karoline leavitt

Biographer Michael Wolff walked through the knots the White House staff must untangle as they try to get President Donald Trump to focus on tangible outcomes in meetings with foreign leaders.

Over the past week, Trump welcomed China's leader, Xi Jinping, and it appeared their activities were centered around the president showing off his construction, his military and what appeared to be his first trip to the National Archives as president. Meanwhile, the visit from Xi was said to be a "summit," which would focus on trade, avoiding a crisis with Taiwan, discussions over minerals, market access, guardrails for artificial intelligence and arms control.

Trump’s approach to meeting foreign leaders puts his aversion to detailed briefings on full display at a time of high-stakes diplomacy. It's a "difficult moment for a president" who must hold a lot of information in their brain about customs and gestures all while remembering the specifics about policy and intelligence about the country.

"You've got to know what you're talking about," said Wolff. "If you don't know what you're talking about, you know, you're giving away the store."

Wolff told The Daily Beast's Joanna Coles, "Trump goes into these meetings. He can't — he refuses to look at the briefing books, refuses to have extensive conversations about the issues at hand. Doesn't care, I suppose. Doesn't know what he's talking about.
It's all, 'I can handle it. I'm good.' He is always saying, 'I'm really good with this.' And then he goes into these meetings and all it is, is flattery. Him flattering the other side and the other side, I think very clearly, taking — understanding what they can get by this guy."

He confessed, "I'm trying to circumvent using the word buffoon, but I think that's what they see him as. I think they're like, oh my God."

Traditionally, there would be weeks of preparation for such an event.

"But if Trump is an information phobe, as you say, then how did they slim it down?" Coles cut in to ask. "How do they whittle it down to the one or two points?"

Wolff said that it's exactly what is done. They simply give him two points. "And even that usually doesn't register with him. I mean, this is something I don't even know how people — how you can get people to appreciate this. How do you get people to appreciate that the presidency has — the workload of the presidency is extensive. And if you don't do it, if you adamantly don't do the work, can't do the work, what happens? What's the effect? That's really hard to make clear to voters and to the American people."

"So, I mean, first, it's incredible. So, he doesn't do the work. He can't do the work. The president of the United States does not know what he's talking about in these situations. How do you begin to explain that to people? And within the White House itself — and they have had the people within the White House have had to explain it to themselves, what do we do here? But that becomes for them, a kind of, well, it's Donald Trump. You know? He's been elected twice. He must know what he's doing."

He thinks a considerable part of the country focuses on that idea. He anticipates that the U.S. will ultimately see the impact of that. In some ways it already has.

The meeting resulted in a two-month extension of the trade deal they currently have. They also agreed to lower tariffs on about $30 billion worth of goods. China agreed to put new export controls on two fentanyl precursor chemicals, the White House claimed. They also said that China made commitments related to American agricultural products, Boeing aircraft and access to U.S. beef facilities. There was no movement on Taiwan, AI or Iran.

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Supporters of President Donald Trump have spent the past week attempting to justify his expulsion of three press outlets from the White House. But one CNN host isn't having it.

According to Sean Spicer, Trump's former press secretary, Joe "Biden stripped the press passes of 440 independent journalists. @CNN said nothing. Had zero concern for the 1st Amendment."

Host Abby Phillip shot back with her own mockery and fact-check.

"Lol @seanspicer, Google is free!" she said, linking him to an Associated Press report blasting the conspiracy theory as completely inaccurate.

This is the second conspiracy theory that Republicans have used to justify Trump's press ban. The first was the inaccurate claim that former President Barack Obama banned Fox News from the White House. In fact, the White House communications team didn't invite Fox to an interview that included other major outlets. In that one instance, CNN stopped it by saying that if Fox was barred, it wouldn't participate. The White House backed down. Fox was never banned from the White House.

The AP report dispels the Biden administration's claim, explaining that in 2023 the administration revised the policy for obtaining "long-term press passes." Every journalist holding such a pass must reapply and clarify that they are still employed full-time for a news outlet. They also must have a physical address in the Washington, D.C. area and must have accessed the White House for work at least once over six months. It's the kind of rule that previous presidents used.

