It’s still early as facts are coming in about the brutal killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Macklin Wood, by who shot in the head by an ICE agent in Minneapolis through the windshield of her car.

What we do know, as we all can see with our own eyes on the viral videos of the killing, is that she was shot in cold-blood, unprovoked, not having put the ICE agent in any danger. This video analysis by The New York Times makes it clear.

We also know from reports that Renee, an American citizen originally from Colorado, was in a relationship with a woman who, in a gut-wrenching video, identified herself as Renee’s wife. In a video obtained by The Advocate, a woman at the scene is sobbing:

“They killed my wife. I don’t know what to do,” the woman says through sobs in the footage, with a damaged SUV visible in the distance behind her. “We stopped to videotape, and they shot her in the head,” the woman cries.
“We have a 6-year-old at school,” she says, almost unable to breathe, as a chaotic scene in which federal officers prevented at least one doctor who was on the scene from assisting the shot victim unfolds. “We’re new here,” the distraught woman says in despair.

On Renee’s social media accounts, which included Pride emojis, Renee described herself as a “wife and mom,” according to the AP, which noted that her six-year-old child is from a previous marriage to a man—a second marriage—and that he had two teenage children with a first husband.

Renee’s mother, Donna Ganger, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that Renee “was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving, and affectionate.” Ganger said Renee lived with her “partner” a few blocks away from where she was killed. Some media aren’t reporting anything about Renee’s wife (or partner) and are even saying her six-year-old child is “orphaned.”

But Fox news is certainly on top of it, all to demonize her—dehumanize her—as a queer woman.

The demonization began, however, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who falsely claimed ice agents were under attack by protestors—“domestic terrorists”—while their cars were stuck in snow.

There was no snow event—hadn’t been a snowfall for days—in Minneapolis and the streets were clear, as we could see from the video, in which the ICE vehicle drove up to Renee’s car, at which points agents got out as she attempted to drive away while one tried to open her door and another shot her in the head through the windshield from just to the side of the front of the car. Again, the New York Times analysis of the video shows this, as do analyses of other news organizations.

Noem falsely claimed Renee tried to “ram” the agent, and that Renee was a “domestic terrorist,” who caused the agent to have to go to the hospital—even though we can see in the video he was unharmed and walked away, then got in his car and drove off. This vile dog-killing cretin of an Homeland Security Secretary is the epitome of all that ugly and fraudulent in the Trump administration. The demonization of a mother, a wife, a daughter, an innocent woman, as a domestic terrorist is truly repugnant.

And it only got worse as the hordes on social began defaming Renee, and then it hit Fox News. Jesse Watters, an odious presence on Fox who makes jokes out of brutality, made some absolutely repulsive comments meant to completely dehumanize Renee.

Describing her as a “self-proclaimed poet” he’s telegraphing to the MAGA masses, who have been nurtured by MAGA’s anti-intellectualism, that she’s one of those dangerous “elites” and thus must be guilty of something. And if that won’t convince them, well, she has the dreaded, “pronouns in her bio,” so she must be dangerous.

And she has a “lesbian partner,” so she’s not a real person, not like the rest of us, but one of them. (It takes back to the Trump super PAC ad during the 2024 campaign showing Kamala Harris supporting trans rights and proclaiming, “Kamala is for they/them. Trump is for you.”).

This is how a fascist regime works. They kill people and then push propaganda, claiming the person deserved it. And on top of that, they demonize the victim as one of those “undesirable” people who deserved it anyway, someone less than human.

There were huge protests in Minneapolis last night and across the country, as there should be. This ICE thug must be prosecuted, though the Trump regime will do everything they can to protect him—and Trump will pardon him, as he’ll have to be convicted under federal charges.

But no matter, we must make the GOP pay for it, bringing the message to the American people, and organizing for the mid-terms to take our government back from the authoritarian regime. And we’ll do it in the name of all the thousands who’ve brutalized—many of them far out of sight—like Renee.

There was of course much discussion on my Sirius XM program yesterday about Donald Trump’s illegal invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of its leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Adela Flores de Maduro.

And that’s when Eli in Virginia called, a true MAGA warrior, to challenge my statements. I’d been explaining that, for legal and political cover, Trump presented this at first as a law enforcement operation, because his DOJ in his first administration had indicted Maduro on drug trafficking charges in 2020—though not his wife, who was only indicted in the superseding indictment a few days ago—and I explained how ludicrous that was.

The U.S. has, after all, indicted people around the world who are far more dangerous to the United States—like, for example, the officers of the Russian military intelligence agency (GRU) for interfering in the 2016 election, and later attacking critical American infrastructure and hacking anti-doping agencies—but we have not used the military to swoop in and capture them. (The drug trade from Venezuela is modest compared to other countries.) One third of the U.S. Navy was used to block Venezuela to get Maduro, while special forces risked their lives and while 80 people in Venezuela were killed as bombs were dropped, many of them innocent civilians.

No, Trump killed people, risked American military lives and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to remove Maduro in order to get Venezuela’s oil, in adddition to his personal animus. He’s now admitted as much—stopped talking about drugs and is only talking about oil—and hasn’t said anything about democracy. In fact, he’s leaving the Maduro regime in place to continue to oppress the Venezuelan people as he attempts to extract the black gold.

You can listen to the call with Eli here—which is a must-listen if other callers and folks on social media listening to the show are to be believed!—who began by telling me I have TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) and then started rattling off military operations of other presidents going back decades.

With facts and details, I debunked his claims about other military missions by both Democratic presidents and Republican presidents—most of which I had opposed, no matter the president’s party—which failed miserably, whether there were boots on the ground or not. And of course, in Iraq, George W. Bush cost the lives of thousands of Americans soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

But the one detail that truly exposed Eli as a fraud who was just spouting talking points was his claim that stopping drugs and their impact on Americans was enough of a reason to get Maduro. When I asked him what he thought of Trump’s pardon of the former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, he suddenly had no talking points or facts:

Signorile: And then what about the Honduras president pardoned because he was working with drug traffickers. Donald Trump just pardoned him a few weeks ago?
Eli: Honduras? Yeah, he. I don't know if—I don't know what the circumstances are.
Signorile: How come you don’t know the circumstances? Why is it when I question you people, you don’t know the circumstances of the thing that exposes the bullshit that you’re pulling? See? Come on now, I want you to Google it right now, Eli. I want you to Google it, or I’m going to have my producer Google it, and I’m going to read it to you so that you know the circumstances. Hernandez, the president of Honduras was indicted. And by the way, the investigation was under the first Trump administration [which unsealed incriminating documents against Hernandez in 2019] through the Biden administration.

A frazzled Eli then grabbed for Hillary Clinton. And Joe Biden. But no, I didn’t allow him to distract.

Signorile: I want you to answer how you know all that and you don’t know this? Why don’t you know about this? Why don’t you know? If you care about drugs? Why don’t you know about the Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was pardoned on charges of drug trafficking, all of it, and was freed because he happens to be a right winger who Donald Trump likes. That’s it.

He tried wriggling around some more, but I pressed him, “Why did he pardon him?”

Eli: Because he was a political hit job.

“Political hit job"?” I responded. “You didn't even know about this two minutes ago. Now it's a political hit job. Wow, that's pretty amazing!”

And with that I told him his world was crumbling and sent him on his way. Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

It’s wild how we’re watching Donald Trump losing his grip on MAGA as MAGA leaders, from Ben Shapiro and Erica Kirk to Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, are tearing themselves apart. They’re riven by outlandish debates like allowing Nazis such as Nick Fuentes into the party, while events like Charlie Kirk’s assassination are enmeshed in divisive, bonkers conspiracies rather than being the predicted rallying moment.

It may seem pretty crazy. But it’s actually making things a lot clearer.

The rebellion against Trump and the leaders in Congress subservient to him over everything from the Epstein files to the extension of Obamacare tax credits underscores that the masses in MAGA are lashing out because they have not gotten what was promised to them. And for most of them, what they didn’t get was their end of the Big Grift: money.

Trump, his family, many GOP leaders, and the billionaires supporting Trump have all been there for the grift, and it’s paying off lavishly as they’re making billions of dollars by commandeering—and often destroying—government. But the deal with the MAGA masses was that they’d be in on the grift too.

Sure, there are substantial pockets of Trump supporters who backed Trump based solely on their twisted one-issue obsessions, like banning abortion, terrorizing transgender people or eradicating immigrants. But the rest of them, many of them likely initially uncomfortable with those hate agendas but willing to rationalize them away, were there as long as they got the one thing they were promised.

It was the promise of a more affordable life that they’d been duped into believing was taken away by minorities and others, as they are paying more and getting less for their money. (Honestly, it isn’t an example of “greed” to want an affordable life. But to accept the promise of it from a bigoted charlatan, knowing that other people will be harmed, is certainly not moral.)

Much of the next few paragraphs has been tread over before, but it’s worth a recap for the sake of this discussion: Millions of Americans experienced a loss of faith in the government over many years, after suffering losses in the earlier part of the century. For many of them, government often was partly or mostly responsible, for many years creating incentives for companies that sent jobs overseas as whole communities in the Midwest decayed. Trump picked up on this in 2016, while people like Bernie Sanders tried to warn Democrats about it.

For many others, it wasn’t government that caused their problems, but their own bad decisions in life—whether about businesses they created, places they moved, jobs they took that weren’t a fit or for other reasons. For others, it was just fate, like facing a terrible illness or losing a loved one. That has, of course, been a constant, both in American life and in the human condition everywhere throughout time. And when a charlatan comes along and tells people that he and he alone can fix it all, many unfortunately will gravitate to the message.

So Trump’s base was built on grievance—and blaming others, like Black people, immigrants, LGBTQ people, women’s equality and others for their problems—and that’s an old story. What’s now becoming more clear to many of these people in the Trump base themselves, however, is that Trump is not fixing things for them even as he’s stripping the rights of all those other people (while further enriching himself and the wealthy).

You can end all the DEI programs, rip out the aid to impoverished foreign countries, declare, as JD Vance just did at the Turning Point USA conference last weekend, that “We don’t apologize for being white anymore,” but you’re still left with high prices, rising unemployment, rents that are soaring and mortgages that are out of reach as tariffs surge.

Of course, what Vance really means is we don’t have to apologize for being racist. But what good is that, the MAGA supporters are realizing, when you still can’t pay the rent and buy groceries?

We’re seeing the markets continue to have surges and weather the tariffs. And we’re seeing GDP growing, including in a new report today, even in the face of inflation and rising unemployment. But that’s all because the wealthiest Americans are still spending, keeping the economy afloat. As the great economist Paul Krugman describes it, based in part on the research of other economists, we’re in a ‘K-shaped” economy, in which the wealthy are getting richer, and, for now, propping things up, while everyone else is struggling:

Talk of a “K-shaped economy,” in which incomes and wealth are rising only for those at the top, has become ubiquitous. And rightly so. For high-income Americans who own a lot of stock, the past year has treated them pretty well. But for those who don’t, not so much.

What Krugman further points out, however, is that those who say it’s been like that for a long time are wrong. It’s true that it was this way ten years ago, and that helped usher in Trump. HIs followers were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt to fix it until the pandemic hit and he saw a bleeding of support.

The pandemic, however, did a number on the economy—and our psyches. Joe Biden was able to break from the K-shaped economy, but people didn’t feel it amidst the pandemic-created surge in inflation worldwide because of supply-chain shortages. Couple that with Trump’s Big Lie and his ability to suck back in those people who truly wanted to believe him and give him another shot. He slithered his way back into power—and into destroying what Biden achieved. More from Krugman:

However, too much of the commentary [about the K-shaped economy] is marred by a sort of lazy cynicism. Too many of these commentaries rely on the casual assumption that it has always been thus. Or at least, that it was as true during the Biden years as it is now. But that’s not true.
David Autor, Arindrajit Dube and Annie McGrew have documented that the Biden era post-pandemic economic recovery was the opposite of what we are experiencing now. In fact, during the Biden recovery wage gains for low-paid workers were much larger than for those further up the income scale. In fact, the pro-low-income worker tilt of wage gains during the Biden recovery was something we haven’t seen since the “Great Compression” of the 1940s. And that narrowing of wage gaps was due to special factors, including wartime wage policy and a rapid expansion of unions.

It’s immensely sad—tragic—that the country was headed in the right direction, away from the growing gap in economic inequality, and now we’re headed in the opposite direction again. It’s also horrific that Trump has assaulted minorities, women and immigrants with a greater force than we have seen, all cynically in the name of supposedly helping others.

But MAGA is realizing that after doing all of that, the economy in 2025 is not getting better for them—and is getting much better for Trump and his wealthy buddies. MAGA and those who drifted toward MAGA in the last election were there for the grift. They truly didn’t care about anyone else or about who got hurt in the process—you can hear it in their voices when they say, “I voted for myself”—but now they’re not getting anything, and, in fact, it’s getting worse.

Democrats’ message has been simple: We can make it better for everyone. By focusing on affordability, and promising that the wealthiest will not get away like bandits, Democrats have surged in elections. And they focused on Trump’s destruction of our government—which regulates business and helps millions of hard-working Americans—as well as the brutal attacks on democracy and civil rights.

That has not swayed and will not sway the diehard MAGA cultists, but it’s enough to see many drift away, while others are just depressed about the entire scam of a project, zapping momentum. That’s clear with MAGA politicians, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Elise Stefanik, retiring, while the whole movement is melting down, as prominent figures are ripping one another to shreds.

It’s hard to believe it’s all happening in less than a year. But here we are. Now Democrats have to continue to drive it all home.

On my Sirius XM program, I discussed the almost comical hearing this month in which a top FBI official, flanked by dog-killing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, claimed antifa — short for anti-fascist — was the “number one terrorist” threat in the United States. Yet he couldn’t answer repeated questions from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) about where the group’s headquarters are, or how many people are actually in the group:

Michael Glasheen, operations director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, said antifa was the agency’s “primary concern” and “the most immediate violent threat that we’re facing.”Glasheen did not answer a question from the top Democrat at the hearing, U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, about the group’s location. When asked about the number of members, Glasheen said it was “very fluid” and that “investigations are active.”
“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee to say something that you can’t prove,” Thompson said to Glasheen. “I know you wouldn’t do that. But you did.”

Later, Glasheen was asked if the Proud Boys were still on the FBI’s list of domestic extremist organizations — after they were added in 2018, under Trump’s first term — but he didn’t answer, just saying, “We’re in the process right now of changing our categories for domestic terrorism.”

After I played the clips of the exchanges and commented on the ludicrousness of this — and the dangers — Steven from Los Angeles, clearly a MAGA supporter, called the program to disagree with me, claiming antifa is a terror threat he has witnessed firsthand.

Antifa of course doesn’t exist as any organized nationwide group. Some people engaging in protest call themselves ant-fascist, and often take on the name antifa — even carrying banners and other identifiers — but they mostly act independently of others who might use the term to to identify themselves.

The majority of those who call themselves antifa are opposed to violence, per the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration. Even if some people have called themselves antifa and have engaged in or inspired violent actions in one place or another during protests (which has happened), that doesn’t mean there’s an organized group engaged in actual organized terror plots.

But Steven didn’t get that, claiming vandalism in LA and elsewhere was “terrorism” which was coordinated by “Antifa”.

Steven: Okay, so I, um, I disagree with you, uh, living on the West Coast. Whether it’s antifa, whether you want to call it, whatever organization it is. But, I mean, they’ve ruined the streets of Los Angeles. San Francisco is a dump. Um, uh, Oregon is a dump. Uh, Seattle, Washington.MS: Who who did this? Who ruined the streets? What did they do?
Steven: It was. Well, whatever organization you want to call it. Uh, the people that were protesting on the streets.
MS: You said antifa.
Steven: Well, that's who they're supposed to be, right?

After I pressed him on what they’re doing he said that in Portland and other places, “These people are on the streets every day. They're yelling at cars. The traffic is stopped.”

Yelling at cars? Yes, that’s what he said.

MS: Okay, Steven, that's not terrorism.Steven: What is that? Terrorism. The stores are all closed.
MS: No, Stephen, that's not terrorism. You could tell me about vandalism. You could tell me about protests. You could even tell me about rioting, if you want, which we haven't seen.
But a terrorist and a terrorist organization are highly coordinated groups of people with plots and plans to take down the government or send a message to a group of people, and they engage in mass violence, bombings, mass shootings, kidnappings.
Why is our government spending all this money on this? You're telling me about what? Graffiti in Los Angeles?

He went on about how yelling at protests and throwing things — not explaining more — was terrorism.

But then when I brought up actual terrorism — January 6, police officers bludgeoned, the Proud Boys making threats, and the Oath Keepers, per law enforcement, stockpiling weapons at a hotel in Virginia, with a plan to bring them up the Potomac to take the Capitol — he had a very different answer.

