court in April by a stunning 20-point margin. Republicans did not even bother to field a candidate in another election for a court that the GOP dominated just a handful of years ago.

This is a hard fall for a state that voted for Trump in 2024.

The Sentinel reports Trump's influence “remains strong among Republican voters – 71 percent said they would vote for a 2026 primary candidate endorsed by Trump. However, it also notes that a nationwide Marquette University Law School poll released two days before Trump's visit to western Wisconsin found his approval rating dropped to 38 percent, the lowest point so far in his second term.

CNN host Dana Bash on Friday mocked members of the MAGA movement who appear to assume California is taking a long time to count votes because political hijinks are afoot.

Fox News host Jesse Waters explained, "I can't prove it — but everybody watching thinks there's shenanigans when it takes this long."

Fox's Greg Gutfeld similarly proclaimed, "You know what that means," when he was told it would take a week or more to count the ballots.

"These are baseless, fraud claims," Bash explained.

California elections have always taken this long, largely due to the massive counties with populations of over 5 million people. Los Angeles County, for example, has a population of 9.6 to 9.8 million people. It's twice the size of Oklahoma.

CNN's Elex Michaelson did an explainer video in which he said that about 80 percent of the voters cast ballots by mail. Each mail-in ballot goes through a signature verification process. There are more than 5.9 million registered voters in Los Angeles County. The single county is larger than 41 U.S. states.

So, he said, there are many steps to prevent voter fraud.

CNN's Aaron Blake showed a post from Gov. Ron DeSantis "who was never a big election denier" during the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. The Florida Republican asked whether California simply keeps counting until it gets the result it wants.

Bash again reiterated that the comments aren't "based on anything that's actually happening."

Time and time again, she said that California votes appear heavily Republican at the beginning and then slowly become more Democratic. If 80 percent of people vote by mail, those votes take longer to count because the ballot must be verified as authentic. Fewer Republicans vote by mail, according to an MIT Election Lab study.

"And part of the reason is that Donald Trump has spent years discouraging Republicans from returning mail ballots. And so, when you're counting these mail ballots late, they tend to be more Democratic-leaning," Blake said.

He added that it has become commonplace for Republicans to seed suspicion that something untoward is happening, even if those conspiracy theories have tons of evidence to the contrary.

President Donald Trump said he would fund his lavish 90,000-square-foot ballroom with donations from corporations and individuals, and now they're getting their return on investment.

The New Republic's Finn Hartnett cited a recent report from the nonprofit government watchdog group, Public Citizen, that showed 14 donors to Trump's ballroom have received more than $50 billion in government contracts in the past six months. The combined total

Trump has ensured that donors' names are censored. It has made 21 corporate donors public, and journalists have revealed six more, the report said.

"Not only is the federal government enriching ballroom donors like Lockheed Martin, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Nvidia, but it is also actively getting them out of legal trouble," Hartnett said. "Sixteen of the 27 donors, including the companies listed above, are presently involved in some form of federal litigation, including antitrust reviews, securities charges, and labor disputes."

Some of those donors' charges have magically been dropped, the report claims.

"It was always pretty naive to think the ultrarich individuals donating to Donald Trump’s $400 million ballroom project were doing so out of the goodness of their hearts," Hartnett conceded.

“This is so insanely corrupt, I can’t even believe it,” Democratic Rep. Mike Levin (CA) posted on X Thursday. “You write a check, your legal problems disappear. That’s not a coincidence.”

The Justice Department was in court on Friday, seeking to appeal a court order shutting down construction, claiming that those suing to stop it lack standing. At one point, the DOJ claimed that the president had a right to tear down the Statue of Liberty and no one could sue to stop him.

Trump has claimed that he needs the ballroom for security purposes by combining his renovation of the presidential bunker with the ballroom. The district court judge, however, noted that the administration separated the bunker from the ballroom by having two different agencies in charge of it. So, the judge ruled that the "national security" claim didn't hold water.

Then, after the attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents' dinner, the White House and allies tried to make the case that taxpayers should fund $1 billion for the project.

The White House has claimed that there's no conflict of interest in corporations giving them money for the ballroom and then receiving lucrative contracts.

Republicans in Congress have gotten plaudits for their recent opposition to President Donald Trump's DOJ "slush fund," which may be temporarily stalled now, but according to a new breakdown from MS NOW, the achievement reveals something more damning about the "feckless party."

