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Trump’s ‘revenge’ meltdown plans leak for White House Correspondents’ Dinner: report
President Donald Trump is preparing to throw a scripted tantrum at the White House Correspondents' Dinner this year, reported The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
"Donald Trump will launch a 'revenge' attack on the White House media when he confronts them in person at a Washington dinner on Saturday night — then flee before there can be revenge," said the report. "He is expected to target publications that he has accused of writing negatively about his administration and his war with Iran, in particular, according to sources."
This would track with his recent rants on Truth Social, where he has accused of the media of rigging reports about the Iran war to make it look like it's going worse than it actually is.
After he is done with his speech, said the report, he is skipping on the rest of the ceremony — in large part because he doesn't want to stick around for an award being given to a story that revealed his closeness to deceased financier and accused child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
"Trump will leave the White House Correspondents’ Association event after making his speech, so he will miss the presentation of press awards — one of which would be certain to embarrass him," said the report. "He has told aides he has no intention of still being in the International Ballroom at the Washington Hilton when the Wall Street Journal is honored with the Katherine Graham award for its scoop about a bawdy letter Trump allegedly wrote for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday card."
The president sued WSJ over that reporting, alleging that the birthday letter was not authentic. This month, a federal judge tossed out that suit.
‘Massive cover up’ fears raised as House panel splits on clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell
Ghislaine Maxwell's condition to testify under oath — but only under the condition of clemency — has split House Oversight and Government Reform Committee members over whether President Donald Trump should grant her that pardon, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) told Politico on Wednesday.
Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator, was deposed by the committee and invoked her Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer the group's questions. Trump is the only one with the power to pardon her, something he has not yet ruled out.
Comer told Politico that he did not favor a pardon for Maxwell, a former confidant to the late financier and convicted child sex offender. When asked whether striking a deal with Maxwell could provide useful testimony, Comer did not share who on the panel supported granting her clemency.
"A lot of people do," Comer said.
"My committee’s split on that," Comer said. "I don’t speak for my committee."
"I think it looks bad," he added. "Honestly, other than Epstein, the worst person in this whole investigation is Maxwell."
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said that Democrats on the committee collectively oppose a pardon for Maxwell.
"That would be a huge step backwards, and, quite frankly, so disrespectful to the survivors," he said in an interview. "She is a known abuser. She is a known liar."
"If the DOJ or Oversight Republicans are out there trying to negotiate some sort of pardon that is... not only a huge slap in the face to this investigation, to anyone, to the American public," Garcia said. "It’s a part of a massive cover up."
‘Wah, wah, wah:’ AOC scoffs at GOP whining over gerrymandering
WASHINGTON — Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, had strong words for Republicans complaining about the gerrymandering in Virginia that voters approved on Tuesday, with strong support from her party.
"Wah, wah, wah," Ocasio-Cortez told Raw Story on Wednesday, mimicking a whining baby and laughing in response to a question from reporter Matt Laslo. "Democrats have attempted and asked Republicans for 10 years to ban partisan gerrymandering, and for 10 years, Republicans have said, 'no.'"
Laslo was asking Ocasio-Cortez to respond to complaints from the GOP that it would be unconstitutional for Democrats to have a 10-1 congressional majority in Virginia, which the gerrymandering ballot measure would make possible. A Virginia circuit court judge blocked the vote-approved redistricting on Wednesday, however.
Still, Ocasio-Cortez saw no problem with Democrats supporting gerrymandering after years of opposing it when done on the Republican side. For AOC, the GOP "wanted to start this," and the Democrats are just fighting back.
"What they're mad at is they're accustomed to a Democrat Party that rolls over, doesn't fight and takes everything sitting down," Ocasio-Cortez said. "What they're mad at right now is that we are here in a new day."
She mentioned Republican gerrymandering in North Carolina and Texas, where Democrats lost seats. Trump's call for Texas Republicans to gerrymander arguably kicked off what's now seen as a redistricting arms race.
"We have been asking the Democratic Party to stand up and fight, and now they did," AOC continued. "Now the Republican Party doesn't like the fact that they are fighting against someone who actually will stand up for the American people."
Ocasio-Cortez said she would "welcome" working with the Republicans to pass a ban on partisan gerrymandering.
"We have the bill right here to end this all today," she said, smiling. "But they don't want to because they like pursuing and continuing to enact an unfair electoral landscape."
Trump trots out bizarre conspiracy theory about campus protests
Former President Donald Trump spent his day off from his ongoing criminal trial by floating a conspiracy theory about pro-Palestinian protests taking place on campuses across the country.