Steven: You know what? I don't think we'll ever know the truth of that whole situation.

Oh yeah, it got a little hot from there before I ended the call! Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

Michelangelo Signorile writes The Signorile Report, a free and reader-supported Substack. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism.

I first met actor, producer and director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Singer Reiner some 15 years. I was on the road with my SiriusXM show, broadcasting from The Abbey, a legendary West Hollywood gay cafe and bar.

We were deep in the fight for marriage equality, and the Reiners were leading the charge against Proposition 8, the ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in California in 2008. They had helped found the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which eventually took the case all the way to Supreme Court. They came on the show to talk about the fight.

It turned out that both of them were avid listeners of my program—Michele, in fact, listened for three hours a day—and they knew the regular guests and even some of the regular callers. This blew me away, of course. But it shouldn’t have. Rob Reiner’s commitment to civil rights was deep. It wasn’t just a cause that he and his wife threw some money at—though they donated millions to causes over their lifetimes.

They immersed themselves in the issues, soaking up as much news and information as they could, so that they’d be informed activists and could use their influence to pressure people in power. I was honored to be one place they were turning to for details on the fight they would help lead to victory.

Over the years Rob Reiner came on the program many times, including just last year when he produced the documentary, “God and Country,” based on Katherine Stewart’s book "The Power Worshippers,” warning of the dangers of Christian nationalism and how theocrats were cementing their relationship with Donald Trump. His and his wife’s deaths are simply gut-wrenching.

Reiner was a big voice, from his days as a sitcom star on the iconic “All in the Family” to his years as an actor, director, and producer of films that had a big impact on American culture. And he used that voice to speak fervently in defending democracy against Trump’s authoritarianism.

That’s why Trump, upon Reiner’s death, couldn’t help but try to defile Reiner, but only defiled himself, and in a much bigger way than usual. Trump wrote a really sick screed on Truth Social yesterday that even had his own fans and some GOP members of Congress lambasting him, another example of how he’s losing his grip.

Trump claimed that Reiner, found stabbed to death with Michele in their LA home, died “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.”

Trump wrote: “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before.”

This was so appalling—and a new low — because besides being grotesquely callous, Trump was putting out the message that those who speak against him can and will pay a price. It was another call to violence and revenge, and it was also an attempt to force himself into the tragic story. (Law enforcement arrested the Reiner’s 32-year-old son Nick, who suffered from drug addiction and mental illness, on murder charges; this had nothing to do with Rob Reiner’s political beliefs).

But the blowback was strong even from some in MAGA—on Truth Social itself, many in Trump’s own base responded to his post with disgust—and Trump in the end only let people see just how much his power is receding. Robby Starbuck, a MAGA influencer and big Trump supporter, slammed him hard.

“What happened last night to Rob Reiner and his wife was a savage butchering of 2 human lives. I don’t care what their politics were or how they felt about Trump, no law abiding human deserves this. We should pray for + send condolences to his loved ones and NOT make it political,” Starbuck wrote on X.

Others pointed to the glaring double standard in the response to Charlie Kirk’s assassination—with MAGA lashing out at anyone who even criticized Kirk, calling for ramifications—and this horrible murder. That includes the spokesperson for Kirk’s Turning Point USA, who wrote: “Rob Reiner responded with grace and compassion to Charlie’s assassination. This video [of Reiner responding to Kirk’s death with sadness] makes it all the more painful to hear of he and his wife’s tragic end. May God be close to the broken hearted in this terrible story.”

Piers Morgan, Trump’s sensationalist buddy, said, “This is a dreadful thing to say about a man who just got murdered by his troubled son. Delete it, Mr President.” And Marjorie Taylor Greene excoriated Trump again.

Right wing Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie wrote: “Regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered. I guess my elected GOP colleagues, the VP, and White House staff will just ignore it because they’re afraid? I challenge anyone to defend it.”

Speaker Mike Johnson ran away from reporters—saying he doesn’t “do ongoing commentary about everything that’s said by everybody in government every day”—when he usually defends every vile statement Trump makes. (And Senate Majority Leader John Thune also ducked the question about Trump’s screed while sending “sympathies and prayers” to the Reiner family.)

This may seem like the same few voices but rather than get universal defense of his statements, Trump found himself the target of a lot of disgust and anger from his own base, and yet more criticism from those GOP politicians who’ve been speaking up in recent weeks. He also didn’t get any support inside the White House, even off the record. Reporter Asawin Suebsaeng, formerly of Rolling Stone and now at Zeteo, who has a lot of sources in the White House who often offer him comments on Trump, noted this:

We reached out to several Trump administration officials, advisers, and close allies immediately after the president posted that. Only a couple replied, and weren’t even willing to try to justify the comments, off the record or otherwise. The White House did not immediately respond to Zeteo’s request for comment.

Many Americans who don’t pay attention to politics pay attention in moments like this, when there’s a gruesome murder of a beloved Hollywood figure whose politics they may not have known but whose work they liked. And to see the president, who some of them supported, speaking in this way was probably jarring. It’s the kind of thing that wakes people up, like the Jimmy Kimmel saga. The entire attack backfired spectacularly on Trump.

And it also showed how effective Rob Reiner was as an activist. Even in his death he caused the insecure, narcissistic Trump to unravel, to face humiliation from his own supporters—and his own White House—and expose his loosening grip on MAGA. I think Reiner would see it as a badge of honor.

Donald Trump went out to give a rally for the first time in months, speaking this week in a swing district in Pennsylvania. The White House hyped it to be a speech on affordability, but he instead attacked “affordability” as a “hoax” and veered into his usual viciously racist attacks.

Democrats couldn’t wish for a better scenario.

Trump is reminding everyone, every day, that his presidency is a disaster. And Tuesday after Tuesday, in elections all across the country, people have been responding by voting against him and the GOP. This past Tuesday Eileen Higgins became the first Democrat to win the Miami’ mayor’s race in 28 years.

She won by 19 points, while Kamala Harris won Miami only by a point in 2024, as Trump made inroad with Latinos, who make up a majority of registered voters in Miami. The Republican on the ticket is Latino himself, former city manager Emilio González, and was endorsed by Trump. But Trump’s support has crashed in the Latino community, driven by his economic chaos and his mass deportations.

Trump, who said in the Pennsylvania speech that “tariff” is his favorite word, just keeps giving people reasons to vote against him even if they previously supported him.

And as he stumbles, he’s bringing more attention to his mental decline and his physical health. The media haven’t nearly covered Trump’s health in the way they covered President Biden’s mental and physical competency.

But not to worry, Trump will remind you of it himself. He’s the one who blurted out on Air Force One that he’d had an MRI in his second physical in the summer, claiming it all was great. But that just raised a thousand questions, as no one gets an MRI as a routine screening. The speculation hasn’t died down, even as the White House has put out further very vague information. And it raises more questions about his swollen angles and bruised hands, which are there for all to see.

When The New York Times finally did a story on how Trump has slowed down, not doing rallies on the road and not having many events inside the White House—and raised his health—Trump went ballistic. He could have just let it be, but no, he had to write a massive Truth Social post that accused the paper of being “seditious” and “treasonous” because no one should be question Dear Leader.

Those are his favorite lines of attack, which only once again highlight his aspirations to be a dictator or a king. It’s outrageous and dangerous, but it also is yet another example of Trump bringing attention to the very thing he doesn’t want anyone paying attention to. We always hear about Trump trying to distract—and that’s true—but he also has a habit of making sure everyone’s laser-focused the thing he’s most afraid of. The rest of the media covered it for the next day, and the Times responded, getting more attention to the issue.

Trump couldn’t resist though because being seen as frail and weak is horrifying to him—and that’s because it’s true. For all the reasons I’ve written here about in recent weeks, Republicans are pushing back on him as MAGA is cracking up. So he can’t help but go on the attack, but then only brings more attention to the story rather than distracting from it.

And that’s what happened with his “affordability” speech, as he only underscored that he doesn’t understand the issue, couldn’t care less about people’s pain and has actually caused that pain with his tariffs.

Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, said in an interview a few days ago that they’d be putting Trump on the road in mega-rallies next year—though Trump, who seems exhausted, hasn’t been told yet.

“I haven’t quite broken it to him yet, but he’s going to campaign like it’s 2024 again,” Wiles told The Mom VIEW, a MAGA show produced by the group Moms for America.

Then she literally said they’re going to “put him on the ballot” in the midterm elections for Congress all across the country:

Typically, in the midterms, it’s not about who’s sitting at the White House; you localize the election. And you keep the federal officials out of it. We’re actually going to turn that on its head and put him on the ballot.

Bring it on! Again, Democrats could not ask for more.

Marjorie Taylor Greene trashed Donald Trump and the GOP on “60 Minutes” this past weekend—causing Trump to erupt in anger at the network he thought he’d just co-opted—and Nancy Mace wrote an op-ed in the New York Times yesterday vilifying intransigent Republican leaders, who are just bowing to Trump.

Far right Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie led the charge on a vote to release the Epstein files, defying Speaker Mike Johnson and Trump, forcing it down their throats. Republicans in both the House and Senate are now holding up the defense spending bill unless the Trump administration releases unedited videos of strikes conducted against boats Trump claims are drug smugglers.

And a battle raged among Republicans for weeks over Tucker Carlson’s legitimizing Holocaust-denying, Hitler-loving Nick Fuentes within the GOP, while Trump was sidelined—and, as Rolling Stone notes, Fuentes has won.

MAGA is tearing itself apart.

And that’s also occurring in that creepy, self-loathing little corner occupied by gay MAGA.

Milo Yiannopoulos—the former alt-right gay warrior who was banished from Trump World in 2017 after it was revealed just before his CPAC keynote that he apparently supported sex with teenage boys—over the weekend expanded on his outing campaign against MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson, who is vying to be the new Charlie Kirk.

And Yiannopoulos, appearing on Tim Pool’s big MAGA conspiracy podcast along with George Santos, also introduced the idea that Kirk may have been a closet case too!

That was enough to make Santos, the sociopathic convicted fraudster and gay former drag queen—newly released from prison after Trump commuted his sentence—suddenly outraged that anyone would promote…a lie.

Seriously!

Johnson, who has a huge reach and thought he had a big win when he interviewed FCC chairman Brendan Carr—who said he’d being going after Jimmy Kimmel, but lost the war in the end—has pushed ugly anti-LGBTQ garbage for years. And yet, as I wrote a few weeks ago, there’s been a lot of discussion on both the left and the right about the sexual orientation of Johnson, who obsessively shares photos of his wife and children.

Progressive podcaster Keith Edwards pointed to several things a few months ago, including queer novelist Saeed Jones remarking that he “made out” with Johnson—in a closet!—at a Christmas party when they both worked at BuzzFeed in the 2010s (before Johnson went full-blown MAGA), something Jones said, “haunts me to this day.” Jones wrote on social media, “I’m definitely not the only man Benny Johnson has made out with,” and that “men will literally become traitors to their country rather than go to therapy.”

Yiannopoulos—who, by the way, now ridiculously claims he’s “ex-gay” and called homosexuality “demonic” in an interview with Tucker Carlson last week—had asked back in March on X:

WHICH happy-go-lucky podcast host gets trashed and has sex with young boys in the latters’ hotel rooms at Turning Point conferences, leaving his wife weeping in the arms of other men downstairs amid the AIPAC leaflets and trestle tables?

It was taken as a not-so-thinly veiled claim about Johnson. Now Yiannopoulos confirmed on Pool’s show that he was pointing to Johnson, sending a suddenly dumbstruck Santos to the fainting couch.

“One of the most distinctive things about the right-wing in this country is its homosexual overtones. Benny Johnson posts pictures of his children every two days—it’s weird. And everybody knows what went on with Benny Johnson in those lobbies and those hotel rooms at SAS [Student Action Summit, at Turning Point USA]. Everybody knows,” Yiannopoulos said with conviction.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Santos replied, feigning complete astonishment.

“Men, younger men. Not underage, at least I don’t know that. His wife was crying drunk in the lobby three SAS’s in a row about how her husband was upstairs with boys,” Yiannopoulos said. “Go ask her.”

“Come on,” a simply stunned Santos replied. “Come on. Come on, Milo. Aren’t you afraid of being sued?”

That obsessively scheming George Santos is thunderstruck in disbelief by someone bringing forth outlandish claims is enough to have you rolling on the floor laughing until your guts spill out.

But it gets better. Milo says that he “thinks” Charlie Kirk was gay too, and pushes a claim making the rounds of the conspiracists that Kirk and his wife were planning to divorce.

This queerifying of the recently deceased MAGA patron saint of hate—canonized by the Catholic convert JD Vance—and whose likeness has now been made into a hideous, newly unveiled monument—was just too much for Santos, who finally grabbed the smelling salts.

“Why would you even go there, to say something like that?” asked an outraged Santos. “The man’s dead!”

Yes, George Santos, convicted of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering, and theft of public funds, having ripped off hundreds of people and the U.S. government—and who lied about his own dead mother, claiming she died in the World Trade Center on 9/11 when she wasn’t even in the country—suddenly cares about the integrity of dead people.

And, I’m sorry, but conjecturing that someone may have been gay, even if they are dead—and even if it’s not true—is not a bad thing.

Santos, newly free and anointed by Trump, seems to be having delusions about leading gay MAGA, while Yiannopoulos is trying to claw his way back from the dead—all as the MAGA mothership is crashing down.

Johnson has seemingly now threatened to sue Yiannopoulos, in a post in which he said he is “duty-bound” to defend himself—but didn’t quite mention what it was about.

But a gleeful Yiannopoulos—who also now says Nick Fuentes is gay, after the Nazi went on Piers Morgan, denigrated women and said he never had sex with a woman —-shot back and told Johnson, in a post he addressed to Johnson and his wife, that he’s got all the receipts:

Dear free speech warrior Benny, dear Kate:
A few notes for your consideration.
— I know more about defamation than any lawyer you will hire. Benny is a public figure. Malice is a nonstarter. I have receipts, and the truth is a total defense against any claim of defamation or libel. Do you want to lose a defamation case to MILO YIANNOPOULOS OF ALL PEOPLE about whether or not you are gay? Do you want to even fight one? The people who have poured money into making you a big deal are about to lose their entire investment.
— I know more about your marriage than you think I do, and I have evidence, and I have witnesses. I know who to subpoena. I know what questions to ask. About nocturnal liaisons dangereuses with chaps in assless chaps and about being caught in flagrante delicto at conferences attended by students, some of whom may have been under 18. (I guess we’ll find out!)

— Discovery will destroy your career beyond any possibility of redemption, Benny, which was never my intention and never in my heart because I believe that family is making you a better man, as I think it did Charlie Kirk, but this will be the inevitable result of your actions. I just want you to be honest because I believe that’s important and I believe that it is in the public interest to report on people who present one way and act another.

I have a feeling Johnson will not be filing a lawsuit any time soon.

Since that post, Yiannopoulos has been trolling Johnson with screenshots of stories Johnson wrote back when he was at BuzzFeed, like this one in 2014 (before he went MAGA).

It doesn’t matter how much of all this is true, by the way, though a fair amount seems so—except for the absurd notion that anyone is “ex-gay.”

The bigger takeaway is that this is another example of MAGA’s implosion, with lots of people making big and small power grabs as Trump loses his grip, with many of them tearing one another down. And I am here for it.

Many of us worried before and after the 2024 election that our democracy would be destroyed completely by Donald Trump, who was hellbent on giving his presidency over to Project 2025 zealots, Christian nationalists, corrupt billionaires, and all kinds of grifters and fraudsters.

His actions from day one reflected that, as he dismantled government and struck terror in the hearts of millions with masked thugs and armed military on city streets. And none of us can rest, as there’s plenty of time for Trump to do us in.

But something else is also happening, ironically exactly for the reasons stated above: Unlike in his first term, Trump has no one around him with any political savvy or moderation, nor anyone with the ability to actually talk him out of his most extreme actions. There is also no one who can help make him appear to the MAGA masses as someone who seems crazy but may just be crazy like a fox. This takes skills with Trump, and there is no one in the White House with that ability.

There are instead mostly loyal devotees who’ve been deeply embedded in MAGA conspiracies for years and want adoration from Trump—from FBI director Kash Patel and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Or there are unhinged bigots like Stephen Miller—who are able to appeal to Trump’s racist instincts, getting what they want from him—or self-serving opportunists like JD Vance and Marco Rubio, who do not care about Trump.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tries on TV, but often comes off like a blathering, incoherent mess, like several others in the Cabinet who aren’t ready for prime time. Again, it takes skill to sell Trump’s madness. Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, had been overrated from the beginning as someone who might be the moderating force in Trump’s ear. But instead, she is more like a babysitter, making sure Trump gets fed what he desires.