"There are two types of White House press passes. Hard passes are for journalists who cover the White House regularly," the AP said. "They require approval from the press secretary and a background check by the Secret Service, according to the White House Correspondents’ Association, and are valid for an extended period. Those without a hard pass can request a temporary pass for specific events or on a day-to-day basis."

According to a report from the time, the number of hard pass holders dropped from 1,417 to 975 after the change. That's where the 442 number comes from. They weren't banned. They simply had to meet the criteria and reapply.

The White House explained at the time that 40 percent of the people who held hard passes hadn't even been to the White House in the past three months. Out of all of the people who reapplied, only one person was denied a pass. They were never identified, however.

President Donald Trump's latest tactic to build some of his decoration projects has been to claim that they're actually for the military. One report thinks that the strategy will backfire.

Writing for The Atlantic on Saturday, Janay Kingsberry noted that since announcing the project last year, the administration has been trying to bypass all of the regulations in place to get it built quickly before it can be stopped either by the judiciary, the legislature or a new president.

This week, on Thursday, the vice chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation terminated the Section 106 review process for the proposed "Triumphal Arch" at Memorial Circle. Section 106 is supposed to make federal agencies listen to the public before moving ahead. That didn't happen for Trump's arch. Officials ended the review before talks were even finished and gave the public only three and a half business days to respond. Americans have until before 11:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Sept. 29 to email jloichinger@achp.gov about their thoughts for or against the arch.

A veterans group has been fighting against the arch, noting the numerous problems with it, such as the massive height with an "observation deck" would allow tourists to watch funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. Others can't stand the way it turns the view away from Arlington, which is meant to honor American soldiers who sacrificed their lives for their country, and instead makes it about Trump.

"In arguing against the veterans’ lawsuit," Kingsberry said, "the project’s lead agency, the National Park Service, said the arch did not need congressional approval because a 1925 law had already authorized a pair of columns on that end of Memorial Bridge, to symbolize the post–Civil War reconciliation of North and South."

Near Abraham Lincoln's Washington cottage are the first fallen U.S. soldiers, their headstones marking a sacred vow to keep America whole. Seeking more room for the dead, Northern troops occupied the estate of Mary Anna Custis Lee, wife of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The Lincoln administration seized the land through a forced tax sale, a move the Supreme Court later ruled illegal. Yet, the landowner ultimately bowed to the grave; with thousands of American defenders already resting eternally, the grounds were fully sold to the government.

A single sightline of stone spans the Potomac River, weaving American history from Lincoln’s temple of freedom across the Memorial Bridge toward Arlington’s hills. It is there that the marble headstones dot green hills, forever binding a broken republic back together from Washington, D.C., from the United States, to Virginia in the Confederacy.

Kingsberry wonders if a 25-story Trump monument is even truly plausible, given Trump is now painting it as a "military facility" where snipers will be stationed, drones propped and ammunition stored. First, it makes little sense because there's no populated area around it. There are no federal buildings to defend. It's already less than a mile from the Pentagon, Fort Myer and less than two miles, as the crow flies, from the White House, where Trump claims he's building another "military center" he can also use as a ballroom.

What is in the area, however, is the heavily restricted flight path of many planes that land at Washington's closest airport, DCA. Already in the Trump administration, military missions near the airport led to the deaths of 67 people on a commercial flight when an Army helicopter ran directly into it. Kingsberry thinks adding drones could make things even more dangerous.

Storing so much ammunition near publicly accessible monuments also creates its own problems, requiring strict military safety mandates.

Experts, such as Patrick Suermann, a Texas A&M construction-science professor and retired Air Force officer, told Kingsberry that ammunition storage normally requires protected “quantity-distance” zones, which are safety buffers intended to protect people and nearby structures in the event of an explosion.

If those rules apply, the public might not be able to safely approach the arch at all, despite being designed for tourists and including a "cafe" and "gift shop." The other problem is that Memorial Circle is a heavily traveled area. There are six bridges people take in and out of Washington to Virginia via road or rail. Following the requirements of a protected distance zone could mean cutting off Memorial Bridge entirely.

