Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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Trump says Venezuelan airspace should be viewed as closed. Maduro government slams ‘colonial threat’

President Donald Trump on Saturday said that the airspace “above and surrounding” Venezuela should be considered as “closed in its entirety,” an assertion that raised more questions about the U.S. pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. His government accused Trump of making a ”colonial threat” and seeking to undermine the South American country’s sovereignty. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

Venezuelan leader Maduro may seem desperate. But his loyalty vs punishment strategy is hard to crack Trump officials and judge face off over flights to El Salvador in rare, high-stakes contempt probe Trump’s pardon of ex-Honduran president Hernández injects wild card into election

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Suspect in National Guard attack struggled with ‘dark isolation’ as community raised concerns

The Afghan man accused of shooting two National Guard members blocks from the White House had been unraveling for years, unable to hold a job and flipping between long, lightless stretches of isolation and taking sudden weekslong cross-country drives. Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s behavior deteriorated so sharply that a community advocate reached out to a refugee organization for help, fearing he was becoming suicidal.

https://apnews.com/article/lakanwal-national-guard-shooting-suspect-afghan-5e5e9567d95a5d0ef806b714bb3ee3b7?

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Volatility vortex

Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios

Every president back to Bill Clinton enjoyed full party control of Congress and fantasized about lasting, durable governing dominance, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column. Every president back to Bill Clinton lost it within two years. Why it matters: Nothing captures the volatility of American politics better than this win-big, lose-quick phenomenon. It's like a new law of political gravity: What the swing voter giveth, the swing voter abruptly taketh away. President Trump would need to defy gravity to avoid the same fate that hit him during his first term … and hit Joe Biden … and Barack Obama … and George W. Bush … and Bill Clinton. ?️ The big picture: We've been telling readers for a decade to expect whiplash political volatility for the foreseeable future. This makes business planning more difficult because the regulatory, political and economic policy environments shift so quickly and dramatically. Both parties are prisoners to three stubborn political dynamics and realities: America is roughly a 33-33-33 nation. Roughly a third of voters are die-hard Democrats, and another third are die-hard Republicans. The other third (or slightly more) are perpetually open-minded and persistently dissatisfied with the new party in power. This dynamic has held firm for most of the past 30 years and shows no obvious signs of shifting. Almost every election since Clinton has flipped control of the White House or Congress. The number of truly competitive House races is shockingly small — roughly 10% of the 435 House seats, give or take. You can thank redistricting at the state level for meticulously chopping the nation into safe havens for very partisan Republicans or Democrats. That means the most important races are often primaries, where voter turnout is low and dominated by activists. Hence, the dominance of hyperpartisans. Big new policies take years to work their way into Americans' actual lives. Trump's tax cut bill, or Biden's infrastructure and green energy laws, or Obamacare were all substantial wins for the party in power. But any benefits usually take longer for voters to feel than the time left in a two-year election cycle. So, like clockwork, a new party wins power, feels invincible, believes it'll defy gravity, obsesses about those hyperpartisans who vote in primaries — and ticks off both swing voters and the activists on the other side. And then loses again. ?️ What we're watching: The American electorate is so volatile that there are now scenarios in which the GOP could lose its House majority even before next year's midterms. We told you last week that rising security fears, and even death threats — along with MAGA infighting — are fueling the once-unthinkable conversation among House Republicans about quitting Congress early. In a Gallup poll out Friday, Republican approval of Congress is an atrocious 23% — halved from a pre-shutdown 54% in September, and down from 63% in March.

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? Part 2: Watch that pendulum

Image: Bruce Mehlman's "Six-Chart Sunday" This thought-provoking graphic — part of the 100th issue of strategist Bruce Mehlman's always-useful "Six-Chart Sunday" — reminds America's powerful that they and their ideas could be on the outs soon enough, Jim and Mike continue. Mehlman reminds us that so far this century, 11 of 13 U.S. elections were "change elections," in which voters tossed out the party controlling the House, Senate or White House — a volatility streak unseen since the late 1800s, during the Gilded Age. ? Flashback: In a column back in February, we reminded Republicans of the "payback precedent": "Copy the payback, punishments and precedent-shattering techniques practiced by the other party — if they prove effective. ... Republicans should fully expect future Democratic presidents to use and build on all [President Trump's] norm-busting moves." And back in June, Zachary Basu helped us chart the 10 "unprecedented new precedents" for presidential power that House and Senate Republicans have enabled. The bottom line: Trump might be different. But that's what first-term Trump — and Biden, Obama, Bush and Clinton — all thought, too.

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Boat strikes

President Trump confirmed he recently spoke with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as the US ramps up strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean. While the details of the conversation remain unclear, Venezuela has accused the US of "murder" after acknowledging that some of its citizens were among the more than 80 people killed by the US strikes. Meanwhile, some Democratic and Republican lawmakers have expressed alarm about Trump's use of the military in the region. In recent days, Trump said potential land strikes in the country could be coming "very soon" and told airlines, pilots and criminal networks to avoid Venezuelan airspace.   Trump favorite holds thin lead in Honduras presidential vote Preliminary and partial results showed two conservative challengers leading the race in Honduras’ presidential contest. The vote came just days after Trump intervened in a close race by endorsing candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura and announcing that he would pardon a former president. Read more. What to know: The National Electoral Council said that Asfura of the National Party had 40.54% of votes in early counting, while Salvador Nasralla, of the conservative Liberal Party, had about 38.99%. Rixi Moncada of the democratic socialist LIBRE or Liberty and Re-foundation party trailed with 19.49%.   Just days before the vote, Trump endorsed Asfura, saying he would fight “narco-communists” with the United States and was the only Honduran candidate his administration would work with. RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Trump’s pardon promise offers yet another life to Honduras’ imprisoned ex-president

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Economist Stunned by Trump’s New ‘Nonsense’ Boast

The president said his tariffs would generate enough money to “almost completely” eliminate federal income tax.

A leading economist accused President Donald Trump of spouting “nonsense” in his boasts about the amount raised by his import tariffs.

During an appearance on MS NOW’s The Weekend, professor Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan dismantled Trump’s claim in a Thanksgiving speech that his import levies would generate enough money to “almost completely” eliminate federal income tax.

Americans aren’t buying Trump’s brags. According to a CBS News/YouGov poll last week, 60 percent of people say the rosy picture Trump paints about inflation does not reflect reality.

Wolfers didn’t bother hiding his disbelief, either. “My kids don’t even lie that often,” he told the Trump-critical network on Saturday. “I just feel disappointment and a certain sadness at this point.”

The Australian economist, who previously taught at Penn’s Wharton School—Trump’s alma mater—zeroed in on the president’s boast at Mar-a-Lago that the United States is “taking in trillions of dollars in tariff revenue,” arguing the claim hinges on a basic misunderstanding of numbers.

