Raw Story

Donald Trump's second administration will find itself unable to rely on a key restraint that prevented the former president from pursuing bad federal policy during his first term, a one-time staffer warned Wednesday.

Former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews appeared on CNN to share her fears that Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, will surround himself with easily swayed staffers should he regain the White House in 2025.

"It's going to be a bunch of yes men and women who will do and say what he pleases," Matthews warned. "It's extremely worrisome because I think that competency and experience are gonna be out the window."

Matthews issued this warning on the heels of a Time Magazine exposé detailing the actions Trump hopes to take as commander in chief, among them prosecuting President Joe Biden, mass deportations and government pregnancy monitoring.

The former press secretary suggested the threat Trump presents would not be evaded should he lose the presidential election on Nov. 5.

"We know with Donald Trump that an election is only fair if he wins," Matthews said. "It almost sounded like a threat of political violence if he loses."

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Matthews then argued future "yes" staffers will not be able to rely on a key tactic Trump's former White House team successfully used to dissuade him from pursuing bad policy: raising the specter of reelection.

The argument will be rendered moot by presidential term limits, she explained.

"If he is elected president again, that won't be a concern," Matthews said. "You're not really going to be able to steer him off of some of these bad policies."

Finally, Matthews expressed her outrage that Trump has suggested pardons for people convicted on criminal charges related to the Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021.

"He calls them hostages and patriots," Matthews said. "It's really just disgusting to me."

Watch the video below or click here.

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."

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“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!!!”

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."

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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.

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."

Watch the video below from Real America's Voice.

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.

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.

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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.