News & Politics

A one-time biographer for President Donald Trump has predicted a shock Cabinet firing in the near future, and all for a surprising reason, which he said was "absolutely fatal": actually being competent at his job.

Michael Wolff is a reporter and author known for his extensive coverage of Trump over the years, including several books about the chaos of his first administration, based on his contacts within the administration. He maintains these connections now, for the second administration, and in the latest episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head," he argued that his long-term exposure to the president has given him a good sense of how things will proceed in the near future.

This included a prediction about the next firing to come from the Trump administration, a top official Wolff said is making the president look bad by comparison.

"I have watched Trump operate now for way, way too long—10 years in which... Donald Trump has dominated my life, and... because he does the same thing over and over and over again, [I have become] pretty good at being able to chart the Donald Trump course," Wolff explained.

He continued: "I think he’s going to fire Marco Rubio. I mean, Rubio has now become the standout figure in this administration."

Rubio, the Secretary of State, has cleared the low bar among Trump officials for competency, and according to Wolff, is "the only guy who seems to show up for work every day and to sit down at a desk and to be capable of addressing what’s on his desk at any given time." The competency and prominence within the administration have led to increasingly loud chatter about Rubio potentially securing the 2028 GOP presidential nomination, over Vice President JD Vance, making him the de facto successor at the head of the MAGA movement.

While Wolff did not write off the possibility of Rubio running in 2028, potentially with Trump's support, he still argued that the secretary will not be in his role much longer, because of the president's fear that somebody else looks like they are in charge behind the scenes.

"In Trumpworld, this is absolutely fatal. When you become the contrast gainer against Donald Trump, you’re finished," Wolff said. "When it begins to look like you are the person who is really in charge, you’re done."

Wolff likened the situation to the one in 20217, when former adviser Steve Bannon got the axe shortly after a Time Magazine cover proclaimed him to be the "Great Manipulator" in Trump's White House.

“You cannot do this around Donald Trump,” Wolff continued. “He just won’t let you. He’ll kill you — just chop off your head.”

He further predicted that Rubio's ouster will come prior to the midterms, as part of an effort from Trump to "change the subject."

Is President Donald Trump starting to lose his tight grip on House and Senate Republicans? It was not that long ago that Trump would make a demand and they would rush to fulfill it. Now, that power appears to be waning.

“Is President Donald Trump losing sway on Capitol Hill?” is the question Punchbowl News asked Wednesday.

“On issue after issue,” Punchbowl notes, “Republicans are giving Trump the stiff arm. They’re ignoring his policy demands and overlooking his diatribes, even as they continue pledging allegiance to Trump politically.”

For months, Trump has asked — and demanded — Congress pass the SAVE America Act, what critics call a voter suppression bill. It has yet to reach his desk. He vowed if he signs it into law, Republicans would never lose a race for fifty years. That was not enough impetus for them to act. He threatened to sign no legislation until it passed. Still, it sits, languishing, in the Senate.

Trump demanded the Senate kill the filibuster, in part to help pass his SAVE Act. Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune refused. Other Senate Republicans indicated they too were uncomfortable with eliminating the 60-vote threshold.

Trump said he would temporarily eliminate the federal gas tax to reduce the cost of skyrocketing gas prices — a direct result of his Iran war. But he needs Congress to approve it. And top Republicans don’t appear especially interested.

Punchbowl reports that Majority Leader Thune “is all but dismissing Trump’s call,” to pause the gas tax, and Speaker Mike Johnson “called it an ‘intriguing idea’ but noted it came with challenges.”

Then there’s the issue of Trump’s highly-controversial White House ballroom. Some Republicans appear to be balking at voting to spend $1 billion for security enhancements surrounding the project — fearing it will look tone deaf as Americans struggle to pay for gas and groceries.

On Tuesday the head of the Secret Service went to Capitol Hill to try to convince Republicans of the need to spend $1 billion. It reportedly did not go over well.

House and Senate Republicans were “cool to the Secret Service’s demand,” Punchbowl reported, noting that they “asked one GOP senator whether it was convincing, and they said, ‘Nope.'”

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson delivered “an explicit rebuke” to Trump’s demand that the House pass the Senate’s housing bill, instead saying that the House would work to make changes to the legislation.

House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-AR) told Punchbowl “no” when they asked if Trump’s social media post would “prompt him to move quicker.”

U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI), the panel’s vice chair, told Punchbowl, “I am not focused on the president’s Truth Socials on this.”

