Throughout his second presidency, Donald Trump has made it clear that his top priority isn't experience — it's loyalty. Trump his filled his second administration with ultra-MAGA loyalists who, unlike many of the traditional conservatives he appointed during his first presidency, aren't going to challenge him or clash with him. And according to the Washington Post, that standard is very much at work with Trump's team of personal lawyers.

In the Post, reporters Isaac Arnsdorf and Perry Stein detail the U.S. president's search for personal lawyers who aren't afraid to make his most audacious arguments.

"After burning through a list of big-name attorneys whose advice he often rejected," Arnsdorf and Stein explain, "President Donald Trump has turned to a group of less-known civil litigators as his personal lawyers. In Trump's eyes, they're a team with a crucial strength — the willingness to make arguments other lawyers might balk at, according to a Trump adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak about internal discussions. The lawyers have taken unusual steps for a sitting president, including suing journalists and litigating against the government he leads."

The Post journalists continue, "At the same time, Trump has asserted greater control over the Justice Department than previous presidents. That has led to highly unusual situations in which proceedings that would typically be adversarial have had lawyers on both sides who are answerable to Trump, many of whom have previously worked together on his behalf."

Trump's current team of personal attorneys, according to Arnsdorf and Stein, "range in experience, temperament and politics." But experience, the journalists emphasize, takes a back seat to loyalty when Trump is searching for attorneys.

"The central figure in the group, according to the Trump adviser and lawyers who have been involved in litigation with them, is Boris Epshteyn, a pugnacious longtime adviser to Trump," Arnsdorf and Stein report. "During the 2024 transition, incoming White House counsel David Warrington recommended the president cut ties with Epshteyn because of allegations that Epshteyn tried to use his closeness to Trump to enrich himself, according to his report, which was reviewed by the Washington Post…. Epshteyn can be at turns charming or bombastic, (a) lawyer who has litigated against him said, and his role is less as a legal expert than as the person who has the direct relationship with the client."

Attorney Ty Cobb, who represented Trump during the Russia probe in 2016 but is now a vehement critic of him, told the Post, "Boris was a nobody when I was there."

Guardian writer Chris Stein says do not expect the lock-step Republican Party to find it’s spine and wholly disown it’s MAGA king in time for the November midterms — but you can expect a smattering of GOP adherents to break away as a matter of political survival.

“The wrath of Donald Trump has kept congressional Republicans in line for much of his second term thus far,” said Stein. “But as the November midterm elections draw closer, the president’s allies in the Senate and House of Representatives appear increasingly willing to defy a president who appears to have asked lawmakers for too much in some areas and too little in others, all while the public sours on his administration.”

Stein points out that in both chambers, tiny enclaves of Republicans have joined with Democrats to advance resolutions requiring that Trump receive Congress’s permission before continuing hostilities against Iran. Republican dissidents in the House, he said, have helped Democrats pass another round of aid for U.S. ally Ukraine in its effort to repel an invasion by Trump’s friend Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Other joined Democrats in an effort to protect Haitians from deportation. In the Senate, a host of Republican senators stepped up to give Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, “a cold reception.”

Republicans do not disagree with Trump unless they want the tiny MAGA turnout in Republican primaries to replace them with Trump’s chosen puppet, but Stein says Republicans “appear bedeviled by the complications of their three-seat majority in the Senate, and historically slim hold on the House.”

“While they managed to enact a major domestic policy bill less than six months after Trump’s inauguration, the president has made few serious asks of Congress in the months since, leaving lawmakers to navigate shutdowns instigated by Democrats in protest of his policies and the brouhaha over the government’s investigation into convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein,” said Stein.

And Trump “has made no apologies for his apparent disengagement with the concerns of congressional Republicans,” said Stein, reminding readers that the president announced at a recent cabinet meeting that: “I don’t care about the midterms.”

However, the GOP does. Trump’s approval ratings are historically low and Democrats are leading Republicans on the generic ballot. Gas prices are high and polls show voters believe Trump’s entirely voluntary war on Iran is afflicting them with inflation.

Those trends may indeed have been motivating defections by some lawmakers, particularly Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Reps. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.) But if Republicans are looking for a sudden rash of independence to save their reputation with voters in the midterms, they should temper their enthusiasm, said Doug Heye, a former House Republican leadership aide. Instances of Republicans standing up to the president “may be less significant than they appear,” and thus unlikely to convince voters the party can act as any sort of mediating influence over the president.

