Lindsey Graham Can’t Find Anything Nice to Say About Tulsi Gabbard

Senator Lindsey Graham appeared hard-pressed for praise beyond personal niceties for Tulsi Gabbard after meeting with Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence.

“We’ve had policy differences. I know her, I like her, you know. She wanted to stay in the JCPOA. I thought that was a mistake,” Graham told CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju on Monday, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, from which Trump withdrew in 2018.

“But, you know, she’ll be serving Trump,” the South Carolina Republican said.

“We’ll see how the hearing goes,” he continued, per footage from WAAY 31 News. Asked whether he was satisfied with Gabbard’s answers, Graham replied, “She’s gonna get back with me, we had a very good meeting. And I’m inclined—well, let’s see what the answers are.”

Gabbard is meeting with senators this week, hoping to alleviate concerns about her sympathetic stances on Russia and Syria’s now-ousted President Bashar Al Assad.

But if Graham has any reservations about Gabbard, that doesn’t mean they will last.

The senator had a sudden change of heart regarding allegations of sexual assault and other misconduct plaguing Trump’s defense secretary pick, Pete Hegseth, who is also making the rounds on Capitol Hill. Last Tuesday, Graham called the accusations against Hegseth “very disturbing,” saying, “Some of this stuff is going to be difficult.”

Within 24 hours, Graham pivoted, telling Fox News, “I’m not going to make any decision based on an anonymous source.… None of it counts, no rumors, no innuendo.”

Donald Trump mocked Justin Trudeau and Canada after the Canadian prime minister pointed out that Americans are realizing how expensive life would be under Trump’s proposed tariffs.

“Trump got elected on a commitment to make life better and more affordable for Americans, and I think people south of the border are beginning to wake up to the real reality that tariffs on everything from Canada would make life a lot more expensive,” Trudeau said in a speech on Monday, promising retaliation if Trump went ahead with his planned tariffs.

In response, Trump made a Truth Social post shortly after midnight Tuesday referencing his recent dinner with Trudeau and yet again joked about Canada being part of the United States.

“It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada. I look forward to seeing the Governor again soon so that we may continue our in depth talks on Tariffs and Trade, the results of which will be truly spectacular for all! DJT,” the post read.

Canada is America’s biggest trading partner, and while 25 percent tariffs on Canadian imports would hurt their economy, retaliatory tariffs wouldn’t be good for the U.S. economy, either. Trudeau pointed out that the U.S. gets 65 percent of its crude oil from Canada, along with many other goods, ranging from steel to agricultural products.

Over the weekend, Trump tried to defend his tariff plan on NBC’s Meet the Press but couldn’t promise that it wouldn’t cause higher prices for Americans. He claimed that the U.S. was “subsidizing” Canada and Mexico, and offered a nonsensical solution.

“If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state. We’re subsidizing Mexico, and we’re subsidizing Canada, and we’re subsidizing many countries all over the world,” Trump said. “And all I want to do is I want to have a level, fast, but fair playing field.”

Realistically, Trudeau is right that tariffs would hurt both the U.S. and Canadian economies, and it’s hard to see any positive outcomes from a back-and-forth trade war. Trump may be able to threaten politicians in the states, but he might find that foreign leaders aren’t cowed by his brash rhetoric. Mexico has already made threats of its own in response to Trump’s tariffs, for example.

If Canadian and Mexican leaders acted like Trump, it would be “Canada First” versus “Mexico First” versus “America First,” and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which Trump negotiated to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement during his first term, would end up torn to shreds. If Trump isn’t careful, that is exactly what will end up happening, to the detriment of all three countries’ economies.

Law firms won’t touch former New York City mayor and disbarred attorney Rudy Giuliani’s legal problems with a 10-foot pole.

In court documents submitted Monday, the Donald Trump ally lamented that he can’t find a lawyer to represent him while he faces the possibility of civil contempt charges brought by Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, a pair of 2020 Georgia poll workers to whom he owes nearly $150 million after he repeatedly defamed them while pushing Trump’s Georgia election conspiracy.