Trump’s waning power over congressional Republicans has been on a “slow boil” for months. Punchbowl points to Republicans refusing “Trump’s demand to put language blocking state AI regulations in the NDAA last year,” and his call for legislation to end sanctuary cities.

The New Republic's Greg Sargent spoke with Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg on his morning podcast about the challenges President Donald Trump and the GOP face in ending the Iran war.

As the Iran war drags on past its 60-day limit and the Strait of Hormuz's closure sends fuel prices soaring, Trump appears to believe everything will suddenly end. Somehow, Iran will finally agree to the U.S.'s demands despite refusing over the past several years since Trump left the treaty.

"They also have said that they think the war is just going to end magically, right?" Rosenberg said. "Just the way that COVID ended. He kept saying COVID is just going to end one day. The war is just going to end, and things are going to snap back to the way they were. And I think that is the widespread belief in the Republican Party now, that this is a temporary blip."

The reality, he continued, is that inflation data now show it has surpassed Americans' wages. Inflation not only went up, U.S. wholesale inflation, known as the Producer Price Index, increased to 6 percent, April numbers show, according to the Associated Press. It makes it the highest increase since December 2022.

"Remember, energy inflation is different than food inflation or different than other inflation because it affects anything that is transported. That also goes up in price," Rosenberg explained. "So, it’s like a multiplier through the economy. It’s not just a singular pillar of inflation."

The impact will likely be on food prices, he added.

"Trump and the Republicans, I think, are in a place of extraordinary denial and magical thinking about the depth of the hole that he’s digging for them right now because of the war," said Rosenberg.

All of it will have a major impact on the 2026 midterm elections.

"You can win an election just on voters being sick of the party in power and have the election that you want to have. And we’ve been having test cases around the election in all these special elections and other elections over the last 16 months. And things have been going very well for Democrats," Rosenberg noted.

Trump is in China this week, and one military expert said that Trump's goal is to get Xi Jinping to help him end the war since China purchases so much oil from Iran.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that Trump should "realize that the person you're talking to is propping up Russia and Iran." He claimed that if China wanted, it could have more influence than any other nation in ending the war.

Trump told reporters before leaving for China, "No, I don't think we need any help with Iran."

A new CNN deep-dive poll showed Americans are fed up with rising costs, and it might be too late for Republicans to fix the problem. With GOP leaders mired in internal fights over a gas tax holiday, ballooning Iran war spending and a controversial $1 billion taxpayer-funded add-on tied to Trump’s White House ballroom, lawmakers are scrambling for a quick fix while voters blame the party in power. The result has been a lots of posturing, few concrete solutions and growing doubt that Congress can deliver meaningful relief before the midterms.

Politico reported Wednesday morning that the GOP is embroiled in "internal battles on Capitol Hill ... laying bare why Republicans are struggling to do anything about it."

Democrats proposed a gas tax holiday, which President Donald Trump indicated he supports. The problem, as one CNN panel discussed Tuesday, is that it is exceptionally rare that any legislation can pass the House and Senate despite Republicans holding the majority in both chambers. The second challenge is that Trump has been promising "checks" for Americans struggling to get by amid the crisis. None of those promises has come to fruition, CNN's Audi Cornish recalled.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) isn't certain if he supports the gas tax holiday, saying there could be “unintended consequences."

“Obviously, we all want to see gas prices come back down, and when the Iran conflict is resolved, they will, and they’ll come down quickly. I don’t think anybody disputes that," said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.)

“You’re seeing the president work really hard to try to get this resolved,” he added. “Hopefully it’s soon.”

The final piece of legislation that could pass Congress is the funding for Trump's mass deportation program through Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Republicans now want to add on $1 billion in funding for Trump's ballroom under the guise that it is for "security."

Speaking to Republicans on Tuesday, the Secret Service said that the funding is more about security and training than for the ballroom itself. It's unclear why those funds weren't requested from the Secret Service when the House and Senate passed the Homeland Security funding bill on April 30 or in the 2026 budget bill passed last summer.

Only about $220 million will be used on the ballroom itself for bullet-resistant glass and the ventilation system.

House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told Politico that he doesn't doubt Secret Service wants more money, but he wanted to “reserve judgment” on the $1 billion ballroom request. He wants a more “itemized” list.

“I hope it’s narrowly tailored to getting [immigration enforcement] funded and restoring the safety and security of the American people,” Arrington said. He has previously said he wants affordability in the bill.

Things got worse on Tuesday when Defense Department officials revealed that the budget for the Iran War went up from $25 billion to $29 billion. Both sides of the political aisle have requested a line-item list of what all of that is going to.