Students have been protesting Israel's war in Gaza in demonstrations that have led to police crackdowns and mass arrests, but the former president claimed Tuesday night on Fox News that "paid agitators" were spurring the movement, and the following morning he suggested the Biden administration might be involved.
“Do you think that the Radical Left Lunatics that are causing all of the CHAOS at our Colleges and Universities are doing so in order to take the FOCUS away from our Southern Border, where millions of people, many from prisons and mental institutions, are pouring into our Country?” Trump posted Wednesday morning on Truth Social. “Just askin’…???”
The protesters have expressed their anger at President Joe Biden for siding with Israel and refusing to pressure its government into negotiating an end to the war, and the president has warned the demonstrators not to engage in antisemitic "hate speech" and to remain "peaceful and lawful."
READ MORE: Read this powerful GOP senator’s pay-to-play 'benefits package' for lobbyists
“Forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful, it is wrong, and hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America," Biden said.
Trump has characterized the campus protests as worse than the deadly 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying that event that claimed the life of civil rights activist Heather Heyer was "like a peanut" compared to the recent demonstrations in support of Palestinians.
The former president will use his scheduled day off from his hush money trial in Manhattan to campaign for re-election in Michigan and Wisconsin, and he took a potshot against Biden before apparently logging off his social media website.
“Where’s SLEEPY JOE?" posted Trump, who has repeatedly dozed off during his trial. "He’s SLEEPING, that’s where!!!”
Gateway Pundit warned by its own lawyer it was using ‘a damned fraud’ as a source: report
A new filing in a defamation lawsuit filed by Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss against the conspiracy theory website Gateway Pundit reveals that workers at the site feared for their credibility, reported The Guardian — and their own attorney warned them that the source for their claims was not to be trusted.
The site's founder, Jim Hoft, has earned the nickname "The Dumbest Man on the Internet" for years of strange and sloppy claims. Despite this, former President Donald Trump has been reported to be an avid reader of the site.
"Attorneys for Freeman and Moss ... said in their filing that John Burns, a lawyer for Gateway Pundit, had warned the site about relying on Kevin Moncla, a source in Georgia who fed the site information on Freeman and Moss, including their non-public personnel files, according to the filing," said the report.
"'Moncla is a known fabricator. I wouldn’t touch/publish anything he produces,” Burns reportedly wrote, while also calling Moncla “a g-------d fraud."
ALSO READ: Read this powerful GOP senator’s pay-to-play 'benefits package' for lobbyists
As if that weren't enough, Freeman and Moss’s attorneys also unearthed messages from Moncla said in which he said of their clients, "I will help you nail these b----s."
According to the report, Moncla was charged with voyeurism and ordered to pay $3.25 million after filming guests in the bathroom at his house.
Earlier this week, Gateway Pundit filed for bankruptcy amid the litigation against them.
Moss and Freeman, who counted ballots in Atlanta in 2020, have become a focus of numerous MAGA conspiracy theories, spread in part by Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani, who claimed that they were stuffing ballots — based in part on a supposed "flash drive" one passed to the other that turned out to be a ginger mint. Giuliani was found liable for $148 million in a defamation default judgment for his role in these claims.
In addition to the defamation cases, efforts to harass the two workers form part of the election racketeering case against Trump's allies in Fulton County.
‘Nobody wants this drama’: MTG admits hostility to ousting speaker — but will plow ahead
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) admitted that "nobody" wanted the drama she was creating by trying to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) — but she's doing it anyway.
Following a press conference Wednesday where Greene vowed to trigger a "motion to vacate" the Speaker's chair next week, she spoke to conservative podcaster Steve Bannon.
"And we have Mike Johnson going in there and basically giving a sloppy kiss to [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries and Jeffries taking him in with a great big hug and them holding and sharing the speaker's gavel together," Greene complained. "That's what's wrong for America."
"Steve, nobody wants this drama right now, but it's Mike Johnson that has completely brought it on all of us," she continued.
"Yeah, this is inconvenient. Yeah, this is something I don't want to have to do with right now. Yeah, this is something that our conference shouldn't have to go through."
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Greene insisted she did not run for Congress to "go along and get along."
"I didn't come up here to Washington to go along and get along and put it in cruise control and just have an easy job, cushy job up here in Washington while America burns down to the ground and gets taken over by George Soros and all of his protests in Hamas and fully open borders and we're being invaded and the economy falls apart and our dollar loses value and inflation continues to skyrocket and our kids have no hope for a future," she ranted.