“As I have previously indicated, the primary reason for this requested extension is that I need more time to find an attorney to represent me in this matter, especially now that Plaintiffs are making allegations seeking civil contempt,” Giuliani wrote.

The lack of legal interest, according to Giuliani, is all thanks to U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell’s treatment of January 6 defendants—and has nothing to do with his reported failure to pay his previous attorneys, or with court reports that the 80-year-old is “losing it.”

“We have spoken to four attorneys and each attorney has declined to handle this matter because they believe Your Honor is unreasonable and biased about Trump-related matters and ‘ideological rather than logical,’” Giuliani wrote. “One said it was ‘a foregone conclusion’ and ‘a no-win proposition.’ Among other numerous reasons, your handling of the J6 cases is considered by many to be the most unnecessarily harsh.”

Howell, meanwhile, isn’t even remotely the toughest judge who has sentenced January 6 defendants. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, for instance—who was slated to oversee Trump’s January 6 case before it crashed and burned in the wake of his election win—issued several sentences for the Trumpian rioters that were harsher than what Justice Department prosecutors recommended.

Giuliani’s previous legal representation ditched him last month, declaring in a motion in federal court that they had reached a “fundamental disagreement” with Giuliani. The disgraced New York politico’s lead counsel Kenneth Caruso and attorney David Labkowski argued that they were entitled to peel away from their client, citing a New York rule that grants attorneys the ability to withdraw when a client “insists upon taking action with which the lawyer has a fundamental disagreement,” when the client insists on “presenting a claim or defense that is not warranted under existing law and cannot be supported by good faith argument,” or when “the client fails to cooperate in the representation or otherwise renders the representation unreasonably difficult for the lawyer to carry out employment effectively.”

Even Fox News isn’t accepting MAGA Republicans’ attempts to discredit accusations against Pete Hegseth without objection.

In an interview Monday, Republican Senator Roger Marshall defended Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense when Fox host John Roberts asked him, quite vaguely, “about the concerns of things that happened in the past.”

Hegseth is currently facing a raft of scandals: He was accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017. (Hegseth was not charged but paid the woman a financial settlement.) His drinking habits as a co-host of Fox & Friends reportedly concerned his Fox News colleagues. The New Yorker recently covered a whistleblower report detailing Hegseth’s excessive drinking and financial mismanagement while running a veterans nonprofit.

“Yeah, look. I think that Pete is a good man,” Marshall said. “He is a man of integrity now. He absolutely has my support. I think that these anonymous character assassinations by the media are way over-reported—”

“But some of them weren’t anonymous,” Roberts cut in.

“Well, the ones that I’ve seen are anonymous,” said Marshall, before diverting the topic away from Hegseth’s scandals.

Marshall’s emphasis on the anonymity of the accusations echoes similar defenses of Hegseth by Senators Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott, who last week attempted to minimize the allegations plaguing Hegseth by pointing to their anonymous sources.

Pushing back against this, MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin wrote a blog post last week, noting that anonymous sources are integral to the functioning of the free press. The identities of anonymous sources are, after all, “known to the journalists reporting them,” and the accusations are independently verified or corroborated.

“And, of course,” Rubin wrote, “at least one of the anonymous people featured in reporting about Hegseth isn’t anonymous to Hegseth: The Jane Doe who has accused him of rape and with whom he signed an agreement.”

Not all of the revelations against Hegseth are anonymously sourced, either. As The New York Times reported last month, Hegseth’s mother in 2018 called her son “an abuser of women,” whose “abuse over the years to women (dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling) needs to be called out,” in a private email to him that she now disavows.

Hegseth was back on Capitol Hill Monday, continuing his effort to salvage his nomination in meetings with the senators who hold his fate in their hands.

Most Americans support the Affordable Care Act and say the federal government should be responsible for ensuring that all Americans have health care coverage, according to a new Gallup survey.

Gallup on Monday released the findings of its poll, which found that 62 percent of adults “say it is the federal government’s responsibility to ensure all Americans have healthcare coverage.” That’s the largest percentage in any year since 2006, when 69 percent of the poll’s respondents agreed with that sentiment.