“I don’t know that the Congress is doing a whole lot — that’s the real issue,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Politico. “My advice to Congress would be, it might be good for us to do something on cost of living. … It seems like voters are making it very clear that they want some relief.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters the optics of the ballroom against high fuel costs is "not good."

Republicans believe that 2025's "One Big, Beautiful Bill" was more than enough to help with the affordability crisis.

Senate Republicans proposed increasing permits for oil drilling to lower fuel costs. It's an idea that Trump proposed in 2024, promising Americans that within one year, he would cut their utility bills in half. The problem with fuel prices is that oil is a globally traded commodity. The larger problem isn't domestic, it's an international factor involving the Strait of Hormuz's closure. At the same time, permits might help create more drilling, but it doesn't begin immediately. It takes time to drill for oil and natural gas, refine it, and transport it. The U.S. is currently producing more energy than ever before and prices are still increasing.

“I’d just be happy if they do something,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Politico on Tuesday. He said the problem is “one or two” House Republicans.

“They’ve been holding it up since God was a baby. Their reasons for holding it up run from substantive to ‘my dog ate my homework,'" Kennedy said.

Trump was asked about the high costs Americans are suffering under due to the Iran war. The reporter questioned whether Trump was considering America's financial situation when he's thinking about solutions on the war.

“I don’t think about America’s financial situation,” Trump said. “I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

President Donald Trump's ability to sway the 2026 midterms asserted itself when, on May 5, at least five of eight GOP primary challengers he endorsed unseated incumbents in Indiana State Legislature races. The incumbents Trump was angry with will not make it to the general election, but many Trump critics are warning that his ability to affect Republican primaries and his ability to affect general elections are two very different things. And according to Semafor, party insiders fear that maintaining Republican control of Congress isn't as a high a priority for Trump as it is for GOP lawmakers.

In Semafor, journalists Shelby Talcott and Burgess Everett report, "Trump is still facing questions from within the GOP about how determined he is to keep control of Congress, as he seeks longer-term, legacy-defining foreign policy achievements amid declining approval ratings."

A Republican insider, interviewed on condition of anonymity, told Semafor that Trump is "certainly not" motivated when it comes to the midterms "in the same way the rest of the party" is — adding, "His mission goes so far beyond one election cycle or one midterm.”

Although Trump is "increasingly engaged in the midterms," Talcott and Everett report, Republican insiders worry that his "choices won't always align with congressional Republicans' calculations" — and Trump pattern appears to be "trying to shape his legacy" rather than "anything else."

Trump, according to the insiders Semafor interviewed, appears to be focused on what benefits him personally rather than what benefits the Republican Party on the whole — including not losing either or both branches of Congress to Democrats in November. And he is being quite "selective" with his endorsements, Talcott and Everett note. For example, Trump has yet to make an endorsement in Texas' GOP U.S. Senate primary.

"Republicans might bristle at Trump choosing to stay out of certain races," the Semafor reporters observe, "but while the U.S. president has a strong hold over his party, he's not infallible. And he has his reasons for being so selective. In Texas or Georgia, it's not clear he can orchestrate a result like he pulled off in Kentucky. And the calculus is even more challenging in bluer states."

Why does President Donald Trump need the "staggering" sum of $1.5 trillion in military funding? According to a new piece from the New York Times, it is to fund his "weirdly retro" military fantasies — and also to avoid having to make "difficult choices" and turn defense spending into an "endless casino buffet."

Writing for the Times on Wednesday, veteran national security reporter Noah Shachtman wrote that this latest funding request from the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase from the one it made last year, which was already "incomprehensible," and is roughly the same as "the annual revenues of Amazon, Google’s parent company and Apple combined."

Shachtman also explained why the request was not even really a "budget" request, in the traditional sense, as it essentially provides the Defense Department with enough money that it would not have to make strategic spending decisions.

"The word 'budget' ordinarily implies picking among options, living within your means," Shachtman explained. "Earlier military budgets, even the most gigantic ones, made trade-offs — canceled weapons programs, deferred maintenance, smaller fighting forces, to name a few. [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth’s plan avoids those choices almost entirely."

He continued: "It would funnel more money to the traditional military contractors that Mr. Hegseth previously called out for feasting on a wasteful, bloated system. It would bankroll President Trump’s weirdly retro military wish list. On top of all that, Mr. Hegseth has asked Congress for $350 billion that would come with far less oversight or accountability than the rest of the sum. And that’s before the bill for the Iran war comes due; the Pentagon estimates it has cost $29 billion so far, up from an estimate of $25 billion a few weeks ago."

