Bill Barr Reveals Exactly What Trump Wanted to Do to His Rivals

Former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr revealed that Donald Trump would often remark about executing people during his time in the White House.

“I actually don’t remember him saying ‘executing,’ but I wouldn’t dispute it, you know,” Barr told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Friday. “The president would lose his temper and say things like that. I doubt he would’ve actually carried it out.”

“He would say things similar to that on occasions to blow off steam. But I wouldn’t take them literally every time he did it,” Barr added. “At the end of the day, it wouldn’t be carried out and you could talk sense into him.”

Trump’s remarks in the White House about killing people have been corroborated by other White House staffers, including former White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin on ABC’s The View in December.

Trump hasn’t held his tongue post-presidency either. In September, Trump said in a Truth Social post that Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be executed for treason over two phone calls the general made to the Chinese government. In late March, Trump also posted a video of Joe Biden hog-tied in the back of a pickup truck. Meanwhile, his legal team is arguing before the Supreme Court that a president could be immune from prosecution even if he orders SEAL 6 to assassinate his rival.

Despite all of this, Barr recently endorsed Trump in the 2024 election, even after expressing numerous criticisms and misgivings about the former president’s tenure and temperament. He’s called the former president a “consummate narcissist” whose second term would be “chaos” and a “horror show.” In June, he said, “Should we be putting someone like this forward as the leader of the country, leader of the free world?”

“He will always put his own interests, and gratifying his own ego, ahead of everything else, including the country’s interest, there’s no question about it,” Barr told CBS’s Face the Nation at the time. And even after Barr’s endorsement, Trump brutally mocked his former cabinet member in a Truth Social post and blamed him for failing to overturn the 2020 election.

Fox News is facing another bombshell defamation lawsuit, this time featuring accusations from Hunter Biden.

A letter sent to the network and obtained Monday by NBC News revealed that the president’s son will be filing a lawsuit against the conservative media behemoth “imminently,” alleging “conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Mr. Biden and paint him in a false light.” The letter was dated April 23 with a request that Fox respond by April 26, which they did not. It’s the second such attempt by Biden’s legal team to reach Fox regarding the suit.

In a statement, Biden attorney Mark Geragos claimed the network had “relentlessly attacked” his client for the last five years, and had “made him a caricature in order to boost ratings and for its financial gain.”

“The recent indictment of FBI informant [Alexander] Smirnov has exposed the conspiracy of disinformation that has been fueled by Fox, enabled by their paid agents and monetized by the Fox enterprise,” Geragos said. “We plan on holding them accountable.”

Another Biden attorney, Tina Glandian, told Axios that in addition to “routinely defaming and disparaging Mr. Biden, FOX has simultaneously sought to profit by the unlawful exploitation of Mr. Biden’s image, name, likeness for commercial purposes and reprehensible dissemination of salacious photographs depicting Mr. Biden,” referring to the network airing nude images of the president’s son.

The letter claimed Fox knew the images were “hacked, stolen, and/or manipulated digital material” but continued to publish them, “in violation of the majority of states’ laws against the nonconsensual disclosure of sexually explicit images and videos,” also known as revenge porn.

Republicans have continually published the nude images taken from Biden’s laptop in an effort to discredit his character. One of the most egregious instances was when Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene waved around poster-sized printouts of the images during a House hearing and then sent those photos out in her email newsletter (potentially showing them to minors).

Fox News’s last major defamation suit was brought by Dominion Voting Systems for the network’s platforming baseless allegations brought by allies of Donald Trump, who claimed that the electronic voting machine company had partaken in a conspiracy to rig the 2020 election against Trump. Fox ended up settling the lawsuit for a historic $787.5 million settlement, and released a statement admitting that the network had aired a false story.

Fox is still working through other lawsuits related to the network’s coverage of alleged 2020 election fraud, including a $2.7 billion suit filed by another electronic voting systems company, Smartmatic, and several others brought by Fox’s shareholders, accusing the company of embracing a business strategy that placed profit over journalism and verifiable facts.

In a statement, Fox claimed that they had accurately covered relevant events pertaining to Hunter Biden, including investigations by the Department of Justice and Congress, and indictments by U.S. Attorney’s offices.

“Consistent with the First Amendment, Fox News has accurately covered these highly publicized events as well as the subsequent indictment of an FBI informant who was the source of certain claims made about Mr. Biden,” a spokesperson for the network said.

This story has been updated.

Columbia University has a message for the pro-Palestine student protesters: cut it out or get suspended.

After nearly two weeks of national attention on Columbia University’s student-led protest encampments calling on the university to divest from weapons manufacturers and other companies associated with Israel’s war on Gaza, university officials’ declared Monday they won’t won’t commit to any real policy changes.