About 54 percent of U.S. adults approve of the Affordable Care Act, close to the record-high percentage of 55 percent from April 2017, when Donald Trump and the GOP were trying to repeal the law. Support for the bill, passed during President Obama’s first term, is divided along partisan lines: 94 percent of Democrats approve of the ACA, while only 19 percent of Republicans do. Both are record highs.

The survey, which was conducted from November 6 to 20, following the presidential election, reveals Americans are closely divided on whether they preferred a private insurance–based health care system or one that is government-run. About 49 percent prefer the former with 46 percent preferring the latter. The last time the two options polled this closely together was 2017, when 48 percent of respondents preferred private insurance versus 47 percent for a government-run system.

And politically speaking, support for government-run health care and private insurance are also polarized on party lines, with 71 percent of Democrats preferring a government-run system versus 20 percent supporting a private system. Republicans overwhelmingly favor private insurance, with 76 percent of them supporting it as opposed to 21 percent supporting a government-run system.

At a time when Americans across party lines are dissatisfied with the country’s health care system and feel powerless to do anything about it, these polling results are significant. The incoming Trump administration has already suggested that it would do away with the ACA’s key reform of prohibiting insurance coverage denial based on preexisting conditions, and the GOP has been trying to “repeal and replace” the ACA since it was passed.

The next four years will be pivotal for American health care, with Republicans almost certain to use their narrow congressional majority to take aim at the ACA again and institute their own “reforms,” which are almost certain to leave Americans worse off. Every politician, Republican or Democrat, should look at this poll and realize that the public wants better health care coverage, and try to do something positive about it.

Luigi Mangione, the man apprehended Monday on suspicion of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was found with a manifesto on his person. Two lines in the manifesto read, “These parasites had it coming” and “I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done,” according to CNN’s John Miller.

Mangione, 26, from Baltimore County, Maryland, was taken into custody at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Monday. Mangione was found with a gun similar to the one used in Thompson’s killing, several fake IDs, and the aforementioned manifesto.

More details from the manifesto have yet to be released, but the two lines may confirm what many suspected were the shooter’s personal vendetta against the health care company.

His high school’s valedictorian, Mangione went on to study at University of Pennsylvania, where he acquired a master of science in engineering and a bachelor of science in engineering degree in computer science.

Thompson was killed Wednesday morning, and police were looking for Mangione for five days. His social media profiles muddy the waters in regard to his personal politics and motive. His X account is full of posts about the future of AI, tech, altruism, and complaints about wokeism, and his header contains an image of the injury that may have possibly radicalized him. His Goodreads contains more left-leaning selections like The Lorax and Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry. He also reviewed the Unabomber’s book, writing that “when all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”

Mangione has yet to be charged.

Donald Trump isn’t just planning to pardon his supporters who ransacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6—he’s also asking them to shape his administration.

The president-elect has apparently included one January 6 rioter—Pete Marocco—in his transition team, Politico reported Monday. Marocco, a conservative activist, does come with extensive Trumpworld experience: He wore several hats during Trump’s last administration and had stints at the Defense, State, and Commerce departments, as well as USAID. His new role on Trump’s transition team focuses on national security personnel matters, according to three unidentified sources who spoke with the outlet.

Last month, the sleuth organization Sedition Hunters spotted Marocco and his wife in footage from inside and outside the U.S. Capitol during the January 6 riot. An anonymous member of the group claimed that they had become aware of Marocco’s participation in early 2023 and had subsequently tipped off the FBI. Marocco has not been charged with a crime.

In an interview with D magazine, Marocco refused to directly acknowledge the allegations that he was present at the Capitol building during the riot.

​​“Petty smear tactics and desperate personal attacks by politicians with no solutions have no bearing on the urgency of voting in these charter amendments from 170,000 Dallas citizens for more accountability and public safety,” Marocco told the Dallas-area publication. “Our commitment to strengthening our city through the will of the people is resolute.”

In a statement, Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said that Marocco’s “valuable knowledge” on national security matters has been a “tremendous benefit to the Trump-Vance transition effort.”