Last month, the Justice Department attempted to settle Trump's lawsuit against the IRS by pitching a nearly $1.8 billion "anti-weaponization" fund, to be paid out to victims of so-called "lawfare" by the federal government for their political beliefs. The plan quickly stalled out in the face of bipartisan backlash in Congress, particularly over the possibility that Jan. 6 participants might be among its beneficiaries, though all but a few Republicans have been hesitant to block it outright.

Writing for MS NOW on Friday, reporter Zeeshan Aleem observed that this "slush fund" episode was definitive proof that the GOP-controlled Congress is capable of reining in Trump's worst impulses — when they want to.

I"t’s not hard to see why lawmakers from a party would push back against a fund whose sole discernible function would be to reward the president’s friends and political allies — potentially including those who tried to violently overthrow the government," Aleem wrote.

He noted further that this successful rebuke of Trump raised another question about Congress's conduct, one with a damning answer: "Why doesn’t the GOP act like this more often?"

Doing so more often, Aleem argued, might actually help the party in the coming midterm elections, which they are currently on track to lose badly.

"Trump is wildly unpopular, hostile to addressing the country’s affordability crisis, mired in a war that he began on a whim, and fixated on turning Washington into an autocrats’ paradise," he argued. "Even if I were a sincere MAGA ideologue, I would be angry that my egoistic party leader was clearly making policy decisions that hurt voters and the party’s chances in the coming midterm elections."

While Trump has proven very much capable of crushing his GOP dissenters with primary challenges, the slush fund defeat shows that if the entire caucus moves in unison against him, they can force him to back down, and protect themselves from retribution, as he "an’t launch a primary against his entire party." Instead, they are further exposing how much they are willing to go along with Trump's destructive agenda in nearly every other instance.

"Republican lawmakers aren’t held hostage by Trump’s power," Aleem concluded. "They choose to enable it by refusing to take a stand collectively. Whether they’ve come to this position through approval of his behavior or acclimating to it, their choice shows they are full participants in American decline."

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Mary S. McElroy — a Donald Trump appointee in Rhode Island — referred U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys to a court disciplinary committee. Politico's Josh Gerstein, reporting on X, noted that the ruling was "over handling of fight over trans medical care subpoenas to RI Hospital" — adding, "Earlier she agreed that presumption of regularity for [government] 'no longer holds.'"

Gerstein tweeted a previous court document by McElroy, dated May 14. And she was quite critical in some of her comments.

McElroy, in the document, wrote, "As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be honest with its counterparts and the judiciary. DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case. It has misrepresented and withheld information to both this Court and the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas (the 'Texas court')."

The federal judge went on to say that the Trump DOJ "has misled the parties with whom it was negotiating in Rhode Island, who have now been placed in an untenable and unprecedented procedural position."

McElroy added, "And when its attorneys came to this Court to explain their conduct, the senior attorney — who was present at many of the events that took place in this case — sat silently by as his counterpart, a junior attorney who has been practicing law for approximately six months and had no relevant information, was forced to answer questions about DOJ's blatant disregard for the proper course of negotiations."

McElroy explained, "Now before the Court is the petitioner, the Child Advocate for the State of Rhode Island’s (the 'Child Advocate') Emergency Motion to Quash a subpoena duces tecum issued by DOJ as well as Rhode Island Hospital's ('RIH') Motion to Quash the same subpoena. (ECF Nos. 1, 28.) For the following reasons, the Court GRANTS both Motions to Quash and enjoins the DOJ from seeking or receiving any documents related to this now invalid subpoena."

Trump nominated McElroy to her current position during her first presidency, and she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The Southern Baptist Convention begins next week, and among the amendments being presented is a tougher rule to block women from the pulpit.

Currently, the SBC only affirms that it believes women do not belong in the office of the pastor, its website says. It "is reserved for qualified men." There is no hard-and-fast ban.

Al.com reported on Friday that a Samford University graduate will present an amendment that would officially ban women.

"Rev. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said he plans to propose a constitutional amendment to clarify that no participating Southern Baptist church can allow women to serve as senior pastors or even have the word 'pastor' in their staff title, or they will be disfellowshipped," the report said, citing the Baptist Press.

The amendment will require a two-thirds majority, and similar amendments have previously failed to pass.

The SBC resolutions committee is also proposing a measure restating its opposition to women serving as pastors. That has a greater chance of passing because it only requires a simple majority.

The resolution would reiterate the stance against women as pastors, “to reaffirm that the office of pastor/elder/overseer is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

It will also say, “the New Testament presents the pastoral office and the function of pastoral oversight of the church as inseparably connected.”

It demands that churches “maintain clarity and integrity in their ministerial titles and practices so that nomenclature is not used in ways that obscure or contradict the Convention’s adopted statement of faith regarding the pastoral office.”