The university told student protesters they must leave the campus by 2 p.m. Monday or else “be suspended pending further investigation” and prohibited from completing the spring semester.

That threat achieved exactly nothing.

Interestingly, Columbia’s X account also posted a summary from Columbia President Minouche Shafik’s statement, noting that after a dialogue between “academic leaders” and student organizers, the university would not commit to divesting. Instead, Shafik outlined steps to consider student proposals and allow for more transparency in the university’s investments. The university ended up deleting that post and replacing it with a much shorter summary, presumably after blowback.

Since students set up protest encampments at Columbia over the war in Gaza earlier this month they have been met with a massive police response. Similar protests quickly spread at other campuses across the country, as many politicians missed the point and urged more punitive measures. Some pundits and politicians even tried to compare the peaceful, diverse protests to the white nationalist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

As commencement approaches, university officials are desperate to make these protests go away, and avoid a situation like that of University of Southern California, where commencement ceremonies were ultimately canceled, following keynote speakers backing out and the initial cancellation of pro-Palestinian valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s speech. But as long as the U.S. continues its support for Israel’s deadly war on Gaza, students will continue to protest against their university connections to the war. And if universities persist in ignoring protest demands, or worse, massively cracking down on protests, they will not surely ignite a firestorm. 

Disgraced former Representative George Santos is still trying to hold on to his 15 minutes of fame—even if it means blowing up his purported beliefs.

The ousted lawmaker announced Monday he was gunning for another Cameo grabbag, this time offering up $350 videos featuring his long-denied drag alter ego Kitara Ravache.

“Y’all weren’t ready for this drop?” Santos wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, alongside a Cameo booking link. “I’ve decided to bring Kitara out of the closet after 18 years!”

In a video posted on the personalized messaging platform, Santos claimed that the campaign would only last a couple of days, with 10 percent of the proceeds going to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which donates to first responders and military veterans, and another 10 percent going to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. His last run on the platform in December ushered in thousands of video requests, raking in more than six figures—a sum significantly more than his $174,000 congressional salary.

The campaign is a complete reversal of where Santos stood little more than a year ago, after news first emerged that the Queens resident had actually been a queen. At the time, Santos claimed that the anecdotes and photographs of his alternate persona were simply “​​outrageous claims” peddled by the media.

“The most recent obsession from the media claiming that I am a drag Queen or ‘performed’ as a drag Queen is categorically false,” Santos said in January 2023. “I will not be distracted nor fazed by this.”

But just a couple of days later, Santos fessed up, claiming the photographs were from a time when he was “young and [having] fun at a festival.” Still, the admission didn’t sway Santos, who is gay, from his war on the rest of theLGBTQ community, which included “full blown support” for Florida’s 2022 Don’t Say Gay law, speaking out against Drag Story Hour, and even suggesting that LGBTQ Americans were grooming children.

And with the way the rest of the year is shaping up for the known fabulist, he’ll definitely need the extra cash on hand. Last week, Santos announced that he was dropping his bid for New York’s 1st Congressional District against his apparent Long Island nemesis, Representative Nick LaLota. But he still has a huge hurdle on the horizon.

The reputed hustler—who was caught fabricating his entire résumé and lying about his relation to Holocaust survivors, his connection to the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, and the kidnapping of his niece, among many other things—is currently facing 23 counts related to illegally receiving unemployment benefits, aggravated identity theft, and credit card fraud. Santos’s next court proceeding is scheduled for August 13, with a trial expected in September.

Ron DeSantis is apparently considering helping the man who once called him “Ron DeSancitmonius,” “Meatball Ron,” and “Pudding Fingers.”

DeSantis privately met with Donald Trump in Miami Sunday morning, according to The Washington Post. Trump’s hope is that DeSantis will help him raise a lot of money for his presidential campaign, as the former president grows increasingly desperate for cash.

Trump and DeSantis clashed very early on in the 2024 presidential race, with DeSantis becoming an early favorite of Republican donors eager to shed Trump and his baggage, in spite (or possibly because) of the Florida governor’s disturbing authoritarian streak. A story that DeSantis once ate pudding with his fingers became fodder for an entire campaign ad from a Trump-aligned political action committee. Trump had quite a few nicknames for the Florida governor, calling him Meatball Ron, Rob, Ron DeSanctimonious, and Ron DeSanctus— and even went as far as to call him a “groomer.”

In the end, DeSantis failed to gain ground on Trump in the polls, quickly alienating voters with his weird people skills and mannerisms. Nikki Haley ended up overtaking him among Republican voters desperate for an alternative to Trump, and DeSantis dropped out of the race in January.