Recently, Trump has battled with his ballroom architect, who was talking about building codes. The Washington Post reported that Trump bellowed, "I am the code." There appear to be many codes Trump would be forced to adhere to for his arch.

In short, the military pivot may give critics more grounds to sue, force the administration into new reviews, increase costs beyond the already estimated $100 million and build an even greater opposition. Instead of speeding construction, combining a gift shop with an arsenal could turn Trump’s arch into a legal, logistical and public-relations disaster.

It's a difficult time for the Republican Party as GOP candidates up for reelection back away slowly from their MAGA loyalty to President Donald Trump. It even appears the first lady is struggling to defend him, said the president's niece, Dr. Mary Trump.

On her weekly cast where she trolls the president by walking through his biggest failures, the psychologist and author keyed in on the reemergence of Mrs. Trump, who held a big event with female CEOs and other C-suite executives as well as the wives of world leaders.

Trump biographer Michael Wolff ridiculed the event, noting that it appeared people who were there were begging, "God, please take me," and looking bored.

Dr. Trump focused on the first lady's efforts to promote her brand when what the "Fox & Friends" wanted to know was how her husband was doing.

"Um, he's very focused. He has a lot on his plate," she sad comparing the first administration to the second. "It's very different, uh, what's going on around the world now. And, um, but, I think he's doing the best that he can."

Dr. Trump mocked the first lady, "You know things are getting bad when even she has to take time to go on Fox State TV's morning show, Fox and Friends, and still cannot come up with a believable, realistic defense of Donald, aka the guy I think she's married to."

The Trump family member assumed Mrs. Trump was "being literal when she said she has a lot on his plate because that's really the only believable thing she said."

Mrs. Trump was also ridiculed this week after saying she doesn't have much time to read because she's so busy.

Fox Business co-hosts gushed, "I don't know anybody who's a harder worker than you. I just have to ask, when you kick back and relax … do you kick back and just … 'I'm gonna sit on the couch for a while and binge-watch some TV.' Does that ever happen to you?"

“No uhm, the other day somebody asked me, ‘What book are you reading?’ I said executive order. It’s coming next, next, in the next two weeks. That’s what I’m reading. Executive order,” she claimed.

“OK then," replied host Brian Brenberg.

Co-host Taylor Riggs asked about making time for family, she said she's "suffering."

"But we try to find time. It’s less and less the family time, it's suffering because of it. But that’s okay. We are here to work, to do a good job, and that’s what matters," she said.

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One of the investigations likely to follow if Democrats take over the House concerns the extent to which President Donald Trump's administration ignored court orders at the direction of those at the highest level of government. One ACLU lawyer is still fighting a case that dates back to the first few months of the Trump administration.

ACLU deputy director of the Immigrant Rights Project, Lee Gelernt, revealed that since U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg's February 2025 order, he's been fighting the federal government to return people who were wrongfully deported to the brutal El Salvadorian prison for being alleged "gang members."

This week Gelernt argued before an appeals court that they should uphold Boasberg's order.

“What they are saying is they can essentially whisk people away to a foreign prison, give them no opportunity to contest the removal, even whether they’re part of this gang that proclamation applies to, concede that they violated due process under *J.G.G. [v. Trump] * and *A.A.R.P. [v. Trump]*, and then say because we got them out of the country into a foreign prison that’s the end of the matter,” Gelernt said in court, according to CourtHouse News.

Speaking to Jacob Soboroff on MS NOW, Gelernt recalled the way that the administration was circumventing the law and the judge to do whatever they wanted regardless of the judiciary.

"By then, we already knew the planes had taken off," he recalled from the emergency hearing. The judge agreed, ordered the planes to turn around, the government refused. On Friday, the Justice Department went into court and said, they couldn't do anything because they'd already done what they were ordered not to do.