Johnathan Lemire of the Atlantic, who often quotes White House sources, wrote of “The Bubble-Wrapped President:”

Trump remains in the MAGA echo chamber even when he’s alone in the White House residence or the private dining room off the Oval Office. Yes, he occasionally checks MSNOW or CNN, but his TVs are almost always tuned to Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax, which practically never run negative stories about the president. (Fox did not even carry the recent news conference featuring Epstein victims.) Same with his phone: Truth Social provides a stream of praise from adoring disciples, as well as AI slop and other provocative posts that play to the president’s basest political instincts.

That has allowed for the pure, unvarnished ugliness and sloppiness of Trump, which, ironically, is even now turning some of his own MAGA base against him on some issues, and is causing a crack-up among the MAGA political leadership. New polling shows that Trump’s voters are increasingly blaming Trump for the affordability crisis, while Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation and scathing send-off have opened the floodgates for other MAGA politicians to sound off.

MAGA nut bags like Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York and now Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina are suddenly also trashing Speaker Mike Johnson—who is of course just taking orders from Trump—and exemplify those Republicans in Congress who see Johnson as not allowing Congress to do its job as a co-equal branch of government, handing the keys over to Trump. They may still be too afraid to name Trump directly, but attacking Johnson for refusing to lead is attacking Trump for taking over from Johnson while Johnson allows it.

Meanwhile, Republicans are finally investigating this administration, making demands, whether it’s on the Epstein files or Pete Hegseth’s war crime.

All of this came after the months of Hands Off and No Kings protest, which helped fuel the massive election blowout in November, where Democrats surged in New Jersey, Virginia and across the country, running on Trump’s failures on the economy and the danger he posed to democracy. The special election for a House seat in deep red Tennessee’s 7th district on Tuesday, where Republican Matthew Van Epps won by only 9% in a district Trump won by 22% in 2024, only underscored this.

Every presidential and mid-term election since 2016 saw the presidential candidate (Trump) or the congressional candidate winning that district by 22% or higher. And turnout in the special election was so high it matched the 2022 mid-term, so it can’t be blamed on low turnout and enthusiasm of the party out of office.

Republicans in Congress and all throughout political office are deathly afraid. Politico quoted one Republican leader saying before the Tennessee results were in, “If our victory margin is single digits, the conference may come unhinged.”

And yet, there is no sign that Trump got the message in any meaningful way. No sign that anyone has been able to tell him he needs to change course, as his poll numbers continue to plummet, with Gallup showing him at 36% approval. He’s still pressuring Johnson, who’s refused to schedule a vote on extending Obamacare subsidies, even as many Republicans in the House want to do so to avoid massive losses—and as it’s leading to Johnson’s downfall, with Stefanik predicting he will lose the speakership.

Trump is still pardoning fraudsters and drug traffickers while he’s trying to start a war with Venezuela (claiming Venezuela is helping drug traffickers!) and has watched his Pentagon committing a war crime before the war even started!

Trump is still defending his tariffs as companies are suing and as Americans, including his base, are feeling the impact as the economy declines. He called the affordability crisis a “scam” and “con-job” by Democrats, even as its winning them elections because Americans are experiencing it.

Trump is laser-focused on his ballroom—and making it bigger—and doesn’t give a damn about anyone else. Lemire reports that there was a plan to get Trump back out on the road in the fall, doing rallies, but it never happened. He went on foreign trips, engaging in corrupt deals, or hunkered down in the White House.

That’s because Tump is tired, and he’s sick. He’s had two MRIs within a year that his doctor called “preventative,” which is just pure b------- Any doctor will tell you there’s no routine screening using an MRI, even for someone 79-years-old. There’s a reason why someone has an MRI.

He’s sleeping in Cabinet meetings and the ugly stuff coming out of his mouth is more frequent and more vile. Calling a reporter, “piggy,” and another “stupid.” Calling Somalis “garbage,” including a sitting Democratic member of Congress, Ihan Omar. Trump always made gross and racist comments, but most of them were attributed to him from things he said in private.

Now, like some men whose brains sadly deteriorate with age, he has less of a filter, and says more of the ugly stuff out loud.

If Trump had people around him, as in the first term, who could talk him out of things and appeal to a sense of political survival, he might weather all this better. And that’s the twisted upside of his having surrounded himself with extremists. Don’t get me wrong: I’d not in a million years wish it were this way, and would rather there were people who talked him out of things. Too many horrible things have happened to the country, too much brutality has been unleashed, too many lives have been torn apart—and there’s more to come.

But that there is no one there to help stage-manage the horror show means people are seeing it more clearly. That’s speeding up Trump’s downfall and Democrats’ ability to bring down Republicans. It’s a long road, and a year between now and the mid-terms. And even then, Democrats may stop the bleeding and have oversight and even impeachment power—but Trump will still be in office. And the damage he’s done is incalculable, with so much that can’t be undone.

So we are not by any means out of the woods. But we should be glad the MAGA unravelling is happening much more quickly than any of us had thought.

I just want to put up top that this story is about what it sounds like, which is fantastical and like something out of a spy thriller, and yet there’s nothing we can put past this administration. But it’s also about how The New York Times missed — or chose to ignore — a story staring it right in the face.

When I read reports last weekend about how Jair Bolsonaro, the Brazilian president who’d been sentenced to home confinement after being convicted in a notorious coup plot, had been arrested after an attempted escape, the first person I thought about was Donald Trump.

Trump, of course, is Bolsonaro’s best buddy and fellow authoritarian coup-plotter who, unfortunately for us, was indicted but never convicted because he became president again and killed the cases against himself. And since becoming president, Trump has spent months railing against Brazil and its Supreme Court — even imposing 50 percent tariffs on the country as retribution — demanding Brazil’s current president release Bolsonaro.

But that wasn’t the only reason I thought about Trump. Reports about Bolsonaro’s arrest focused on how his ankle monitor was breached after midnight, and security forces immediately detained him, putting him in a pretty cushy jail, under orders from a judge on the Brazilian Supreme Court who noted that Bolsonaro lives close to the U.S. embassy.

Bolsonaro had in early 2024 slept in the embassy of Hungary — where another authoritarian buddy, Victor Orbán, is president — in what authorities believe was an attempt to evade arrest.

I couldn’t help but think the judge and law enforcement might be aware of a plot involving the U.S., and I discussed it on my SiriusXM show on Monday, speculating that it could have been an attempt by Bolsonaro to get to the U.S. embassy and get asylum from the U.S., which, under Trump, would give it to him.

It wasn’t until Tuesday that I actually saw the video from later in the day on Saturday of Trump, heading to his chopper at the White House, being asked questions by reporters about Bolsonaro, which you can watch right here.

At first, Trump clearly seems not to catch that the reporter is asking about Bolsonaro being arrested the night before and instead thinks it’s just a general question of some sort about his dictator pal.

TRUMP: So I spoke last to the person you just referred to, and we’re going to be meeting, I believe, in the very near future.

Reporter: Sir, are you aware about the president being arrested today?

Trump responds with what is clearly shock, sticking his head out .

TRUMP: What?!

Reporter: I’m talking about the former Brazilian president being arrested today.

TRUMP: No, I don’t know anything about that.

Trump seems a bit stunned, and again says, “I don’t know anything about it,” before asking the reporter, “Is that what happened?”

Then he kind of grimaces, and says, “That’s too bad,” and repeats again, “I Just think it’s too bad.”

The Times published a story about the latest on Bolsonaro’s arrest, but it oddly focused up top on how Trump, supposedly learning the limits of his power, doesn’t have as much interest in Bolsonaro as he used to, and it quoted from the exchange with reporters — but only the part where he says “That’s too bad,” and not the part where he says he just spoke to Bolsonaro:

“That’s too bad.”

It was a telling response from President Trump on Saturday when he learned the news from reporters that his once close ally, the former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, had just been arrested.

Did he have any thoughts?

“No,” Mr. Trump replied. “I just think it’s too bad.”

What a difference a few months make.

In July, Mr. Trump sent an angry letter to the current Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, demanding that the authorities drop charges that Mr. Bolsonaro had attempted a coup. Mr. Trump slapped 50 percent tariffs on Brazilian imports and imposed sanctions on a Brazilian Supreme Court justice to try to keep Mr. Bolsonaro — a right-wing politician sometimes called the Trump of the Tropics — out of prison.

Five months later, Mr. Trump has all but admitted defeat.

This ia a very strange framing. It completely omits what Trump said before he said “That’s too bad.”

Trump said he’d just spoken with Bolsonaro the night before. And said he they were going to be meeting “very soon.”

How would Trump be able to meet Bolsonaro in home confinement in Brazil?

And how did the Times not catch what would otherwise throw cold water on the framing of its story? After all, far from forgetting about Bolsonaro, Trump was very much thinking about Bolsonaro, having just spoken to him and planning to see him “soon.”

Thankfully, the always sharp Rachel Maddow proved I was not crazy and being conspiratorial. Because when I did a search this morning, after seeing the video, I found that she indeed covered this on her MS Now program, raising all the right questions even as she pointed to what fantastical plot this would be if true.

But where is the rest of the media, and why did the Times not home in on Trump’s highly interesting comments, instead making it appear as if Trump had been giving up on Bolsonaro?

Michelangelo Signorile writes The Signorile Report, a free and reader-supported Substack. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), according to reporting in Axios, is setting his sights on a 2028 run for the presidency. The report forced Donald Trump to respond to it, and thus to talk about life without him as the leader of MAGA, much less America.

No, Cruz will not be elected president in ‘28 — and we certainly don’t want that to happen — but we should encourage the talk nonetheless, and media should to bring it up more. Apparently, the White House is angry with Cruz for putting it out there, seeing it as undermining Trump — and JD Vance. As NOTUS reports:

The White House and its allies believe Sen. Ted Cruz is taking positions antithetical to President Donald Trump from his perch as chair of the Senate Commerce Committee as a way to position himself against Vice President JD Vance ahead of 2028.

And they’re not happy about it. Cruz has been making life difficult for the White House behind the scenes.

And that’s why it’s a good thing. This week’s outcome of the months-long debacle in Congress over the Epstein files, coming to a head after Republicans saw a Democratic blowout at the polls two weeks ago, underscores that Trump is a lame duck.

The dam burst, as Republicans rushed to vote to force the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files. We have not seen a president rebuked like this in ions, with a veto-proof majority that was nearly unanimous in the House and Senate.

Sure, Trump jumped on the bandwagon and told Republicans to vote for it, but only after he saw he was going to lose big. He could release the files at any time, and didn’t need a bill. He signed the bill — which he had to do, or face that veto-proof majority — with no cameras, nor with the victims by his side, announcing it on Truth Social in the dead of night.

Trump was forced to do something he was loath to do. It doesn’t mean the files will be released, as he’ll go to Plan B or Plan C, working with the DOJ to block them or strip out anything in them about him. While that’s not good for the victims who want justice, any further stonewalling will just keep the story out there. It will never go away, and will continue to bring Trump down.

Trump is the lamest of ducks, as Republicans in states like Indiana now defy his orders to redistrict and further gerrymander. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (D-GA) went for broke and created a huge clash with Trump. She was the most high-profile deep, dark MAGA figure to break with him, taking a gamble that it would work for her. And it did.

Trump finally exploded and called her a “traitor” — which is rich for so many reasons, including that she’s used that word against so many others — inspiring violent threats against her. None of us knows MTG’s true motives. On Friday, she dropped the stunning news that she would resign from Congress in January. There’s been lots of talk about her positioning herself to run for president too.

Bring it on!

No, MTG will not be elected president. But the more the MAGA base talks about this rift and about other Republicans running for president, the more they show that they’re dividing and also looking at life beyond Trump, who’s dropped his threats — for now — of running for a third term.

Trump’s power over the GOP is slipping, and the Jeffrey Epstein debacle was really a massive exposure of that. NBC News reports that Greene’s voters, while they still support Trump in her blood-red, gerrymandered district in Georgia, also continue to support her.

Before Greene announced her resignation, NBC interviewed voters in her district. Trump had pulled his endorsement of Greene and threatened to back a candidate to primary her. But it doesn’t seem to be working:

“That’s not right. It’s not right,” Debbie Dyer, 60, said of Trump’s accusation. “She should not be seen as a traitor. She’s trying to do the best for the American people and I think Donald Trump should accommodate her and work for America.”

“She has a lot of courage and tells it like it is,” added Dyer, who lives in Dalton, near the Tennessee border, and works at a carpet company.

Trump was hoping the voters would choose between him and Greene, and choose him — his black-and-white world in which you’re either with him or you’re against him — but that doesn’t appear to be happening. This tactic always worked for Trump, but it’s now deflating.

“Some people are struggling with it. Some are choosing Team Marjorie, and some are Team Trump,” said Angela Dollar, a local Republican official in Floyd County, part of Greene’s district.

As for Dollar: “I can like two people who don’t like each other. My hope is they’ll reconcile.”

It seems highly doubtful that Trump is going to destroy Greene. And that’s a big deal.

Of course, none of us should trust or root for Greene, who’s been a vile force in politics, her recent pushback on Trump notwithstanding.

But if Trump no longer has the power to destroy Republicans by backing primaries against them — and as more of them learn that that’s true — we could see the GOP bucking him on a number of issues as we head toward the mid-terms, where Democrats have opened up a big lead in the generic ballot.(A whopping 14 points in one poll, and high single digits in others.)

Republicans are in disarray, with a civil war under way over everything from welcoming holocaust denier Nick Fuentes into the party to fears about the impact of Obamacare subsidies expiring.

The only thing uniting the GOP for years has been a fear of Trump.

But if that fear dissipates, the splits just widen, as they fight one another more and facilitate the MAGA crack up. And that is definitely something to root for.

Michelangelo Signorile writes The Signorile Report, a free and reader-supported Substack. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism.

“I’ve had enough,” Adam from Michigan told me in a call to my SiriusXM show last Friday, after identifying as someone who voted for Donald Trump three times.

He plans to vote “against him, up and down the ballot,” next year.

He said it’s not just him — it’s his entire family, and colleagues at work.

“We don’t want to hear any of it — we just turn it off,” Adam said, referring to TV at the office, where most of his colleagues are Republicans who supported Trump.

As we see MAGA Republicans in the House defying Trump on the Jeffrey Epstein files, and Republicans in states like Indiana ignoring Trump’s demands for redistricting and gerrymandering — an attempt to rig the midterms — there’s a clear sign that many GOP officeholders see Trump as a lame duck. They’re not following his every command.

They’re emboldened — and frightened — by the blowout elections for Democrats two weeks ago, which proved Trump is tanking and Democrats are soaring. And they’re looking at the polls where Trump is sinking, not just with a substantial majority of Americans but among Republicans and MAGA too.

It’s on every issue, including immigration and the economy, where Trump is doing the worst.

Adam is one of them. As I told him, I could argue with him for hours about why he voted for Trump three times, and about his claims that Trump’s first term saw a great stewardship of the economy and the handling of the pandemic. But that would get us off course — there’s always time for that.

I wanted him to just explain what had him dumping Trump now and what he planned to do moving forward. A transcript of our conversation follows.

MS: Adam is in Michigan. Hi Adam. Thanks for calling.

Adam: Oh, hey Michelangelo. I am a, I voted for Trump three times, and he is just like, he just right now, it’s amazing how he is not at a 10 percent approval rating. With the Epstein stuff, the tariffs, the economic destruction, the alienation of our allies. Telling Ukraine, you’re on your own. Destroys everything, saying he’s gonna fix things by lowering the tariffs with a mess he created.

Then you have the Epstein files and then he’s in the emails. I think right now is the time every Republican voters should say, “This our chance to dump him, impeach him, remove him, and get back to business.” That’s how I feel like — I’ve had enough.

MS: Tell me a little bit about how, ‘cause you seem very passionately opposed to him, but to vote for him three times, you had to be very passionately in favor of him and supporting him and certainly by that third time. So what is it that really did it for you after he was elected this time?

Adam: Well, the first time was a wild card, like a lot of people, right.

The second time was kind of like, I remember how the economy was pre-COVID, kind of anchored to that. Okay. Like 2020 happened, and then kind of like, this time, I was kind of thinking, Will things be like 2019 again?

I didn’t take him as serious on the tariffs because he talked about in 2015, 2016, but he never actually did it. But then when he did the tariffs this time, it’s like so reckless. With that “liberation day” and like he destroyed our standing in the world. Canada is gonna hate us for like 50 years. I mean, it’s really sad, but I’m just, I did not—

MS: So it was the tariffs first, but then what? The Epstein files? You mentioned a whole bunch of stuff.