“What does it say about Trump’s hold on the party that 1.8 percent of the House Republican conference voted against him? I’d submit nothing,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

President Donald Trump is reportedly set to announce an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars for a dying industry, after he already paid out billions to try and kill off one of its biggest competitors, prompting online observers from across the political spectrum to rake his questionable "art of the deal" over the coals.

On Thursday, CBS senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs took to X to report, based on sources close to the matter, that Trump was set to announce a $700 million investment "for 13 current coal plants plus two new ones," continuing his obsession with propping up the long-suffering American coal industry. Despite coal making up an increasingly minuscule portion of energy production and consumption in the U.S., Trump has spent significant political capital on propping up the industry, possibly on account of the support he gets from its workers and business leaders.

To that end, earlier this year, it was announced that his administration had nearly a billion dollars to get the French energy conglomerate, TotalEnergies, to halt the production of new wind farms off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, in order to promote further investments in fossil fuels and coal. This particular move also fit with Trump's longstanding hatred of wind turbines, an animosity that seems to relate, at least in part, to when a wind farm went up off the coast of his golf course in Scotland.

In response to Jacobs' scoop, users across X were unsparing in their derision, ripping Trump for continuing to waste precious tax dollars to keep the U.S. from joining the rest of the world in pursuing green energies.

"Trump cancelled less expensive, less pollution from clean energy. Now Trump is forcing tax dollars into more expensive, toxic coal plants instead," Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson posted about the news. "You pay more AND you get more toxins. Art of the deal."

"The art of the deal: pay billions of dollars to take offshore wind farms offline," reporter Sam Stein wrote in a post. "Then pay hundreds of millions of more to prop up coal plants."

"Stupidity breeds more stupidity," Arizona politician Dennis Kavanaugh wrote in response to Stein.

"The whole entire world is moving to green energy," Joanne Carducci, a popular left-wing online commentator, wrote in response to Jacobs' original post. "We’re so f——."

Liberal and left-wing users were far from the only ones taking issue with the news, as Marc Short, the former chief of staff for Vice President Mike Pence, ripped Trump for making yet another move in defiance of free-market principles.

"Just another step toward a managed economy and away from a free economy," Short posted.

President Donald Trump wants to end the war in Iran but cannot figure out how, according to a pair of journalists from the conservative website The Bulwark.

Noting that Trump’s approval rating according to a recent AP poll is 33 percent and he recently lost an important redistricting referendum in Virginia, journalist Sam Stein told colleague Tim Miller on Wednesday that “I think he clearly is tired of this s—— and wants to figure out a way out of it. So it's not that he's not feeling the acute political and economic pain here. It's just that he's in a game of chicken.”

Stein added that “there's a larger thing here, a theme through all these stories that I'm going to get to later, but it boils down to this: Donald Trump starts s—— without ever knowing what the off-ramp is going to be. It's the same with Virginia and redistricting. It's the same with Kevin Warsh in the Fed nomination. He always starts something and he has no idea how to figure it out and finish it off. And this is just what's happening in Iran.”

Seizing on Stein’s point, Miller alluded to the fact that on Tuesday the president called for an abrupt ceasefire against Iran, which given the lack of predicating circumstances led many to call it “TACO Tuesday” — that is, “Trump Always Chickens Out” Tuesday. The Independent reported the story with the headline “Trump extends ceasefire deadline with Iran in latest example of ‘TACO’” while The Daily Beast used “TACO Trump Gives Iran an Indefinite Ceasefire.”

“One of the limits of madman theory is that you always have to be the craziest man,” Miller told Stein. “And right now, he's in a game of chicken with ... the craziest sons of b—— in the world. And so it's like, 'okay. So now... now what?' And you can see what happens, which is he says, ‘Oh, I'm gonna end their civilization,’ or, ‘Oh, I'm not gonna extend the ceasefire,’ or, ‘We're gonna go back at their power plants.’ And then when push comes to shove, it's like he doesn't want to do it.”

While the “madman theory” was popularized by another controversial Republican president, Richard Nixon, Trump’s predecessor used this approach only sporadically, only after deliberately plotting his implementation — and could point to achievements like ending the Vietnam War, preventing nuclear war in the Middle East and opening up relations with China. By contrast, as Stein and Miller noted, Trump seems to act impulsively.

“But like, you can tell ... he's trying to veer off,” Miller said. “He's the one with the itchy turn hand.”

Stein replied, “It is a weird situation where it's like, who is the biggest nihilist?”