"Tough luck. They're out of the country as if the men got there on their own," said Gelernt, recalling the hearing on Friday. "Then, without a trace of irony, they said that they had violated the order not to send them. They said, there's just nothing you can do for them. And then they went on to say, well, this is probably a one-off. We're not going to do it anymore."

He claimed that these kinds of actions by the DOJ have continued.

Gelernt said that Judge Boasberg found it appalling and said, " Look, you know, these men are entitled to a hearing; you're conceding you didn't give them due process. And so I'm going to give you the choice. Do you want to give them hearings remotely? Do you want to let them come back? You can detain them if they come back, but one way or the other, there's now overwhelming evidence that these men had no ties to this gang. And that you can't use the Alien Enemies Act during peacetime against a gang. It was a military law."

CourthouseNews reporter Ryan Knappenberger said that it appeared the three-judge panel was split on the matter, but Gelernt said it doesn't matter. If they vote against him they intend to see a full vote by the entire panel. The Trump administration is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court at that point.

"As some conservative judges have already said, that's a blueprint for just lawlessness. For the rule of law just going out the window," said Gelernt. "I mean, a number of judges have already come out and said, this is a grave threat to the rule of law if the executive branch can get away with violating orders."

The problem, he said, is that it's setting up for a larger showdown between the executive branch and the judiciary.

"I think if the Court of Appeals doesn't have Judge Boasberg back, not only for him, but for the judiciary as a whole, it's going to send a terrible signal that the executive branch can just get away with these kinds of things," he closed.

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The comedy duo "The Good Liars" has made a name for itself, not by tricking supporters of President Donald Trump but by asking simple questions and getting real answers. In a recent video, they've captured the shift happening among Trump's most ardent fans.

For the non-political public, "The Good Liars" videos have been an eye-opener into the realities of MAGA world. Justifications for strange laws, beliefs that the government is causing hurricanes and other storms, every investigation of Trump is a conspiracy, vaccines inject tracking chips, wind turbines cause cancer and more.

In one video, a Trump supporter, decked out in his MAGA hat and an AMERICA t-shirt, said that Trump is trying to buy off voters with his latest promise to deliver $5,000 checks if Republicans maintain power in the House and Senate. The shift is a small one, but it's still there.

"How did you feel about him saying everyone gets $ 5,000 checks, only if the Republicans win the midterms?" Jason Selvig asked.

"Well, sounds like it might be buying some votes," the man said.

"Sounds like he's buying votes?" Selvig asked.

"Yeah."

"Is that something the president should be doing?" Selvig questioned.

"Probably not, but we'll see how it all falls into place," the man replied.

"Does it make you question your support for him?" Selvig then asked.

"Not at all," the man said. "He's still done more for the country than any other president ever has."

"Even if he's buying votes, your words, that would be a big problem in the country. That would be a big issue. That wouldn't affect your support?" Selvig confirmed.

The man maintained his devotion for the president.

In a study published in The Journal of Social and Political Psychology in April, the author, Cindy Harmon-Jones, a senior lecturer in the School of Psychology at Western Sydney University, examined how people change their thinking to make two conflicting ideas fit together.

She found that Trump supporters had three ways of responding to the "discomfort," but one was more prominent than the others. About one-third of those surveyed said that they cared about Trump's policies rather than his personal life, including questionable morality, corruption, lying and alleged abuse. Another one-third of respondents used the justification that others are criminals doing the same thing. Some agreed with both sentiments. The overwhelming response from the participants, however, was to parrot Trump's "fake news" claims, allege that it wasn't real or part of a conspiracy against Trump.

As the November election draws near, some Democrats are already measuring for new decor in House committee hearing rooms, preparing for the investigations they plan to launch. Authors Susan Glasser and Peter Baker were asked on MS NOW how President Donald Trump is likely to respond to his new reality of heightened accountability.

This week, the Washington Post spoke with a dozen Democratic lawmakers on what they're planning if their party takes back the House. One intends to begin an investigation into how Trump and his family have managed to profit from the government, how the family's businesses are winning lucrative government contracts, and to look for legitimate solutions to fix corruption in politics.