Adam: I know, I’m just kind of sick of him, but you know, just, he’s just not the same person, I can’t explain it. He’s just not who he was the first time. Like the first time he cared about the economy more than anything. Like we saw that during COVID, right?

But then this time it’s like.He’s purposely trying to destroy the economy, then trying to act like he’s fixing it. Like I think he’s lost officially lost his mind — well, not officially, but just, he’s just not — he’s a different monster this time. He’s just reckless.

MS: I will, I will agree with you on that. He’s a different monster. Where we will disagree, and I could argue with you about COVID and the economy in the first administration and, you know what he was, but I’m not going to because I’m very happy that you’re now, you know, deciding you don’t support him.

And I do believe he’s a different kind of monster. He wasn’t like this in the first term, but a lot of us saw this coming with Project 2025. He just completely and totally, I think, is captive to these people. He’s kind of checked out.

Are you now going to do what you can in the midterm elections to vote against Republicans to make sure there’s a check on him?

Adam:I thought about the today out on my walk. I was kind of thinking for next election, I think I just have to maybe vote against him up and down the ballot.

I hate to talk about the people who have cancer, but kind of like as a chemo to get rid of the cancer of Trump. I can’t, I mean, no disrespect to people who have cancer. I hate using this analogy ‘cause it’s so disingenuous, but I just dunno how to explain or what to do, you know?

MS: Yeah, I hear you on that a Adam, thank you. I’m glad to hear that. I bet you represent some other people too. Maybe you can quickly tell me, are there other people you know who’ve also decided they don’t like him anymore?

Adam: Oh yeah. I have clients that work, you know, really like ‘hard in,’ said the same thing. They’re all done. All my siblings, my parents. I have colleagues, people at work who are all Republican voters, you know, like the Mitt Romney types, the John McCain types. We’re all done. Like when his staff comes on TV, we just hit the mute button at the office. We don’t wanna hear from any of them, like Peter Navarro or Scott Bessent or any of them.

Like, we don’t wanna hear any of it. We just turn it off.

MS: I’m, I’m glad to hear that. Make sure, do what you can to make sure they vote against Trump, and that means voting for the Democrat on the ticket, particularly in Congress, particularly for the Senate there in Michigan. Very important races in Michigan.

He has to be stopped. If the Republicans do not have the majority, everything stops. He won’t be able to do, what he’s been doing. So make sure you tell them all and organize. Thank you, Adam for the call.

Election night was exactly what we all needed.

Following the returns coming in, it was exhilarating, an experience that helped counter what we felt in 2024.

So yes, on a personal, psychological level, this will fuel us for the enormous work ahead. And this built on No Kings, which again points to the importance of organizing.

But we also surely needed this politically, to counter Trump and the GOP—and the corporate media, which is always pandering to the GOP.

Mikie Sherrill, winning by double digits in the New Jersey race for governor, killed the narrative of New Jersey as drifting toward the GOP. The pollsters and the pundits had a big upset, telling us it was going to be single digits and MAGA Jack Ciatterelli could win. Black and Latino voters, who the media told us had strayed to Trump, voted in big percentages for Sherrill.

In the Virginia gubernatorial race, the spread for Abigail Spanberger’s trouncing was also bigger than predicted, and the GOP harping on a texting scandal didn’t stop Jay Jones from becoming attorney general. The House of Delegates is seeing double-digit pickups for Democrats. Virginia, a true bellwether, is a massive blow to the GOP.

Californian organized fiercely within a matter of two months, led by Governor Gavin Newsom, and voted to fight Trump and Texas by redistricting their congressional map. It was a stunning turnaround—so rapidly—and an understanding of the stakes.

Newsom gave a powerful speech, letting Trump know we will not accept his authoritarian rule. And Newsom implored other Democratic states to follow suit with redistricting — and I think they will.

And in New York, Zorhan Mamdani brings a whole new generation to City Hall, as voters decided it was no more business as usual with the same old corrupt politicians. He ran on affordability, as the other Democrats did, hitting the GOP and Trump for only continuing to enrich the billionaires. Mamdani is also a model for Democrats across the country in how to engage with voters, and he sent a message to Democratic leadership: It’s time for change. Much will be written on that.

Mamdani’s acceptance speech, rather than being conciliatory, was fiery and defiant—the right stance for this moment—as he spoke directly to Trump, telling him to “turn up the volume” to listen, and then letting him know he will have a big fight on his hands if he comes for us. Pitch perfect.

So, let’s celebrate these big wins, and the fact that two women elected as governor, and an immigrant—the first Muslim and South Asian elected to be New York’s mayor—won the marquee races.

We needed it. And the GOP, Trump and the media needed to see it. Our opponents are now on the defensive. Republicans will fret, deathly afraid of what Trump will do to their chances—but also deathly afraid of what he’ll do if they pull away from him. That’s exactly where we want them moving into the 2026 midterm elections.

A strange thing happened over the past few days. No sooner did Donald Trump again float the idea of running for a third term, saying,” I’d love it” and “I’m allowed to do it,” than he backtracked completely, saying, “I guess I’m not allowed to it” and it’s “too bad.”

In between, House Speaker Mike Johnson rushed to tell the press, “I don’t see the path” for a Trump third term, and said he’d spoken with Trump about it on the same day—basically talking Trump down from his first statement in less than 24 hours, or so it appeared.

Now, don’t get me wrong. None of us should trust anything Trump says. He is a dictator and clearly wants to stay president, and he has already engaged in an attempted coup. So his word means nothing. But the backtrack was nonetheless odd.

What actually happened? A few things. It seems, first off, that Steve Bannon, in his interview with The Economist on Friday, may have been trying to mess with JD Vance—whom he can’t stand and has worked to take down—who’s made it quite clear he’s the heir to MAGA and wants to be president in 2028.

As I wrote on Tuesday, Bannon told The Economist editor that there was a “plan” to get around the 22nd amendment, which bars a president from running more than twice. “Trump is going to be president in 2028. And people just ought to get accommodated with that,” Bannon claimed.

For Trump, it was catnip—irresistible. He doesn’t want to be seen as a lame duck. He wants to seem invincible. But, more pertinently, he most definitely wants to be president forever because he is an authoritarian. Anything breathing life into that idea was going to set him off.

And so, after being asked by reporters on Air Force One about Bannon’s comments, Trump then mused about it the way I explained on Tuesday—not ruling it out while remaining vague, sending the message that he’d try. But that seemed to set off a chain of events in the GOP that shows why No Kings had such impact—and why Republicans have been deathly afraid of the protest and the message of the seven to nine million people who marched.

Trump was in Asia—all of his comments, including the backtrack, came while he was on Air Force One—so it may have been easier for White House operatives to work around Trump and organize a pushback, including getting someone to talk Trump himself down. Trump made the initial comments on Monday. By Tuesday afternoon, Mike Johnson killed the idea.

“It’s been a great run, but I think the president knows, and he and I have talked about, the constrictions of the Constitution, as much as so many of the American people lament that,” Johnson said during a news conference.

Trump was in Japan at the time. But Johnson said he spoke with him that morning. Clearly, killing this idea of Trump blowing through the 22nd amendment, becoming president again—and maybe for as long as he lives, like a king—was important enough for Johnson to speak with Trump about it while Trump was galavanting many time zones away.

“I don’t see a way to amend the Constitution because it takes about 10 years to do that,” Johnson said. “As you all know, to allow all the states to ratify what two-thirds of the House and three-fourths of the states would approve. So I don’t, I don’t see the path for that, but I can tell you that we are not going to take our foot off the gas pedal.”

Trump then followed suit in answers to a question on Air Force One on his way to South Korea, where President Lee Jae Myung knew how to work Trump, feeding his ego by giving him a replica of a crown worn by Korean kings in 5th and 6th centuries. That, of course, deliciously fed into No Kings, as the gift mesmerized Trump, who even said he wanted to put it on “right now.”

Trump told reporters it was “too bad,” but “based on what I read, I guess I’m not allowed to run. So we’ll see what happens.” Of course, that last line still leaves the possibility open—because Trump still wants people to think he’s a king.

Jonathan Karl of ABC told “Morning Joe” this week that Trump often talks with reporters on Air Force One about who should succeed him, asking if it should be Marco Rubio or Vance, suggesting Trump actually has always been planning on leaving. Per HuffPost:

Karl pointed to Trump’s question [about Rubio and Vance] as evidence that the president doesn’t really have “any designs on actually staying past the end of this term” despite his repeated talk of and hints at trying to stay in the White House for an unconstitutional third term.
Trump “tells people privately, people close to him, ‘No, no, I’m, you know, I’m done,’” Karl said on Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”…

Karl also suggested Bannon was stirring the pot in order to cause tension for the ambitious and super-dangerous Vance. Just this past Tuesday night Vance spoke at a Turning Post USA conference in Mississippi, where the young MAGA crowd was chanting, “Forty-eight! Forty-eight!”

So it’s quite possible Vance, feverishly working on getting the base behind him, was among those scrambling at the White House as Trump was traveling, doing what they could to tamp down any idea that Trump would run again, and bringing Mike Johnson in.

The GOP has a big problem: weaning the MAGA cult off of Trump and onto someone else. They must be talking about life after Trump, and they have to be worried about pushing a fantasy of Trump running again that doesn’t or can’t pan out. Trump may eventually draw them into some plan to keep him in office, as they’ve been drawn in to supporting many illegal things he’s initiated. For now, however, they’re surely thinking life after Trump.

But also, they know it’s toxic to have Trump talking about running for a third term as they are facing enormously tough elections, having already been brought down by Trump. As millions were set to march in No Kings rallies, the GOP was petrified of the message, doing what they could to demonize the protesters, none of which worked. Trump’s musings, inspired by Bannon’s claims, only added more fuel to that messsge of No Kings.

All of this is another example of why No Kings was so successful and will continue to be, and why we must keep marching strong.

Donald Trump uses a well-worn technique of saying several distinctly different things in one exchange, or in a series of exchanges, allowing people—including media, but also voters—to choose what they want to hear.

A case in point in the past few days is his answer regarding running for a third term, something that the 22nd amendment explicitly prohibits for any president elected to two previous terms.

A reporter asked Trump about Steve Bannon’s recent interview with The Economist, in which Bannon referred to a “plan” that would get around the 22nd amendment to make Trump president. “Trump is going to be president in 2028. And people just ought to get accommodated with that,” Bannon claimed.

Trump answered the question by saying this: “I haven’t really thought about it… but I have the best poll numbers I’ve ever had.” (That was a joke, as Trump’s numbers are in the toilet—but he doesn’t pass up any opportunity to spread disinformation.) And then he said, we “have great people,” floating Marco Rubio and JD Vance as strong candidates for president, suggesting he would not be running for president.

But then Trump added, “I would love to do it,” followed by this ambiguous line: “Am I not ruling it out? I mean, you’ll have to tell me.”

When asked about a scheme racing around right-wing circles in which he would run for vice president in 2028—which is legally dubious, but less clear cut—and then become president after his running mate resigns once in the Oval Office, Trump appeared to throw cold water on it while also saying he’s “allowed” to do it:

Yeah, I’d be allowed to do that…You’d be allowed to do that, but I wouldn’t do that. I think it’s too cute. Yeah, I would rule that out, because it’s too cute. I think the people wouldn’t like that. It’s too cute. It’s not—it wouldn’t be right.

So, in this entire exchange, Trump both promoted the idea of running and refused to rule it out—which tracks with statements and actions this year, including trolling online with Trump 2028 hats—and suggested he wouldn’t run by promoting other candidates for president while dismissing what appears to be the only semi-debatable way he could legally become president again.

People can take from it what they want. Most of the media reported on both responses—Trump dismissing running for VP as “too” cute but not ruling out a third term—but there was little in-depth coverage of how Trump would seek a third term. I believe that’s because it would mean speculating that he’s lying about not using the VP loophole or that he will engage in a coup. And our corporate media is deathly afraid of going to either place.

It’s possible Trump is promoting the idea of a third term, as some suggest, merely to elevate his power and put fear into people while he doesn’t have actual intentions of seeking it. A lame duck president is seen as weak, and Trump may be trying to scare Republicans in Congress, so they don’t begin pushing against him.

At the same time, we cannot rule anything out with Trump. And media should be deeply delving into anything he says, laying out the scenarios.

There’s nothing in the major news outlets, however, about the possibility of Trump staging a coup—even though he attempted to do so in 2020 and sent his MAGA mob to attack the Capitol. Conservative former appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig, writing in the Atlantic, explained this week just how much easier it would be for Trump to be successful the next time:

Today, Trump has vastly greater powers than he did in 2020. He has a willing vice president to preside over the joint session of Congress that will certify (or not) the next election, a second in command who refuses to admit that his boss lost the 2020 election. (Vance has said that he would not have certified the results without asking states such as Pennsylvania and Georgia to submit new slates of electors, a solution he invented to a problem that does not exist—there is no evidence of widespread fraud in those states or any state in 2020.)
Trump’s party controls both houses of Congress, and he will surely do everything he can to maintain those majorities. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has paved the way for a third Trump term, as it did for his current term, by essentially granting him absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for any crimes he might commit in violation of the Constitution or the laws of the United States.

This kind of discussion is exactly what corporate media should be raising. They may claim it’s too conspiratorial and speculative, but the truth is that they’re just plain afraid. After all, it’s nothing out of the realm of possibility for Trump, because he’s attempted it all before.

They fall back on Trump giving mixed messages, and much of the public that wants to deny what Trump says follows suit. But how many times in the past nine months have we heard from Trump supporters, from Joe Rogan and the bro podcasters to average Trump voters, who’ve soured on Trump and now say they only thought he’d be going after hardened criminals—”the worst of the worst”—in his mass deportations?

How many times have we seen them express astonishment at the tariffs to which they are now strongly opposed? How many times have we watched as they expressed shock about mass firings in the government or attacks on foreign leaders and lands?

Trump said he was going to do all of this. He explicitly discussed deporting tens of millions of people during the 2024 campaign, for example, and even raised the reality of deporting mothers whose children are American citizens.

But people pre-disposed to like Trump’s rage and who were easily conned by his economic promises only heard what they wanted to hear. And much of the media has enabled this by not digging deeply into what Trump says, particularly when he purposely puts out mixed messages like a smorgasbord for people to choose from.

Right-wing UFC star Bryce Mitchell, an evangelical Christian who said during the campaign that he’d “take a bullet” for Trump, is now calling Trump the “Antichrist.” The fighter wrote on Instagram this week:

I do not like the guy at all…
Putting America last, and now he’s blaming the beef farmers for the price of beef. Hey, I’m not biased, man. He talked a good game, he tricked me. It fooled me. I admit it.

I’m glad he admits he was tricked and fooled. But again, it’s not like Trump didn’t say what he was going to do during the campaign. People who choose what they want to hear need to be hit over the head again and again with facts and analyses of potential outcomes. And unfortunately, our media didn’t do that and still isn’t doing it.

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In response to Donald Trump’s threat to “jail” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson simply for being opposed to having troops on their streets, Pritzker rightly responded by telling reporters Trump is a “coward,” and saying, “Come and get me.”

But he also gave an interview to the Chicago Tribune in which he raised Trump’s declining mental condition. It was biting but seemed accurate, getting to the core, and certainly raising questions for journalists to ask about:

This is a man who’s suffering dementia,” Pritzker said in a telephone interview with the Tribune. “This is a man who has something stuck in his head. He can’t get it out of his head. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t know anything that’s up to date. It’s just something in the recesses of his brain that is effectuating to have him call out these cities.
“And then, unfortunately, he has the power of the military, the power of the federal government to do his bidding, and that’s what he’s doing.”

This came a day after Democratic Senator Reuben Gallego told reporters something similar, regarding Trump’s engagement on talks about the government shutdown.

And it came a week after Representative Madeline Dean of Pennsylvania told House Speaker Mike Johnson that Trump is “unhinged and unwell,” something Johnson actually didn’t outright deny. This shows the issue is potent, something Republicans see and would be put on the defensive about.

Dean then was brought on TV talk shows to discuss what she meant by her comments. This underscores that the media will only focus on this issue if Democrats raise it, and it’s something that many Americans will recognize—and be concerned about—when it’s highlighted. That’s vital right now as Trump is engaged in even more dangerous actions and rhetoric, while seemingly being used by those in his administration who are taking advantage of his declining mental state. Of course, Democrats should be responding to Trump many different ways. But this is one powerful tool in their arsenal right now.

And it’s good to see that raising the issue is becoming more prevalent, with at least three Democrats within a week focusing on Trump’s mental fitness. It’s not just about Trump making decisions without being mentally sound; it’s about others around him manipulating him and exploiting his increasingly feeble mind.

