Trump’s Trash Defense Pick Has Even Lost Newsmax

Ex–Fox 5 New York host and Trumpian acolyte Greg Kelly uncharacteristically dropped the hammer on one of the president-elect’s Cabinet picks, warning that his former network colleague—defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth—has “serious baggage” that makes him “blackmailable.”

“I was once accused of sexual assault, falsely,” Kelly said on Newsmax, his current home network, Wednesday. “I would never in a billion years pay that person a dime. That doesn’t sound like a fighter. That sounds like somebody who’s blackmailable. And I’m not comfortable with that individual being the secretary of defense.”

Kelly, the son of New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, was accused of raping and impregnating a woman in 2011 before the charges were dropped a year later by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.

Hegseth, meanwhile, has been under fire since Donald Trump tapped him to lead the Pentagon, primarily over a shocking 2017 police report that revealed the Army veteran was accused of raping an attendee at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. Hegseth has also admitted to several other scandals, including five affairs that he had during his first marriage. Some of Hegseth’s former Fox colleagues have accused him of being “handsy” and groping them. Nearly a dozen of his former co-workers have spoken to various media outlets to warn that his drinking habits are “concerning,” and some noted that they had smelled alcohol on Hegseth as recently as last month.

Republicans at the forefront of the Senate confirmation process have also taken note of Hegseth’s drinking problem. In an interview with CNN earlier this week, Republican Senator Kevin Cramer specified that Hegseth needed to stay away from the bottle and offer a promise of sobriety before taking the reins of the country’s military intelligence.

Even Hegseth’s own mother couldn’t defend the white nationalist-connected conservative, accusing her son in a scathing 2018 email following his separation from his second wife of “using women for his own power.” (Penelope Hegseth has since publicly changed her tune—on Wednesday morning, she appeared on Fox News to beg people to support her son for defense secretary.)

But beyond the unsavory misconduct, Kelly’s gripe with Hegseth is that he’s an unqualified candidate who simply hasn’t demonstrated enough loyalty to Trump to warrant such a title.

“Pete Hegseth is no Matt Gaetz,” Kelly said, referring to the legally embattled ex-congressman who was practically forced to drop his attorney general nomination last month over sex trafficking allegations. “He hasn’t done nearly enough for MAGA to warrant the Department of Defense job. And he’s got serious baggage. Serious baggage. It happens sometimes. Not every pick is perfect.”

Trump, meanwhile, has drilled down on his endorsement of the former Fox host.

“Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more so than the Fake News would have you believe,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday morning. “He was a great student—Princeton/Harvard educated—with a Military state of mind. He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense Defense, one who leads with charisma and skill. Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!”

Fox News’s “Patriot of the Year” loves the United States so much that he wants to completely reshape it—starting with the country’s elections.

Speaking to a crowd he referred to as “friends” during the network’s sixth annual Fox Nation Patriot Awards Thursday night, President-elect Donald Trump signaled his full intentions to enact sweeping changes to the process by which the nation chooses its leaders.

“We’re going to do things that have been really needed for a long time. No, we are going to look at elections,” Trump said.

“We want to have paper ballots, one-day voting, voter ID, and proof of citizenship, a little thing like proof of citizen—” Trump continued before trailing off on a rant about voting laws in California, which, like many other states around the country, doesn’t require voters to show photo ID at the booth. Instead, the Golden State asks its denizens to register to vote with either their Social Security number, their driver license number, or their California ID number.

Trump’s late-night ode to election fraud (despite having been relatively mum on the issue since winning his race in November) is a neon-emblazoned sign that his administration has no intention of dropping his 2020 voter fraud conspiracy—even if actual voter fraud is, statistically, a relative nonissue in U.S. elections.

A statewide audit out of Georgia, the epicenter of Trump’s baseless theory, revealed in September that just 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state’s voter roll. Out of those 20, only nine participated in elections years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Critics argue that restrictions on the front end of the electoral process—such as one-day voting and requiring day-of voter ID—would minimize voter turnout and limit the democracy’s ability to represent its constituents. This would especially be true in high-density areas like the nation’s biggest cities, where those stipulations would significantly drain resources (i.e., the number of volunteers required) and require more time to process, potentially leading to delays.

Trump’s continued focus on the nativist nonissue belies the fact that it is, of course, already illegal and impossible for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections, including in Georgia, where the individuals who fell through the cracks in the system accounted for just 0.00024390243902439 percent of the state’s voting population.

Meanwhile, Trump has said nothing about campaign finance reform, an electoral issue that has, over the last few decades, increasingly placed politicians in the pockets of major corporations and billionaire donors. Project 2025—which Trump briefly disavowed before his allies practically admitted postelection that it was the blueprint all along—has actually promoted the opposite, advocating that the incoming Trump administration loosen campaign finance laws, raise limits on campaign contributions, and oppose Federal Election Commission reforms that could help the agency enforce the laws regarding the country’s elections.