Speaking to hosts Eugene Daniels, Jackie Alemany, and Jonathan Capehart, Wolfers said, “This is just nonsense. Let me start with one important fact-check: The president appears not to understand the difference between millions, billions, and trillions. That’s actually one of the most important points in all of economics; they’re massively different. We are not taking in trillions of dollars in tariff revenue.”

He continued, “If we were, we could afford his $2,000 tariff checks. We aren’t. So therefore, we can’t.”

Wolfers also pushed back on the 79-year-old’s repeated boasts about the stock market, noting the United States is lagging well behind its global peers.

“The other thing that he talks about a lot is the stock market,” he said. “Now, here’s a funny thing: If you look at the stock market returns from, say, 25 of the biggest countries around the world, the United States ranks around about 22nd right now. So yes, American stocks are up. But guess what? They’re up even more everywhere else.”

He said that U.S. consumers, far from celebrating the economy, appear deeply uneasy. “So, consumer confidence right now—it’s quite striking just how bad it is. So, consumer confidence right now is very close to being an all-time low. And this has been measured back to the 1970s. So consumers say that they’re feeling worse than they were during the Great Recession, than they were during the pandemic, than they were during the early ’80s recession. It’s really quite striking numbers.”

Wolfers pointed to growing frustration with the administration’s economic policies. “If you dig into that a little bit, you ask them things like: What do you think about the quality of U.S. economic policy?” he said. “The number of people who think that the quality of economic policy is poor is at an all-time high. It’s roughly three-fifths of the American people.”

“What you have, I think,” he added, “is that the president has fundamentally lost the battle of ideas. What you normally do with an economic program is you come up with some ideas, and you try and convince people of the virtues of them. And he has fundamentally failed. There’s a deep question as to how long people are going to keep spending.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/economist-stunned-by-trumps-new-nonsense-boast/?

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Trump Gives Bonkers Excuse for Pardoning Drug-Runner President

President Donald Trump thinks a former Central American leader was simply set up by the Biden administration.

President Donald Trump defended his pardon of a former Honduran president who once bragged that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.”

Trump, 79, stood by his announcement on Friday that he would grant “a full and complete pardon” of Juan Orlando Hernandez, the 57-year-old former Honduran leader who was sentenced to 45 years in prison last year after he was convicted of drug trafficking and firearms offenses.

“Well, I was told—I was asked by Honduras, many of the people of Honduras, they said it was a Biden setup,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday. “He was the president of the country. And they basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country.”

The Justice Department, under former President Joe Biden, had said Hernandez “abused his power to support one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world,” helping heavily armed traffickers smuggle as much as 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.—all while publicly promoting anti-narcotics policies in the Central American nation.

The prosecution of Hernandez began in Trump’s first term and concluded under Biden. Hernandez was extradited to the U.S. in 2022 and sentenced in a New York federal courtroom two years later for taking bribes from drug traffickers to move “well over approximately 4.5 billion individual doses of cocaine.”

In 2021, a witness recalled Hernandez as saying, “We are going to stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses, and they’re never even going to know it.”

But Trump insisted Sunday that “the people of Honduras really thought he was set up, and it was a terrible thing.”

“He was the president of the country, and they basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country, and they said it was a Biden administration setup. And I looked at the facts, and I agreed with that,” he claimed.

When a reporter asked him to share any evidence showing that Hernandez was set up, Trump replied: “They could say that you take any country you want, if somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life. That includes this country.”

The pardon comes as the Trump administration hammers down on boats in the Caribbean that it has accused of ties to drug cartels. Pete Hegseth’s self-anointed War Department has so far killed at least 83 people in 21 strikes since September, according to CNN.

The Washington Post revealed in a bombshell report that Hegseth handed down an order during a Sept. 2 strike to “kill everybody”—a legally perilous move that experts said could amount to a war crime.

Trump appeared to know little about the incident.

“Number one, I don’t know that that happened,” he told reporters. “And Pete said he did not want them... he didn’t even know what people were talking about. So we’ll look into it, but no, I wouldn’t have wanted that, not a second strike.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-bonkers-excuse-for-pardoning-scandalous-honduran-ex-president/?

ps:Interesting!! So we pardon a drug dealer and go after a "supposed" drug dealer in SA with no evidence!! Kill all the people so no one can question anyone to actually back up trumps claim that the boats are filled with drugs!!!!! What a pathetic administration!!!!!

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Trump Issues Venezuela Threat After Bloodthirsty Orders Leak

The president unveiled a new plan after an insider leaked orders to “kill everybody” during anti-cartel hits.

President Donald Trump announced that the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela would be closed, just hours after a leak suggested that his agenda in the Caribbean Sea could constitute a war crime.

“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” the president wrote on Truth Social Saturday.

Trump’s latest threat followed an insider leak about U.S. orders in the Caribbean Sea, with Pete Hegseth reportedly having directed forces to kill indiscriminately.

The leak came after a Sept. 2, attack on a suspected drug trafficking boat near Trinidad, during which Special Operations forces killed all 11 people on board. After an initial strike, a second missile was then deployed in order to kill the two survivors on the boat wreck.

A source told the Washington Post of the instructions from the Defense Secretary: “The order was to kill everybody.”

Hegseth clapped back against the troubling claim on X Friday, writing: “As usual, the fake news is delivering more fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting to discredit our incredible warriors fighting to protect the homeland.”

After blasting the bloodthirsty report as inaccurate, Hegseth then followed up by vowing: “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”

Trump’s new focus on controlling the Venezuelan airspace comes after months of strikes on boats surrounding Latin American coasts, which have been undertaken without Congress’s approval. At least 83 people have been killed, and 21 vessels have been struck. The efforts have now officially been ramped up into the campaign “Operation Southern Spear,” which Hegseth promises will “remove narco-terrorists from our hemisphere.”Despite Trump and Hegseth’s passion for the anti-cartel project, both their GOP colleagues and voting base have suggested that the hyper-focus on overseas campaigns could fracture the MAGA movement.

An IPSOS/Reuters poll from this month revealed that just 29 percent of voters support the U.S. killing suspected drug traffickers, and 51 percent responded that they opposed the execution of suspected criminals without trial.

Republican senator Rand Paul blasted Trump after the president this month refused to dismiss the option of sending U.S. troops onto Venezuelan soil, pointing out that his actions weren’t looking quite as “America First” as promised.

“I think a lot of people, including myself, were attracted to the president because of his reticence to get us involved in foreign war,” he said.

On Saturday, Venezuela responded to Trump’s order, describing it as a “colonialist threat.” The country’s foreign ministry issued a statement confirming that the U.S. had “unilaterally suspended” its weekly migrant repatriation flights and calling on “the international community, the sovereign governments of the world, the UN and the relevant multilateral organizations to firmly reject this immoral act of aggression.”