Todd Harrison is a military budget specialist for the center-right American Enterprise Institute, and he offered further insight into the rationale behind the ludicrously high funding request.

"They’re just doing an all-of-the-above approach," Harrison told the Times, adding that this strategy would mean they "don’t have to make difficult choices" when it comes to funding allocations.

This funding request, which would effectively turn the DOD into an "endless casino buffet" of military spending, "was more like a dare" than a real and carefully crafted budget proposal, attempting to "reframe the debate on his own maximalist terms." Shachtman noted that the Pentagon reportedly "scrambled" to find ways to even begin spending such a large sum of money.

CNN reported Wednesday morning (U.S. time) that during the 20-plus-hour flight President Donald Trump took from Washington D.C. to Beijing on Tuesday and Wednesday, he never once spoke to the press, which is unusual.

As the president landed in China ahead of his summit with Xi Jinping, Senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes reported that a number of tech CEOs were on the plane with Trump while others took the overflow plane.

"So you see them now opening the door, John, and we'll wait and see how long President Trump takes to actually come out and greet everyone," continued Holmes. "He's been on a long flight and he didn't talk to the press at all, which is incredibly notable. A guy who loves talking to the press, particularly when he's on a 20-or-so-hour flight, he did not do that this time around."

Co-host Kate Bolduan keyed in on the comments and how unusual it was.

"That was actually going to be my question because I was — we of course, as we woke up to the news, you know, woke up to knowing that you guys were all flying over waiting and kind of expecting" Trump to speak to the press, Bolduan explained.

"Are we going to get some information or a gaggle, if nothing else, of the president?" the host asked.

Co-host John Berman returned to the matter in a later conversation, saying that Trump allowed his final remarks about Iran and America's economic situation to marinate in the political news.

Trump on Tuesday, before departing for China, told reporters he doesn't think "even a little bit" about Americans' financial situation when executing the war in Iran.

“The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon," Trump said Tuesday.

Two and one-half months into President Donald Trump's war with Iran, the U.S. Army is, according to ABC News, suffering from a "sudden budget crunch." And ABC News' Steve Beynon reports that the Army is addressing the problem by "scrambling" to make training cuts.

ABC News and U.S. officials, according to Beynon, went over internal Army documents discussing their budgetary challenges. Beynon reports that "the move is to make up for a shortfall of some $4 billion to $6 billion, according to one of the officials, as the service has drastically expanded its operational footprint at home and abroad."

"The cuts, which range from elite schools to unit-level training, have triggered a wave of abrupt cancellations and unusually aggressive spending scrutiny months before the fiscal year ends September 30," Beynon explains. "The service's multibillion-dollar shortfall is the product of a widening set of operational demands and rising costs across the force."

The Iran war isn't the only thing fueling the military's budgetary woes.

"Major drivers, a U.S. official noted, have been costs associated with the Iran war and an expanding mission securing the southern U.S. border," Beynon reports. "Additionally, expansive National Guard missions, including the ongoing deployment in Washington, D.C., which alone is projected to cost roughly $1.1 billion this year, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. At the same time, the service is absorbing ballooning personnel expenses and stepping in to cover missions tied to Department of Homeland Security funding lapses, including at the southern border and construction projects."

Beynon adds, "The Army is expected to be reimbursed for covering down for some of (the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's) expenses incurred during the record 76-day DHS shutdown."

According to Beynond, the U.S. Army's III Armored Corps is "expected to bear a lot of the brunt" of the training cuts.

"That internal plan warns that the corps' aviation units will deploy next year at 'a lower state of readiness,' and 'career stagnation' of mid-level officers who would oversee key training events and noted it would take a full year for units to rebuild 'combat proficiency,'" Beynon explains. "The corps commands some 70,000 soldiers representing nearly half of the service's combat power."

While Republicans have managed to make inroads in the Congressional maps for U.S. House of Representatives races, the U.S. Senate map is growing increasingly worse for the GOP.

Speaking to "Morning Joe" on Wednesday morning, David Drucker addressed his recent Bloomberg piece, in which he recalled the 2018 elections during President Donald Trump's first term. In that case, Democrats gained 40 seats. However, that was before GOP states were allowed to redraw and gerrymander congressional lines and blue Virginia was not.

"But the Republican majority grew by two seats [in the Senate] because they picked up some seats in red states. So, even though the president wasn't doing well in red states, he was doing just fine," Drucker said. "And that's how this election was unfolding. Democrats are looking very good in the House still. Republicans [are] looking very good in the Senate except for a couple of places."

Things are changing as problems continue in the U.S. economy.

