"Trump's a grotesque human being.”

Critics expressed their disgust for Donald Trump on Thursday after he showed his Chinese counterpart the autopen photo that replaced President Joe Biden’s portrait at the White House. Chinese President Xi Jinping laughed heartily when Trump gave him a tour of the Presidential Walk of Fame near the Oval Office during Xi’s three-day state visit to the U.S.

“Trump, and that’s Trump,” Trump said as he pointed to the portraits from his first and second term. “And this is the autopen,” Trump said, pointing to the picture that replaced President Biden and giving Xi a tap on the arm as the Chinese president howled with laughter.

While MAGA laughed along with Xi, critics of the Trump administration suggested the interaction was another example of the U.S. president disrespecting his office.

“As an American, I find this so embarrassing,” posted Michael McFaul, U.S. ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration. “He calls it the people’s house, but he does not treat it as the people’s house. Whatever your policy disagreements were with President Biden, 81 million Americans voted for him. To treat him with such disrespect is appalling. To force a foreign guest to participate in your ridicule of President Biden is even worse.”

Charles C.W. Cooke, senior editor at the National Review, suggested Trump was out of line. “This is grotesque behavior,” Cooke posted. “Joe Biden was an American president. Xi is a communist dictator, and the head of a foreign state. Our internal divisions are not fair game in this context.”

Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois turned Trump critic, used the same adjective to describe the president’s actions. “He’s a grotesque human being,” Walsh said. “Taking a despicable cheap shot at an American president to make a communist dictator laugh.”

Howard Koplowitz

Howard Koplowitz is AL.com's Breaking & Trending Reporter for afternoons and nights. He has been with AL.com since 2015 and has served in a variety of roles…

 

                                          THIS IS AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT

"Graft, Self-dealing, and Illegal Money-Grubbing..."

 

Graft, self-dealing, and illegal money-grubbing have sloshed through all three branches of government, convincing nearly 90 percent of Americans that corruption is widespread. But without the dogged investigative journalism from the nonprofit news site ProPublica, much of this would have gone undetected (e.g., Supreme Court justices’ financial nondisclosure and gifts). In just the last couple of weeks, ProPublica unveiled two more blockbuster investigations.

Its account of Vladimir Putin-aligned Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev’s payment for Don Jr.’s lavish wedding reception rocked the White House and even shattered the usual MAGA solidarity front. Trump’s flunkies first denied anyone in Trump’s regime knew who he was. Now Trump insists the money was repaid. (Anyone got a receipt?) It’s all too little, too late.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), who will inherit the gavel on House Oversight if Democrats win the majority, wrote to Chief of Staff Susan Wiles, citing the details laid out in ProPublica’s report: “Despite only having met Mr. Trump in September 2025— less than a year before the wedding in question—[Umar] Kremlev reportedly paid to rent out one of the private islands used for the wedding that typically costs $100,000 per night, along with other expensive items, such as a $70,000 fireworks show.”

He continued: The secretive, close relationship between the son of a sitting U.S. President and a member of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s inner circle raises serious national security and public corruption concerns. A Russian oligarch reportedly financing parts of a lavish wedding for the owner of multiple firms holding Department of Defense contracts is all the more disturbing. Given that Mr. Trump reportedly advises his father, the President of the United States, on issues of national security and vetting White House personnel, any possible foreign entanglement deserves close scrutiny.

Garcia demanded documents and answers, requests that the White House will undoubtedly ignore. More importantly, he apparently told Wiles to “preserve all documents, communications, and other materials” relevant to the potential investigation, putting anyone who might destroy evidence or interfere with Congress in legal jeopardy.

The facts are disturbing enough that even some Republicans are upset. Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) wrote to Judiciary Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to demand an inquiry “into potential misuses of presidential family relationships for financial benefit, preferential treatment, or special access to certain people.”

Nominally citing Republicans’ years-old complaints about Hunter Biden, Curtis focused heavily on “the relationships of President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., with foreign business figures and the acceptance of significant gifts.” He too relied on ProPublica’s reports about “a lavish wedding afterparty, on a private island, provided by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, who reportedly traveled to China as part of a delegation accompanying Vladimir Putin shortly before giving the gift.” Curtis added:

These concerns are compounded by Donald Trump Jr.’s active promotion of family-backed cryptocurrency ventures, his continued pursuit of international real estate deals involving direct meetings with foreign heads of state, and his reported investments in defense contracting. This pattern extends to his significant financial and advisory ties to prediction-market platforms that depend on favorable federal regulatory decisions being considered by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

These reports raise legitimate questions about foreign access to members of a sitting president’s family and whether such relationships can create actual or perceived expectations of favorable treatment. They also may create expectations of a returned favor that would not be in the best interests of the American people or our allies and could even create national security vulnerabilities.