The statement described Trump’s remarks as “another extravagant, illegal and unjustified aggression against the Venezuelan people.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-issues-venezuela-threat-after-bloodthirsty-orders-leak/?

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Judges Humiliate Trump by Ejecting MAGA Favorite From Top Job

Trump loyalist Alina Habba was not serving lawfully as acting U.S. attorney.

A federal appeals court on Monday found that MAGA favorite Alina Habba was serving unlawfully as U.S. Attorney.

The trio of judges on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled unanimously to uphold the lower court decision that President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney was disqualified from the job.

Habba had been serving as the acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, but her appointment was challenged.

The appeals court found that her appointment violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which sets out the requirements for temporarily filling vacancies.

The ruling was unanimous and handed down by two George W. Bush appointees and one Barack Obama appointee.

The judges ruled that because Habba had been nominated to fill the Senate-confirmed position, she was prevented from assuming the role as acting U.S. attorney, and the attorney general also could not delegate to her the powers to serve as the top federal prosecutor in the state, circumventing the law.

The Trump loyalist was sworn in as the interim U.S. attorney in late March following the previous acting U.S. attorney’s resignation.

In June, Trump nominated Habba to the position permanently, but the Senate never acted on it amid opposition by the state’s two Democratic senators.

Acting U.S. attorneys can only serve in the position for 120 days, so ahead of the deadline, the district court issued an order that the assistant U.S. attorney would fill the position once her term expired.

Instead of stepping away from the position, Habba and the Trump administration fought back with a series of unusual steps to try to keep her in power without the Senate confirmation.

Habba resigned as interim U.S. attorney and was instead appointed a “Special Attorney” by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who claimed she could conduct proceedings, thus making her acting U.S. attorney for the government.

But two men facing charges filed motions challenging their indictments by arguing that Habba’s appointment to her position was unlawful, setting off a series of court battles.

A lower court found that Habba was, in fact, disqualified from serving as acting U.S. attorney in August, but the administration appealed the decision.

The panel of three judges—Bush appointees D. Brooks Smith and D. Michael Fisher and Obama appointee L. Felipe Restrepo, had heard arguments on the case on October 20.

Reports from the courtroom at the time of the hearing were that the judges appeared deeply skeptical of the government’s arguments for keeping Habba in place.

Habba, who previously defended Trump during his fraud case and worked as a legal spokesperson for his campaign before joining the administration as a counselor to the president, attended the hearing at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia.

“As it stands, Habba alone is exercising all the powers of a U.S. Attorney, making her an Acting U.S. Attorney whose appointment is not FVRA compliant,” Judge Michael Fisher wrote in the opinion released on Monday.

The Daily Beast asked the Justice Department what it plans to do next in response to the ruling.

The decision creates new legal uncertainty about the cases Habba brought while working unlawfully in that position.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/judges-humiliate-trump-by-ejecting-maga-favorite-from-top-job/?

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Trump Posts Cryptic Ballroom Message After Major Building Setbacks

The president and his handpicked architect have clashed over the supersized construction project.

Donald Trump has issued a cryptic message about his beloved ballroom following clashes between the president and the architect he hand-picked to design his vanity project.

Trump, 79, took to Truth Social on Sunday to repeat his regular claims that the super-sized ballroom will be funded privately and that the White House has “needed and desired” a ballroom for 150 years.

The president then curiously stated of the construction, “As long as we are going to do it, we are going to do it RIGHT.”

The mystery post follows Trump’s feud with James McCrery II, the architect he personally selected to design the ever-expanding ballroom.

While the president initially claimed the new ballroom would not interfere with the existing White House, the entire East Wing was demolished to make room for Trump’s inflated vision.

Sources told the Washington Post McCrery urged Trump display restraint with his plans for the 90,000-square-foot ballroom, that will dwarf the 55,000-square-foot mansion it will be attached to.

The ballroom has grown from a 500-seat room to one that will accommodate 999 people, with Trump now wanting it to hold 1,350 guests and potentially be big enough to host a presidential inauguration.

McCrery reportedly expressed to Trump the golden rule of architecture–an extension should not engulf the building it is designed to complement.

A report in the New York Times on Saturday said Trump had told builders working on the ballroom that they could ignore zoning, permitting or code requirements because the structure is on White House grounds.

The publication claimed McCrery has now pulled back from his day-to-day involvement in the ballroom, but was still involved in a consultancy role and remained proud to be working for Trump.

A White House official conceded that Trump and McCrery have clashed over the ballroom design but insisted nothing is amiss, describing the back-and-forth as “constructive dialogue.”

“As with any building, there is a conversation between the principal and the architect,” the official said. “All parties are excited to execute on the president’s vision on what will be the greatest addition to the White House since the Oval Office.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

Trump fast-tracked the contractors, including McCrery, working on the ballroom, bypassing the traditional government bidding process, according to the Times.

The report claimed the firm excavating the site for the ballroom initially quoted $3.2 million for the work, but the president pressured them to accept $2 million.

Trump wants the ballroom finished by 2029–his second presidency is due to end in January of that year.

The project is also yet to be submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission, the federal body responsible for reviewing the designs. White House officials insist the plans will be filed at “the appropriate time.”

While Trump has secured funding for the ballroom from corporate donors including Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Caterpillar, Amazon and Comcast, the CEO of America’s biggest bank, JPMorgan, has explained why it has not handed over cash to the president.

Jamie Dimon told Erin Burnett OutFront on Saturday that the bank has “an issue” and must remain cautious.

“Since we do a lot of contracts with governments here and around the world, we have to be very careful how anything is perceived,” Dimon said.

“And also, how the next DOJ is going to deal with it? So, we’re quite conscious of the risk we bear by doing anything, it looks like, you know, buying favors or anything like that. So, you know, do we do things like that? We also have policies. We don’t do certain things.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trumps-cryptic-ballroom-post-after-major-building-setbacks/?

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Former Trump lawyer Alina Habba is disqualified as top New Jersey prosecutor, US appeals court rules

President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Alina Habba is disqualified from serving as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor despite his administration’s maneuvers to keep her in the role, an appeals court said Monday. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

National Guard member shot in DC has shown positive signs, West Virginia governor says Chairman of vaccine committee leaves for new HHS job New York backs 3 new casinos, including at Mets stadium and a golf course Trump once ran AP Decision Notes: What to expect in Tennessee’s special congressional election Melania Trump reveals White House holiday decorations and her theme, ‘Home Is Where the Heart Is’

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An Angry Holiday Weekend

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For the past few weeks, President Donald Trump has seemed uncharacteristically passive. His own Republican Party bucked him on the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein—in a movement partly led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once seemed like his staunchest apostle. His U.S. House gerrymandering campaign faltered under opposition from the GOP in deep-red Indiana, of all places. He even seemed awed by Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, in an Oval Office meeting.