Trump is listless and half asleep at events happening in mid-morning. He sometimes has no public events for days at a time. There’s the mysterious bruise on his hand that appears and goes, which may or may not be connected to the chronic veinous insufficiency for which he’s been diagnosed and which causes his ankles to swell. These issues may or may not be related to his mental decline, but all of it is a concern and something the public should know about.

Jake Tapper of CNN described a phone text interview with Trump this week that was very odd. First off, Trump doesn’t text or email. He speaks on the phone for interviews, so it was suspicious from the beginning. The topic of discussion was the war in Gaza, and Trump answered in short, often inflammatory, several-word sentences, which gave the impression he wasn’t actually the person on the other end of the phone.

It was a dereliction by Tapper and CNN, which promoted it as an exclusive interview. They actually gave the questions to Trump—or whoever—in writing before the so-called interview. And CNN can’t confirm that Trump was actually texting. Even Tapper seemed dubious.

CNN’s journalistic malpractice aside, what the hell is going on? Why didn’t Trump just call the show? Who is actually running things and making decisions?

As I wrote about over the weekend, we had several examples last week of Trump not knowing key facts, while his administration has also taken major actions without informing him.

Trump had spoken in a weekend conversation with Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, and he alluded to being told by Kotek that the reality in Portland differs from what’s being portrayed to him. He seemed shocked that she wasn’t seeing the fires in Portland that he’s seeing on television. And he continued this week to claim Portland is “burning to the ground” when there are a handful of protesters and no violence. We’ve learned that aides are using five-year-old footage to make Trump think there are fires.

The Trump administration late last week reversed extraordinary counterterrorism cuts to New York City—the number one target of terrorism in this country—of $187 million dollars. The reversal came only after New York Governor Kathy Hochul called Trump, who hadn’t heard about it. No one in his administration informed him of what Homeland Security was doing, and even worse, he didn’t see any of this in the news as DHS publicly defended the cuts.

And, as we now see Trump wavering on the idea of extending subsidies for Obamacare, saying on Monday that he was open to it only to backtrack after Republican leaders talked him down, it adds to Senator Chuck Schumer’s observation that Trump was in the dark about the subsidies from the very beginning.

Schumer, after he came out of the White House meeting over the shutdown, posted about how Trump seemed not to know that Obamacare subsidies were expiring at the end of the year.

Now The Wall Street Journal has confirmed that Trump’s Truth Social post ordering Pam Bondi to indict James Comey and others was actually meant to be a be a private message to Bondi, but he inadvertently publicly posted it.

Someone apparently removed it, but it was too late. It had gotten out, so they put it back up so it wouldn’t look like what it was: a confused man in mental decline posting something publicly that he clearly should have spoken with Bondi about in a meeting or on the phone.

On Sept. 20, Trump meant to send a private message to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging her to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and his other favored targets, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote.
Trump believed he had sent Bondi the message directly, addressing it to “Pam,” and was surprised to learn it was public, the officials said. Bondi grew upset and called White House aides and Trump, who then agreed to send a second post praising Bondi as doing a “GREAT job.”

And let’s not forget the crazy QAnon “medbeds” post Trump shared little over a week ago:

President Donald Trump on Saturday shared an apparently artificially created video of himself promoting a cure-all bed with origins in conspiratorial corners of the internet.
The video, which has since been deleted, was intended to resemble a Fox News segment on the show hosted by the president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, featured an AI version of Trump promising access to new medical technology. This segment has never aired on the network.
The “medbed” conspiracy theory has spread during recent years in QAnon circles online.

Did Trump actually think this AI version of himself was him, and that he had spoken with Lara Trump about “medbeds” on Fox News—and that they actually exist—and was now sharing the segment, proud of his non-existent accomplishment? That’s the only plausible explanation, especially since it was taken down, likely by someone else in the White House covering up what is bizarre behavior.

Trump is clearly unwell, and people in the White House are manipulating him and making their own power grabs.

Pritzker, Gallego and Dean were right to publicly raise the issue of mental decline. Every Democrat should do exactly that and force the media to put the White House and Trump on the defensive about it.

As happens often, the Trump administration overreached, this time after the brutal killing of Charlie Kirk.

A political assassination is something we all condemn. It was an opportunity for any president to bring the country together, and even have his opponents in agreement with him on at least that one issue, condemning violence.

Instead, Trump, as well as JD Vance and Stephen Miller, went for revenge and retribution, threatening to prosecute non-profit groups like the Ford Foundation, and publications like The Nation. They urged people to dox anyone speaking harshly about Kirk on social media, and to call their employers—and many people lost their jobs.

And then came the FCC chair Brendan Carr’s threat to ABC based on a comedian’s monologue, and the network quickly jumped to put Jimmy Kimmel on “indefinite suspension.”

This was the third time ABC and the parent company Disney were caving to Trump since he took office, just like some law firms and universities did. They didn’t get that you can settle a frivolous lawsuit and bow to Trump—and he will only come after you again, a maniacal shark seeing blood in the water.

This time, America did not sit back.

The public outrage was intense, and Kimmel is someone known to the vast majority of Americans, and beloved by many. So are the women on “The View,” which was also threatened by Carr. I said this on my SiriusXM show late last week and wrote as much here late on Friday: The entire story had been turned about—by Carr’s own zealousness—from one of political assassination of a far-right figure who was little known in the mainstream to one of free speech and popular culture, silencing well-known and popular voices simply for criticizing Trump.

And as I wrote last week as well, we all know this was about Kimmel’s criticism of Trump in that monologue and not about Kirk. Trump later talked about taking the licenses away from all networks that have news or comedians who criticize him.

The uproar was intense, with Disney and Hulu subscriptions being canceled at a fast pace and some reports that Disney’s value had dropping dramatically. Figures from President Obama to former Disney CEO Michael Eisner slammed Disney for showing no leadership. Labor unions, in Hollywood and beyond, spoke out, protested and threatened further actions. Over 400 Hollywood celebrities signed a letter condemning the action, and some stars called for boycotts—even stars of Marvel, which is owned by Disney.

Then came conservatives like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, who compared the administration to Mafia thugs.

This was only going to grow. Disney had no way out but to bring Kimmel back, and he is returning tonight. Whether he apologizes or says his critics misunderstood his comments doesn’t really matter. His return proves that this was not about his “ratings” as Trump and Carr claimed, suddenly on the defensive. Carr was likely jolted by how quickly ABC caved after the companies that own the stations—Nexstar and Sinclair—had said they wouldn’t air the show after his comments, as both companies have mergers and other business before the FCC.

So it proved Trump and Carr to be liars and authoritarians hellbent on controlling speech, because obviously it wasn’t about ratings—and Kimmel will probably have ratings through the roof tonight. Sinclair is sticking to its threat and not airing the show in the couple of dozen markets in which it owns stations. We’ll see how that lasts, as they say they will “evaluate” it in time.

For now, let’s look at the lessons learned.

Sustained outrage from the public and boycotts, coupled with shaming of leaders of corporations—by other political and cultural leaders—worked here. Obama has lately been very active, thankfully, on social media, after early on being very subdued. That has made a difference. Hollywood celebrities, former media executives and the other comedians—well-known-and lesser-known—had a huge impact.

This is one of those incidents in which the left and progressives used culture in going on offense—when it’s often MAGA that is whipping up fake stories within the cultural space—and we need to do that over and over. Jimmy Kimmel—and all the rest of us defending him—did more for the First Amendment and waking up the country than any politicians or media have done.

Many people who weren’t tuned in or paying attention to what’s going on are suddenly aware that something bad is happening in America. We have to learn from that for the battles ahead.

JD Vance and Stephen Miller, speaking for the Trump administration, declared war on liberal groups doing the important work of fighting to save democracy, all in the name of avenging Charlie Kirk’s death. The exploitation of a political assassination has been sickening—and dangerous—as MAGA uses it to promote revenge, silence free speech and shut down vital organizations.

These are all the same people who decried “cancel culture” from the left—and we don’t even know the motive of Kirk’s killer!—but don’t expect consistency from fascists. They’re just out for power.

One condition that has set the United States apart from other democracies in which authoritarians have seized power is its strong civil society. The U.S. has been a democracy much longer than Russia, Hungary, Turkey, India and others, past and present, in which we’ve seen strongmen seize control and snuff out democratic institutions.

As such, the U.S. has built a strong, very organized and wealthy civil society that is not nearly as easy to destroy as it has been in fledgling democracies. Universities and colleges, both publicly and privately funded. An unfettered and robust free press. Legal organizations and private law firms doing pro bono work, all guaranteeing a fight for basic protections.

And foundations, often created by wealthy people who have continued to fund them along with average Americans sending in whatever money they can, which have for many decades backed groups fighting for civil rights, women’s rights, separation of church and state, freedom of speech, LGBTQ rights, economic equality and much more. These non-profit organizations help fund other non-profit aid groups and non-profit publications doing investigative reporting and commentary that have been vital.

As the fear that Congress, controlled by a subservient GOP, would do nothing to protect democracy from the authoritarian came into view this year, and as we’ve watched a Supreme Court Trump has stacked doing his bidding, the United States’ civil society has been an important pillar.

That’s why we saw Trump attempting to dismantle it from the beginning of this term, starting with the universities, law firms and the media. After ABC caved in to Trump’s extortionist lawsuit, we saw CBS do the same. Eventually Paramount, CBS’s owner, got its merger approved by Trump’s FCC in a quid pro quo deal in which Trump got a settlement on his frivilous lawsuit, which, like ABC’s settlement, paid Trump’s legal fees and funds his presidential library.

Now CBS’s new owner, Skydance, is under control of Trump supporter Larry Ellison, who is eager to please Trump. In the last week we learned CBS News has hired a MAGA “ombudsman”—an internal censor is a more apt title in this case—with no media experience, who will make sure the network doesn’t stray from the far right agenda.

Ellison is also in talks to bring in right-wing Bari Weiss, who built the conservative Free Press—which he will buy up in the deal—and put her in a top job at CBS News. This will be the first network among the big three broadcasting networks—which are still more watched than cable channels—that looks like its news division will transform into a new Fox News.

Regarding the universities and law firms, after seeing many initially bow to Trump, we finally saw Harvard and several important firms fight back in the courts and win big. That’s been encouraging, and it’s what we must demand.

That’s more important now as Miller and Vance signaled the Trump administration is going after non-profit groups as they use Kirk’s death. Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast yesterday—from the White House—and Miller and other Trump officials came on the program.

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Vance was the epitome of the rising fascist, declaring war on “leftists.” He promoted a mass doxing effort to have people who have criticized Kirk fired from their jobs. He called on people who “see someone celebrating Charlie's death,” to “call their employer.” Vance went on: “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility, and there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”

This is the same JD Vance who spoke at the Munich Security Conference in February, where he backed the neo-Nazi party in Germany, the afD, and fought for their right to promote hate speech, saying, “Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree.”

So much for that.

We’ve already seen people, from TV pundits and newspaper columnists, to teachers and an airline pilot, lose their jobs after making comments about Kirk mostly focused on his hateful, racist, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Many were fired after MAGA politicians and groups brought attention to their words. This is a purge, and it’s just getting started.

The Guardian reports an “anonymous website that began collecting reports of anti-Kirk ‘political extremism’ said it had received more than 63,000 submissions.” The New Republic notes that the effort is already out of control, sweeping up people who didn’t even write about Kirk, according to a User Mag report:

Ali Nasrati, 30, said he hadn’t posted anything about Kirk but was still publicly doxed over an account using his name and photograph that made posts mocking the right-wing activist, User Mag reported. This set off a tidal wave of threatening messages and phone calls, sending his mother and sister fleeing from their home and resulting in Nasrati getting suspended (with pay) from his job.

Even more alarming, Vance suggested taking away the non-profit status of the Ford Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, referring to an article in The Nation magazine, the renowned progressive outlet which he clearly wants to shut down. The Washington Post reports neither group actually currently funds The Nation:

Vance called out the “generous tax treatment” that George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation receive as he accused the groups of funding a “disgusting article” in the Nation magazine that he said was used to justify Kirk’s death. Neither group appears to have provided money to the Nation in the past five years.
'The moves underscore the extraordinary amount of time and resources the administration has dedicated to advancing the legacy of Kirk and the way officials have harnessed the emotions surrounding his killing to potentially suppress dissent.

Miller said the White House is promoting a list of “left-wing organizations that are promoting violence.”

“This is not happening for free,” Miller said. “And so under the president’s direction, the attorney general is going to find out who is paying for it, and they will now be criminally liable for paying for violence.”

As The New York Times reports, investigators believe the suspect in Kirk’s killing, Tyler Robinson, acted alone. But the paper noted the White House is implying some sort of coordination with progressive groups. This as Trump claimed political violence is coming from the left while he ignored the vast majority of political violence, which is directed at Democrats from MAGA killers, like the man who shot and killed Minnesota Democratic legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home a few months ago:

But Mr. Trump and his top allies suggested that the suspect was part of a coordinated movement that was fomenting violence against conservatives, without presenting evidence that such a network existed. America has seen a wave of violence across the political spectrum, targeting Democrats and Republicans.
Mr. Trump, who has downplayed violence from right-wing or other supporters, said that he would like to designate a range of groups, including the loosely affiliated group of far-left anti-fascism activists, known as “antifa,” as domestic terrorists and bring racketeering cases against people funding protests.

Trump actually called for using the RICO Act against progressive non-profit organizations.

“We have some pretty radical groups and they got away with murder,” Mr. Trump said, without naming additional groups. He added that he was talking to the attorney general, Pam Bondi, about bringing charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act against “some of the people that you’ve been reading about that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation.”

Is all of this a lot of bluster that won’t get far, even if they intend it to? Possibly.

That they couldn’t find a connection between their first mentioned targets, the foundations and The Nation—and that The Nation, as a magazine, is protected by the First Amendment—doesn’t bode well for their crackdown. It’s doubtful they will find any group on the left supporting violent action of any kind. Those groups after all have been speaking against gun violence for decades, fighting for gun reform and backing efforts to stem gun violence, domestic abuse and brutality by law enforcement.

This may mostly be about using Kirk’s death to fire up the MAGA base for the mid-terms—as Trump’s numbers are tanking and he can’t get away from the Epstein saga—while setting up JD Vance for a 2028 run.

But with odious Stephen Miller vowing revenge, and seeing what he’s done on immigration, I wouldn’t put anything past them. Part of Project 2025’s plan is dismantling the grip of groups that fight for democracy, and Trump and his allies see an opportunity to damage that robust civil society further. This is when we all have to pay even more attention.

In the 48 hours since Jimmy Kimmel was “indefinitely” suspended by ABC, the story of Charlie Kirk’s assassination has changed to one of a political purge and killing of free speech.

Kirk and the investigation are out of the news cycle, while Donald Trump’s FCC and its nazi tactics have taken center stage.

A man named Troy from Utah called my SiriusXM show yesterday saying he was “hard right” and yet he thought we’d surely all be on the same page on this one, that we can’t have government dictating speech. (You can Listen to the clip here). He expressed the discomfort that a lot Trump supporters have expressed.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page, as right-wing as they come, slammed Trump.

Mr. Trump has pursued retribution against political opponents in his second term. He’s used regulatory leverage against Paramount and CBS in a weak lawsuit and squeezed liberal law firms to do pro bono work, while the Justice Department is investigating prosecutors who brought cases against him.
A regulator like [FCC chair Brendan] Carr who might have ignored Mr. Trump’s musings about revenge in the first term doesn’t need direct orders in the second.
The squeeze on Disney looks to be a case of cancel culture on the right.
Mr. Kimmel’s comments Monday associating Charlie Kirk’s killer with the “MAGA gang” were false, callous and stupid. But they weren’t inciting violence, and in a free society they shouldn’t be cause for the government to push someone off the airwaves. Compared to the malevolent garbage on social media about Kirk and his killer, Mr. Kimmel’s words were only mildly offensive.

The head of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, one of the most powerful Christian nationalists in Trump’s base, is very worried, discussing with his panelists that this was “setting a precedent” for a Democratic president to do the same thing.

Even Ted Cruz came out on Friday afternoon and compared the FCC’s Carr to the Mafia operators in “Goodfellas”, speaking on his podcast, per USA Today:

"He says, 'We can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way,'" Cruz said, referring to Carr. "That's right out of 'Goodfellas.” That's right out a mafioso coming into a bar going, 'Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.'"
"What he said there is dangerous as hell," Cruz said after playing audio of Carr's remarks. That’s right out of a mafioso…It might feel good right now to threaten Kimmel, but when it is used to silence conservatives in America, we will regret it.”

Whoa!

It’s sounding like the GOP knows it’s got a massive problem, as the country is now focused on Trump overreaching, and that includes even some in the base of their own party. The story has shifted from Kirk to Trump’s fascistic actions. Carr, taking orders directly from Trump—who is now saying it’s illegal for the networks to write negative things about him, and should have their licenses taken away—undermined the MAGA narrative.