Perhaps hoping to give Trump (and Republicans) some cover, he pleaded, “The country should not have to accept one standard for the family of a Republican president and another for the family of a Democratic president. Nor should congressional oversight begin and end when control of the White House changes hands.”

In other words, Curtis is issuing a warning that things will go much worse for Trump if Democrats unilaterally run with the ball and focus exclusively on Don Jr. This White House surely won’t take him up on his invitation to get ahead of the story, but the dam may be about to break. By Tuesday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) had joined Curtis’s call to investigate.

Then this week, ProPublica dropped another shocking story, this time concerning an extensive FBI investigation involving Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the perennially “concerned,” phony moderate (who confirmed two justices to the Supreme Court that destroyed abortion rights).

ProPublica’s report detailed a 2019 meeting between Scott Reed, head of the Collins Super PAC, and three executives from defense contractor Navatek — which Collins had helped “land a multimillion-dollar Navy research contract in Maine.” ProPublica reported that Reed asked them for a $500,000 donation, although “[g]overnment contractors are banned from making political contributions,” and any offer of “donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal bribery.” The account explained:

To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said — and that Navatek would get its government contracts.

After the Corner Bakery meeting, Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins super PAC using the shell company. Two months later, he told Navatek executives that Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal company email reviewed by ProPublica.

Kao, who faced charges for illegal campaign contributions (and had his own credibility issues), spilled his story to the FBI, which “opened up an entirely new phase of the investigation… [and] sifted through hundreds of thousands of records seized during Kao’s arrest and found that many were consistent with his account of widespread influence peddling.” But the FBI didn’t get very far, since the Trump regime “eviscerated” public corruption investigations and enlisted law enforcement to go after his enemies.

Collins’s office now “vigorously” denies wrongdoing. Neither she nor anyone on her staff was ever charged. However, she will face intense pressure to answer questions about the story.

Her opponent in the Senate race, Troy Jackson, pounced. “This is corruption of the highest order. Susan Collins delivered millions in taxpayer dollars for a corrupt donor bankrolling her campaign, and then Donald Trump helped her cover it up,” he alleged. “No wonder she voted with him 96% of the time and has rubberstamped his agenda to hurt Maine.”

He continued, “Susan Collins doesn’t care that we’re losing our health care, that ICE is killing people on the streets, and that we’ve been dragged into a pointless war — as long as her donors get their contracts and her coffers get filled. We deserve answers about every contract and every conversation that Collins and her team facilitated on the backs of taxpayers. The jig is up.”

Without ProPublica’s work, neither of these corruption stories would have come to light. Its undaunted, unbiased, and unrelenting effort to expose wrongdoing and shine a bright light on public and private corruption deserves Americans’ deep gratitude. The outlet is a national treasure.

The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now

 

Court Strikes Down Media Ban; Trump’s Weakness Is Apparent to the Whole World

 

U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly struck down Donald Trump’s White House ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico as likely unconstitutional on 5th Amendment grounds. In issuing a 14-day temporary restraining order, he rejected Trump’s bogus national security excuse (Trump’s lawyers “offer little to back up their asserted national security interest,” Kelly found, observing that this was an after-the-fact justification) and ordered the White House to immediately restore the outlets’ access. 

While not yet reaching the 1st Amendment issue, the definitive ruling and utter disdain for Trump’s national security excuse represent a stark repudiation of his authoritarian edict. We will have more coverage of the latest Trump legal rebuke.

Donald Trump, like most manipulative authoritarians, exploits his followers’ craving for strength, certainty, and self-control. His fixation with demeaning “losers” is meant not only to reassure himself (I’m no loser!) but to convince his cult members that they can avoid dreaded loser-doom by sticking with him. It’s one reason his physical deterioration coupled with his international defeats pose such a threat: they destroy the illusion of power on which he relies. And lately, his international record — historically a refuge for presidents struggling at home — has been a series of catastrophes and personal humiliations.

Trump’s appearance at the United Nations on Tuesday was another cringeworthy display of desperation and self-delusion. Bumbling through his teleprompter script, he threatened to annihilate the Islamic Republic of Iran, railed at the International Criminal Court, calling it “evil” (unsurprising for someone whose genocidal threats violate the law of war), and listed off his phony accomplishments (Settled 8 wars! Stole Venezuela’s oil!). This incoherent, reckless rant, however, was one of his least energetic performances. Perhaps he’s depressed by the absence of the White House press pool?