“Confusion has arisen in some Southern Baptist churches regarding the relationship between the title, office and function of pastor, including the use of title ‘pastor,’ ‘elder’ or ‘overseer’ for roles that either do not carry the responsibilities of the pastoral office or are assigned in ways inconsistent with the Convention’s articulated understanding of Scripture on this matter,” the resolutions committee said in a statement.

One major example of disfellowship was Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. His website referred to female staffers as pastors.

Warren responded to the disfellowship with a passionate speech in 2023, saying, in part, that churches with “women on pastoral staff have not sinned."

SBC Resolutions Committee Chair Hunter Baker told the Baptist Press, "For the vast majority of Southern Baptists, I think this issue is one that has always been settled by Scripture as opposed to the interpretation of various church authorities. We believe that by focusing on what the Bible says about the office of the pastor, we are able to effectively express where Baptists already are."

President Donald Trump, on Thursday, announced that he plans to nominate Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche to head the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for a full term. The same day, Trump also told reporters that he has no plans to nominate Acting National Intelligence Director Bill Pulte as a permanent replacement for Tulsi Gabbard. Trump's Pulte appointment is drawing widespread criticism, as he has no intel experience. But according to law professor and former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, Trump views "incompetence" as a plus — not a minus — in his administration.

Trump, McQuade laments in an opinion column for MS NOW, chooses "incompetent" or inexperienced appointees on purpose because they are less likely to question his policies.

"Pulte was, and remains, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency — hardly the background one would expect for the leader of America's 18 intelligence agencies," the former DOJ prosecutor writes. "That's particularly true during a time when America is at war with Iran, a hostile foreign adversary whom the U.S. government considers a state sponsor of terrorism…. Pulte replaces Tulsi Gabbard, who resigned from the post last month amid disagreements over the threat posed by Iran."

McQuade continues, "Gabbard's resume was thin, but at least she had experience in the military and in Congress. Pulte appears to lack any national security expertise at all. In fact, his only apparent qualification is unflinching loyalty to the president and an eagerness to weaponize the government against Trump's perceived foes."

McQuade notes that she was working in DOJ in 2001 when Congress — in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks — created the director of national intelligence (DNI) position, which requires one to oversee "the nation's collection, analysis, and dissemination of information relating to terrorist plots, cyberattacks, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and malign foreign influence."

"Why would a president want to fill such a sensitive and important position with someone who lacks any bona fide credentials?" McQuade writes. "Perhaps the appointment reflects what historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat calls 'engineered incompetence.' When a leader appoints an individual to an office that is above their station, the official becomes beholden to the leader — who, in turn, gains absolute control. Knowing they are in over their head, the official is less likely to assert independent judgment or to object when the leader acts in his self-interest instead of the public good."

McQuade adds, "Engineered incompetence explains how a Fox News host, (Pete Hegseth), gets appointed secretary of defense and promptly shares sensitive attack plans over a Signal chat…. Effective leaders value candid advice, even when it means hearing things that conflict with their policy preferences. A leader who ignores unpleasant news is one who is unprepared to make clear-eyed choices on behalf of the people he was elected to serve. With a loyalist like Pulte leading the president's daily intelligence brief, the engineered incompetence itself poses a grave risk to our national security."

During their years in the White House, former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush sometimes drew criticism from supporters for being overly deferential to their policy advisors — Obama with Wall Street insiders on economic policy, Bush with hawkish neoconservatives on foreign policy. But President Donald Trump, on the other hand, is known for surrounding himself with staunch MAGA loyalists during his second presidency — a pattern that, according to former National Security Council (NSC) and ex-U.S. State Department official Emily Horne, poses a major threat to the United States from a military/foreign policy standpoint.

Appearing on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast," Horne warned that no one in the Trump White House is going to stand up to the president when he's making a really bad decision.

Horne told host Greg Sargent — a former Washington Post columnist — "Who actually gets the president's ear is always a real issue of power and access in any administration, but especially in this one. We all know that Trump is a president who listens a lot to the last person who he talked to. And so, whoever gets to talk to him, whoever shapes his opinion, is often just the person that he heard from most recently. And so, I have no doubt that the national security workforce — who are civilian, who serve apolitically, who are military, who serve apolitically — are doing what they always do. They're collecting the intelligence, they're preparing the assessments, they're preparing the battlefield scenarios and the plans, and they're bringing them up. The question is, is any of it getting through?"