In recent days, though, the president has posted a series of angry tirades, apparently determined to reclaim his role driving the news.

During his first administration, Trump seemed to sow the most chaos after hours on Twitter, when his advisers had gone home for the night. His second administration may have no more “adults in the room,” yet the timing, during a holiday when he had more free time and fewer constraints, seems noteworthy. The stretch began with an awful event Wednesday night—the shooting of two West Virginia National Guard members, one fatal, in Washington, D.C., where Trump had deployed them. The suspect is Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan man who worked with the CIA during the American war in his country before seeking refuge in the United States and receiving asylum this past April.

In volatile situations, Trump can almost always be relied upon to choose the most inflammatory response, and this was no exception. When reporters asked him whether he’d attend the funeral of Sarah Beckstrom, the slain West Virginia Guard member, he said he hadn’t thought about it yet and pivoted to extolling his own electoral performance in the state. Later, the president posted a picture of people fleeing Kabul after the U.S. withdrawal (“the horrendous airlift from Afghanistan,” as he put it), and announced that he would “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions.” He also suggested stripping citizenship from immigrants and declared, “Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation.”

What any of this means in policy terms is unclear, including what specifically Trump means by “Third World,” a term that doesn’t hold practical meaning now that the Cold War distinction of First and Second World countries has dissolved. Mostly, it seems to be a cleaned-up label for what he has previously called “shithole countries”: those whose residents are not white. (The administration has also been working to cut off refugees, except for white South Africans, as well as Europeans who oppose immigration—except, presumably, in their own case.)

Trump was just warming up. On Thanksgiving Day, what began like a normal missive quickly went south. “A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at,” he wrote, before calling Minnesota Governor Tim Walz “seriously retarded” and attacking Representative Ilhan Omar, also of Minnesota, whom he described as “always wrapped in her swaddling hijab” and accused of entering the country illegally. (No evidence supports this.) Trump defended his use of the slur against Walz yesterday.

On Friday, Trump posted that he was “cancelling all Executive Orders” that President Joe Biden signed using an autopen, a remote-signature device that Trump has also employed. He threatened to try Biden for perjury if he claimed that he’d signed the documents. Again, the actual effects of such a statement are unclear. The most controversial application would be reverting Biden’s pardons and commutations, which Trump has alleged (without proof) that the former president was not aware of authorizing—though legal experts say these types of actions can’t be reversed.

If any grants of clemency are going to be reversed, a good candidate would be another one of Trump’s actions on Friday: the announcement of a pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras. The floridly corrupt Hernández was sentenced to 45 years in prison last year for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. Pardoning someone responsible for bringing literal tons of cocaine into the country makes no sense, especially given that Trump’s government is currently using likely illegal strikes to kill people it claims are trafficking small amounts in tiny boats. But Trump’s own experience as a convicted felon has apparently trained him to see convicted heads of state as victims of a political witch hunt. The president also recently commuted the sentence of David Gentile, a financier convicted in a $1.6 billion fraud scheme.

Saturday morning, he posted again, saying that “THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA” should be considered “TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY.” Trump has no authority to unilaterally declare a no-fly zone over Venezuela, a sovereign nation with which the U.S. is not (yet!) at war. Even if such a thing were wise, the United States does not appear to be prepared to enforce it: Neither the White House nor the Pentagon has provided any more details or explanations that back up the statement. Never mind: Within 35 minutes, Trump had moved on to claiming to have driven drug prices down “500%, 600%, 700%, and more,” a mathematical impossibility.

In the most immediate sense, Trump’s rampage worked: He’s back in control of the news cycle. Whether that improves his political position, however, is an open question. Public racism and the use of slurs may be accepted in Trump’s base, and may even excite some of his supporters, but nothing suggests these behaviors will be well liked by the rest of the country, including independents who voted for him in 2024. On Friday, Gallup released a new poll showing Trump at his lowest approval of this term. The president can still seize the spotlight, but notoriety and popularity are not the same thing.

Related:

• The Trump steamroller is broken.
• A rogue nation on the high seas

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Trump's purest form of power

Photo illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Photo: Stephen Nadler/ISI Photos via Getty Images

President Trump has embraced clemency as an expression of raw political power, seizing on a unique authority designed to go unchecked by Congress, the Constitution or the courts, Axios' Zachary Basu writes. Why it matters: No presidential power is more absolute than the pardon. And no president has wielded it more openly as a tool of personal and ideological loyalty than Donald Trump. ? Zoom in: Trump's extraordinary move to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández — convicted last year of flooding the U.S. with tons of cocaine — is among the clearest examples yet. Prosecutors said Hernández, who led Honduras from 2014 to 2022, conspired with cartels to pave a "cocaine superhighway" into the U.S. — posing as an anti-drug conservative while running his country like a narco state. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it a "clear Biden over-prosecution." Between the lines: The Hernández pardon fits squarely within Trump's view of justice — serious criminal conduct matters far less than whether the defendant pledges loyalty, flatters the president or aligns with his ideological project. While the right-wing Hernández walks free from his 45-year prison sentence, left-wing Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro — indicted on charges of narcoterrorism — faces the threat of a U.S. military invasion. ? Zoom out: The dynamic extends to Trump's domestic orbit, where MAGA-friendly financiers, operatives and celebrity allies have had their convictions wiped away with the stroke of Trump's pen. Changpeng Zhao ("CZ"): The billionaire founder of crypto giant Binance was pardoned despite pleading guilty in 2023 to money laundering violations. Trump — whose family's crypto venture has ties to Binance — later claimed he did not know CZ, saying on "60 Minutes": "I heard it was a Biden witch hunt." George Santos: The disgraced former GOP congressman — convicted of defrauding donors and lying to the House — had his seven-year sentence commuted by Trump after spending less than three months in prison. Paul Walczak: Trump pardoned the former nursing home executive, who pleaded guilty to tax crimes, less than three weeks after his mother attended a $1 million-per-person fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago. A White House official claimed Walczak was "targeted by the Biden administration over his family's conservative politics." Fake electors: Trump granted sweeping pardons to Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows and more than 70 other allies tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including the "alternate electors" scheme.

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? Scoop: The letter behind Trump's pardon

The opening paragraphs of Juan Orlando Hernandez's four-page letter to President Trump.

