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President Donald Trump playfully scolded Sean Duffy for mispronouncing "Buttigieg" during a White House press conference on Wednesday.

Duffy, Secretary of Transportation and acting administrator for NASA, was commenting on an announcement that the Trump administration is slashing fuel economy standards put in place by former President Joe Biden. The move is aimed at making it easier for automakers to sell gasoline-powered vehicles.

"Congress set a rule that says you have to look at combustion engines. Biden and Buttigieg actually did an analysis..." Duffy said, before Trump interjected to correct his pronunciation of Buttigieg, the last name of Pete Buttigieg, former Secretary of Transportation.

"Boot edge edge!" Trump exclaimed, correcting Duffy.

Laughter broke out among the lawmakers surrounding Trump and the press.

"Edge. Edge. I'm sorry," Duffy said.

President Donald Trump's niece and vocal critic has called her uncle out for the peace proposal that she says puts Ukrainians — and global democracy — in a dangerous position.

In her Substack essay published Tuesday, Mary Trump described how Trump pressured Ukraine to reach the peace proposal by Nov. 27 and had threatened to withdraw the allied country's access to U.S. intelligence.

"Ten months into his failure of a presidency, Donald has finally offered up a peace proposal. It’s so disadvantageous to Ukraine that it may as well have been written by Putin. And it probably was," Mary Trump wrote.

She described how Trump's adoration for Putin is what led to the controversial proposal that would force Ukraine to surrender "Donbas region, Crimea, and other occupied territories" and scale back its military size, limiting its use of long-range weapons.

"This is unacceptable, but if you consider that Donald has been in Putin’s pocket since the 1980s, it also makes perfect sense," she wrote. "Being easily led and weak-kneed, Donald will not stand up to Putin. In fact, having been brought up by a patriarchal authoritarian sociopath, Donald was raised to admire and be subservient to authoritarians like Putin."

Trump promised to end the war, but his regime and leadership have further damaged the situation, she added.

"How it ends matters greatly, and how it ends must reflect how it began--with an illegal invasion by Russia (ostensibly our adversary) of Ukraine (ostensibly our ally). What also needs to be factored into any peace plan is the fact that Ukraine is not just fighting for its own freedom and sovereignty; it is fighting for the future of Western liberal democracy. We all are the beneficiaries of the courage and resilience of the Ukrainian people, and we owe them a debt of gratitude," she wrote.

She argued that the world — and democracy — is at stake.

"Both sides should not have an equal say in the negotiations. Russia should get nothing. It should give back every square foot of territory it has stolen from the Ukrainian people," Mary Trump wrote. "It should give back every resource it has stolen. It should have to pay them for all the damage it has caused. It must be forced to return all the Ukrainian children it has kidnapped. Tragically, it cannot restore the lives of those who have been murdered by Russia."

A Democratic lawmaker said Thursday that Republican lawmakers have begun to separate themselves from President Donald Trump.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) told CNN anchors Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown that Republicans have voiced their concerns over the president's recent moves and have questions about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's most recent comments on the Sept. 2 strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, off the coast of Venezuela.

Merkley, who serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, argued that the administration's response to the killings is not a satisfactory response for him. He described what the lawmakers have learned about the second strike, where "two helpless men clinging to debris" were killed.

"If this was a legal action of war, which is still under dispute, then it would be a war crime," Merkley said. "If it was not, it was a murder. In either case."

The Democratic lawmaker said that the U.S. Coast Guard should have investigated this incident.

"Again, the right way to find out if there are drugs aboard a boat is you stop the boat, you board it, you investigate it, and in the process you learn if there are drugs, you learn about the strategies involved, which gives you information to help dismantle a broader operation," Merkley said. "Blowing a boat up, not even knowing much about what the boat is doing simply destroys that type of information. So it's not only extrajudicial, it is also stupid. And so this is this is vast concerns about judgment. And by the way, of course, this is all a prelude to the possible strikes on Venezuela itself."

Trump has signaled that the U.S. has planned to attack Venezuela in ground strikes, although those details have not yet been released publicly.

The recent revelations have prompted congressional leaders to request Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley brief lawmakers Thursday in Washington, D.C. It has also raised questions about whether GOP leaders are ready to face the president over the reports, among other lingering concerns.

“There has been such a sense, of my colleagues, that they are not ready to confront Trump over the mistakes of this administration but we have started to see cracks in that following the November election a month ago where they're starting to feel like they have hitched their wagon to a horse that is going to take them over a cliff and they better start separating themselves,” Merkley said.

Merkley said it will be interesting to see what Republicans say after the briefings Thursday and that he believes Hegseth should resign.

“My Republican colleagues in the Senate are getting very nervous about being tied — not just to Hegseth — but to the overall actions of the administration," he added.