The audience sat largely in stunned silence as he recycled genocidal threats, including rhetorically asking global leaders: “Do I drive them [Iran] into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” Simultaneously, he insisted other countries help isolate Iran economically. His attacks on AI regulation — including his unintentionally hilarious attempt to rebrand it “Super Intelligence” — will delight Democrats who understand how out of touch he is with public opinion on an issue of rising concern for voters.

Trump’s distorted hype about Greenland further smacked of his deepening desperation for affirmation of his strength — and the gap between his self-image and reality. Last week, his bogus announcement suggested he had achieved some sort of breakthrough. Alas, the New York Times played along and reported that Trump said he had a brand new deal on Greenland. An accurate headline would have been: Trump again misrepresents foreign negotiations. This problem of dutifully reporting “Trump says X” will become even more serious when Trump inevitably makes false assertions about the midterm voting and results. The press must not become accessories to election denial.

By the time he signed the defence pact at the United Nations meeting, everyone but Trump could see it amounted to a galling retreat from his takeover demands. As former ambassador and State Department official Dan Fried explained, there has been no real breakthrough, as we have had extensive basing rights since the 1951 Defense of Greenland Agreement. This was simply a way to allow “the US to walk back from its damaging and pointless threats of aggression.”

Beyond his UN debacle, Trump’s foreign policy disasters are multiplying these days. In a single week, the Houthis attacked Saudi forces (Trump subsequently reversed course and refused to help the Saudis respond), while “Algeria declared that it was severing diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates and subsequently closed its airspace to Emirati planes,” Marc Lynch reports. The common thread is Trump’s abject failure “to defeat Iran or protect its Arab allies.” His utter fecklessness should dissuade any country from relying on the United States.

None of this bodes well for his meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping this week. China’s leader presumably senses he is now in the driver’s seat after negotiating what amounted to an economic truce last year, convinced he is dealing with a US in decline. Meanwhile, US businesses complain they have been shut out of the hyped US-China Board of Trade despite Trump’s promises, and China has yet to deliver on promises regarding rare earth minerals. In other words, Trump has received very little from China, which neither fears nor respects him. With Trump bowing and scraping at a State dinner tonight, Xi likely will be emboldened by Trump’s creepy sycophancy.

While the loss of America’s stature as the dominant world power holding together an international rules-based order is by far the most consequential and damaging legacy for Trump, the average voter’s most immediate impression (understandably) of Trump is as the president who betrayed his promise not to get us into another forever war and instead got bogged down in a losing regime-change stunt that sent energy prices skyrocketing. 

That failure has eaten away at his support, most visibly driving Republicans lapdogs now trailing in Senate races, including Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), and Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), to call for Trump to “quickly end” the war. They apparently think voters will not hold them responsible for giving Trump a blank check to wage a war that predictably turned into a strategic nightmare and political albatross.

A new CNN poll shows nearly two-thirds of Americans acknowledging that we are not winning the war. 70 percent say Trump’s Iran decisions have hurt the US, and 75 percent presume he has no plan to end it. A stunning 76 percent say it was not worth it. Remarkably for someone who used to dominate his party, “[m]uch of the decline in approval of his handling of Iran comes among Republicans,” the pollsters found.

In March, though, 73% of Republicans approved of the way Trump was handling it. Now, that figure stands at 60%. Among Republican and Republican-leaning adults, approval of Trump’s handling of Iran dips into negative territory among those younger than 45 (53% disapprove) and those who say they are not members of the Make America Great Again movement (54% disapprove).

But it is not JUST Iran. Trump’s serial international blunders have caught up with him. “Overall, only 29% of US adults approve of Trump’s handling of foreign affairs, a new low in CNN polling across both of his terms as president, while 71% say they disapprove. More see his foreign policy decisions this term as harming America’s standing in the world rather than helping it.”

Trump has frequently insisted that other countries were “laughing” at the US (a pathological narcissist’s worst nightmare is to be humiliated by others, so naturally he regards this as the worst imaginable insult). But he’s done something worse: Turn the US into a dispensable ally, a patsy for China, a punchline for Canada, a defeated power hobbled by the Middle East, and a human rights miscreant.

It will take years to restock our depleted munitions, but recovering our international stature and reputation and rebuilding frayed alliances may take decades. As a result, the world will be less stable, less free, and less prosperous.

-Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian 

U.N. Speech May Signal the Next Chapter of American Hegemony

Iran showed the limits of American coercion. Trump may turn back to the Western Hemisphere, where those limits remain the weakest. Donald Trump’s speech to the United Nations on Tuesday was many things, but it should not have been surprising to anyone.