The former NSC/State Department official continued, "And one of the things that's really clear is that Trump has weeded out anyone who has access to him who is capable of telling him, 'Sir, that's not a good idea.' Or, 'Sir, if you do that, here are the five bad things that could happen because of that.' He does not want to hear it. And to survive in Trump's royal court, you have to be a yes man or a sycophant. There is no one who can speak truth to power left in this White House."

Horne lamented that although the Iran war "is wildly unpopular across the political spectrum," Trump's loyalists in the White House are afraid to challenge or question his policies.

"As costs continue to rise, as diplomacy continues to falter, and as the chaos continues to reign across the Middle East — not just in the Strait of Hormuz — with no end in sight," Horne told Sargent, "this is a war that is entirely of Trump’s making."

Economist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has pinpointed a series of events that have led to the rest of the world seeing America as “inessential.”

Just weeks after President Donald Trump was sworn into his second term in office, he held a televised Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during which he and his top administration officials berated the leader fending off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s illegal war.

“You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump told Zelenskyy. But according to Krugman, Zelenskyy has “quite a few cards, while Trump has far fewer cards than he imagined.”

Krugman calls that Oval Office dressing-down “a spectacle that shamed America,” with Trump “engaging in petty bullying of the leader of a nation fighting for its life against tyranny.”

The Oval Office attack was just the start of what would make the world start to rethink its relationship to the U.S.

Trump then cut off all financial aid to Ukraine and blocked weapons sales to the battered nation — even when other nations were paying the bill.

Trump later met with Putin, where, “as the Russians see it, he offered to broker a deal that would give Russia control of a crucial fortress belt on Ukrainian soil.”

Krugman calls that “a shocking betrayal of a democracy fighting for its freedom — and, in so doing, fighting for the freedom of Europe as a whole.”

And while 18 GOP senators Thursday voted to restore aid to Ukraine, against the will of their leadership, should that bill come to Trump’s desk, it is doubtful he would sign it.

Despite Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine, Ukraine turned the war in its favor, and by doing so, taught the world a lesson.

“Before Trump, we were also a nation almost universally regarded as essential,” writes Krugman. “Nations believed that they needed access to U.S. banks to do business, access to U.S. markets to prosper, access to U.S. weapons to defend themselves.”

“But by breaking decades’ worth of international agreements — not to mention threatening allies and betraying Ukraine — Trump quickly forfeited the world’s trust.”

Trump “failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power,” has also “dispelled much of the world’s fear,” Krugman says.

The world is “managing economically” despite Trump’s tariffs and his abandonment of Ukraine — and Ukraine is “surviving despite Trump’s attempt to cut it off at the knees,” says Krugman, revealing that America is “much less essential than everyone assumed.”

President Donald Trump knows that his nominee for director of national intelligence can't be confirmed by the Senate.

An exclusive Wall Street Journal report revealed that Bill Pulte, who Trump nominated this week, has a reputation of "moves fast and breaks things," as one CNN reporter said on Tuesday.

The expectation is that Pulte will take Trump's revenge campaign up a notch, deploying the entirety of the U.S. intelligence apparatus against the president's perceived enemies. The office of the DNI oversees 18 intelligence agencies from the CIA to the NSA and others. It was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the investigative commission found the intelligence departments weren't able to connect the dots between details each agency discovered.

Trump told the Journal personally, that he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is “unnecessary and or too big.”

“I’d like to see it smaller. I think there are a lot of people in there that shouldn’t be there,” Trump said, about those who worked in the Joe Biden and Barack Obama administrations.

The Journal asked Trump whether he wants Pulte to start firing people, and Trump said he wants him to “start the process.”

Trump also added that "his eventual nominee to serve in the role permanently should continue that work."

The comment appears to acknowledge that Pulte will not be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Indeed, many Republicans have indicated they're opposed to the nominee, but Pulte can serve as an "acting DNI" and implement all of the changes Trump wants before he appoints someone who could get confirmed. As an "acting" official, Pulte can serve for 210 days, or until the Senate votes to deny him.

“Frankly, it might be good for him to shake it up before people come,” Trump said. “Because, if he [Pulte] reduced the size, in conjunction with me … and in conjunction with possibly the person coming in … he can do a lot of the hard work and we wouldn’t have to saddle somebody that goes in.”

Trump said he is interviewing possible permanent candidates, two of whom he'll speak with on Friday. "One from business and one from the world of politics. Bill is not going to be there that long."

Trump said he wants to see Pulte do what Education Secretary Linda McMahon has done in her department.