"What we are beginning to detect in my conversations with Republicans, which — who would, you know, to be clear, prefer this doesn't happen. Is that the playing field on the Senate map is becoming perilous for Republicans," Drucker continued. "Now, the reason why Democrats shouldn't jump for joy is because if they're going to have a good election on the Senate side, it's going to be in defined red territory."

Outside of Maine and North Carolina, gains must be made in reliably red states like Iowa, Ohio and others.

Co-host Joe Scarborough asked specifically about long-shot states like Iowa and Texas, which he called "fool's gold."

Drucker explained that Texas will be heavily contested, but agreed that it isn't as likely. Where things could change is in the Republican runoff on May 26.

What he called "super interesting" is Alaska. Drucker said that it's been a spot that Republicans have been concerned about since 2024. Former Rep. Mary Peltola, the Democrat, has already won the statewide race for the at-large congressional seat. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) appears to "know that," with a voting record that has evolved recently. He votes with the Trump administration 100 percent of the time, VoteHub showed.

Fellow Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted with Trump 90.8 percent of the time. Her numbers have been lower in the previous administration, closer to a 78 percent alignment with Trump. Whereas Sullivan has never dropped below 91 percent alignment.

In a piece published Wednesday morning, the New York Times editorial board reserved particular criticism for the GOP-led Congress as it tracked President Donald Trump's efforts to poison American democracy, ripping the lawmakers for backing off when they could be doing things to stop it.

In the new piece, the board explained that the war with Iran is "the most significant military action in American history that a president has undertaken without any form of congressional authorization," marking a significant acceleration of Trump's "erosion" of democracy and disregard for Congress.

"Mr. Trump has received no approval whatsoever from Congress, the only branch of government with the constitutional authority to declare war," the board explained.

The piece included a chart with 12 metrics measuring Trump's damage to Democracy, graded on a scale of zero to 10, and based on the current state of the Iran war, the board confirmed that it was increasing the grade for bypassing the legislative branch by one notch, up to five.

"When a democracy slides toward autocracy, the leader often finds ways to neuter the legislature," the board explained. "Mr. Trump has done so in many ways: by usurping Congress’s power of the purse and imposing widespread tariffs (which courts have often deemed illegal; gutting congressionally authorized agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development; withholding approved funds for schools, libraries and scientific research; using private donations to pay for his White House ballroom during a government shutdown; attacking boats in the Caribbean and invading Venezuela; and more."

The board added: "Over the past two and half months, Mr. Trump has ordered thousands of strikes against another country and killed its leader. The war has roiled global energy markets and drained American munitions stockpiles. Yet despite its scope and stakes, the president continues to show disdain for members of Congress who ask questions about the war and has not even provided a coherent rationale for it."

In making this determination, the board added that Congress, which Trump's Republican Party controls both chambers of, bears considerable blame for the president's conduct, given its refusal to step up and rein him in.

"Congressional Republicans deserve significant responsibility for the situation," the board explained. "They could and should do much more to constrain him. Congress could pass a resolution expressing its disapproval of the war and hold hearings investigating it, raising the political pressure on the White House. It could refuse to confirm nominees or fund Mr. Trump’s military priorities until he adheres to his constitutional duty to work with the legislature. Otherwise, members of Congress are participating in America's slide from democracy."

With the 2026 midterms less than six months away and President Donald Trump suffering from persistently low approval ratings in countless polls, some GOP lawmakers have a warning for members of their party: voters are angry. A CNN/SSRS poll released on May 12 found that only 30 percent of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the economy — and almost 70 percent fear the United States will go into a recession in the next year.

According to Politico reporters Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and other GOP lawmakers are urging fellow lawmakers to be more proactive about the economy — especially inflation.

"Americans are furious about the rising cost of living, and a series of internal battles on Capitol Hill this week is laying bare why Republicans are struggling to do anything about it," Carney and Hill report. "House and Senate Republicans are facing divisions over a gas-tax holiday being demanded by President Donald Trump, not to mention housing and energy permitting bills that have stalled for months…. The scale of the political challenges facing Republicans were further underscored Tuesday with the administration's latest cost estimate for the Iran war surpassing $29 billion and a brutal inflation report showing gas, grocery and housing prices surging last month amid the conflict."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told Politico that the look is "not good" when Trump continues to push for a lavish White House ballroom while Americans are struggling with high gas prices.

Hawley told Politico, "I don't know that the Congress is doing a whole lot — that's the real issue. My advice to Congress would be, it might be good for us to do something on cost of living.… It seems like voters are making it very clear that they want some relief."