From a U.S. prison cell, Honduras' ex-president secured a likely pardon for drug trafficking thanks to a letter he penned praising President Trump — whom he called "Your Excellency" — and a persistent lobbying campaign by longtime Trump pal Roger Stone, Axios' Marc Caputo writes. Why it matters: The surprise announcement of Juan Orlando Hernandez's looming pardon is a window into the unorthodox, norm-shattering way Trump grants clemency. Trump's announcement came just ahead of elections in Honduras, where the White House backed the right-wing National Party that Hernandez led as president from 2014 to 2022. ? Zoom in: Shortly after Trump took office in January, Stone wrote three separate Substack posts calling for the pardon of Hernandez, who was indicted the day he left office in 2022 and extradited to the U.S. to face cocaine-trafficking and weapons charges. Stone cast Hernandez as a victim of leftist "lawfare" in Honduras and in President Biden's administration. ? Stone told Caputo that on Friday, he reached out to Trump and reiterated those points. Stone claimed a pardon announcement would energize the right-wing party and called Trump's attention to Hernandez's four-page letter begging for clemency. Keep reading ... Read the letter.

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? White House: Admiral, not Hegseth, directed hit

Officials in Congress and the Pentagon "are increasingly concerned that the Trump administration intends to scapegoat the military officer" who directed a follow-up strike on two survivors of an attack on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean, The Washington Post's Noah Robertson and Tara Copp report.

• Why it matters: Lawmakers have vowed to investigate whether a second strike during the Sept. 2 attack — the first of approximately 20 such strikes so far — could constitute a war crime.

?️ Admiral Frank "Mitch" Bradley, who White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said yesterday ordered the second strike, is expected to provide a classified briefing Thursday to key lawmakers overseeing the military.

• The Washington Post reported last week that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had given a spoken directive "to kill everybody" and that the commander "ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth's instructions."

The story was murky about the timing of Hegseth's order. Five U.S. officials told the N.Y. Times that "Hegseth's directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth via X

Leavitt said yesterday that Bradley, the officer who oversaw the attack, "worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed."

• Bradley is a Navy SEAL officer who is the commander of the U.S. Special Forces Command.

Keep reading (gift link).

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? Israel's strikes in Syria alarm Trump

Via Truth Social

The Trump administration is concerned that Israel's repeated strikes inside Syria — including on Friday — risk destabilizing the country and undermining hopes of an Israel–Syria security agreement, two senior U.S. officials tell Axios' Barak Ravid. "We are trying to tell Bibi he has to stop this because if it continues, he will self-destruct," one of those officials said, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ? The big picture: Supporting President Ahmed al-Sharaa's efforts to stabilize Syria and encouraging him to engage in a peace process with Israel are key elements of the Trump administration's Middle East strategy. President Trump and his team have repeatedly sided with Syria's government in disputes with Israel — the only country in the region for which that's the case. Keep reading.

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White House says admiral ordered follow-up strike on alleged drug boat, insists attack was lawful The White House said Monday that a Navy admiral acted “within his authority and the law” when he ordered a second, follow-up strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea in a September U.S. military operation that has come under bipartisan scrutiny. Read more.

What to know: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered the justification for the Sept. 2 strike as lawmakers announced there will be congressional review of the U.S. military strikes against vessels suspected of smuggling drugs in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific Ocean. The lawmakers cited a published report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order for a second strike that killed survivors on the boat.   Her explanation came after President Donald Trump a day earlier said he “wouldn’t have wanted that — not a second strike” when asked about the incident. Leavitt said Hegseth has spoken with members of Congress who may have expressed some concerns about the reports over the weekend.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Experts explain what the law says about killing survivors of a boat strike   Outlets that reach millions denied access to rare Pentagon news briefings this week   Doctor says Trump had preventative screening MRI on heart, abdomen with ‘perfectly normal’ results   Babson College supports student deported flying home for Thanksgiving surprise   US air travelers without REAL IDs will be charged a $45 fee   2 conservative operatives get probation for robocalls to discourage Black Detroit voters in 2020   Indiana Republicans could win 2 more US House seats under a new proposed map   GOP-led states settle lawsuit against federal government over checking citizenship status of voters   WATCH: Melania Trump, Usha Vance assemble holiday care packages for US troops

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Donald Trump Posts Once a Minute in Unhinged Late-Night Spree

The president went posting-crazy, even for him.

Donald Trump has gone on a relentless Truth Social posting spree that is unhinged even by his standards.

The 79-year-old spent Monday evening posting almost non-stop on his social media account, including regularly doubling up through what seemed to be an automatic quote-tweet of the post that immediately preceded the last, clogging his feed.

Incredibly, Trump posted over 160 times between 7:09 p.m. ET and 11:57 p.m. ET, with most posts shared twice. At one point the president was firing off more than a post a minute.

Most of the posts involved sharing MAGA-friendly content from right-wing sources including Fox News, YouTuber Benny Johnson, and broadcasters Scott Jennings and Alex Jones.

The video Trump shared by conspiracy theorist Jones was a clip from his InfoWars program with the bizarre caption: “Michelle Obama may have used Biden’s autopen in the final days of his disastrous administration to pardon key individuals.”

As part of his perpetual string of posts, Trump shared videos targeting his usual list of enemies: California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Gov. Tim Walz and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, former FBI chief James Comey, former Attorney General Eric Holder, and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff.

One video Trump shared was headed “Make Christmas Great Again” and included footage of his acting role alongside Macaulay Culkin in 1992’s Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, while he broke up his clips of his enemies with one dedicated to his wife Melania.Before he went on his run of sharing other people’s content, Trump did fire off a few angry posts from his own hand.Trump continued his attack on Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former Navy captain and NASA astronaut whom the president called a “traitor” after he appeared with fellow Democratic lawmakers in a video reminding members of the Armed Forces and intelligence community they had a constitutional duty to refuse illegal orders.

Trump called them the “Seditious Six” and even posted that the lawmakers had committed “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

On Monday, Trump ranted, “Mark Kelly and the group of Unpatriotic Politicians were WRONG to do what they did, and they know it!”

He added, “I hope the people looking at them are not duped into thinking that it’s OK to openly and freely get others to disobey the President of the United States!”

Trump shared videos of himself explaining his concept of “reverse migration,” which he launched after plotting an immigration blitz in the wake of the fatal Washington D.C. shooting last week in which the sole suspect is an Afghan national.

The president also proudly shared the Thanksgiving video of him calling a female reporter “stupid” after she questioned him on when the Afghan suspect had been granted asylum in the U.S.

Trump also lent his support for the push to release Tina Peters, a former Republican clerk from Colorado who was found guilty last year for her role in a scheme that aimed to prove Trump’s claims of mass voter fraud in 2020.

She is serving a nine-year sentence in Colorado. While Trump has pardoned other allies, only Colorado’s Democratic governor has the power to pardon Peters.

During his Monday night spree, Trump posted “Colorado, FREE TINA PETERS, NOW.”

Earlier in the evening, he was watching Jesse Watters Primetime on Fox News, posting that the guest, former U.S. Army Special Forces member Jim Hanson, had done a “great job” discussing Trump’s “WAR AGAINST DRUGS!”

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on the spree.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-melts-down-in-unhinged-late-night-posting-spree/?