The Heritage Foundation, the far-right think tank behind Project 2025, has also urged Trump—a man who used his own campaign funds to foot his legal fees—to appoint FEC commissioners who won’t enforce the law.

Russian state media thinks Tucker Carlson might be acting as a back channel between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

During a Thursday broadcast of the state-controlled channel Solovyov Live, host Vladimir Solovyov spoke to his guest, U.S. expert Malek Dudakov, and referred to Carlson’s recent Moscow interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, which was posted that same day on X.

“What is important here is that the man who came to talk to Lavrov spent the last six months shoulder-to-shoulder with Trump. Obviously, he didn’t just come to conduct an interview. He has something to say. Apparently, he has a message that he is bringing,” Solovyov said.

Dudakov agreed, saying, “Yes, we currently see quite a few similar emissaries.”

“It seems Viktor Orbán is again planning to meet with Trump, and after that, he may come to Russia once again. There are people who are willing to pass messages back and forth, indirectly,” Dudakov continued.

Carlson’s interview was very sycophantic toward Trump and Putin, lending some credibility to Dudakov’s theory. Six months ago, Carlson interviewed Putin himself, and was so deferential to the Russian leader that Putin even mocked him afterward. Still, Carlson is liked enough by the Russian government that his show has aired on Russian TV channels, although his producer claims that was without permission.

Russian strategy has focused on using fear of nuclear war against the U.S. over its support of Ukraine, and Carlson’s interview with Lavrov was very much in line with that goal, according to The Daily Beast.

“We’re on the brink of global war. Why isn’t anyone talking about it?” Carlson said during the episode’s introduction. The rest of the interview was framed around how the U.S. could avert doomsday by ceasing to back Ukraine.

Trump promised during his presidential campaign to end the war in Ukraine quickly, a possibility that Putin has seemingly dismissed. But if Carlson, as well as pro-Putin leaders such as Orbán, are carrying messages from Russia to the president-elect, negotiations related to the war could be in the pipeline. They will likely favor Putin and Russia over Ukraine, though.

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is on the rise.

The progressive breakout began notifying her colleagues Thursday that she intends to run for ranking member on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, the key investigative arm of the legislature and one of the most influential positions in the House.

At least three lawmakers who had discussions with Ocasio-Cortez confirmed the bid, reported NBC News. The 35-year-old currently serves as the vice ranking member on the committee.

Her race, which pits her against a senior member of the committee—Virginia Representative Gerry Connolly—will serve as a measure of Democratic priorities in the wake of a brutal November election, as the caucus weighs whether to continue to reward and back its longtime leaders or lean into its up-and-coming changemakers.

Fellow progressives are already endorsing her for the job. In an interview with NBC News, Representative Ro Khanna described Ocasio-Cortez as “very collaborative” and someone who “helps lift up all members.”

“She has been so passionate about the work of this committee for two years as vice chair, and we need progressives moving into leadership in our Congress and country to enact a working-class agenda,” Khanna told the network. “I’m all in for her.”

The top spot became an open race after Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin challenged New York Representative Jerry Nadler to become the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. In a letter to his colleagues announcing his candidacy, Raskin warned that the next four years under Donald Trump would be “the fight of our lives,” pointing to the incoming Republican trifecta as well as a “complicit Supreme Court waiting in the wings” and a “dominant media propaganda system parroting all the lies.

“This is where we will wage our front-line defense of the freedoms and rights of the people, the integrity of the Department of Justice and the FBI, and the security of our most precious birthright possessions: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the rule of law, and democracy itself,” Raskin wrote, referring to the House Judiciary Committee.

On Wednesday, Nadler bowed out of the race, caving to internal party pressures that demanded a younger face for the coveted position. His exit came with a full endorsement of Raskin, 61, who will effectively waltz into the position in a race with no other challengers.

Pete Hegseth’s lawyer is resorting to threats to help his client’s nomination to secretary of defense.

Tim Parlatore told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Thursday night that the sexual misconduct allegations against the former Fox & Friends Weekend host were “extortion,” in his opinion.

“Quite frankly, with the violation of the [confidential settlement] agreement, if he is not confirmed as the secretary of defense, we may still bring a civil extortion claim against her,” Parlatore said.

Parlatore said that the agreement between Hegseth and his accuser was not a nondisclosure agreement but a confidential settlement between the two parties, and claimed that the accuser and one of her friends had violated it. The lawyer added that Hegseth’s accuser was free to speak publicly but faced the risk of a defamation lawsuit.

This flies in the face of what Republican senators have been saying in recent days to defend Hegseth. Senators Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott each attacked the credibility of Hegseth’s accuser for remaining anonymous and not coming forward. Now it appears that she will be hit with a defamation lawsuit and branded as an extortionist if she starts speaking publicly.