“There’s so much corruption and grift that it’s going to take the entire House on the Democratic side to do investigations appropriately,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Cal.).

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calf.) has his sights on the House Natural Resources Committee. He wants to know how Trump's allies secured lucrative mining and energy deals.

Then there's Trump's bulldozing of the White House, threats to tear down the Kennedy Center after bankrupting it and his "botched" job "fixing" the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) has already requested documents.

Even Republicans have been investigating the Department of Homeland Security over the corruption that took place under the direction of Secretary Kristi Noem. Now, Democrats intend to turn their eyes to a laundry list of missteps under Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

Co-host Eugene Daniels noted that Trump has two more years in office. There is a high likelihood that he will pardon himself along with those in his government. Public investigations can still continue and lawmakers can use them to ultimately craft legislation that can curb illegal behavior by government officials with tangible consequences. Daniels wanted to know what that world looks like and how Glasser thinks Trump will react when he is backed into a corner.

"You know, lame duck. Trump is not sort of [a] neutered, do nothing, while-away his way his time on the golf course Trump," Glasser cautioned. "It is a man who has a long history of escalating. And you know, his personal motto, which he's been very clear about, including with journalists over the years, is, if somebody punches, you, punch back harder. And I think now that he has such an expansive view of the powers that he believes he has in the Oval Office when he's challenged, if he were to be defeated, that's when I would look for him to do things that perhaps he's been constrained from doing so far."

She said many Americans think Trump has already done so much that he can't possibly escalate, but she warned there's still more.

"Look at what he did after republicans were defeated in the 2018 midterms. The first thing he did was to fire his attorney general to, you know, make maximal demands on Congress, which led to, at the time, the longest shutdown of the government in history," Glasser continued.

What was different after 2018 is that Democrats held the House majority while Republicans still maintained the Senate. In a world where the House and Senate are both Democratic, a budget bill to fully fund the government could pass both chambers through reconciliation, and Trump could veto it, shutting down the government. He would be the one publicly taking blame.

Glasser said that Trump has been signaling for a while that he won't "sit back and take a defeat in the midterm elections."

"So, even though the polls and everything suggest Republicans are really going to have a tough time, that doesn't mean that Trump will just, you know, come out and meekly declare defeat and that he's, you know, been chided by the electorate as Barack Obama and others did," she said.

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It is now 38 days until the Nov. 3 election and the thought back in May was that there's really no chance of flipping as many as 40 seats in Congress, The Los Angeles Times wrote. It appears that thinking has changed.

Slate reported on Saturday that if Democrats vote in significant enough numbers and MAGA voters stay home, even in red states, safe Republican seats will end up close, if not flip entirely.

The adage has always been that, due to gerrymandering of congressional district lines, so many seats are drawn to ensure that lawmakers from either party can maintain their seats with little effort. In an election with poll numbers seen this month, that could change if the electorate matches the polling.

AlterNet has reported on the mistake that Texas made by redistricting its congressional lines based on 2024 election data. Now, however, even Republicans are warning incumbent lawmakers that they're probably further behind than they think.

The most recent Cook Political Report, released on Friday, shows the Republicans losing, but how much will determine how deep the GOP sinks.

"How deep will this red-state incursion go?" Slate asked. "Already, national Republicans have all but given up purple-state Senate races like Georgia and North Carolina, as more and more money will have to go to defensive measures in Texas, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, and Kansas. Nebraska? Maybe South Carolina and Mississippi? As National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Tim Scott told GOP senators this week, senators in deep-red states need to run as if they’re behind so all resources can go toward the 'record number of toss-up races' on the map."

Last week, Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved "eight races toward Democrats, including four previously thought to be safe GOP seats, on Wednesday—the latest warning sign for Republicans ahead of the November midterms," Newsweek reported.

Writing for The New Yorker, Susan Glasser said that for most of the summer Republicans assumed they'd lose some seats but it wouldn't be the kind of bloodbath they saw in 2018, for example. It was Trump's first midterm election, and he had 40 percent popularity. Democrats flipped 40 GOP seats that year. The question is what happens when Trump's approval is in the low 30s and he's even losing MAGA support.