"I'm sorry, I'm not here to participate in the uniparty, but I can't wait to deliver a vote for American voters next week so they can have a fully transparent list of everybody here in Congress that believes in the uniparty and has a membership card in the uniparty," Greene added.
"It's a coming out party, Steve, and I'm ready to deliver it."
Trump’s demand to stop hush money trial denied by appeals court
The appeals court has denied Donald Trump's request to have Justice Juan Merchan recused from the Manhattan hush money trial, Law360's Stewart Bishop reported Tuesday morning.
Trump has also demanded that the trial be paused because he is awaiting a ruling from the Supreme Court on his "presidential immunity" claims. That too was denied.
Trump faces 34 felony counts in Manhattan surrounding a so-called hush money agreement with adult film star Stormy Daniels. Prosecutors say he paid her to keep quiet about a sexual relationship they had before the 2016 election.
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Trump claimed Merchan was biased against him because the judge's daughter works for Democratic campaigns.
Merchan asked a judicial ethics board to examine the issue last year, and it was ruled that everything was above board. Still, Trump appealed his refusal of recuse.
Trump scrambles for cash as huge legal fees leave little for battleground campaign: report
If fundraising or other means of getting cash falters, Donald Trump is close to running out of funds to pay his legal bills as his New York hush money criminal trial continues, according to a new report.
Trump is racking up significant legal bills as the trial, where he's accused of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to adult movie star Stormy Daniels, enters into its second week. He's also facing three other indictments that could result in trials beginning this year.
Newsweek reported that Trump has been paying his lawyers using the Save America PAC, which has doled out more than $62 million for legal fees since January 2023. At the end of March, the PAC had around $4 million in cash — after spending $5.4 million on legal bills in the previous month.
Also read: Judge slaps Trump with $9K in fines — and warns 'jail may be a necessary punishment'
Speaking to Newsweek, University of Nottingham political science professor Todd Landman said that while "it is not clear that he will run out of money," Trump will be paying "substantial legal fees" in the coming weeks.
"Trump is managing four legal cases at present, each of which incurs legal fees for preparation of his defense, filing motions, and in the case of the Manhattan trial, representing him at trial four days a week," he said.
"The Manhattan trial is expected to run for five to six weeks in total, which continues this week, where there will be more witnesses for the prosecution and a separate hearing on whether he has violated his gag order," Landman continued. The judge ruled Tuesday that violations had occurred, but has another meeting scheduled to look into extra accusations.
"He has retained multiple lawyers to defend him, which means that he will have to pay substantial legal fees. It is not clear that he will run out of money, as he has been successful in securing a number of large donations from supporters," Landman said.
"However, there are legal constraints on using some of his political organizations and thus [he] needs to keep campaign finance separate from personal legal defense spending. On top of his legal fees, he has outstanding civil judgments against him pending appeal."
Funneling so much cash to legal fees could also drastically effect Trump's campaign, said another University of Nottingham professor, Christopher Phelps.
"The key question is whether he can do so while also running an effective ground operation in the battleground states, which requires a lot of advertising and personnel," he said.
‘It won’t stop him’: Judge urged to go further after fining Trump for contempt of court
New York Judge Juan Merchan slapped former President Donald Trump with a $9,000 contempt of court fine on Tuesday for repeatedly violating the gag order in his Manhattan hush money trial to publicly attack witnesses and jurors — and warned him that a stay on Rikers Island could be in his future if he continues on his current path.
This led some commenters on social media to praise the judge — but many others urged him to stop showing so much restraint on Trump, who has already been fined multiple times for similar violations in his civil trials.
"BREAKING: Judge Merchan fines Trump for violating gag order 9 times," wrote political influencer Ed Krassenstein on X. "Trump has officially been held in contempt of court. But I'm sure that MAGA will claim that it's because the judge is biased and because Trump is being politically targeted, right? When will Republicans ever just say, 'Trump made a mistake?'"
"The $9,000 Trump has to pay for violating his gag order is good but isn’t going to stop him," wrote political podcaster "JoJoFromJerz." "I don’t see how he makes it through this trial without spending some time in the pokey."
ALSO READ: ‘Clear indication’: Dems accuse GOP congressional candidate of illegal super PAC ties
MSNBC political analyst Tim O'Brien had a sober assessment. "Trump will see Justice Merchan’s $9,000 fine for violating the gag order as a reasonable cost for the ability to continue attacking the judge, court and rule of law," he wrote. "It won’t stop him."
"If any of us violated a gag order so many times, we would be in custody," wrote legal expert and commentator John Collins.
Georgia State University constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis thinks this is an ominous sign for the former president.