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Why Trump’s Presidency Is All But Over: James Carville

Democratic strategist James Carville is already writing President Trump’s political obituary.

Democratic strategist James Carville says Donald Trump’s presidency is circling the drain as voters sour on him and his Cabinet’s fiascos—with more trouble on the horizon.

“The power’s going out of Trump by the minute,” the famed strategist, 81, said on The Daily Beast Podcast. “You can just feel it oozing out.”

A new Gallup poll released on Friday found Trump’s approval rating dropping to just 36 percent—the lowest mark he’s recorded in Gallup’s polls in his second term.

“The public has turned on him. It turned on him decisively,” Carville told host Joanna Coles, arguing that voters are increasingly blaming the 79-year-old president for their economic woes. At the same time, Trump’s Cabinet, mired in a string of scandals, is fueling a sense of “disorder” around Trump, Carville said.

“I don’t see how this gets better for them, I really don’t,” said the strategist behind Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, and its winning slogan: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Carville pointed out that healthcare premiums are set to soar for more than 20 million people in the new year, a consequence of Trump and the GOP’s refusal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies.

Noting Trump’s “catastrophic” numbers, Carville said, “I don’t know how much lower you can go. I think his presidency, in terms of, like, anything significantly done, is over.”He predicted that Democrats would ride Trump’s missteps to 2026 midterm victories and leave him a lame duck president. “He’s going to definitely deal with a Democratic House. I think it’s more likely that he’ll be dealing with a Democratic Senate.”

Carville pointed to the scope of Democrats’ Nov. 4 victories in states across the country, calling the results “stunning, not just in the depth, but the breadth of it.”

Last week, Carville declared in a New York Times opinion piece that Democrats must embrace a “platform of pure economic rage” to respond to the “economic pain” of the current era.

“I am now an 81-year-old man and I know that in the minds of many, I carry the torch from a so-called centrist political era. Yet it is abundantly clear even to me that the Democratic Party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression,” he wrote.

Trump has so far struggled to deliver on his campaign promises to “vanish” inflation and “make America affordable again.” At the same time, he has presided over a weakening job market, and his erratic tariff strategy has hurt farmers and caused market volatility.

He has also devoted himself to decorating the White House in gold and building a massive $300 million ballroom that he says he and his billionaire friends will pay for.

In his piece for the Times, Carville said “the French Revolution is in the American wind.”

Asked by Coles to elaborate on what he’d meant, Carville pointed to America’s skyrocketing economic inequality and Trump’s coziness with the billionaire class.

“Young people see no future. They can’t imagine themselves ever buying a house. They can’t imagine themselves ever affording an education. Meanwhile, savers and old people have just run off with the whole stack,” Carville said, noting that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill slashes Medicaid while giving tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefit wealthy Americans.

“And the young people are going to see us, and they’re going to figure out that, ‘Hey, these people stole everything from us, so let’s go get our fair share.’ And that’s how unrest starts,” he said. “And the best thing to do is get ahead of it and try to even this thing out a little bit.”

The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-donald-trumps-presidency-is-all-but-over-james-carville/?

ps:Obviously! If only because he can't run again!!

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Pentagon Pete Throws Elite Commander to the Wolves Over ‘Illegal’ Order

Hegseth is deflecting blame for the lethal strikes on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean earlier this year.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the White House shifted responsibility for controversial strikes on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat to a decorated Navy admiral.

The second of the September strikes in the Caribbean has been called “illegal” by some because of how two survivors were seen clinging to the vessel, but were then killed, according to The Washington Post.

While Hegseth has been criticized after the Post claimed the embattled 45-year-old authorized an elite military force to kill all those on board, those in Trump’s orbit are beginning to shift responsibility.

Hegseth on Monday night said that Frank Mitchell Bradley, the commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, “is an American hero, a true professional, and has my 100% support.” Hegseth claimed Bradley made the “combat decisions” during the attack.

“I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made — on the September 2 mission and all others since,“ Hegseth, 45, wrote on X. ”America is fortunate to have such men protecting us. When this @DeptofWar says we have the back of our warriors — we mean it."

Among Bradley’s decorations are the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and the Combat Action Ribbon. An Afghanistan War veteran, he held several military command roles before assuming his current position in early October.

Bradley, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday, was authorized by Hegseth to conduct the Sept. 2 strikes.

“Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” Leavitt said. “This administration has designated these narco terrorists as foreign terrorist organizations.”

Yet critics of the strikes have come from both sides of the aisle.

“The idea that wreckage from one small boat in a vast ocean is a hazard to marine traffic is patently absurd, and killing survivors is blatantly illegal,” Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, a Democrat, told the Washington Post, which first reported on the order to “kill everybody” on board. “Mark my words: It may take some time, but Americans will be prosecuted for this, either as a war crime or outright murder.”

Meanwhile, attorney and conservative commentator Andrew McCarthy wrote for National Review that if the Post’s report was correct, what had happened was “at best, a war crime under federal law.”

“I say ‘at best’ because, as regular readers know, I believe the attacks on these suspected drug boats — without congressional authorization, under circumstances in which the boat operators pose no military threat to the United States, and given that narcotics trafficking is defined in federal law as a crime rather than as terrorist activity, much less an act of war — are lawless and therefore that the killings are not legitimate under the law or armed conflict," McCarthy argued.

On Monday night, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said Hegseth was clearly “passing the buck.”

“He sort of sees the freight train that is coming, right, that both Republicans and Democrats are coming to the conclusion that this was an illegal, wildly immoral act,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “And he is shifting the blame. It‘s the opposite of the buck stops here. And boy, it‘s a chilling signal to everyone in the chain of command that the secretary of defense does not have your back.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-pete-throws-elite-commander-to-the-wolves-over-illegal-order/?

ps:He's learned really well how to throw others under the bus!!

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Why Blowhard Pentagon Pete Just Put Himself in the Crosshairs

White House efforts to defend Pete Hegseth have stirred up a hornet’s nest of real life warriors.

Pete Hegseth says he is all about the “warrior ethos.”

As a Jewish guy from New Jersey, I am far better equipped to discuss the worrier ethos. This explains why I was from the get-go deeply concerned about Trump appointing a Fox News mannekin to run the Department of Defense. And it is now why, if I were Hegseth, I’d be worried about being able to hang on to that job much longer.

Ironically, it now seems likely that it’s folks with real warrior ethos coming for the poseur who is their boss–precisely because he’s too chickensh-t to take responsibility for his own terrible judgment.

You could tell that Pentagon Pete was going to be a disaster from the start. Having never run anything successfully in his life, he was completely unequipped for the job—one of the toughest in the world. His prior track record in business was, to put it politely, undistinguished; he was coming to the Capitol from the Island of Broken Media Toys where, despite competition that consisted primarily of failed beauty queens and the kind of loudmouthed blowhards you would move far away from at a bar, he had not made the cut to be even a weekday afternoon anchor. No, he handled weekend duties, the equivalent of a military command assignment in Greenland—before it became a cool MAGA tourist destination.