Kirk wasn’t well-known beyond young people and MAGA minions. But all of America knows Jimmy Kimmel, and they are smelling the stench of fascism.

I’ve been a little quiet for the past few days, as we were dealing with the passing of our pit bull Artie, who many of you will remember me talking about over the past 14 great years of his life. (And thank you to those who’ve written me kind notes.)

But of course the world has gone on and gets more dangerous. I popped up to see U.S. adversaries gathering together, making a mockery of Donald Trump. So, a few words on that.

Trump thought he was being slick when he met with Vladimir Putin in Alaska to supposedly use his supposedly great friendship with Putin to end the war in Ukraine.

He also thought he was being slick when he slapped 50% tariffs on India, when its authoritarian leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, wouldn’t stop buying Russian oil.

And he’s thought he’s been really slick with President Xi, believing he was affecting China’s economy with tariffs that would cripple it.

But as we know, China said s----- you, and slapped on bigger tariffs. And while the trade war between the two countries has subsided somewhat, China never caved, and Trump never got what he wanted.

Modi also said f--- you, and now is in the warm embrace of Putin, with whom he held hands over the weekend at China’s summit of anti-Western leaders.

Modi also refused to take Trump’s call, in an act of total humiliation for the feeble orange man with blue hands, as Trump fumed over the Putin-Modi bromance.

This is not normal!

Seeing Xi, Putin and Modi creating an alliance—Modi and Xi having the largest populations and fastest-growing economic markets in the world — with Putin is a five alarm fire.

But then Kim Jong Un turned up in their orbit, in Beijing with Xi, Modi, and Putin to attend China’s military parade.

Trump—clearly feeling left out and very small—went nuts about it on Truth Social.

But it only shows how much he has no influence and credibility with any of these leaders. He so wants in the club, but even these villains don’t want him. To them, he’s just an amateur who also wants to push them around. They’re betting on banding together—a scary thought—and pushing the U.S. around. From ABC:

President Donald Trump took to his social media platform as Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared together in Beijing for China's largest-ever military parade on Wednesday.
Trump accused Xi of "conspiring against" the United States as they attended the parade, which marked the 80th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II.
"May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America," Trump wrote on social media as the parade was underway.
Trump referenced America's involvement in World War II in his post on, saying, "The big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive amount of support and 'blood' that The United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader."
"Many Americans died in China's quest for Victory and Glory. I hope that they are rightfully Honored and Remembered for their Bravery and Sacrifice!" the president wrote.

But Xi sloughed it off and, speaking at the parade, let Trump know that he’s not afraid of him:

The Chinese nation is a great nation that does not fear violence, and that stands independent and strong. In the past, when confronted with a life-or-death struggle between justice and evil, light and darkness, progress and reaction, the Chinese people stood united, rose up in resistance, and fought for the survival of the country, the rejuvenation of the nation and the cause of human justice.

A top aide to Putin, Yuri Ushakov, accused Trump of conspiracy-mongering:

I want to say that no one organized any conspiracies, no one was weaving anything, no conspiracies. Moreover, no one even had that in their minds, none of these three leaders had that.

It’s a painful, humiliating needling for the narcissistic Trump because Putin’s aide is basically saying, “We’re not even thinking about you.”

Kim committed himself to Putin at the summit, and it’s clear that Kim, Modi, Putin and Xi stand with Russia against Ukraine.

Kim said, "As I said during our previous meeting, if there is anything we can do to help Russia, we will certainly do that, and we will regard this as our fraternal duty. We will do everything in our power to assist Russia."
After the meeting, Putin and Kim hugged in front of reporters, with the Russian leader inviting Kim to visit Russia. "Come back again," Putin said.

Trump’s Alaska summit did nothing. After Melania sent a letter to Putin imploring him to stop the violence because of “children” killed in the war, Putin responded by killing many more children—after bombing a U.S. factory and offices of the European Union—launching an attack on Ukraine that is the biggest blitz in the war, as NATO is scrambling planes.

Putin now has the full backing of the other leaders Trump tried to bully or bromance, or both—not understanding diplomacy at all—and has no reason to pull back in Ukraine, nor from threatening Europe or any other U.S. interests.

And no amount of embarrassing, whining, threatening, or ranting Truth Social posts is going to stop that.

Donald Trump signed an executive order this morning expanding the role of the National Guard in Washington, DC, creating a “specialized unit” that is “dedicated” to “public safety.” Anyone who thought the federal government would pull out after 30 days—following the law—is sadly mistaken. The order draws upon various agencies within the government:

The Secretary of Defense shall, subject to the availability of appropriations and applicable law, immediately create and begin training, manning, hiring, and equipping a specialized unit within the District of Columbia National Guard, subject to activation under Title 32 of the United States Code, that is dedicated to ensuring public safety and order in the Nation’s capital.
As appropriate and consistent with applicable law, the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Interior, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, shall each deputize the members of this unit to enforce Federal law.

But it gets worse, much worse.

The order also calls for Pete Hegseth to create a “quick reaction force” to go to any locale in any state at a moment’s notice for “quelling public disturbances”, and also to ensure that state National Guard units are trained to work for the federal government and federal law enforcement.

What exactly is a “public disturbance,” and have we really experienced anything so terrible that it requires federalizing the National Guard and creating a special “quick reaction force”?

Surely we’ve seen terrible storms and natural disasters in which the Guard has aided citizens, and sometimes they’ve done so in helping local law enforcement regarding criminal activity. But there’s no reason we need the federal government to coordinate and oversee any of this. Governors can call in and have called in their states’ National Guard. The federal government’s role should be in making sure that FEMA is doing the work that is vital to its mission—oh, but Trump wants to gut FEMA.

No, Trump is envisioning “quelling” public protest, and using the National Guard to chill speech. And he’s thinking about elections and ways to intimidate voters, and he’s planning for backup for speeding up mass deportations.

How do we know this? Because he talks about stifling speech and limiting voting all the time, obsessed with both. And he’s already using the National Guard in DC and Los Angeles to help ICE’s diabolical work in rounding up immigrants.

According to the order, Hegseth, “shall immediately begin ensuring that each State’s Army National Guard and Air National Guard are resourced, trained, organized, and available to assist Federal, State, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety.”

The Secretary of Defense also, “shall designate an appropriate number of each State’s trained National Guard members to be reasonably available for rapid mobilization for such purposes. In addition, the Secretary of Defense shall ensure the availability of a standing National Guard quick reaction force that shall be resourced, trained, and available for rapid nationwide deployment. “

So, let’s read that right. The federal government will basically take over every state’s National Guard, making sure they are there to “assist” federal law enforcement—that would be ICE, the FBI, the DEA and other agencies Trump is using for mass deportations—and would create a “quick reaction force” to be deployed at any time to any state.

You can imagine that the “quick reaction force” will likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars, since teams of service members dedicated to that mission only will need to be housed and always ready, and they will need to have aircraft available to fly them anywhere at a moment’s notice. And the fact that Trump thinks that such a force is needed means he’s planning to use it for very nefarious reasons.

This is another turning point in Trump’s march toward fascism, make no mistake.

NOW READ: Inside Trump's downfall — and the thing that will finally do him in

On Friday, Donald Trump did something that alarmed economists around the world—and even many Republicans in Congress—by firing the commissioner of labor statistics, Erika McEntarfer, hours after a very weak jobs report and revisions from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that showed the previous months were even weaker. An angry, desperate Trump claimed without evidence that the numbers were “rigged” in a post in which he said, the economy is “BOOMING.”

Trump’s action signaled he will try to cook the books, killing reliable economic data. What other numbers would he try to fake? The markets and the entire world economy rely on accurate data. The ramifications could be staggering—and the opposite of what Trump would be attempting to do—causing massive uncertainly and broad disbelief, sending the economy into free fall.

The statistics chief, by the way, has very little to do with the numbers. As Harvard economist Jason Furman notes, “those numbers are produced by the 2,000 nonpartisan career staff members who work in the agency, in this case compiling the survey responses from the more than 100,000 businesses that report their employment to the B.L.S. every month.”

So why was Trump so spooked by the numbers to engage in such an impulsive and reckless action that even many in his party were freaked out by? Because Trump and those in the White House who might have supported his action are exceedingly desperate, as their authoritarian project is facing what could be insurmountable resistance.

The Epstein saga, a completely unexpected revolt within the MAGA base, has thrown them off, split their supporters and proven to be uncontrollable—a ravaging wildfire. Without a unified base, any would-be dictator of a representative democracy who is attempting to transform it into an authoritarian state is dealing with enormous drag.

So that is already one big area of concern for Trump. But another element that is absolutely necessary for his project is for the majority of people to believe the economy is booming.

Many commentators who are experts on authoritarianism have made the point that what distinguishes Trump from Hungary’s Victor Orban, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan—and even many fascists in history, like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler—is that they all had solid majorities in public approval numbers early on and for quite some time. This allowed them to consolidate power over time and engage in anti-Democratic actions with little public pushback.

That is not the case with Trump, who, with numbers in the toilet, is facing massive public resistance. For all of those other leaders, one reason the public was behind them was because of the belief that the economy was booming—whether or not it was true. Putin became president after years of economic stagnation in a fledging democracy, a nation coming out of decades of communist rule that deprived people of basic necessities, let alone luxuries.

Putin early on oversaw a growth in GDP, an expansion of the economy that got a big flat screen TV in every home, which kept enough people content for long enough to chip away at democracy. It was a much longer term project, however, than Trump is facing, trying to instill autocracy within four years.

Similarly, Erdogan, who, unlike Trump, has more control over interest rates, cut rates and kept them low in the face of astronomical inflation rates—which came to be known as "Erdoganomics”—allowing for cheap borrowing and the appearance of a booming economy (until he eventually was forced to increase rates or face economic calamity). Again, this kept enough people happy long enough for Erdogan to strip democratic rights, but it didn’t happen overnight.

This also explains why Trump keeps pressuring Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve to cut rates—to the point of floating the idea of firing Powell, though the Supreme Court has made clear he can’t. He wants that cheap borrowing to give people the sense of a boom, taking a page from Erdogan.

In Hungary, Victor Orban also worked over a longer period of time to dismantle democratic institutions because, as Paul Krugman writes, his party retained popularity, much of it based on people being content with the economy:

Since taking power in 2010 Viktor Orban and Fidesz, the ruling party, have systematically undermined democratic institutions, creating a de facto one-party state. But the process has been gradual and relatively nonviolent: Salami tactics that sliced off effective opposition a bit at a time rather than tanks in the streets and detention camps.
Why did Orban take a gradualist approach to destroying democracy? Partly, no doubt, because too overt a power grab might finally have roused the rest of the European Union from its slumber. But it’s also true that Fidesz had the luxury of time because until recently the party remained quite popular with the Hungarian public.
Some of this popularity may have resulted from Fidesz’s takeover of the news media. But it was also true that for a long time, Orban could claim to have made Hungary prosperous. He took power at a time of extremely high unemployment: Hungary, like much of the European periphery, was caught up in the disastrous slump caused by Europe’s debt panic. And he was able to preside over a large fall in unemployment as austerity was relaxed.

As Krugman also notes in comparing Trump to Orban, “It's now clear, by contrast, that Trump and MAGA don’t have the luxury of time. Trump’s approval has already cratered.”

Trump has less than four years and yet he’s far more unpopular than those autocrats—and the historical figures like Hitler—at the same point in time as he’s trying to consolidate power. So, since his tariffs are causing consumer uncertainty and will soon spike inflation, and since he can’t cut interest rates, the one thing he was clinging to that he hoped would help him push an aura of a booming economy were the jobs numbers.

But now that has been shattered too.

Trump is underwater on most issues. His mass deportations have brought his approval on immigration—one of the issues he ranked highest on—down to 35% in the Gallup poll. The Epstein saga has completely blindsided him. The one thing he probably hoped he could turn his approval around on more quickly than other issues was the economy, since it’s an issue on which he once ranked high and got him elected.

The new jobs numbers and the revisions of recent months’ reports, however, more than anything else, have economists pointing to a recession. That means Trump’s approval dropping further. And that means the resistance builds.

The numbers are indeed a mortal threat and Trump is desperate for sure, causing him to engage in further reckless actions. But unlike other autocrats he’s emulating, a sizeable majority of people are not happy just seven months after he’s taken power, and many of them are increasingly angry. That’s what we must continue to harness.

It was pretty startling to see Mike Johnson do a complete about face, from breaking with Trump and calling for the files related to the Epstein investigation to be released to unprecedentedly shutting down Congress until September to desperately avoid a vote on releasing them.

Johnson may have developed a spine momentarily last week, and then had it ripped out by a menacing and threatening Trump. Johnson suddenly decided Trump needed more “space” before a vote could take place. Or it could have been, as Kiera Butler at Mother Jones suggests, that Johnson is bowing to Christian nationalists, some of whom are among the MAGA supporters defending Trump against what they see as a plot by Democrats regarding the Epstein files.

Whatever the case, however, it underscores that MAGA is deeply divided. Johnson is trying to prevent a vote while Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and other MAGA extremists have joined progressive Democrat Ro Khanna and right-wing Trump instigator Thomas Massie in trying to bring a vote to the floor.

And that’s what prompted Johnson to send everyone home, fearful that a vote would force the Department of Justice to release all the files, since there are enough Republicans who would join all Democrats to easily pass a bill.

Democrats have effectively put on hold the GOP’s agenda, as Johnson ended all business, vowing nothing until Congress is back in September.

But what happens then?

Trump, who is fearful of what’s in the files—some of which is implicated in stories in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and elsewhere—is stalling for time. There may not be enough that’s incriminating, but there is surely enough for much of the public to believe Trump, himself an accused sexual abuser and someone found liable for rape, was deeply involved with Epstein at the time Epstein was engaged in sex trafficking and raping children.

One way Trump is trying to buy time and maybe even come up with a backstory is by having the DOJ speak with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend who is in prison serving a sentence until 2037, found guilty of sexual abuse of minors along with Epstein and having procured many of the girls. The DOJ announced it was seeking to speak with her, and her attorney confirmed that. The plan could be to have her clear Trump of any wrongdoing and then he would, in return, commute her sentence or even pardon her.

But this looks like a very desperate, difficult and unconvincing move. If Trump were to pardon Maxwell or commute her sentence, it would be clear that she lied. Sure, he could wait until the end of his term and in the meantime get this story out of the way, though it would be a MAGA bomb for anyone inthe GOP coming forward.

But before getting to that, she would really have to have information that clears Trump; a simple statement won’t suffice. What could she have? Why would people believe a pedophile who wants special treatment? (She’s also in the process of appealing her case to the Supreme Court.) As MSNBC.com’s Jordan Rubin, a former prosecutor, notes (italics are mine):

it’s difficult to analyze the value of Maxwell’s potential cooperation one way or the other without knowing specifically what she would share.
In any cooperation situation, the name of the game is corroboration. Therefore, in looking at this situation from the perspective of a prosecutor who would have to make a case based on Maxwell’s potential cooperation, she should not only have to be willing to implicate some other person or persons, but also be able to help prove it. Ideally, that would be with documentary or other objective evidence in a hypothetical case in which the defense would have ample room for cross-examination, given how this cooperation would have come about.

So the Maxwell angle won’t seem to work for Trump (and neither are any of the crazy deflections he’s made, like the ridiculous claim that President Obama fomented a “coup”). And the House Oversight Committee, again with Republicans joining Democrats, already has voted to subpoena Maxwell itself:

The House Oversight Committee plans to subpoena Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell "as expeditiously as possible," a committee spokesperson said.
A House Oversight subcommittee on Tuesday without opposition approved a motion directing the committee chair, James Comer, to issue a subpoena for Maxwell. Only four members were present.
Comer, R-Ky., had directed Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., to introduce the motion after Burchett requested that the committee subpoena her. The motion allows "the Committee to formally consider whether to proceed," the committee spokesperson said.
"The Committee will seek to subpoena Ms. Maxwell as expeditiously as possible," the spokesperson said. "Since Ms. Maxwell is in federal prison, the Committee will work with the Department of Justice and Bureau of Prisons to identify a date when Committee can depose her."

So Maxwell, rather than being a tool for Trump (who would have her release some sort of statement), could provide a circus in Congress that keeps the Epstein saga alive no matter what she says. And again, it’s unlikely she clears Trump in any convincing way.

Many Republican members of Congress, meanwhile, will now have to face the rest of the summer being hounded by their constituents, running away from town halls and afraid to do anything, fearful of Trump, but also of their own base, in addition to Democrats and independent who’ve been on their heels for allowing Trump to engage in reckless actions. And not much is going to change by September, when Johnson says he’ll bring Congress back in session.