"Judge Merchan makes plain by holding Donald Trump in contempt that the New York gag order is a blanket one covering any statements about witnesses, jurors, (or potential jurors earlier in the process)," he wrote.
"He has little room to run to the media: a danger zone for undisciplined Trump."
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Trump’s ‘revenge’ meltdown plans leak for White House Correspondents’ Dinner: report
President Donald Trump is preparing to throw a scripted tantrum at the White House Correspondents' Dinner this year, reported The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
"Donald Trump will launch a 'revenge' attack on the White House media when he confronts them in person at a Washington dinner on Saturday night — then flee before there can be revenge," said the report. "He is expected to target publications that he has accused of writing negatively about his administration and his war with Iran, in particular, according to sources."
This would track with his recent rants on Truth Social, where he has accused of the media of rigging reports about the Iran war to make it look like it's going worse than it actually is.
After he is done with his speech, said the report, he is skipping on the rest of the ceremony — in large part because he doesn't want to stick around for an award being given to a story that revealed his closeness to deceased financier and accused child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
"Trump will leave the White House Correspondents’ Association event after making his speech, so he will miss the presentation of press awards — one of which would be certain to embarrass him," said the report. "He has told aides he has no intention of still being in the International Ballroom at the Washington Hilton when the Wall Street Journal is honored with the Katherine Graham award for its scoop about a bawdy letter Trump allegedly wrote for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday card."
The president sued WSJ over that reporting, alleging that the birthday letter was not authentic. This month, a federal judge tossed out that suit.
‘Massive cover up’ fears raised as House panel splits on clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell
Ghislaine Maxwell's condition to testify under oath — but only under the condition of clemency — has split House Oversight and Government Reform Committee members over whether President Donald Trump should grant her that pardon, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) told Politico on Wednesday.
Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirator, was deposed by the committee and invoked her Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer the group's questions. Trump is the only one with the power to pardon her, something he has not yet ruled out.
Comer told Politico that he did not favor a pardon for Maxwell, a former confidant to the late financier and convicted child sex offender. When asked whether striking a deal with Maxwell could provide useful testimony, Comer did not share who on the panel supported granting her clemency.
"A lot of people do," Comer said.
"My committee’s split on that," Comer said. "I don’t speak for my committee."
"I think it looks bad," he added. "Honestly, other than Epstein, the worst person in this whole investigation is Maxwell."
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said that Democrats on the committee collectively oppose a pardon for Maxwell.
"That would be a huge step backwards, and, quite frankly, so disrespectful to the survivors," he said in an interview. "She is a known abuser. She is a known liar."
"If the DOJ or Oversight Republicans are out there trying to negotiate some sort of pardon that is... not only a huge slap in the face to this investigation, to anyone, to the American public," Garcia said. "It’s a part of a massive cover up."
‘Wah, wah, wah:’ AOC scoffs at GOP whining over gerrymandering
WASHINGTON — Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, had strong words for Republicans complaining about the gerrymandering in Virginia that voters approved on Tuesday, with strong support from her party.
"Wah, wah, wah," Ocasio-Cortez told Raw Story on Wednesday, mimicking a whining baby and laughing in response to a question from reporter Matt Laslo. "Democrats have attempted and asked Republicans for 10 years to ban partisan gerrymandering, and for 10 years, Republicans have said, 'no.'"
Laslo was asking Ocasio-Cortez to respond to complaints from the GOP that it would be unconstitutional for Democrats to have a 10-1 congressional majority in Virginia, which the gerrymandering ballot measure would make possible. A Virginia circuit court judge blocked the vote-approved redistricting on Wednesday, however.
Still, Ocasio-Cortez saw no problem with Democrats supporting gerrymandering after years of opposing it when done on the Republican side. For AOC, the GOP "wanted to start this," and the Democrats are just fighting back.
"What they're mad at is they're accustomed to a Democrat Party that rolls over, doesn't fight and takes everything sitting down," Ocasio-Cortez said. "What they're mad at right now is that we are here in a new day."
She mentioned Republican gerrymandering in North Carolina and Texas, where Democrats lost seats. Trump's call for Texas Republicans to gerrymander arguably kicked off what's now seen as a redistricting arms race.
"We have been asking the Democratic Party to stand up and fight, and now they did," AOC continued. "Now the Republican Party doesn't like the fact that they are fighting against someone who actually will stand up for the American people."
Ocasio-Cortez said she would "welcome" working with the Republicans to pass a ban on partisan gerrymandering.
"We have the bill right here to end this all today," she said, smiling. "But they don't want to because they like pursuing and continuing to enact an unfair electoral landscape."