When AlterNet reached out to the White House earlier in April for comment on criticisms of Trump’s policies in Iran and their impact on the economy, White House spokesman Kush Desai told Alternet that “President Trump has been clear about short-term disruptions as a result of Operation Epic Fury, and the Administration went into this military engagement with a plan to mitigate these disruptions to America’s long-term economic resurgenceAs energy markets begin to stabilize, historic tax refund checks hit the mail, and the rest of the Trump administration’s pro-growth agenda continues taking effect, Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come.”

Bulwark Managing Editor Sam Stein and Bulwark writer Lauren Egan say Democrats are reluctant to make President Donald Trump’s advanced age and health a political issue. Only they really should.

In Egan’s words: Trump is old. And he is a mess.

“We have all seen the signs of Donald Trump growing older,” said Egan. “He turns 80 next month. He has some weird bruising on his hands … and not only has he fallen asleep in the Oval Office. … He had an MRI last year but didn't really tell us why. He's not transparent about his health, which is obviously not exactly like a new thing for presidents. But after Biden we have all these questions. And he is he's old.”

Stein pointed out that Americans just lived through two years of “extensive, very aggressive” campaign against Joe Biden for being old and frail. But unlike Republicans and their right-wing propaganda networks, Democrats don’t appear to be up for some very easy payback against the slurring, sleepy president.

“The DNC is being kind of spicy in their Twitter account and in their TikTok account, but I think the problem for them is that their stuff just doesn't pop off in the way that it did with the RNC back in the Biden administration,” said Egan. “The RNC would clip something that Biden would do and … and it would go viral and basically the national press corps of people covering the White House would force these kinds of stories into the mix and people covered it.”

Egan went on to say that, rather than throwing up their hands, Democrats “do have a role to play in that they can force the issue” in to the pres.

“They can do things to get it into the front page of the New York Times or Washington Post in a way that Republicans really understand,” Lauren said. “Democrats like to play referee and they think that guilting you will like change something as opposed to trying to shift their strategy a little bit and force people to cover some of these things.”

Last said he recalled Republicans and their propaganda allies hammering Hillary Clinton’s email “every single day,” pushing topics such as email retention snafus into the front page because it's “all they're talking about.”

“Meanwhile, Trump's taking documents to his bathroom in Mar-a-Lago and no one seems to notice that everyone's on Signal. Who knows what kind of government retention policies they're practicing, if any, at the White House. Democrats aren't pushing that,” said Last.

But of course, there's only “so many hours in a day,” said Egan.

“You do have to make editorial choices. And if Democrats aren't out there forcing this, it's just an easier decision when there's all the corruption issues and everything else there is to cover. You understand why age might not always be top of mind.”

Reporters and political analysts are raising questions about Fox News being on hand as the FBI raided the office of Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, an influential Democrat in the state.

The Bulwark's reporter, Sam Stein, and host Tim Miller both questioned if Fox got a heads-up about the raid in Portsmouth on Wednesday morning.

"How did Fox News get someone live on the scene of a raid in Portsmouth? Do you all have an office in Portsmouth?" asked Miller.

"I will say. Some pretty remarkable instincts by Fox News to have its London correspondent placed in Portsmouth, Virginia, right in time for the FBI raid of Louise Lucas," wrote Stein. "To be clear, I don't begrudge Fox at all here. Take the scoop. But it does suggest a coordination on the part of the FBI and a politicization, too. The folks who accused CNN of getting the tip-off on Roger Stone seem to be fine with it now."

Stein noted that Lucas oversaw a successful redistricting campaign effort two weeks before.

Former Director of Public Affairs at the Federal Trade Commission Douglas Farrar similarly commented, "Fox News knew to be on the scene at the perfect time..."

The Justice Department's manual shows in Title 1 Section 7.710 that any "advance" warning to Fox News would have needed a high-level, investigative reporter Scott MacFarlane wrote on X.

Indeed, the DOJ manual explains:

"In order to promote the aims of law enforcement, including the deterrence of criminal conduct and the enhancement of public confidence, DOJ personnel, with the prior approval of the appropriate United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General, may assist the news media in recording or reporting on a law enforcement activity."

It goes on to say that the assistant attorney general or U.S. attorney must consider whether their hat-tip would "Unreasonably endanger any individual; prejudice the rights of any person; or be otherwise proscribed by law."

"In cases where a search warrant or arrest warrant is to be executed, no advance information will be provided to the news media without the express approval of the appropriate United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General. This requirement also applies to operations in preparation for the execution of a warrant," the manual continues.

MacFarlane saw Fox's reports and asked how the network could characterize it as a “corruption” investigation before reviewing the legal documents associated with the warrant.