In response to MSNBC’s Jen Psaki speculating that Trump “is hoping he can outlast this until August” and asking if he can, Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said it’s not going to work.

Absolutely not. We’re going to keep talking about the Epstein files until Donald Trump releases them. What’s happening right now is that the American public are seeing that Donald Trump has betrayed them. He’s broken their trust.
He ran on the Epstein files as a key part of his campaign. The MAGA world did as well. His family talked about it constantly. Don, Jr. tweeted about it dozens of times. They have focused the on the release to the public, and to build goodwill among his base. He’s now completely reversed on that. And if Donald Trump and Mike Johnson think Democrats are going to just roll over and let that happen, they are highly mistaken.

So what will Mike Johnson do in September? Just keep Congress on hold? That would be great, with Democrats effectively shutting down the GOP agenda for months and stopping more of the dangerous actions. But the GOP could not sustain that. Johnson may hope that threats against Republicans who are joining with Democrats may force them to back down by then.

But Rep. Thomas Massie and a few others haven’t backed down in the past in voting against Trump. More importantly, the others are unlikely to back down now, since their own base is demanding this and many them are true believers themselves when it comes to the Epstein files.

And if Republicans come back and vote not to release the Epstein files or continue to do what they can to stop Democrats from introducing votes to learn more about a notorious sex trafficker and child rapist, it only helps Democrats, for whom it’s win-win.

Right now and for the indefinite future, Democrats are keeping Republicans from even legislating. And they’re also keeping them and Trump on the run, where they want them.

NOW READ: Trump's Obama slam may have been a shocking confession

Some weekend fun, in which MAGA is suddenly so very concerned about homophobia!

During a discussion on my SiriusXM program about Donald Trump dropping bombs on Iran, Mike from Nashville called to ask, “ What would you suggest we do to a diabolical regime who are homophobic, anti-American, anti-Israel…?”

I cut in and said you are describing Saudi Arabia, where they “behead” people who are gay, and where women have use a different entrance at Starbucks. Had to give him a little history on that country, which Donald Trump fully embraces.

And of course, MAGA itself is animated by homophobia, with many fully ginned up on Christian nationalism—and theocratic control of the government—in a way that is not much different from the fundamentalist Islamic regimes.

Mike then did the typical MAGA thing of whining that I wasn’t letting him talk. A sure sign of a loser.

Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

The best thing that California Governor Gavin Newsom did—certainly the best thing in the past few months, as his political posturing has been out of sync—was to tell Donald Trump this week to come and arrest him.

Faced with threats by Tom Homan, the so-called border czar, regarding Newsom’s rightful outrage of Trump federalizing California’s National Guard without Newsom’s request amid protests over immigration raids, Newsom made it clear he’s not afraid. He called Trump an “authoritarian” and said he was “unhinged.” He called him a 'liar and said he should “grow up.”

The response from the administration, thrown off guard, was muddled—and caused Trump to overplay further, which is always unpopular.

Homan defensively backtracked—and then backtracked again. Trump, after Homan’s first backtrack, said, Homan “should” arrest Newsom. When a reporter asked what Newsom should be arrested for, Trump said, “for being elected” as governor.

It was both dumb and exceedingly threatening, exposing Trump as the dictator he is. And that’s exactly what we want the American people to see. Newsom stood up and Trump, unable to back down, went too far.

Polling shows the American people see the the LA raids and the bringing in of the military as massive overreach. And remember, Trump is worried about the mid-terms and the prospects for the GOP, worried about investigations by Democrats and even impeachment. He knows that that he and the GOP are enormously unpopular, and that the savaging of the federal government and its agencies by Elon Musk and his flunkies has enraged people. Musk’s numbers are in the toilet and he’s now been banished in a public battle that played out for days.

Trump sees immigration as his only strong suit—even as the case of Kilmar Abrego-Garcia and others showed him losing support massively on the issue because people were being deported who were not criminals are were not getting due process—and he surely expected the LA raids to lift him up.

But Americans do not want to see families terrified—hard-working people who committed no crimes and are a part of the community—and they don’t want to see troops in the streets of U.S. cities.

A new CBS/YouGov poll shows Trump underwater in sending in the Marines, with people disapproving by double digits. Pollster G. Elliott Morris, looking at several polls, notes the LA actions look like they’re hurting Trump:

[T] his morning, we got the first batch of polling data on how people are feeling about the LA situation, and I think it's worth covering. Despite apparent conventional wisdom that the events would help Trump (and he is clearly looking for a fight, so probably agrees), the data show voters do not initially approve of his response, even if they don't approve of the protestors, either.
The point is: The default assumption that the LA protests help Trump seems thinly evidenced at this point. They may very well end up hurting him.

The abominable Stephen Miller is in charge of this operation—someone who’s an extremist and who doesn’t care about what the larger public might think—and no one has any control over him in the White House. He has Homan and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on television, besides himself. These are all pretty horrifying and often incoherent people, certainly not reassuring to the American people.

The LA protests are a show of solidarity and defiance, as The American Prospect’s David Dayen wrote, and they’ve been largely peaceful even as corporate media and MAGA have focused on scattered acts of vandalism. Now there are protests across the country. When the SEIU leader David Huerta was arrested during the LA protests for no apparent reason, union activists in cities across America organized demonstrations in cities across America until he was released.

Now, on Saturday, we’ll have the “No Kings Day” protests, which will likely turn out millions of people in cities, small towns, and rural America, as we saw with the “Hands Off” protests a few months ago.

Trump is feeble and stumbling, a laughingstock to the world. His tariff madness is tanking the economy and causing instability. His battle with Musk was ludicrous and his threats against Musk for even contemplating supporting Democrats—not that any Democrat should take his help—revealed how lawless Trump is. It’s only when people stand up to Trump that he’s further revealed as extreme because he just can’t hide it, and it drives more people away from him.

Trump’s actions are threat to democracy for sure. And the raids are terrifying for many immigrant families. But the rest of us must stand up for them and expose Trump further, as the American people continue to show their disapproval. We’ve got to keep exposing Trump’s brutality and the GOP’s undying loyalty to make sure the Republicans no longer retain power come the mid-term elections.

NOW READ: Why Trump wants to turn America violent

Wall Street traders, who are almost feral in sniffing out patterns in which to make money, are using the term coined by Financial Times columnist Neil Armstrong, “the TACO trade”— which stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out”—regarding Trump threatening tariffs, sending the markets plummeting, only to back down later, causing markets to rise.

Trump became agitated yesterday in the Oval Office when a reporter asked him about TACO . At first, he was bewildered, not seeming to know about it, but soon he became angry, calling it a “nasty question.” That’s how you know something is true, when Trump is exposed— humiliated about the truth surfacing—and soon becomes furious.

We can all learn from the market traders and from China and others beating Trump at his own game. In fact, TACO should be a motto—and an ad campaign—for Democrats, because it’s both empowering to those taking on Trump, and it also gets under his skin big time.

There’s no question Trump is engaged in mass corruption and destruction to our democracy, causing what is seemingly irreparable harm. But Trump is also losing a lot too.

Those two things can be true at once. I don’t have to go through all the ways Trump is engaged in corruption—from crypto dinners to pardons—and the ways he’s taken a sledgehammer to our democracy. We’re all seeing it happen every day.

At the same time, those who’ve chosen to fight Trump rather than capitulate find it’s the only way to respond, and they’re often winning. Trying to strike a deal with Trump—as Columbia University and some law firms did—only has him extorting you further, like the mob, as former FBI director James Comey put it last week. Trump is a classic narcissist who doesn’t really believe in striking “a deal.” That involves give and take, calibration and compromise, with both sides coming out on top or able to tell their supporters that.

Trump doesn’t want compromise, and always wants to be the only winner. He wants domination, and once he knows he can dominate you—such as when you agree to his supposed “deal”—he will keep dominating you, as Columbia and the cowardly law firms are finding out. He now wants to control Columbia’s entire curriculum, and he’s making the law firms that struck “deals” with him represent shady MAGA clients, after they agreed to give him and his “causes” billions in pro bono work.

So the only way is to fight him—you have nothing to lose and everything to gain—because more often not he caves in, or is a dealt a blow in court, as happened with three with law firms in recent weeks that said no to him.

China, unlike some other countries, refused to bow to Trump, and retaliated with tariffs. As it escalated dramatically, it was Trump who backed down, dropping the 145% tariffs, with China making no concessions of any kind. TACO was in play.

Even Vladimir Putin, in a terrible example, knows how to play Trump, aware that Trump would never get tough. So far, horribly, it’s TACO again.

Those who fought Trump have also often won in court. Trump had a series of losses in recent days, including the stunning defeat at the U.S. Court of International Trade yesterday. The three-judge panel—an Obama appointee, a Reagan appointee, and Trump appointee—unanimously threw out most of his tariffs. The administration is, of course, appealing, but the states and businesses that brought cases have had a big win, and legal experts believe that the Supreme Court will uphold the ruling.

There was no way that Trump’s using emergency powers granted by Congress decades ago to impose tariffs for an unlimited amount of time was constitutional. But unless you decide to fight it, a court won’t declare it.

The universities and law firms that capitulated to Trump worried they’d suffer losses if they didn’t. Yet, their reputations are now in tatters, a major loss. And the law firms have lost major clients, and are losing attorneys, who are leaving for other firms or starting their own firms. Meanwhile, Harvard has the public behind it in its fight, and the law firms that fought Trump are empowering others.

Trump’s goal, again, is domination, not negotiation and compromise. China and others learned that if you push back, he folds. So, we all should learn from the Wall Street traders’ shorthand—”Trump Always Chickens Out.” It empowers more of us to fight—including major institutions with power and influence, which we need on our side—and it drives Trump crazy.

NOW READ: The one character trait glaringly common among Trump supporters spotted by researchers

The Trump administration has been relentless—merciless—in its attacks on America’s oldest and most prestigious university, continually stripping Harvard of funding, trying to force it to get in line. The goal is to control the university and its curriculum, make no mistake. And Harvard is fighting back hard, with lawsuits and defiant words from its president, its faculty, and its students.

Donald Trump’s determination to basically destroy Harvard—taking away its free speech rights and no longer allowing for independent thought and education free of government control, in line with what he’s doing to other universities—is in sharp contrast to how Trump is dealing with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, a threat to Europe, the U.S., and the world.

Over the weekend, Trump feigned outrage over Putin’s escalation of the war in Ukraine, after Russia launched one of the worst attacks on Ukrainians since the beginning of the war.

Trump looked weak and also compliant. To watch the video of him answering questions as he was going onto Air Force One is to see Trump faking anger, making as if he’s furious at Putin for “killing a lot of people” while he and Putin are supposed to be having talks. “I don’t like it all,” Trump said, sounding completely phony.

“I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” he said when asked about the attacks. “I’ve known him a long time, always gotten along with him… What the hell happened to him?”

This was vintage Trump, both lying about having a supposed close relationship with Putin—having told Americans during the presidential campaign that Putin will listen to him and end the war immediately—and then professing shock that Putin is doing what he’s doing, explaining that it’s just “crazy.”

Putin, of course, has been doing what he’s doing for three years now in Ukraine and for many years before that elsewhere. So Putin hasn’t changed and become “crazy.” But that’s how Trump tries to excuse himself.

When asked if Trump would now move ahead with more sanctions, Trump only said, “Absolutely.”

Yet when the European Union further sanctioned Russia last week, the U.S. did not join. And it likely won’t. Don’t forget that Russia was the only country that didn’t get hit with tariffs on the so-called “liberation day.”

Trump is doing Putin’s bidding. He professes outrage and then makes like he can’t understand what’s happening. But does nothing. Putin is determined to take Ukraine—and then he’ll continue on. As David Sanger at the New York Times put it, everyone is on to Trump, as he’s done this over and over.

The result is a strategic void in which Mr. Trump complains about Russia’s continued killing but so far has been unwilling to make Mr. Putin pay even a modest price.

One European official said that in a meeting with European leaders, it was clear Trump was moving on from the war, leaving our longtime ally Ukraine to fend for itself, which means a complete takeover by Russia.

“He said, essentially, ‘I’m out,’” the official told the Times. Putin has now seized more land, and there is no stopping him.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon is actually preparing for war with Russia should Putin take Ukraine and invade other European countries.

Of course, that makes no sense, particularly since Trump has teased pulling out of NATO—unless Trump wants a war with Putin in Europe and then plans to conquer him. Or maybe it’s just the Pentagon—the generals—preparing despite what the lunatic commander in chief is saying.

Whatever is going on, it’s all so dangerous. And if Trump only spent half the energy he’s expending against Harvard on Putin, he’d beat him back. But Trump is focused on his grievances, attacking elite universities, while his bromance with Putin has him going soft on the dictator—even as the Pentagon is preparing for the scenario the president might actually create—no matter what the outcome is for the U.S. and the world.

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The GOP, following the orders of their despotic leader Donald Trump, passed the budget bill that throws millions off of Medicaid, funds Trump’s mass deportations and cuts taxes for the wealthiest Americans. No matter the draconian cuts, the massive debt—more than we’ve seen in any budget bill by any president—has the bond markets shuddering, coming on top of the tariff chaos.

Then there are the hidden last-minute provisions in the bill, which, if debated at all, were only discussed in committee hearings and on the floor overnight so the GOP would not have the American people see what was happening. I’m just going to focus on three that have surfaced, but you know there’s more in a bill that is over 1000 pages and rushed through.

Democratic Congressman Joe Neguse of Colorado exposed the stunning provision that would allow Donald Trump to defy court orders, and he eviscerated Rep. Jim Jordan about it. Yes, tucked in the bill is a paragraph limiting a court's ability to make the government follow its rulings.

“This is a deep deviation from existing federal law," Neguse said. "And I find it astounding ... I imagine there will be a lot of limited government advocates who will find deep reasons to be concerned about this type of provision because as you can imagine it will preclude folks from being able to vindicate their constitutional rights."

Jordan huffed and puffed about looking at it again, somewhat feigning ignorance, but it’s in the bill, per Newsweek:

A provision "hidden" in the sweeping budget bill that passed the U.S. House on Thursday seeks to limit the ability of courts—including the U.S. Supreme Court—from enforcing their orders.
"No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued," the provision in the bill, which is more than 1,000 pages long, says.
The provision would prohibit courts from enforcing contempt citations for violations of injunctions or temporary restraining orders—the main types of rulings that have been used to rein in President Donald Trump's administration—unless the plaintiffs have paid a bond, something that rarely happens when someone sues the government.

Democrats also this week asked the Congressional Budget Office to score the impact of the bill on Medicare in addition to Medicaid. And lo-and-behold, the GOP had another surprise. They knew that significantly raising the debt would automatically trigger cuts to Medicare.

The Congressional Budget Office found that the bill would increase the national debt so much that, according to The Washington Post, “it could force nearly $500 billion in cuts to Medicare.” Some of those cuts would could come next year, as the bill would force officials “to mandate across-the-board spending cuts over that window that would hit the federal health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities.”:

When legislation significantly adds to the national debt, which already exceeds $36.2 trillion, it triggers ‘sequestration,’ or compulsory budgetary reductions. In that scenario, Medicare cuts would be capped at 4 percent annually, or $490 billion over 10 years, the CBO reported in response to a request from Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pennsylvania), the top Democrat on the Budget Committee.

Then, well past midnight last night, the anti-trans provisions were added, as The Advocate reports:

In the early hours of Thursday morning, while much of the country slept or was waking up, House Republicans rammed through a sweeping multi-trillion-dollar domestic policy package that slashes Medicaid, restricts food assistance, and — in a stunning escalation — bans federally funded health care for transgender people of all ages.

The heartless bigots added two provisions, one of which strips health care from the Affordable Care Act. The initial mark-up of the Medicaid provision said it applied to minors—and then “minors” was stricken, so it then applied to all trans people.

One strips all Medicaid and CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program) funding for gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgeries, not just for youth but for trans people of any age. A second bans coverage for those same services under the Affordable Care Act by excluding them from the definition of “essential health benefits.”

Again, these are just three horrendous provisions added to the bill, which was forced through by Mike Johnson and Trump and passed last night with no Democrats supporting it. The bill still has to pass the Senate and there have been Republicans skittish about the Medicaid cuts. But you know Trump will make threats and they will fall in line. So I’m not hopeful that any of these hidden provisions—and more that we don’t even know about—will come out.

Let’s remember though that the GOP always overplays, and then gets completely slammed. So, as Democrats focus on the all out assault on the safety net, as Americans see it and feel it, we’ve got to make sure the GOP pays for it in the mid-terms.