Now, DeSantis is probably looking at the future and seeing that he doesn’t have one without at least tolerance from Trump. The two reportedly haven’t spoken since the primaries, even though DeSantis endorsed Trump the day he dropped out. The fact that DeSantis scoffed at a proposal for Florida to pay Trump’s legal bills probably didn’t help, and who can blame him? The former president’s bills keep piling up, and he reportedly can’t even pay his legal counsel.

One of Congress’s most powerful Republicans apparently feels powerless in the face of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

Sitting for an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained that he didn’t see any other option than to endorse the GOP presidential nominee—despite having made previous declarations against Trump, including blaming him for the violent events that unfolded on January 6.

“The issue is, what kind of influence, even if I had chosen to get involved in the presidential election, what kind of influence would I have had?” McConnell said after insinuating he was duty-bound as the most powerful Republican in the Senate to support the candidate that Republican delegates voted for.

“I’m the Republican leader of the Senate. What we do here is try to make law,” McConnell continued. “I like us to be in the majority. I’m spending my political time and my political capital, whatever amount I have, on trying to flip the Senate so that my successor is the majority leader and not the minority leader.”

In a heated back-and-forth with host Margaret Brennan, McConnell continued to dodge questions that poked at his purported policy agenda, skirt overtly offering advice to Trump’s campaign, and refuse to admit that he was ideologically more aligned with President Joe Biden’s idea of American leadership.

“Look, I wouldn’t have withdrawn from Afghanistan. I wouldn’t have submitted four budgets in a row for defense that don’t even keep up with inflation. I’ve got plenty of differences with the current administration,” McConnell said, referring to actions taken during Biden’s administration. “Whether I will have differences with the next administration remains to be seen. And so I’m not going to predict what might happen on this issue. I know what I think and it doesn’t make any difference what the outcome of the presidential election is. I’m going to be focusing on this remainder of my time in the Senate.”

McConnell has struggled in recent months to unify his party, even around typically popular Republican issues. He is one of a shrinking number of GOP lawmakers who support sending more military aid to Ukraine in its counteroffensive against Russia, and he was forced to watch as his party tanked a bipartisan border security bill at Trump’s behest.

The Kentucky Republican has spoken out against the right’s fight for a new brand of American isolationism—which includes Trump’s threats to withdraw from NATO and Republican infighting over aid for Ukraine, among other national security issues—but he placed the blame on former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson rather than Trump.

“He had a huge audience among rank and file Republicans. And I think it was very destructive, very impactful on regular Republican voters and created a big problem,” McConnell said about Carlson, adding that the political conspiracy peddler “certainly ended up where he should have been all along, interviewing [Russian President] Vladimir Putin.”

An Arizona state lawmaker indicted for his involvement in Donald Trump’s 2020 fake elector scheme has announced that he’s getting a promotion in the Republican Party.

State Senator Jake Hoffman was charged by Arizona on Wednesday alongside 17 other people, including Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former attorney Rudy Giuliani, for orchestrating a scheme to use fake electors to flip Arizona’s 2020 election results over to Trump. The former president is named in the documents as an unindicted co-conspirator. But on Saturday, Hoffman revealed that the conservative party had rewarded that behavior by electing him as a state delegate for the GOP.

“I’m humbled and honored to have been elected as the next RNC National Committeeman for Arizona!,” Hoffman said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“For the next 4 years I will work tirelessly to ensure that the RNC makes Arizona its #1 priority not only in 2024, but every year,” he wrote, continuing to decry Democrats as “fascists” who want to “destroy opportunity and prosperity” for Arizonans.

“Make no mistake, our Party is unified, focused, and motivated to win the White House for President @realDonaldTrump, the US Senate seat against far-Left extremist Ruben Gallego, the Legislative Majority at the State Capitol, and other offices up and down the ballot,” Hoffman said.

On a web page that lists the lawmaker as a 2021 fellow with the The Club for Growth Foundation—a fiscally conservative nonprofit funded by billionaires Richard Uihlein and Jeff Yass that donated roughly $20 million to the campaigns of 42 Republicans who worked to overturn the 2020 presidential election results—Hoffman is described as someone whose work on a digital campaign for Trump “played a key role in helping elect” the former president in 2016. The site also notes that Hoffman was invited to attend Trump’s inauguration, had visited the White House for several meetings, and was allegedly described by Trump as one of his “very good friends.”