Certainly not the Iranians, whom Trump threatened to “annihilate” if they refuse his terms for ending the war. Not the Cubans, whose government he called “an absolutely failed state” that will soon fall. Not Greenlanders or Danes, who have spent more than a year listening to threats to seize Greenland by force. Not America’s allies, who have learned that treaties, institutions, and decades-old relationships hold little sway with this president who treats them more like vassals within an American sphere.

Reactions to the speech have been and will be parochial and diverging. Some will dismiss it as performative, typical of this president. Others will cite the threats and exaggerations as further evidence of cognitive decline. His defenders will hear strength, resolve, and a president willing to say aloud what weaker leaders would not. The more useful question is what the speech portends for how Trump will use American power abroad as the pressures on his presidency mount.

One answer has become almost conventional. Trump’s tried-and-true cycle of bluster and retreat will continue, though he faces a world now accustomed to waiting him out. Trump threatens, markets panic, allies scramble, opponents brace themselves, and then he backs away. The Wall Street-assigned acronym TACO — “Trump Always Chickens Out” — and the market’s repeated willingness to recover from his threats and missteps suggest that investors still trade as though the label has merit.

Greenland offered another example this week. After months of demands that the United States acquire the territory, Washington, Denmark, and Greenland reached an agreement that gives Washington little that it could not already have pursued under a 1951 defense agreement still in force.

That outcome — as with many others — may look reassuring only if we ignore what happens between the threat and the retreat. Trump can abandon an objective without erasing the costs accumulated while pursuing it. Relations with Denmark and Greenland absorbed months of unnecessary strain. Tariffs can disappear, but businesses and consumers absorb the disruption that preceded their removal. The Iran war has shown the problem on a far greater scale: oil trading near $100 a barrel, depleted American munitions stocks, and regional governments absorbing retaliatory strikes from Iran and its proxies.

The smaller episodes — whether the White House ballroom, the renaming of the Kennedy Center, or the proposed 250-foot triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery that Trump now wants to turn into a military complex housing drones, snipers, and ammunition — are no less reflective of what comes next. His attention remains locked on initiatives that offer a visible display of presidential authority, even as more consequential national-security problems remain unresolved.

That is why I am not persuaded by James Carville’s prediction that Trump is “just gonna walk away” by Easter of next year. Carville argued that a political rebuke in the midterm elections could leave Trump frustrated enough to resign — just walk away. That argument, however, assumes Trump judges the presidency largely by his ability to govern successfully through Congress.

Even a hostile Congress would leave Trump commander in chief, head of the executive branch, wielder of the pardon and veto powers, conductor of American foreign policy, and the dominant figure inside his political movement. Leaving office would surrender all of that.

That distinction also makes me less convinced by the familiar argument that Trump will become more dangerous because he senses the walls closing in. His speech at the United Nations did not sound like that of a man preoccupied with shrinking authority. It sounded like a president oblivious to constraints and signaling where he will apply his power next.

The Western Hemisphere stood out. Trump celebrated the American operation in Venezuela, predicted political change in Cuba, and promised to use America’s “unmatched military might” when necessary to protect U.S. interests in the region. His administration has simultaneously worked to organize Latin American governments around its campaign against cartels.

Whatever one thinks of those policies, the pattern deserves attention. Trump appears increasingly focused on a region where the United States enjoys enormous military and economic advantages and where most governments possess limited means to resist sustained American pressure.

Iran offers almost the opposite lesson. Tehran can retaliate. It can disrupt energy markets, threaten American bases, and work through partners across the region. Russia possesses nuclear weapons and conducts a war that the United States cannot end by declaration. China combines military power with economic leverage on a scale no Latin American state can approach. Europe can frustrate Washington through institutions, regulations, and collective action even as it remains dependent on American security guarantees.

The Americas, on the other hand, offer Trump something increasingly difficult to find elsewhere: leverage without an equal counterweight. Trump’s United Nations speech matters for reasons that have little to do with whether it sounded presidential or unhinged. We already know how Trump talks. The important signal was where he directed his attention.

Trump still appears convinced that American power can compel outcomes if he finds the right place to apply it. On Tuesday, he gave the world an indication of where he intends to look next.

Brian O’Neill, a retired senior executive from the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, is an instructor on strategic intelligence at Georgia Tech. His Safehouse Briefing Substack looks at what’s ahead in global security, geopolitics, and national strategy.

Brian O’Neill

 

Four Changes to Help the White House Press Recover Its Spine

 

Trump’s unconstitutional temper tantrum in ejecting CNN, Politico, and MS NOW from the White House — which prompted the outlets to file suit Monday — underscores his late-stage deterioration into decrepitude and desperation, as rage and loss of impulse control drive his behavior. He reportedly was left alone — gasp! — in the White House over the weekend, leading to his impulsive decision to hit the eject button for certain news outlets. 