Worse, we already knew what it might all mean if he ever got the kind of power he now has having read his book.

This book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, essentially lays out why Hegseth had spent a chunk of his career defending and actively advocating on behalf of soldiers accused of committing war crimes. It makes clear he feels that international law and the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice are just ‘woke’ obstacles to the murdering and maiming that real killing machines are entitled to once they put on the uniform of the United States.

In fact, one of the first things Hegseth did when he got to his big office on the third floor in the E Ring of the Pentagon was to fire a bunch of the military’s JAG officers—lawyers whose job it was to keep DoD operations within the bounds of the law.

In the months since assuming his role, Hegseth has been a serial disaster. Some of his greatest hits have included revealing sensitive information about battle plans on a messaging app, alienating many of his own staff to the point that’ve left their posts, banning Defense Department employees from speaking at think tanks in other forums where they could interact with experts and, infamously, convening top military brass to Quantico for a lecture on why they should not have beards.

Oh, and he also happily signed off on President Trump’s efforts to deploy the military to cities across the U.S.

Another place, of course, where massive military assets have been deployed has been the Caribbean, notably off the coast of Venezuela. Never mind that there was neither a war nor a threat to U.S. national security anywhere in the vicinity; Trump has been aching to invade somewhere since before he took office. Greenland, Canada and Panama had all been on the list at one time or another. Hegseth has been happy to play along.

When that plan grew to include sinking small speedboats that were alleged, without evidence, to be carrying drugs, Hegseth was all for it. (Trump, Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and co. have created an elaborate argument that somehow the boats are part of a massive “narco-terrorist” operation linked to Venezuela’s president Nicolas Maduro, and demand military intervention.) Others, including the combatant commander of the U.S. Southern Command, were not. He quit.

Hegseth, like the White House, has been proudly boasting about the military prowess involved in our war against these powerboats, never mind that it pits relatively tiny vessels against the full might of the U.S. Navy—including a carrier battle group led by the most advanced aircraft carrier in the world, the USS Gerald R. Ford.

The Washington Post has reported that Hegseth was so hands-on with these attacks—which have claimed over 80 lives—that when overhead surveillance images following an early strike revealed survivors amid the wreckage, he gave the order to “kill them all.”

The order, and the murders that followed, are precisely the kind of illegal action Democratic lawmakers had warned that U.S. military officers were obligated by law and their oaths not to follow.

Unfortunately for Hegseth, this incident very quickly ceased to be seen as partisan. Republican lawmakers have now joined in calls for investigations into what happened and whether Hegseth really did issue the fatal command.

Trump has denied, in an interview on Air Force One, that this was the case—but also, tellingly, indicated that he wouldn’t have issued the order in question either. And the White House now, according to a follow-up Post story, looks like it is trying to shift the blame for the incident to the military commander who was carrying out Hegseth’s orders.

Unfortunately, for Hegseth, the Post story makes it very clear that top military brass are not going to stand for the scapegoating. That is in part true because of Hegseth’s record to date. But it is also because the guy who Pentagon Pete is trying to hide behind is the real deal, with a career that has won him deep respect among his colleagues. His name is Admiral Frank Bradley and he is a former Navy SEAL and currently the head of U.S. Special Operations Command.

In other words, he’s the kind of guy Hegseth supposedly admires and emulates. But now, at the first sign of incoming fire from the D.C. press corps, senior military officials are worried he’s a figure Trump, Hegseth and the White House are perfectly ready to sacrifice. Collateral damage.

Trump has reportedly considered letting Hegseth go several times over the past year, dating back to the leak of battle intelligence via that Signal group chat with a journalist. While the White House’s defense of Hegseth may suggest he is not ready to pull the plug on his Secretary of Defense at the moment, the military leaks to the press and bipartisan calls for further investigations suggest that the party may soon be over for the frat boy atop our military establishment.

Will that happen in the middle of the illegal war with Venezuela that appears to be looming? Perhaps not. But given that invading Venezuela for no defensible reason is also likely to trigger many in Trump’s “America First” base; given that all the attacks on the alleged “drug smuggling” speedboats are likely to be violations of the law; and given that Hegseth has now stirred up a hornet’s nest of real-life warriors, it also seems likely that Trump, who never assumes responsibility for any problem, is going to need a fall guy.

And that, for the first time in his checkered career, is a role for which Hegseth was tailor-made.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pete-hegseths-reckless-drug-boat-strikes-put-his-future-squarely-in-the-crosshairs/?

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Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández freed after Trump pardon

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Former Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced last year to 45 years in prison for his role in a drug trafficking operation that moved hundreds of tons of cocaine to the United States, was released from prison following a pardon from President Donald Trump, officials confirmed Tuesday.

https://apnews.com/article/honduras-us-hernandez-trump-pardon-099332ff4b81bafa3a32c642368ca665?

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Panicked Trump Begs MAGA Voters to Stop Special Election Blue Wave

The president frantically urged voters to cast ballots in a Tennessee special election.

Republicans are looking to avoid an embarrassing upset in a special election on Tuesday in a district Donald Trump won by 22 points.

Voters are headed to the polls to vote in the special election in Tennessee’s seventh congressional district, which includes Nashville.

While the election remains in Republicans’ favor, tighter-than-expected polling has left Republicans sweating over the outcome.

The result of the election could be a significant indicator ahead of next year’s midterms. It also has an immediate impact on the House as Republicans hold a razor-thin majority.

Republican Matt Van Epps is up against a progressive Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn for the seat vacated by former GOP Rep. Mark Green.

Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have both been aggressively trying to turn out support for Epps and avoid a disastrous upset for the GOP.

“I am asking all America First Patriots in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District to please GET OUT AND VOTE for a phenomenal Candidate and MAGA Warrior, Matt Van Epps!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday about the ex-Tennessee Department of General Services commissioner. The president alluded to past comments from Behn when he claimed that, unlike his opponent, Epps “cherishes Christianity and Country Music.”

It was a surreal scene on Monday morning when Johnson traveled to the state to participate in a get-out-the-vote rally for Epps.

The U.S. Speaker of the House, with a smile plastered on his face, was standing in the middle of a Tennessee restaurant holding the microphone up to his smartphone with the President of the United States on the line.

“Tennessee just loves me because we won by the biggest margins anybody’s ever won by, so that’s cool,” Trump declared on the speaker.

“She hates country music,” Trump said. “How the hell can you elect a person like that?”

Behn has been attacked by Republicans for a comment she appears to have made on the podcast Grits in 2020, where she said she was heavily involved in the Nashville mayoral race because “I hate this city, I hate the bachelorettes, I hate the pedal taverns, I hate country music.”