Still, Trump didn’t seem to outwardly notice the local win for his supposed good friend, failing to acknowledge it on TruthSocial and opting instead to spend the day posting about his New York hush-money case, 2024 presidential election polls, and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

All of the indicted individuals in Arizona are facing the same slew of charges, which includes counts for conspiracy, forgery, fraudulent schemes and practices, and fraudulent schemes and artifices—the last of which holds a potential sentence of up to five years in prison.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has doubled down on her decision to shoot and kill her pet puppy—and the Trump camp isn’t happy.

“The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did,” Noem said in a long post on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday. “Whether running the ranch or in politics, I have never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle. Even if it’s hard and painful. I followed the law and was being a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor.”

The story, which comes from Noem’s new book, was seen by many as a plea to Donald Trump (who doesn’t like dogs) as to why she’s the right choice for his vice president. But perhaps unsurprisingly, a story about puppy murder has not earned her any plaudits from Trump’s campaign.

“Governor Noem just keeps proving over and over that she’s a lightweight,” one person close to the Trump campaign told Semafor. “We can’t afford a Kamala problem.”

Trump has enough problems of his own these days, especially with damaging new information coming out of his hush money trial each day. The last thing he wants is for a running mate who attracts her own negative coverage. In addition to her dog shooting story, several Native tribes in Noem’s state have banned her from their territories over her racist comments. Her mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic also led to a spike in cases in Native communities, and she tried to prevent the tribes from implementing their own pandemic safety measures. Meanwhile, she’s also in the press for a rumored affair with longtime Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski.

The latest speculation about Trump’s VP choice is someone with a lot less drama and a bit more moderation just south of Noem: North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, whose major issue would be the same one that plagued him during his failed run for president: a lack of name recognition.

Donald Trump’s hush-money trial is revealing new details from his life, including things that even some of the people in his inner circle didn’t know.

“I’m talking to these Trump senior advisers… a lot of them are learning about this in real time,” reporter Kristen Holmes said Friday on CNN. “They have no idea what’s going on inside the courtroom.”

Trump can’t communicate with anyone while he’s in the Manhattan court, and only a small number of his aides are in the (apparently frigid) courtroom with him. That means the rest of them have to keep up with media reports—and find out new revelations at the same time as the public.

“It is exactly as salacious as they thought it was going to be. There was no mistake. We know what is at the heart of this alleged cover-up for an alleged affair with a porn star,” Holmes said.

So far, the court has heard testimony from David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Inc. and ex-publisher of the National Enquirer, who has provided damaging information about Trump’s activities and even how many of Trump’s associates were involved. Trump has been hesitant to attack Pecker, leading some observers to suspect that he’s afraid of the tabloid magnate.

Trump faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime for having his former fixer and attorney, Michael Cohen, pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair before the 2016 presidential election. Both Cohen and Daniels are expected to testify in the trial, meaning that more shocking details are forthcoming.

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, suspended an account owned by the grandson of former South African President Nelson Mandela on Friday.

It is currently unclear why the social media platform, owned by Elon Musk, banned Zwelivelile Mandla Mandela, a member of the National Assembly of South Africa. The company has issued no statement regarding its decision to restrict the South African politician’s speech, but the timing is questionable.

Mandela has spent the last week making multiple public appearances in support of Palestinian liberation, quoting his grandfather ahead of his voyage aboard a Freedom Flotilla trip sailing to Gaza from Turkey with the intention to provide more than 5,000 tons of aid to the war-torn enclave.

“He regarded the Palestinian struggle as the greatest moral issue of our time,” Mandela said in a speech posted on social media Friday, referring to his grandfather while donning a keffiyeh. “He made a commitment to the Palestinian people by saying that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinian people.”

In a separate statement issued on Thursday, Mandela explained that the “Freedom Flotilla for Gaza aims to draw the attention of the international public to the atrocities, genocide and war crimes being committed against the people of Gaza.”

So far, the departure of the flotilla of ships has been waylaid due to a bevy of ship inspections triggered by an Israeli pressure campaign, reported Al Jazeera, even though a retired U.S. Army colonel and State Department official organizing the flotilla said the ships had already passed all of their inspections and were ready to set sail.

In order to reach Gaza, the flotilla will need to break through an Israeli blockade originally set in place in 2007. Previous efforts to break the blockade by humanitarian missions have ended in death. In 2010, the six-vessel Freedom Flotilla I was intercepted by Israeli forces, who boarded the ships via helicopters and speedboats on international waters, shooting and killing nine activists.

Having eyes on the flotillas is critical for their safety, according to one of the aid shipment’s organizers.

“We’re trying to get all eyes on the Flotilla to make sure the world knows and Israel knows we’re coming so that they can’t fire a missile on us and say it was unintentional,” Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American attorney and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, told Al Jazeera.