Trump is calling for a gas tax holiday, but Sens. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Jim Justice (R-Virginia) aren't impressed.

Justice likened the proposal to "taking aspirin for cancer," and Paul told Politico, "I think instead of suspending the tax, we should suspend the war."

President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is discussing settling his $10 billion lawsuit, potentially costing each taxpayer roughly $100 — and doing so despite a judge’s attempt to protect the public interest.

“The Justice Department is holding internal discussions about settling President Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in the coming days, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, a move that could involve the government directly providing taxpayer funds or another public benefit to the president,” reported The New York Times’ Andrew Duehren and Alan Feuer on Tuesday. “Whether to settle the suit and on what terms remains up in the air. One of the settlement options the Justice Department and White House officials are reviewing is the possibility of the I.R.S. dropping any audits of Mr. Trump, his family members or businesses, according to two of the people.”

Trump, his two sons and his family business are suing the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion by arguing the agency should have done more to prevent the leak of his tax returns. Because Trump oversees the Justice Department, which is assigned to defend the IRS, in April Judge Kathleen M. Williams appointed three law firms to serve as friends of the court to iron out the complex legal and logistical details involved in the unprecedented case.

“For a lawsuit to be valid, the two parties must actually be on opposite sides, otherwise the judge can throw out the case,” the Times reported. “The judge has ordered Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers — along with the Justice Department, which represents the I.R.S. in federal court — to submit briefs by May 20 explaining whether they are in conflict with one another.”

In addition to potentially promising to cease all audits on the Trumps, the settlement could still require the government to pay the Trump family, marking the first time in American history that a sitting president received a large legal settlement from US taxpayers while in office. Even though settling before the deadline would leave all of the potential ethical issues unresolved, experts believe Williams would be powerless to stop it.

“She would not likely be able to prevent Mr. Trump from simply withdrawing the suit and coming to a private agreement with the federal government,” the Times reported. “Even if the judge were to ultimately find that the settlement was collusive or reached in bad faith, she would likely be hamstrung in any effort to stop money or other benefits from changing hands.”

The legal consensus from experts is that the Justice Department would not normally settle a case like the one presented by the Trumps, with a group of former IRS and Justice Department officials filing an amicus brief pointing out that Trump filed the suit too late and his request for $10 billion is far too large. Indeed, a similar case by hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin was settled without any financial compensation; Griffin instead received a public apology.

As the libertarian commentator James Bovard recently pointed out in USA Today, if Trump’s lawsuit prevails and he receives $10 billion, that would require every American to pay him roughly $100 directly.

“Roughly 100 million Americans pay federal income taxes annually (not counting people who receive more in earned income tax credits than they pay in income taxes),” Bovard wrote. “A $10 billion settlement divided by 100 million taxpayers works out to about $100 per taxpayer, or $200 per couple.”

He added, “If congressional Democrats are savvy, they would mandate that the payout to Trump be financed by IRS penalty letters sent directly to 100 million taxpayers. To add salt to the wound, citizens could be compelled to send their payments directly to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.”

Although Trump has defended the potentially unprecedented sum by arguing he would donate the money to charities, conservative commentator Andrew Egger pointed out that “Trump had been using his personal charity, it came to light after a lawsuit from the state of New York, to pay his business debts, make political contributions, and buy things for himself.”

Former FBI acting director Brian Driscoll told CNN anchor Anderson Cooper that he does not regret withholding the names of FBI officials targeted for firing because they were assigned to investigations involving President Donald Trump.

Driscoll was fired in August 2025 by FBI Director Kash Patel, following his resistance to demands to turn over names of agents. Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general at the time, charged Driscoll to produce a list of all FBI employees, some 6,000 names, but Driscoll instead submitted identification numbers that did not contain names.

Driscoll told CNN that when he asked Bove why he needed that list of employees, the response he got was that there was “cultural rot in the FBI.”

At that point Driscoll told Coope that he sent a bureau-wide email to all 38,000 FBI employees informing them of Bove’s request for additional names involved in January 6 investigations. Bove accused Driscoll of “insubordination” and sent out an email claiming without fact that “No FBI employee who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner with respect to January 6 investigations is at risk of termination or other penalties.”

“Well, this is wrong and we're going to speak truth to power and I'm going to speak truth to you,” Driscoll told Cooper. “I'm not the smartest, I'm not the best agent ever in the bureau. I am certainly not the best investigator, the best at anything, and I have been around people better than me in every way, and I learned from all of them, and in those moments, I just need to leverage everything I had and give it back to them and I wouldn't change it. I don't regret it, and I'd do it again.”