"What court filing are they referring to ... that specifies this as a 'corruption' probe?" he asked.

The FoxNews.com report alleges the raid could be related to a cannabis dispensary that Lucas co-owns. Virginia hasn't approved sales of cannabis products containing THC recreationally, which is the ingredient that can achieve the "high" feeling from cannabis products. However, those with a medical card can use cannabis in Virginia.

A February report by the Virginia Mercury said that some of the products in the dispensary claimed to have high doses of THC, but when tested, didn't come close to achieving the advertised amount.

Trump reclassified state-licensed medical marijuana as a less dangerous, Schedule III drug in April. It did not fully legalize cannabis federally.

Fox News was broadcasting immediately as the FBI conducted a raid on the office of Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, a Democrat, and progressive foe of President Donald Trump.

Trump has spent the past several months using his Justice Department to target his political enemies after his former attorney general failed to secure indictments of them.

Lucas has been a thorn in the digital side of Trump for the past few years, relentlessly trolling him and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on X.

There is currently no information on how the FBI obtained a warrant to raid Lucas' office, however, WJLA News cited sources saying it might be related to a corruption probe. The warrants were approved by a federal judge.

Bulwark reporter Sam Stein questioned how Fox News happened to be on hand just as the FBI acted.

"I will say. Some pretty remarkable instincts by Fox News to have its London correspondent placed in Portsmouth, Virginia right in time for the FBI raid of Louise Lucas," wrote Stein.

According to Fox's reporting, it wasn't merely Lucas, there were many people taken into custody during the raid "as agents move through the area."

WJLA News reported that federal agents are also serving a warrant at a cannabis dispensary nearby.

Former FBI Director James Comey was indicted about a year after he posted a photo of shells on the beach spelling out 8647.

"She told Fox News that she had no idea what the FBI agents were doing at her office," the Fox report said.

President Donald Trump announced last year that he was demolishing the East Wing of the White House to build his massive ballroom structure that will hold about 1,000 guests for large events. Until recently, Trump was raising private funds to ensure no taxpayer dollars were spent to create the party room. That changed on Monday night, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) announced that the Republican budget will allocate $1 billion for the project, which was originally supposed to cost $200 million.

Daniel Pfeiffer, former senior advisor to President Barack Obama, wrote on Tuesday, "Trump’s obsession with his ballroom is bizarre. Given all the problems in the world and Trump’s political challenges at home, taking every opportunity possible to wax about a home renovation project is an odd choice, to say the least. Trump’s ballroom fixation also helps explain why his approval is at an all-time low and continuing to sink."

He noted that it's "emblematic" of all of Trump's problems in that it is a solution that Americans don't want or need.

Last week, a Washington Post poll showed that even Republican voters oppose Trump's ballroom, with only 28 percent of Americans supporting it and 56 percent opposing, cited Pfeiffer.

The top issues Americans care about is the affordability crisis. Costs are soaring on housing, healthcare, fuel, food and utilities, while wages aren't keeping pace.

"Trump’s ballroom can symbolize his focus on himself at the expense of everyone else. Building a massive, corporate-funded ballroom to host fancy parties — while Americans are paying $4 a gallon for gas, and while groceries, healthcare, and housing prices keep rising — is some real fiddling while Rome burns," wrote Pfeiffer.

The Bulwark's Sam Stein wrote on X, "The Ballroom was pitched as a project that would not cost taxpayer money. Now, Senate Judiciary Republicans are requesting $1 billion for security features related to it (how much of that $1 billion on the ballroom, it doesn't say)."

He linked to Grassley's budget, highlighting the available funding, saying that the funds couldn't be used for anything other than security features such as bulletproof windows, bulletproof walls or a drone-proof roof. It would not fund million-dollar chandeliers or pounds of 24-carat gold-leaf embellishments. While the price of the ballroom had ballooned to $400 million, those security features were already built into the cost. As Stein noted, the $600 million in overage costs aren't explained.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) agreed that it doesn't make sense for the taxpayers to foot the bill. She commented on X, "The American people are weathering $5 gas, $6 diesel, and skyrocketing fertilizer costs because of the war of choice in Iran, and now the GOP want you to pay $1 Billion for a ballroom. Somebody help make this make sense."

Other activists pointed out that it's an example of "waste, fraud and abuse in the Trump administration."

Pfeiffer closed his piece by calling the whole issue a "layup for Democrats, because we don’t even have to work that hard to highlight the ballroom" in the midterm elections.