The conceit that each aggressive move is part of a well-conceived scheme to cement authoritarian control no longer withstands scrutiny. 

Even his closest aides and most fanatical apologists have struggled to recast his impetuous, self-destructive spasms as actions of a wily political operator. We are, from all appearances, witnesses to his narcissistic collapse. All that noted, Trump’s accelerating mental crackup also underscores the degree to which the White House press corps has failed to cover the despotic president in a way that accurately conveys to Americans the depth of his mental deterioration and fascist extremism.

It took an unprecedented affront and multiple employers’ ejection for the pool to finally react collectively. The presidential TV pool was suspended on Monday, leaving Trump with no TV network or live coverage of events at the White House and United Nations. In a mild step of solidarity, the New York Times and Washington Post refrained from publishing the events of the day — but only until midnight. But how long will the corps stay out? And will their conduct change once they return?

Even before this latest outrage, First Amendment guru Floyd Abrams succinctly observed in an interview: “I think he is the most threatening president to free speech, free press, the First Amendment that we’ve ever had.” One wonders if we would have gotten to this point had the pool years ago stood up in unison to Trump. 

They could have taken their belongings and left when Trump repeatedly demeaned and insulted female reporters; they could have grilled him directly when he tricked the press into serving as human decoys to avoid the threat posed to his security-insufficient Qatari-gifted Air Force One. They could have mounted a collective response after multiple, frivolous lawsuits against news outlets, the firing of Stars & Stripes journalists, and/or Pentagon attacks against legitimate news outlets. It’s little wonder that appeasement gave Trump the idea he could do as he pleased.

After all, the WHCA continued to invite him to its glad-handing White House Correspondents' Dinner as if he were a normal president respectful of the First Amendment. The press pool’s lack of aggressive follow-up questioning, refusal to confront out-and-out lies (“Sir, that statement is objectively false. Why are you lying?”), and the inexcusable laxity in pursuing questions about his mental and physical health (even as he falls asleep in their midst) have all served to sane-wash Trump. That has both normalized him in the eyes of many voters and given him a sense of impunity in dealing with the press.

The White House press gaggle’s short attention span has allowed Trump to avoid ongoing scrutiny of the cover-up of the Epstein pedophile files. 

The White House’s collective temper tantrum has effectively staved off questioning about the grossly disturbing co-dependent relationship with Natalie Harp. And Trump has somehow cowed reporters to avoid confronting him with specific questions about his and his family’s self-dealing and grotesque profit-making in office.

And yet, for all their passivity and inappropriate deference — all rationalized as the price for maintaining “access” — their meekness only emboldened Trump. But now they have reached an inflection point, the embarrassing result when a hapless press corps sought to sacrifice journalistic integrity for access and wound up with neither. If outlets want to regain their dignity and status, reclaim their role as guardians of the First Amendment, and inform the public of the extent of the danger Trump poses to our democracy, they would be well advised to adopt several simple rules.

First, no real news outlet should return until all are allowed back. If the White House decided, for example, to throw out all Black reporters, would white members still attend? Contrary to the notion that their absence would be letting Trump “win,” continuing to show up while he tramples on the core principle that all legitimate news outlets get equal access is the ultimate capitulation. And by the way, real reporting and actual scoops don’t involve sitting and taking down dictation from aggressive, lying regime flunkies.

Second, regardless of whether they are physically in the briefing room, reporters assigned to the White House must interrogate the Trump regime and all Republicans (who cannot hide during the sprint to the midterms) daily about the three topics he dreads most: the Epstein files, his personal corruption, and his mental and physical health. There is no satisfactory explanation for the Epstein pedophile coverup, the greed-a-thon, and/or Trump’s obvious unfitness. Yet in a display of journalistic negligence, they allow Trump to escape regular questions on these topics. If Trump or fellow Republicans refuse to respond, the press is obliged to keep at them and demand explanations.

Third, the end of jocular, frivolous conduct and social deference (e.g., standing when he enters the room, inviting him to their WHCA dinner) must end. When dealing with a wannabe dictator who has long sought to destroy a free, independent press, White House reporters need to snap out of their Stockholm Syndrome stupor and adopt a properly confrontational demeanor.

Fourth, if the press pool is reestablished with access for all news outlets, it would behoove the gaggle to change its approach. If a reporter is interrupted, harassed, insulted, or abused, the press should exit the room. Period. If Trump refuses to answer a legitimate news question or claims it was a dumb question, every other reporter must ask the same question until Trump tires out or answers. (Understanding that their MAGA flunkies from non-news outlets have been allowed into the pool, genuine reporters can explain how real news organizations operate and identify those Trump collaborators who continue coddling him.)