But Driscoll, who had only recently been promoted to his new post, called the scenario of political targeting inside the FBI “a nightmare.”

“[You] have the weight of 38,000 people and the world's finest law enforcement organization on your shoulders, and you're watching it be compromised legally,” said Driscoll.

“The FBI was being compromised?” asked Tapper.

“One hundred percent,” Driscoll answered.

- YouTube youtu.be

Conservative Dispatch staff writer Nick Catoggio lined up a legion of lies that will inevitably be the undoing of the Republican Party in November.

In addition to pushing a tariff policy that China leaders themselves praised as damaging to the U.S., Catoggio said Trump “bungled the task of taming the dragon about as thoroughly as it can be bungled, most recently by burning through weapons stockpiles in Iran that were supposed to keep China honest in the Far East. And the Chinese have noticed.”

Oh, but there’s so much more, gripes Catoggio, referring to Trump’s recent claim on Fox News of considering making Venezuela the 51^st state because of its oil reserves. Trump probably wasn’t entirely serious, but the claim contradicts everything about his MAGA promise to prevent: “importing the third world” to the U.S if he turns “a country of almost 30 million Hispanics into a U.S. state, particularly a country that’s famously impoverished,” said Catoggio.

But Catoggio said “practically everywhere you look over the past 16 months, you’ll find Trump breaking one of the promises that got him elected,” with Trump’s Iran war possibly being “the most consequential ideological betrayal by any president in my lifetime, poisonous to everyone except his core base,” said Catoggio.

“If you’re one of the three or four people in America who took Trump at his word when he promised to end the weaponization of government, you’ve been rewarded by getting to watch him turn the Justice Department into a menagerie of vengeful hacks and henchmen whose headquarters now bears his photo over the front entrance,” Catoggio said. “If you believed him when he and his party complained about the so-called Biden crime family, you’ve had to endure the Trump clan turning the presidency into a full-time influence racket worth many billions of dollars in plain sight.”

On the economy, Catoggio said: “If you’re the sort of chump who set aside your qualms about January 6 and the president’s basic fitness for office and voted to reelect him because you hoped he’d stabilize your family’s finances, his negligence toward the cost of living is the ultimate electoral bait-and-switch.

But a president “who knows he can break (almost) every promise he’s made and still retain the support of at least 85 percent of his base, no questions asked, is a president who’s going to do stupid and pernicious things that will inevitably alienate most of the rest of the electorate,” said Catoggio. “So when Democrats take back the House this fall — and they probably will despite the GOP’s best ‘hacking’ efforts, as the generic ballot has begun to widen in their favor and now looks downright gruesome in some polling — don’t blame the president or his cronies in government for the party’s failure.”

Instead, Catoggio said “blame the enablers, the right-wing rank-and-file.”

“They’ve been the problem since June 2015, and they’ll continue to be the problem after Trump is gone.

Comedian and satirist Munya Chawawa’s documentary “Wrestling With Trump” punches President Donald Trump in ways he should have been punched at the very beginning of his political career, says Guardian writer Lucy Mangan.

“Trump is the ultimate showman. He’s a master of it, a billionaire Barnum, but with a greed so insatiable it moves him ever further from entertainment into malevolence,” Mangun said. “If the Democrats had realized this earlier and recognized the strength the man was playing to and the particular voting public weaknesses he was preying upon, instead of sneering with distaste, then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Chawawa, however, takes the “underused idea” that Trump and his team’s campaigns and style of government “use the same playbook as that created by the U.S. pro-wrestling industry’s most famous promoters, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE),” said Mangan.

The connection is more than obvious, added Mangan. World Wrestling Entertainment was founded by Vince McMahon and his since-estranged wife, Linda. Vince quit the business 2024 in the wake of allegations of sex trafficking and sexual assault, but his wife Linda is now the U.S. secretary of education.

One of the most-recognized tropes of fake wrestling is its habit of dividing “heroes” (white Americans) and villains (non-American, non-white Americans) with “Babyfaces” (good guys who play by the rules) “Heels” (who aren’t and don’t).

It works in the ring and at political rallies, said Chawawa, who notices Trump’s use of trash talk and his alienation of brown people to “rouse the bloodlust” and “make [voters] commit” to a world leader “who promises to rid the world of all the people perceived to be the cause” of white voters’ frustrations.

And then there’s the wrestling industry’s use of “kayfabe,” and its blurring of the lines between truth and lies. Chawawa, in his documentary, “speaks to MAGA folk who can call Trump a “blue collar billionaire” without batting an eyelid. It’s a sign of the “astonishing power” Trump has “to warp the senses, collapse contradictions and reconstruct a reality that suits him better,” reports Mangun.