Kevin Roberts, president of the powerful Heritage Foundation and architect of the Project 2025 manifesto, is throwing his organization’s heft (and cash) behind Donald Trump’s nominee. However, the president-elect is reportedly souring on Hegseth, and last month, his team began compiling a list of alternative candidates for secretary of defense. With Hegseth’s nomination reportedly hanging on by a thread, Trump might have to deal with the same embarrassment he faced with Matt Gaetz.

The crypto industry is about to have another friend inside the White House.

In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump announced the appointment of Paypal COO David Sacks to a new position with an influential-sounding title: “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.”

“In this important role, David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness,” Trump wrote late Thursday. “David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas. He will safeguard Free Speech online, and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship. He will work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S. David will also lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.”

Trump continued to pile on the praise for his prominent Silicon Valley backer in a follow-up post, promising that the tech executive has the “knowledge, business experience, intelligence, and pragmatism to MAKE AMERICA GREAT in these two critical technologies.”

The new role—and his appointment of a longtime tech billionaire to initiate it—underscores Trump’s growing intent to leverage D.C. to the better benefit of Silicon Valley. A member of the “Paypal Mafia,” Sacks will be the latest associate of Peter Thiel to enter the echelons of the executive branch, following fellow Paypal co-founder Elon Musk and Vice President–elect JD Vance, who has had a long work history with the anti-tax billionaire. Trump has also tapped Thiel’s colleagues to run critical agencies: Jared Isaacman, who financed Musk’s SpaceX initiative, was nominated to run NASA earlier this week.

Sacks is a part of a contingent of tech bros, including Musk and Thiel, who have leveraged their immense wealth, power, and influence to unite conservatives and former leftists behind a cynical and conspiratorial reactionary vision against liberalism. As The New Republic’s Jacob Silverman noted in 2022, Sacks has spent years “quietly becoming the leading practitioner of a new right-wing sensibility that has emerged in the political realignments provoked by Trumpism and the pandemic.

“On foreign policy, it offers a blend of isolationism, Trumpist nationalism, suspicion of the deep state, and the anti-empire realism of John Mearsheimer,” Silverman wrote. “Domestically, the vision is more muddled, a series of angry poses, a politics of pique, much of it playing out on Twitter, Callin, YouTube, Rumble, Substack, and other online media, especially among people who may have once counted themselves on the left but now can’t countenance the sight of homeless encampments.”

But despite his political affinity for Trump’s politics, Sacks hasn’t always been on the president-elect’s side. In the immediate wake of January 6, the longtime Republican said on his podcast, All-In, that Trump was “clearly” responsible for the insurrection because “he is the one who put forth this theory that the election was stolen and was constantly repeating it for the last two months” and had “disqualified himself from being a candidate at a national level.”

“If you want to see this mob as a gun, I think he loaded the gun,” Sacks said at the time. “He pointed it in a certain direction, but did he tell them to storm the Capitol? No, not specifically. I think therefore it’d be a very hard case to prosecute, but I think, you know, prosecuting him in a court of law is sort of unnecessary and redundant. I mean, I think that in the eyes of the public, politically, he is—I think most see that he’s culpable.”

With Pete Hegseth’s nomination for secretary of defense is in trouble on Capitol Hill, he still has the support of a powerful conservative backer: Project 2025 architect and Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts.

Roberts said Thursday that his organization plans to spend $1 million to lobby senators unwilling to back the former Fox News personality accused of sexual assault.

“It’ll be messaging right now with their constituents about how out of step they are with the Trump agenda,” Roberts told the Associated Press in an interview, saying that “the establishment” was behind the opposition to Hegseth.

The conservative think tank also has a lot of supporters in the Republican Party, and Roberts’s move could sway Republican senators who are put off by Hegseth’s personal views and the allegations against him.

During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly denied that he had anything to do with the conservative Project 2025 manifesto, despite his running mate JD Vance and multiple campaign staffers having links to the project. Since he won the election, however, Trump has made staff picks with close ties to the policy plan, and his allies have spoken openly about adopting some of its policy proposals, such as eliminating the Department of Education.

If Roberts is openly supporting Hegseth and backing up lobbying efforts with cash, it could signal that Trump’s nominee is Project 2025–approved. It may also be an effort to curry favor with the president-elect in exchange for something else.

With Trump no longer in campaign mode, his administration’s true motives and affiliations no longer have to be hidden or explained away. Likewise, the unpopular people and organizations who support him don’t have to keep their distance. Project 2025 and its leaders are now operating openly to defend the president-elect in exchange for being able to implement their horrific agenda for America.