When the news of President Biden’s aggressive form of prostate cancer broke, it could have been a teaching moment, an opportunity for the media to educate Americans about prostate cancer and the confusing, conflicting guidelines on PSA screening via an annual blood test. As a prostate cancer survivor who deeply delved into the research three and half years ago when I was diagnosed, I committed myself as a journalist to breaking through the fog and misinformation.

But when the Biden cancer story broke, our corporate media was already swirling in sensationalism regarding a book that claims Biden had lost his mental capacities while president—or, even more dubiously, before that—and everyone around him covered it up. That one of the authors is a CNN anchor meant that rather than an interview with the authors, which might be expected, it has been wall-to-wall 24/7 coverage.

Of course, that had MAGA ginned up and firing off conspiracies, and then came the news of the cancer diagnosis. That only further fueled the claims of a cover-up. He had to know he had cancer and everyone covered it up!

That is factually incorrect.

But too much of the media allowed this idea to be propagated in the first 24-hour news cycle. Right-wing outlets interviewed MAGA Republican members of Congress, from Senator Rick Scott and Rep. Mike Lawler to Rep. Warren Davidson and Rep. Ronnie Jackson, Trump’s former White House doctor. Donald Trump Jr. promoted the conspiracy on social media and then Donald Trump himself jumped into it in a press conference, showing his mental decline and why he should be the subject of scrutiny, falsely and idiotically claiming Biden had “stage 9” cancer and delayed sharing his diagnosis. (Biden has Stage 4 cancer. His Gleason score for prostate cancer is 9.)

Even on MSNBC and other networks, doctors were interviewed who implied Biden had to have known. Oncologist Ezekiel J. Emmanuel did this on MSNBC, saying Biden “probably” had cancer for a long while (only later clarifying to the Washington Post that he did not necessarily mean that Biden “knew” he had cancer.)

Here are the facts to cut through the lies and misinformation. The US Preventative Services Talks Force has for years offered antiquated guidelines on prostate cancer screening—the PSA test, which is a blood test that measures prostate-specific antigen. USPSTF nonetheless is the gold standard of the U.S. government medical establishment’s prevention efforts—at least before RFK’s tenure and the havoc he is wreaking and will continue to wreak.

According to USPSTF, anyone with a prostate should begin screening at 55 and stop at age 69—well under Biden’s current age of 82.

Cancer groups like the American Cancer Society, the Prostate Cancer Foundation—as well as many doctors—disagree, and advise screening beginning in the mid-forties and even advise some groups, like Black men and those with a family history, to begin at age 40. The groups also advise making individual decisions with your doctor if you’re in your 70s and if you’re healthy and active. Clearly, if you’re likely to live a long time, you should be screened continually.

Why the discrepancy?

There’s a fear of over-treatment and harms caused by unnecessary treatment. If people test when too young, the critics of testing believe, they may find something that will never grow—a Gleason 6 on a scale of 6 to 10, the measure of prostate cancer advancement—and might be driven to have treatment at a young age that causes more harm than good. (PSA testing can sometimes be elevated for other reasons too, even repeatedly, meaning unnecessary biopsies sometimes happen.) And if you’re over 69, and you develop a tumor, because the vast majority of prostate cancer is slow-growing, you’ll likely die of something else before prostate cancer becomes life-threatening.

But honestly, let people make up their own minds with their doctors. The advice from the government is paternalistic and seem to deny that we have the medical science to make sure people catch it early and won’t have to undergo severe, intensive treatments to beat it back if they only find out later.

So, all of that said, it’s quite possible that Biden was following the USPSTF guidelines and had stopped testing at age 69. This would have been following a US government medical authority in consultation with his doctors, and not an act of negligence.

But it’s also quite possible Biden was testing regularly after 69—as many do—and that there was no rise in PSA. In the rare, aggressive form of prostate cancer, PSA often doesn’t rise, and even if it does, the cancer is so fast that it can develop rapidly between screenings—within a year—and go undetected. Some of the media—only on the second day of coverage—are focusing in on that, when this should have been something at their fingertips from the beginning.

We don’t have a lot of facts from Biden’s team and don’t know if he was still testing annually. We know from what they’ve told us he had urinary problems, which, if caused by prostate cancer, usually means the disease has progressed. A digital exam by a doctor was then performed and a “nodule” was detected. (People should always get both a PSA blood test and a digital exam annually, by the way, because something might be detected in one that is not detected in the other.)

That could mean PSA testing showed nothing concerning, or that Biden had not tested in a few years.

Either way, the physical exam obviously warranted further testing that included a biopsy, which found the Gleason 9 cancer and the metastasis to the bone. They may also have done a genetic test on the cancer to measure the aggressiveness.

That Biden was covering this up is also belied by sheer logic. If Biden had Gleason 9 metastatic prostate cancer four months ago or 8 months ago or two years ago, would he not be going for treatment immediately? Why on earth would he wait until after Trump took office or after the election or whatever, and put his life gravely at risk? It makes no sense.

And no, before some MAGA nutbag says he must have been secretly getting treatment, let’s be real about the treatment he’s going to receive. Androgen deprivation therapy, administered for more advanced cancer, is withering, bringing fatigue and many other side effects. And followed by radiation or chemotherapy or both for a man Biden’s age, it’s terribly intense and exhausting. He’d not be sitting on “The View,” as he did two weeks ago, laughing and carrying on, showing great energy.

Now, one last word, about that book. The saturation of coverage across all the media is over-the-top—and for CNN, it’s an abuse of the platform for an anchor to sell books—and shows how our media is so ghoulish and sensational.

Yes, it’s a story to consider, regarding questions about Biden, and whether Biden should have dropped out sooner. But the melodramatic claims that it somehow is a blow to the Democratic Party for decades (as some pundits have stated) is ludicrous.

This is an inside-the-media story—from the very same media that constantly tells us the American public has a short attention span. The GOP, after all, nominated a four-times indicted, twice-impeached, convicted felon who clearly has his own mental incompetence—and the American people elected him—seeming to have forgotten he did much more horrible stuff than anything Joe Biden and Democrats did in some sort of “cover up.”

Actually, I don’t want that to be the last word. Because the last word here should be about what lessons Joe Biden will now teach us, and the one good thing that can come out of the very challenging reality he now faces: Educating the public. If you have a prostate make sure you get tested—and urge those you know to get tested—beginning in your 40s and throughout your life. Information is power, and we all should be informed to make your own medical decisions.

UPDATE, 5/20/25, 7:06 pm ET: Biden’s spokesperson today confirmed that Biden didn’t have prostrate cancer prior to his announcement nor PSA-test since 2014, following the USPSTF guidelines. This blows out of the water the MAGA extremist conspiracies. It also rightly calls into question the USPSTF guidelines on not testing over the age of 69.

There are so many horrible injustices perpetrated by Donald Trump—from brutal attacks on immigrants to the targeting of law firms and universities—but none of this is registering with the MAGA base in recent days quite like the $400 million jet Trump’s claiming he will accept as a gift from Qatar to replace Air Force One, which may cost almost $1 billion to upgrade.

Some soft Trump voters have been horrified by those other issues, seeing students snatched on the streets and law firms bowing to Trump—and we’ve seen Trump’s approval numbers on immigration go down—but the extremist MAGA personalities like Ben Shapiro, Laura Loomer, radio host Mark Levin and others have mostly been silent on those issues or defending Trump, while they have been slamming the Qatari gift.

Also speaking out against it are MAGA Republican members of Congress, from Ted Cruz to Josh Hawley, who never criticize Trump. Enough Republican senators have come out against it that the gift would be voted down by Congress, which, by law, actually must approve gifts of this kind to the country.

Of course, the outrage is not enough that these cowards in the GOP will actually be moved to force a vote and try to stop Trump. But they’re likely feeling pressured to publicly express the opinions of their constituents who are contacting them, the MAGA base—who follow the MAGA online personalities, who have big platforms. And those opinions are like that of a caller to my SiriusXM show yesterday, a three-time Trump voter, who is so angry about the jet—and about Trump’s $45 million military parade to celebrate his birthday—that he’s dumping Trump.

The hardcore MAGA couldn’t care less about Trump’s brutality against people—they actually love it—so events like immigrants sent to torture prisons and parents being taken from their children don’t move the needle much with them.

And while many are claiming their opposition to the Qatari royal family’s gifted jet is about taking something from a country that has supported Hamas, this is much more about them, and their own pocketbooks. The only thing that moves these people is how something affects themselves. Don’t forget: They’ve given Trump a pass or even cheered him for emboldening more dangerous foreign leaders than the Emir of Qatar, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

No, the true reason the Qatar jet has broken through is that it connects to the other issues that have jolted the MAGA base: Trump’s tariffs, the faltering economy and rising prices. Trump promised to bring down prices on day one and instead sent the economy into a downward spiral with tariffs. Many of the same MAGA personalities attacking the gifted jet also criticized Trump on tariffs, like Shapiro. They saw their stock portfolios plummet and watched prices continue to rise.

More so, they heard from their millions of followers—the people who line their pockets, many of whom have been struggling—and the Republicans in Congress heard from their constituents. They’re hearing what the caller to my show, Albert from Cleveland, said about the military parade and the Qatari jet; you can listen to that call here.

Albert voted for Trump three times, but now he’s off the Trump train because of the military parade—and the millions spent on it “when their are people starving in this country”—and the Qatari jet.

As I’ve said in the past, I don’t give a really hard time to these MAGA callers who apologize for their vote—which he did, saying, “I made a mistake”—even as their claims are mind-boggling.

I ask a few questions to challenge them and to learn their motivations past and present—and their answers are not even remotely satisfying—but I don’t push too hard. (Usually, I ask if they will work to elect a Democrat in the mid-terms—which I think should be our priority right now over pushing them away—but I actually didn’t have the time on this one because I had to go to a guest.)

I think that if prices were down, and if tariffs weren’t creating havoc on the economy, these people would be fine with Trump accepting the “palace in the sky,” having a military parade and using government dollars on himself.

But they’re not getting theirs, while Trump is treating himself like a king and enriching himself. They’re fine with lot of other people suffering; their deal with Trump was that he was supposedly going to make things better for them, even if he and his family would be grifting, as they did in his first term.

Trump doesn’t seem to get how broadly his tariff disaster has now affected him, as more of these flashpoints will arise, and wake people up. All of it presents opportunities for Democrats.

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Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has been front and center in the Trump administration’s trade wars.

His main function has been to puff Trump up, and then carry out Trump’s various cave-ins—most recently his folding to China. Bessent met with Chinese officials over the weekend, and the result was reducing tariffs (though onerous 30% tariffs remain), after Trump said he’d never back down from the 145% tariffs without concessions, which China never offered. And of course the economic impact is already underway with supply chain shortages.

Bessent’s other function is to go on television and try to spin it all as a win, though it’s been nothing but surrender after surrender for Trump on tariffs—and severe, lasting harm to the economy.

Despite the continued uncertainty, Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager whom the Wall Street Journal noted was previously “little-known” if respected in the financial world, now has a desperate Wall Street clinging to him as the person who they hope will save them from Trump’s lunacy.

He’s using that platform—and Trump—to promote himself as somewhat of an oracle. Bessent helps drive the markets back up after they’ve plummeted, as investors buy on hope and rumor—which he supplies to them—even when both might be false. (Inevitably the markets drop again on actual economic news and solid data, as well on Trump’s threats.)

But Bessent isn’t, as the media’s portrayed him, an “adult in the room” who’s a sort of Democrat-turned-Republican, trying to do the “right thing.”

JD Vance has been Bessent’s longtime friend, which should tell you enough about his character. The WSJ reported, in a piece last year, that Bessent supported Trump in 2016, and then, even after January 6th, “decided to go all-in [on Trump in 2024] when he saw that the legal cases against Trump were helping, not hurting, his approval rating. He told people the phenomenon reminded him of a stock that rises despite bad news, a bullish sign for some investors.”

Trump, always taken in by flattery, decided that Bessent was an oracle when Bessent backed Trump over Nikki Haley, who much of Wall Street’s Republicans got behind in the primaries. Trump then invited the ambitious Bessent to a 2024 North Carolina rally to speak, and called Bessent, “One of the most brilliant men on Wall Street. Respected by everybody.”

But Bessent was previously “little-known” on Wall Street precisely because he’s not an oracle—or, apparently, that brilliant. One of his biggest predictions—which he made at that very rally in North Carolina—has in fact been turned on its head.

“Kamala Harris will start with the Kamala crash in the stock market,” Bessent warned the crowd. “Then it will be the Kamala crash in the economy.”

Of course, the “crash”—the largest market drop in years because of Trump’s trade war, which saw the Dow have its worst April since 1932—was the “Trump crash,” not the “Kamala crash.” If Harris were president, there would be no tariffs, and no chaos imposed by tariffs, in the markets or in the economy. That is simply a fact.

There’s been much made of Bessent having worked for George Soros more than a decade ago, as chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, as well as his having held a fundraiser for Al Gore in 2000. Hence the idea that he was a gay man who supported Democrats previously.

But in fact, as the WSJ, reports, he “didn’t agree” with a lot of the causes Soros’ foundation backed, and regarding one of them—proposing to restrict the fund from investing in companies doing business with Israel—Bessent threatened to resign. The idea subsequently “was dropped.”

And the same year he the held the fundraiser for Gore, Bessent gave money to John McCain. He’s mostly backed Republicans in fact—to the tune of over $15 million—but gave money to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, which, as with Gore, seemed more like making sure he, as a business person, buttered both sides of the bread more than anything else. And Bessent has been on the Trump train since it began rolling down the tracks.

In 2016, Bessent told people they were underestimating Trump’s chances. After Trump won the election, Bessent scored a big win betting on a market rally and later gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee.
Bessent also has taken sides in the types of culture fights Trump picks. In 2020, he lobbied to get the headmaster reinstalled at his son’s former Manhattan school, St. Bernard’s, after concerns about the school turning too liberal.

So Bessent is more MAGA—and opportunistic—than the liberal-ish adult-in-the-room he’s been portrayed as in the press. And it’s pretty appalling for a gay man, working for a president stripping LGBTQ rights while the Supreme Court Trump created is routinely carving out exemptions to LGBTQ rights for “religious liberty” reasons.

Bessent has been married to a former New York City prosecutor, John Freeman, since 2011. They have two school-aged children, and they buy, upgrade and sell mansions in posh places, and have sold at least 20 homes. Until recently, they lived in what they called the Pink Palace in Charleston, South Carolina, which they sold for over 18 million dollars.

Bessent, according to an interview in the Yale Alumni Magazine in 2015, never imagined he’d be able to get married as a gay man, and have children via surrogacy. It’s a comment that is quite jarring considering that, a year later, he’d support Trump— and is now working him:

In a certain geographic region at a certain economic level, being gay is not an issue. What’s fantastic is now, people in the rest of America, whether blue collar or white collar, have access to everything. If you had told me in 1984 when we graduated and people were dying of Aids that 30 years later I’d be legally married and we would have two children via surrogacy, I wouldn’t have believed you.

But who made it possible for Bessent to marry, and have children?

Not the Republicans he was supporting—nor Trump. And not the current Supreme Court Trump created, which, if the issue came to them now for the first time, would never rule for marriage equality. And everything they’re doing now is in fact chipping away at the Obergefell ruling, allowing for discrimination against gay married couples in public accommodations.

It was gay and lesbian activists, putting their own bodies on the line, who fought for Bessent’s rights, and Democrats, who finally took up the mantle that got marriage equality legalized in the states and then eventually upheld by the courts. Marriage equality was opposed by the GOP—and still is opposed among most those Republicans in Congress, and among Trump’s powerful base Christian nationalist—and we’ve seen Trump stripping LGBTQ history from government websites, removing anything with the word “gay,” targeting queer people in atttacks on DEI and killing LGBTQ health initiatives.

Bessent, who once served on the board of God's Love We Deliver, an organization founded to deliver meals for homebound people with AIDS, is now part of an administration that is literally killing people with AIDS, having stopped lifesaving HIV drug treatments for millions through USAID. And Bessent is watching the abominable things this administration is doing to transgender people, destroying lives, denying they exist.

Bessent could have influence on Trump regarding LGBTQ rights if he wants. Curiously, we’ve not seen, for example, the Trump administration attacking Yale University the way it is attacking Harvard. Could that be because Bessent sits on the university council at Yale? In fact, he and his sister donated the Bessent Library to Yale, and Bessent has endowed three scholarships at Yale. Sounds like he might be protecting his alma mater from Trump. But he couldn’t care less about helping his own people under attack.

Bessent got his—his money, his marriage, his children, his homes—and now, opportunistically, he’s making a name for himself helping the very president who is harming LGBTQ people and so many other minorities every day, in addition to endangering democracy and sending the economy in a spiral downward, causing hardship for millions of Americans. There aren’t enough words to describe this kind of immorality.