In sum, Trump is indisputably the greatest threat to the First Amendment we have ever faced. No president, congressional member, committee, or outside power comes close. The White House press corps has proven itself inadequate to meet the moment, and has lost access, prestige, and credibility as a result. But capitulation is a choice. The current standoff is the ideal time for responsible outlets to adjust, start behaving as fierce defenders of the truth and of democracy, and rise to meet the occasion.

-Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian 

“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment, nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles”

 

September 18, while White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was out of town, Trump suddenly announced he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” Trump wrote. “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose deep unpopularity means he is likely eager to curry favor with Trump, promptly posted that the Defense Department fully supported Trump’s decision. He claimed that the same outlets, which recently have reported that Russia has been helping Iran target U.S. troops and that the Defense Department has not fully accounted for deaths of service members or destruction of U.S. military bases, “endangered our troops with false stories, leaks, and trafficked in fiction and lies about the President, our Warriors, and their mission.”

The next day, reporters from those outlets attempting to enter the White House complex where the press facilities are located were denied entry, and Secret Service agents confiscated their press badges. On Sunday afternoon, Trump posted an image of three full black trash bags, labeled “CNN,” “MSNBC,” and “Politico,” outside the White House.

This morning, after the weekend’s backlash, he posted: “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”

There’s that “national security” claim again: the same justification he’s using for building his ballroom and now his triumphal arch. It is also, not coincidentally, the excuse President Richard M. Nixon floated for covering up the Watergate break-in in June 1972.

In any case, no one’s buying it. MAGA Republicans have tried to claim that President Joe Biden cancelled 400 press passes. In fact, in 2023 the Biden administration tightened the rules to get a “hard” press pass that allows repeated, unaccompanied access to the press area of the White House. To have one, a reporter had to renew it annually, be employed full-time as a reporter, have a Washington, D.C., area address, and have had recent access to the White House. With that change, the number of White House hard passes fell from 1,417 to 975 because many of those who held passes didn’t reapply. Those people could still get day passes. In any event, these changes regarded individual reporters, not entire media outlets. The Biden White House did not identify the one journalist whose hard pass application was denied.

Today CNN, MS NOW, and Politico sued Trump, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung, Secret Service director Sean Curran, and White House chief of staff Wiles for violating both the Fifth and the First Amendments. 

“This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment, nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the lawsuit says. It says Trump banned the outlets and the reporters to retaliate against the reporters for their past news coverage “because he deemed it ‘negative’ and chilling future reporting about him and his administration’s policies and actions.” They are suing for the restoration of their press credentials for their coverage of the White House.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, appointed by Trump to the bench in 2017, was assigned the case. Although Trump appointed Kelly, in 2018, the judge ruled that Trump’s revoking of journalist Jim Acosta’s hard press pass likely violated his due process rights. Trump groused that the news outlets “have drawn a great Judge, for them, a man who ruled in favor of Jim Acosta.” Apparently anticipating a loss, he has already vowed to appeal.

He ranted that journalists were demeaning the Oval Office by reporting negative stories about him. “Virtually every story about me, or anything having to do with me, is negative, wrong and, in many cases, DANGEROUS for our Country! No matter how GREAT my Achievements, they trivialize and demean,” he posted. “I have an obligation to fight for the Success and Safety of our Country. FAKE NEWS IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY, and I will do whatever is necessary to make sure that the U.S.A. thrives.”

Podcaster Allison Gill noted that Judge Kelly ordered the government to respond to the lawsuit by tomorrow, and that he has set a hearing for Wednesday afternoon at 3:30. Perhaps of even more concern to Trump is that the major news networks are refusing to cover him on television, starving him of media oxygen.

ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News take turns providing the television coverage of the president, and CNN was supposed to be in charge of the TV pool today. With CNN banned, the other networks refused to take its place, leaving television coverage of Trump suspended. A.J. Katz of The Wrap reported on their joint statement, in which they said: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

This afternoon, Trump held an event at the White House, but without a press pool, there was no audio. It was just footage of Trump standing with a group of people and apparently talking. The White House advertised “The White House App” on social media, claiming users could “[g]et real-time updates and live events streamed DIRECTLY to your phone. No noise. Just the news that matters most—straight from the Trump Administration. DOWNLOAD NOW,” it said.