Tulsi Gabbard’s PAC spent thousands in political funds to help get her personal manifesto on The New York Times bestseller list, Forbes reported Thursday.

Gabbard founded the leadership PAC Defend Freedom, Inc., in March. Although it initially reported having no cash on hand, the PAC would go on to spend $33,000 of its donors’ funds on a bunch of copies of Gabbard’s book.

The book, For Love of Country: Leave the Democrat Party Behind, debuted in fourth place on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller list during the week of May 4, but it was flagged for bulk purchases, as large orders might have affected its ranking. The book stayed on the list for one more week.

At least some of those bulk purchases came from Gabbard’s PAC: On July 11, Defend Freedom made the first of four disbursements for “printing” to BulkBooks, a book wholesaler based in Franklin, Tennessee, that specializes in large orders. The disbursements totaled $33,000.

“For a limited time, Defend Freedom PAC supporters who gave $100 or more received Tulsi Gabbard’s NYT bestselling book For Love of Country,” Gabbard spokesperson Erika Tsuji confirmed.

Authors normally receive royalties for book copies purchased wholesale, which indicates that Gabbard profited personally from the bulk order (rather than if her PAC had requested copies from the publisher directly). Her spokesperson didn’t comment on this when asked over email.

While this is not illegal, it is shady. “She is not a federal candidate or an officeholder, so she is allowed to personally profit when her PAC buys her book with donors’ funds,” campaign finance attorney Brett Kappel explained to Forbes.

Gabbard has shifted hard from an edgy Democrat to an unflinching, QAnon-adjacent Donald Trump loyalist. This book, and the subsequent bestseller scam, is straight from her new alt-right grifter playbook.

Rudolph Giuliani is facing more legal action from two Georgia election workers who successfully sued him for defamation in December last year.

Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss asked a New York federal judge Thursday to impose “severe” sanctions and hold the former Donald Trump lawyer and ex–New York City mayor in civil contempt after Giuliani failed to turn over discovery documents related to the seizure of his property to settle the defamation ruling against him.

Giuliani ignored an October 28 court order to turn over the documents within 14 days and then disregarded a November 22 court order specifying a mandatory four-day window to produce the documents. After the November 26 deadline came and went with no action from Giuliani, Freeman and Moss’s attorneys told the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that “the time has come for Court to hold Mr. Giuliani in contempt for violating both the October 28 and November 22 Orders, and enter a contempt sanction it finds appropriate.”

The MAGA gadfly has desperately tried to delay and disregard the legal proceedings against him for falsely accusing Freeman and Moss of manipulating ballots during the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, resulting in Trump supporters sending the pair death threats, engaging in harassment, and protesting at their homes.

Last month, Giuliani even cited Trump’s upcoming inauguration in a motion to delay his trial, only to be denied by the judge, sending him into a pathetic rant.

“It’s punishment for being the one who revealed first Joe Biden’s 30-year criminality,” Giuliani whined at the time. “He’s been trying to torture me, stop me, take everything away from me since then.” It wasn’t clear if he was complaining about Biden or the judge in the case, Lewis J. Liman.

It’s unclear if Trump will bail out his former lawyer with a pardon, as the president-elect has already stiffed Giuliani on unpaid legal fees. Giuliani has already had to give up some of his prized possessions to Freeman and Moss, including luxury watches, a diamond ring, and a 1980 Mercedes-Benz. He also blew off another legal deadline in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. If Giuliani is held in contempt, the next penalty he faces could be prison.

Senator Tommy Tuberville is willing to do anything he can to make Donald Trump’s transition easier, even if it means completely forgoing one of the most important parts of his job.

Tuberville told reporters from CNN Wednesday that the Senate didn’t need to complete the vetting processes for Cabinet confirmations because Trump already did such a great job of that, even using the controversial Pete Hegseth as an example. Tuberville went so far as to suggest that Democrats who were merely doing their research were actually attacking nominees.

“Who are we to say that [the Senate is] a better vetter and picker of people than Donald Trump?” Tuberville asked CNN’s Manu Raju.

“Advise and consent, that’s your job,” Raju correctly replied, referring to the power vested in the Senate to approve treaties and appointments. Tuberville replied that that was more the Democrats’ job.

“Donald Trump did all the vetting they needed to do on Pete Hegseth,” Tuberville continued. I just can’t believe we even have people on our side that are saying, ‘Well I’ve got to look at this, gotta look at that.’ What they’re doing is throwing rocks at Donald Trump.”

Numerous Republican senators have expressed discomfort over Hegseth, a Christian nationalist accused of rape, assault, and misconduct who is up for defense secretary.

It’s unsurprising that the same senator who couldn’t name the three branches of government has no qualms about shirking the basic constitutional responsibility of his position. If these confirmations are a MAGA loyalty test, Republicans like Tuberville are passing with flying colors.