It was once thought that voters only started paying attention to the elections after Labor Day. Candidates came back from August Recess vacations and really stepped on the gas of their campaigns. Republican pollster Lee Hartley Carter echoed the tendencies, but explained in a FoxNews.com op-ed that that didn't happen this year.

"And politics has developed a very bad habit of confusing the people who are paying the most attention with the people who will ultimately decide the election. We confuse loud with large," she said. The translation is that social media does not represent real life.

"A few thousand furious people can generate an enormous amount of internet. Millions of people wondering why their grocery bill is still so high can generate almost none," she wrote.

The Slate report cautioned that Democrats shouldn't get cocky, expecting they could win 50 GOP seats and take eight Senate races. But if they show up, even the GOP's huge money advantage won't matter.

" Trump will pull some gimmick with diesel prices, like an export ban, that will be terrible policy but might offer relief for a hot second. And many swing voters, while livid at Republicans, still do consider Democrats to be helpless freaks. But this week? Take in the GOP panic. Marinate in it," Slate writer Jim Newell encouraged.

Ultimately, in a wave election, individual skill and favorable partisan geography may not be enough. When voters want to punish the party in power, the wave can reach far beyond the seats everyone was watching, the report closed.

Little attention is being paid to the ways first lady Melania Trump has found to cash in on her position in government.

While President Donald Trump's grift reveals something new almost weekly, businesses linked to his company, run by his heirs, are being handed huge government contracts. But Mrs. Trump's ways of making money off of the White House are staying quiet.

The Editorial Board of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote on Saturday morning that the move is all part of "Trump’s shameless Art of the Steal." This week, Trump launched a television ad campaign, paid for by U.S. tax dollars, promoting himself and his "One, Big Beautiful Bill," set to a song that continues chanting "Love me, love me" in the background.

While there's Trump's cryptocurrency, there's also the first lady's.

"She launched $MELANIA, a memecoin that had an initial market capitalization of about $1.7 billion, but quickly plummeted by about 95 percent," the editorial board recalled. But that only came after investors banked about $100 million.

"A lawsuit accused the designers of Melania’s cryptocurrency of orchestrating a 'pump-and-dump' scheme,'" they noted.

Unlike Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Jared Kushner, and the family’s cryptocurrency ventures, Mrs. Trump does not feature prominently in foreign investment, government contracts, deregulation, or business arrangements that could overlap with White House policy. Instead, what she's focused on is ways she can benefit commercially even though she isn't formally running a major corporation or working as a "government envoy."

Mrs. Trump is building her brand and profiting primarily through media. The Inquirer suggested in the piece that while she is keeping a lower public profile than other Trump family members, her Amazon documentary and related content deal is the largest example.

Trump biographer Michael Wolff alleged this week that the first lady's new "Davos for women" initiative is really just a platform for her to orchestrate content for her latest film or reality show.

Critics have raised questions about whether a first lady should be able to use her White House status and public events as material for a private media project, particularly when the project’s commercial value is inseparable from her unusual access to the presidency. So far, she's pocketed an estimated $40 million off of the Amazon documentary. It's unknown how much she made from her memoir titled Melania.

The report goes on to highlight what Kushner and Ivanka Trump managed to score from their time in the White House. In the first term, the two "reported between $172 million and $640 million in outside income while working for taxpayers. That was before Kushner got $2 billion from the Saudi investment fund to start what is now a "fledgling private equity venture," the board characterized.

While Kushner is away claiming to negotiate an end to the wars between Russia and Ukraine and an end to the war in Iran, he is also "reportedly trying to raise $5 billion for this private equity fund from Middle East governments, even as he serves as Trump’s point person in negotiating a peace deal with Iran."

“You cannot both be a diplomat and a financial pawn of the Saudi monarchy at the same time,” said U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.).

If voters cast ballots for the Democrats in November, both the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees plan to investigate these reports of using the government directly for profit. So far, it appears at least one Republican supports the move.