Users were not kind. One commented: “I’d rather launch my phone into the sun than install a government propaganda app.” Others noted that the administration is eager to get its hands on user information, and only a fool would install what could be spyware on their phone. Peter Alexander of MS NOW had his own response to Trump’s attacks on the press: “This is not normal. This is not business as usual,” he said.

“What’s happening right now is different. The latest threat against our cherished freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution. The media is not perfect. There’s a debate to be had about who you trust, where you should get your news.

“This is something bigger, though. Among the privileges, the duties of a free press, are to hold power to account, to ask the difficult questions, to document history as it happens. The president says fake news is reporting that is untrue. In fact, it’s reporting that he finds unflattering.

“And here’s the reality. A little more than seven weeks until the midterms, many of the facts are unflattering. Where to begin? Gas prices, now $4.48 a gallon on average, $1.50 more than where they were before the war with Iran began. Ask farmers about the price of diesel, now at a record high, nearly $6.50 a gallon.

“All of it due to a war the president started, a war he vowed would be done within weeks but is now in its seventh month. Eighteen American service members dead, if not more, and that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

“A trade war with Canada, an obsession with the Kennedy Center, if it’s not demolished like the East Wing, then there’s the grift, the self-dealing, a Russian oligarch paying for Trump’s son’s wedding party, billions of dollars made by the Trump family.

“Those are the facts. They may be unflattering, but they are not fake.

“I’ve been there since the beginning. Trump’s frustration, this fury, it didn’t happen overnight. On the campaign trail, I remember, before he even took office, he would yell at us in the bullpen in the back of those large rallies, riling up the MAGA crowd. Once elected, he would insult reporters to their face—I’ve been there—and he would call journalists the enemy of the people. As one of my former colleagues described it, Trump is trying to discredit the messenger, to create a vacuum where his version of reality fills that void.

“But the answer from journalists is simple. To report more, with more sources, more digging, more facts.” Trump has his own answer. The White House YouTube channel announced this afternoon that at 7:00 tonight it will launch “TRUMP TV: The Essentials Station.”

—Heather Cox Richardson

 

The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way

 

In the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Sen. Susan Collins walked into a perilous meeting at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C. For the first time in her two-decade Senate career, the Republican lawmaker from Maine was in danger of losing her seat. Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings were dragging her down in the polls, and she was falling behind her likely 2020 Democratic challenger in fundraising.

Scott Reed, head of the Collins super PAC, was on a mission to close that gap. Reed was meeting that day with three executives from a Hawaiian defense contractor, Navatek. A year earlier, Collins had helped their company land a multimillion-dollar Navy research contract in Maine. Now, seated at a coffee shop not far from the U.S. Capitol, Reed asked them for a $500,000 donation.

Government contractors are banned from making political contributions. More consequentially, for the company to offer donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal bribery.

But the company did have such a proposal: Navatek was hungry for more government contracts in Maine. If they cut a big check, the CEO told Reed, Navatek wanted Collins to guarantee tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding.

To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said — and that Navatek would get its government contracts.

After the Corner Bakery meeting, Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins super PAC using the shell company. Two months later, he told Navatek executives that Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal company email reviewed by ProPublica.

Three years later, Kao holed up in a conference room to recount the Corner Bakery meeting to a group of four FBI agents and federal prosecutors. The FBI had seen through his shell company ruse, and in 2022 a grand jury indicted him for making illegal campaign contributions. No one working for Collins was charged. Facing years in prison, Kao hoped to do less time by revealing the entire scheme.

What he told them has never before become public. The Corner Bakery meeting, he asserted, was just one episode in a sprawling pay-to-play operation that embroiled some of the most powerful figures in Congress.

Over three days at the U.S. attorney’s office in Honolulu, Kao laid out in devastating detail how his operation worked. He gave agents a 50-page document naming dozens of lobbyists, congressional staffers and members of Congress who he said helped him trade cash for contracts. Kao and his close associates had donated nearly $900,000 to dozens of politicians, allowing Navatek to establish operations in half a dozen states with over $40 million a year in government funding.

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Most damningly, Kao told FBI agents and prosecutors, the company’s work for the government was of no real value. Navatek’s research under his stewardship never resulted in products the military wanted to buy, ProPublica found.

Kao’s tell-all interviews with the FBI lasted into late 2024. His confessions opened up an entirely new phase of the investigation. Agents sifted through hundreds of thousands of records seized during Kao’s arrest and found that many were consistent with his account of widespread influence peddling.

Kao had credibility issues. He was now a felon trying to avoid a lengthy prison sentence. And there were other challenges. Building a corruption case against elected officials requires extraordinary proof of a quid pro quo arrangement, in part because the Supreme Court has narrowed what counts as bribery.