Her campaign manager, Kate Briefs, responded with a statement to a local Nashville TV station that did not address whether she had actually said it but argued Republicans are “panicking and in a last ditch attempt, they are distracting from the fact that Washington Republicans and Matt Van Epps are raising costs on Tennessee families and ripping away their health care.”

But in the Country Music Capital of the World, the race appears unusually tight. Democratic operatives have downplayed the likelihood of a massive upset to the Daily Beast but have argued that Behn even closing the gap in a double-digit Trump district would signal a lot more competitive districts next year.

Behn has received support from Democrats across the political spectrum as she campaigned on health care, affordability and ending corruption.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined her Monday evening for a virtual rally in the deep red state along with former Vice President Al Gore and Rep. Pramila Jayapal.

Republicans have slammed her as “radical” and tried to tie her to tax hikes while touting Trump’s tax law passed over the summer.

Democrats have accused Epps of being disastrous for health care as the Republican majority in Congress has yet to come up with a solution for skyrocketing premiums.

Both Republicans and Democrats have poured millions into a race in a district that was not expected to be competitive.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/panicked-trumps-plea-to-maga-voters-to-save-red-state-seat/?

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Triggered Keystone Kash Lashes Out at Dem Mocking His FBI ‘Cosplay’

The FBI director used a years-old “Chinese spy” controversy to try to hit Rep. Eric Swalwell for criticizing him.

FBI Director Kash Patel lost it on a Democratic lawmaker who teased him over a leaked report that said some of his own agents view him as “in over his head” and “insecure.”Patel, 45, appears to have unraveled after the 115-page “pulse check” was released, containing embarrassing details from 24 current and former FBI sources who described his first six months in the role as “dismal” and warned that the bureau was “all f---ed up.” The report also detailed an incident in which Patel is said to have refused to get off a plane in Utah until he was provided with an FBI raid jacket. Agents who were in the middle of the Charlie Kirk murder investigation were forced to find him a proper jacket, ultimately providing him with a women’s medium-sized raid jacket that they then had to dress up with patches he requested, according to the report. Patel has been roundly ridiculed over the report, including by Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, also 45, who posted on X: “I don’t mind that FBI Director Kash Patel had to wear a women’s (size medium) jacket to cosplay as someone in charge. I just wish he’d focus on stopping the rampant domestic terrorism happening on his watch.”Patel apparently decided that humor was the best way to respond, replying that he had actually been “looking for a Youth Large,” before then going on the offensive.

He said domestic-terror arrests were “UP 30% this year,” claiming that achievement was “impressive, considering I spent zero days dating a Chinese spy named Fang Fang.” He added, “Where should I send your women’s medium for date night?”

Patel’s “Chinese spy” reference is a long-running right-wing attack against Swalwell tied to Christine Fang, also known as “Fang Fang,” a woman who volunteered on Swalwell’s 2014 re-election campaign before it was publicly revealed in 2020 that she was a suspected Chinese spy.

U.S. officials said they found no evidence she obtained any classified information from Swalwell, who cut contact with her after an FBI briefing in 2015.

The House Ethics Committee carried out a two-year investigation into the matter and closed it in May 2023 without taking any action.

The FBI assessment that got Patel hot under the collar also slams Deputy Director Dan Bongino, 51, as “something of a clown,” and says the pair are too fixated on social media.

The document’s authors have said they never intended to attack FBI leadership but that the feedback they received from inside the agency ended up being mostly negative. The assessment was handed to New York Post columnist Miranda Devine—a choice some view as designed to inflict maximum damage on Patel and Bongino.

Bongino appeared to allude to the leak on X, claiming opponents “will do anything” to undo FBI reforms.

The Daily Beast contacted the FBI and Swalwell for comment. The FBI declined to comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/triggered-keystone-kash-patel-lashes-out-at-dem-eric-swalwell-for-roasting-his-womens-jacket-tantrum/?

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Pam Bondi Plots Desperate New Bid to Save Trump Revenge Cases

The Department of Justice runs the risk of a new grand jury refusing to indict James Comey and Letitia James.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has not given up on prosecuting two of Donald Trump’s political foes after their indictments were thrown out because they were filed by a prosecutor who was unlawfully serving, according to a report.

The cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York state Attorney General Letitia James were dismissed after a judge ruled that Trump’s appointment of Lindsey Halligan—a former Miss Colorado beauty pageant contestant with no experience in criminal law—as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia violated a federal law limiting the tenures of temporary federal prosecutors.

Bondi vowed to immediately appeal the decision from U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie, although no such steps have been taken yet. Sources have now told Politico that the DOJ is considering not appealing the Halligan ruling but is hoping that one or more grand juries will file new indictments against Comey and James over allegations of lying to Congress and fraud, respectively.

Such a move carries multiple risks, as there is no guarantee that a new grand jury will approve charges against Comey or James. Both cases are widely viewed as flawed and as examples of a retribution campaign waged by Trump.

There is also some confusion as to whether Halligan can still be considered to have a job following Currie’s ruling. A spokesperson for the DOJ previously told the Daily Beast that Halligan has the “full support” of the department despite the judge, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, branding her appointment unlawful. The DOJ said it is consulting with Halligan “the same way we do all U.S. Attorneys caught in this ridiculous appointment dilemma created by liberal activist judges.”

The DOJ could bypass the issue by having Halligan re-present the cases as a “special attorney” appointed by Bondi, Politico reported. Another team of prosecutors could also be assigned to carry out Trump’s revenge agenda, or even present the cases alongside Halligan.

Another potential hurdle is that the five-year statute of limitations in Comey’s case—stemming from allegations he lied to Congress in September 2020 about whether he authorized leaks to the press about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election—has now expired.The statute of limitations expired five days before Halligan filed charges against Comey. The indictment itself was filed just days after Trump publicly complained to Bondi on Truth Social in September that “nothing is being done” about prosecuting Comey and James, in a post that was reportedly supposed to be a direct message.

“For Attorney General James, there’s no problem re-indicting here,” Gene Rossi, a former senior federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia, told Politico. “For Comey, there’s no hook… For the Comey case, I think it’s gone.”

Rossi said federal prosecutors cannot cite a law that grants an extension of six months or more when a judge dismisses an indictment because the original indictment filed by Halligan was inadmissible.

“Whatever document came from that grand jury was meaningless,” Rossi said. “You can’t supersede something that doesn’t exist. If there’s no time left in the statute of limitations, they’re out of luck when it comes to Comey.

“If they go that route and try to supersede or refile the indictment against Comey, they’re going to lose.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the DOJ and lawyers for Comey and James for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pam-bondi-plots-desperate-new-bid-to-save-trump-revenge-cases/?

ps:What a clown show!!!!!