“Kayfabe, in wrestling, is the pretense that everything is real – that the invective is unscripted, that the Heels’ and heroes’ backstories are authentic, that the moves are unchoreographed, and that the body slams, hip checks and chokeholds are as dangerous and painful as they look. For as long as the fight lasts, you live the illusion. Nothing is true except what you are told you see.”

Ex-diplomat Brett Bruen clearly hit the White House where it hurts after posting on X that Trump was unprepared for his upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“Not a single China expert. POTUS would normally have at least one NSC/State official to provide briefings,” posted Bruen on Tuesday. “Underlines how utterly unprepared he is for meetings with Xi.”

White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung apparently felt the sting of Bruen’s damage, however, posting on X soon after with an insult-laden rant filled with name-calling.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about you slope-brained, mouth breathing moron,” Cheung said. “Stop calling yourself an expert in anything, aside from sucking. Anyone that hires you (not many!) should get an immediate refund and payment for wasting their time.”

Bruen had cited an earlier post from News Nation White Correspondent Libby Dean, who posted a list of people joining Trump for his Tuesday meeting with the Chinese leader to discuss the mess Trump created with his attack on Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

That list includes President Trump, Eric Trump, Lara Trump, Secretary Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, Stephen Miller and Cheung, himself, among others. None of these, said Bruen, were experts on China.

“Trump will arrive on Wednesday with many in China wondering how he got bogged down by a far lesser power in a war he started. Iran’s nuclear stockpile is exactly where it was, still under the rubble of an American bombing raid last June,” the Times reports. “The Strait of Hormuz, through which China gets more than 30 percent of its oil and a bit less of its natural gas, remains closed, with no obvious plan to pry it open again.

The Times reports that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said two weeks ago, that Trump is “humiliated” by a smaller power, having entered the conflict “with no truly convincing strategy.”

Brett Bruen served as the White House Director of Global Engagement during the Obama administration and has worked as a senior diplomat in multiple capacities throughout his career. His expertise in international relations and diplomacy has made him a frequent commentator on foreign policy matters.

Bruen has been critical of the Trump administration's approach to diplomatic engagements, particularly regarding preparation and staffing decisions. His posts on social media have gained significant attention within political circles and among foreign policy observers. The exchange between Bruen and Cheung reflects broader tensions within the administration over its handling of key international negotiations and the adequacy of expert consultation in high-stakes diplomatic meetings.

Intelligencer Senior Editor Margaret Hartmann says the White House is getting increasingly touchy about President Donald Trump’s growing problem with nodding off in front of millions of viewers.

“We’ve all been there: You’re in some dull meeting and you’re fighting to keep your eyes open because you stayed up too late attacking your enemies on Truth Social and posting weird AI slop about how you’re the greatest president of all time,” said Hartmann, referring to Trump’s recent all-night Truth Social rage-slam.

“[W]e can all identify with these videos of Donald Trump struggling to stay awake during a meeting yesterday on maternal health,” said Hartmann. “Unfortunately for Trump, he can’t just admit that he’s a nearly 80-year-old man who gets drowsy sometimes because (a) he’s president of the United States and (b) he won reelection, in part, by repeatedly attacking ‘Sleepy Joe’ Biden for his decrepitude.’”

And because of this inability to admit the obvious, Team Trump must devise other explanations for “why the president regularly closes his eyes for long periods of time in public.”

“Sometimes they ... [marvel] about how Trump is an unstoppable ball of energy, despite evidence to the contrary. The president himself has insisted that he never nods off in public. Two years ago, he said that sometimes he just likes to ‘listen intensely’ and rest his ‘beautiful blue eyes,’” reports Hartmann.

Only now, the White is tempering its outlandish claims with a fair bit of hostility.

“He was blinking, you absolute moron,” White House’s rapid-response team snapped on X.

“This response was weirdly aggressive,” said Hartmann, pointing out that Reuters national security correspondent Idrees Ali didn’t even claim Trump was sleeping on the job. He merely shared an un-doctored photo what looked like Trump doing the obvious thing that senior citizens sometimes do at public engagements.

And in any case, Trump’s eyes were “often fully closed or downcast” when others were speaking, including one moment, 22 minutes into the video, where Trump shut his eyes 18 seconds.

An 18-second “blink” really strains credulity, said Hartmann.

“Though, isn’t sleeping, in a way, just a regular hourslong blink?” Hartmann added.