Even so, by the end of 2024, the agents had enough evidence to pursue a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers of both political parties. 

They asked their supervisors to approve a new investigation and contemplated using undercover operatives to gather more evidence. Although their effort was in its early stages, and it was unclear where it would lead, FBI agents asked Kao extensive questions about his dealings with Collins and her office.

Then Trump returned to the White House. Consumed by a campaign of vengeance, he stacked the Department of Justice with his personal lawyers and demanded a purge of anyone who had ever investigated him. The specialized FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption investigations, some of which were involved in Trump-related cases, were eviscerated. 

One of the agents who had taken Kao’s confession was pushed out as retribution for her role in investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Dozens of agents and prosecutors quit amid the department’s destruction, including the career attorney assigned to Kao’s case.

Trump’s Justice Department no longer takes on public corruption in any meaningful fashion, former officials said. The investigation sparked by Kao’s revelations is dead. And the government is no longer talking to an informant who had offered a road map to corruption in Congress.

The White House referred ProPublica to the FBI.

FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said the agency had investigated claims against Collins years ago “and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign. Any suggestion otherwise is totally false.” Williamson said the Trump administration has removed agents only “if they have been found to have acted unethically, undermined the mission, or engaged in weaponization of law enforcement.”

Williamson did not respond to questions about the new investigation launched in 2024 based on Kao’s previously unreported cooperation with the FBI.

ProPublica is revealing the existence of the case for the first time. We reviewed a trove of evidence gathered by the FBI and thousands of pages of legal records, and interviewed dozens of people familiar with Navatek, its Washington operations, and the FBI inquiry to conduct our own investigation. We independently corroborated much of Kao’s account. Whether or not Kao’s dealings with politicians amount to criminal bribery, the Trump Justice Department has little interest in finding out, and his sheer success reveals how easily influence is purchased in Washington today. This is the first in a series of stories drawn from our reporting.

Of all the politicians Navatek courted under Kao’s leadership, Collins was its most important patron. The senator’s office steered government contracts worth millions toward the company while her campaign was pumping Kao and his network for donations, according to emails seen by ProPublica. Sometimes they cut checks within 24 hours of the annual defense spending bill, which funds military contracts, clearing a key Senate hurdle.

Collins’ office did not specifically address questions about the Corner Bakery meeting, the senator’s relationship with Kao and the millions she helped appropriate for Navatek.

Annie Clark, Collins’ deputy chief of staff, told ProPublica in an email that Collins’ office “vigorously” denies allegations of bribery and pay-for-play made by Kao, calling his claims “outlandish.” Collins’ campaign was not part of the discussions between Kao and the super PAC, and her office “fully cooperated” with the FBI investigation, Clark said.

“The fact that the FBI and Biden-led Department of Justice thoroughly examined the Navatek matter demonstrates this,” Clark wrote. “These issues were resolved in 2021 and concluded when the Collins campaign disgorged the illegal contributions that Martin Kao had made without our knowledge.”

Collins is once again fighting to keep her seat, in a race that could determine control of the Senate. On the campaign trail, she spotlights the funding she directs to Maine while leading the appropriations committee, which she calls “the most powerful committee in the Senate.”

She demonstrated that power with Navatek. After the budgets became law, Collins’ office pushed the Navy to award specific contracts to Navatek, emails seen by ProPublica show, even though awards are supposed to be competitive.

“I spoke with Sen. Collins office regarding the $8M,” a naval official wrote in an email on Feb. 6, 2019. “The interested company is Navatek.”

In a meeting with Collins and two campaign officials, Kao said, the officials told him the senator expected his ongoing support. Collins told him: “You’ve seen me deliver,” Kao said.

Reed knew Kao was behind the $150,000 anonymous donation, emails showed, because Kao told Reed he planned to donate through a shell company. “Very smart,” Reed replied in an email viewed by ProPublica.

Reed did not respond to detailed questions about the Corner Bakery meeting, the $150,000 donation and Kao’s allegations. “I understand Martin Kao is now sitting in federal prison,” Reed wrote in a brief email. “I never had any communications with Senator Collins [or] her staff about Martin Kao and/or Navatek.”

But an email seen by ProPublica suggests that someone must have relayed the news of Kao’s donation to Collins, just like Reed promised to do in Kao’s recounting of the Corner Bakery meeting. Seven days after the super PAC cashed the check from Kao’s shell company, one of Reed’s subordinates emailed a Navatek lobbyist asking for Kao’s phone number: “Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him.” […].

-ProPublica

by William Turton, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Molly Redden and Kirsten Berg

For the entire story:

FBI Eyed Susan Collins Over Defense Contractor’s Donations — ProPublica