“We’ve made the Department of Education much smaller, and likewise, this should be much smaller,” Trump told the Journal, referring to ODNI. “And this should maybe even be terminated, and we’ll make that decision.”

Trump also mentioned that Pulte should feel free to release any classified documents that he wants.

“I would say everything — he should look at everything and make a determination," Trump said.

Even some of Trump's own advisors were shocked by his nomination of Pulte, who has no experience in intelligence, defense or even law enforcement. He's been Trump's director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

“We don’t need a weaponized DNI,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said, speaking to reporters this week.

President Donald Trump is growing "weaker and weaker" by the day, and according to his one-time biographer, this is all being driven by an incurable flaw in his character.

Michael Wolff is a veteran reporter and author, best known for extensive coverage of Trump's political career, based on contacts within his inner circle and administration staff. In the latest edition of his Daily Beast podcast, Wolff revealed the essential failing within Trump that is making him weaker on a "daily basis": his inability and unwillingness to change.

“Two things are happening at the same time. Donald Trump is not changing,” Wolff explained. “Donald Trump can’t change. Donald Trump can’t fix the situation that he’s in. Donald Trump doesn’t want to. Donald Trump wants to be Donald Trump.”

He continued: “That becomes clearer and clearer, which means that the enterprise itself gets weaker and weaker and is, in fact, falling apart. So, we’re dealing with these two things: Donald Trump... and the power that he has, and Donald Trump and the power that he is losing on a daily basis.”

Wolff gave the example of Trump giving major administration jobs to "unfit" people because he believes he can get away with it. He specifically highlighted his nomination of Bill Pulte to be the new director of national intelligence, effectively handing control of the world's biggest intelligence apparatus to someone with zero relevant experience.

Wolff claimed to have spoken with someone close to Trump, who gave a simple answer as to why Trump is doing things of that nature.

"I was talking to a Trump guy — you know, someone I regard as basically a decent sort about this — and I was asking how can he hire these people? And this person replied, ‘To show that he can,’“ Wolff said. “It’s all about him. It’s all about the message that he’s sending. So when he appoints these totally unfit people, it’s a message of control and contempt for rules and standards."

Wolff noted later that Trump has a simple message for Republicans, Congress, his administration and the rest of the world with his unceasingly bad nominations: "F—— you."

“That is elemental to how he sees his administration and how he staffs his administration: I can appoint this person because I can," he said.

President Donald Trump is cooking up a new loyalty test for GOP lawmakers, this time driven by clocks, according to Politico, and while the rest of his agenda might be increasingly toxic with voters, this one might actually prove to be fairly popular.

As Politico revealed in a Friday morning report, Trump "is lobbying GOP lawmakers on a plan to make daylight saving time permanent, meaning more daylight in the evening hours and an end to the twice-yearly clock-resetting ritual observed in most states." In fact, he has already notched one small victory on this count.

"Trump has fixated on this issue, believing it resonates with voters who are burdened by 'all of the work and money' associated with changing the clocks every six months," Politico revealed. "He scored an initial victory last month when members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 48-1 to insert an amendment into their portion of a surface transportation reauthorization bill that would codify daylight saving time across the country."

Trump's involvement was reportedly instrumental in getting that amendment successfully added to the bill. Politico also reported that he made "personal phone calls to Republicans on the matter."

“He’s a big fan of it,” Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican who received one of those calls, told Politico. “He said, ‘Do you still think this is a good idea?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I do, I think it’s a great idea.’”

“The president has been actively engaged in this,” one anonymous senior official added in an interview. “It’s a big priority for him.”

Unlike most of Trump's second-term agenda, there is ample evidence to suggest that voters and Americans overall might actually enjoy this change, if it gets across the finish line. Daylight Savings, meant to preserve hours of sunlight across different seasons for the benefit of farm workers, has long been viewed by many as an antiquated practice that is more troublesome than it is worth anymore for most people, especially when it means losing an hour of sleep once a year. According to a Gallup poll from last spring, 54 percent of U.S. adults said that they would support moving away from Daylight Saving Time, with 40 percent opposing and 6 percent saying they were unsure.

"It remains to be seen, however, whether Trump will be able to parlay support within his party at the committee level to the House and Senate floors, where many members could then be less enthusiastic about voting on a policy change that would have far-reaching consequences," Politico noted.

It added: "There have been bipartisan efforts for years to make daylight saving time the norm and none have been successful. Lawmakers have been torn between advocacy from the golf and retail industries eager for more daylight to boost their businesses, and sleep experts who warn of the adverse health effects of darker morning hours — and some Jewish constituents whose daily morning prayers are required to happen in daylight."