“Democrats and their allies in the media who think they are going to obstruct our ability to deliver on this mandate by going back to the same January 6 playbook of smears and faux outrage that was soundly rejected by the American people will be disappointed,” Leavitt added.

A person of interest was taken into police custody on Monday for questioning  regarding the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan. If the man in question is in fact the alleged shooter, his digital footprint raises many more questions than answers.  

Luigi Mangione, 26, from Baltimore County, Maryland, was apparently apprehended at a Pennsylvania McDonalds on Monday. Mangione went to Gilman, a private all-boys high school in Baltimore, and then studied at University of Pennsylvania, where he acquired a master of science in engineering degree and a bachelor of science in engineering degree in computer science. 

Perhaps of greatest note, his cover photo on X contains an image of an X-ray, leading to speculation about the status of his own health. 

His X account is rife with mostly right-leaning, slightly nihilistic, tech bro-y takes concerning AI, mental health, altruism, ancient history, and society in general. Mangione follows Ezra Klein, Sam Altman, AOC, Edward Snowden, and Robert F. Kennedy, among others. 

In April, he posted that “modern Japanese urban environment is an evolutionary mismatch for the human animal. The solution to falling birthdates isn’t immigration. It’s cultural.” He reshared another video from June of Republican megadonor Peter Thiel talking about people with Asperger’s running start-ups. He reposted a pseudo-motivational quote, “Netflix, door dash, and true crime podcasts have stolen more dreams than failure ever will.” And he reposted several messages railing against “wokeism.”

His Goodreads is also of interest. He reviewed the Unabomber’s book, writing that “when all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution. Fossil fuel companies actively suppress anything that stands in their way and within a generation or two, it will begin costing human lives by greater and greater magnitudes until the earth is just a flaming ball orbiting third from the sun.”

His Goodreads also noted that he read Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry. Perhaps Mangione, who again was 26 years old, was recently off his parents’ health care, injured, and radicalized by his struggle to figure out a convoluted system.

Mangione was also allegedly found with a gun similar to the one used by the CEO shooter and a written manifesto criticizing health care companies. He has yet to be charged.

The far right is rejoicing at Daniel Penny being found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the May 2023 New York City subway strangling death of Jordan Neely.

Penny, who is white, put Neely, a Black man, in a chokehold for six minutes while other train passengers captured the incident on film. Penny’s lawyers argued that he believed Neely was a volatile, mentally ill man who posed a threat to the public. Neely was unarmed and had a muffin in his pocket, but Penny quickly became a hero to the right wing. 

Right-wing figures, including one Donald Trump staffer, immediately took to social media and rejoiced at the verdict on Monday.

Some took aim at the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, for bringing charges against Penny in the first place. Bragg is also hated by MAGA for successfully prosecuting Donald Trump for paying off an adult film star to hide their affair before the 2016 election.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said Penny’s acquittal was “clearly the just and correct verdict.

“I must admit I was skeptical that a jury in New York City would reach a unanimous not guilty verdict, and the jury deserves credit for doing the right thing,” DeSantis said. “Meanwhile, is there a worse prosecutor in America than Alvin Bragg?”

The right-wing reaction to Penny’s acquittal seems to echo the rulings exonerating Kyle Rittenhouse for shooting demonstrators in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020, and George Zimmerman for shooting unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, in 2012. In all three cases, the perpetrator was lionized by the far right as making justified killings against criminals, rather than enacting vigilante justice fueled by racism. 

Donald Trump’s criminal cases may be behind him, but that doesn’t mean his legal woes are over.

The president-elect is still on the hook for eight civil cases relating to his involvement in the January 6 attack. The cases, which come from congressmembers and injured police officers, could be the last bastion in holding Trump to account for failing to intervene as his supporters ransacked the U.S. Capitol.

“These cases, unlike the criminal case, will not be affected by the election,” Joseph Sellers, a lawyer representing 10 current and former Democratic House members suing Trump and the far-right groups that led the January 6 riot, told Politico. “Our clients suffered real injuries that entitle them to relief, but also I think are seeking some measure of accountability given President Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 events and the events leading up to it.”

The criminal cases against Trump died overnight after the MAGA leader won the presidential election, effectively allowing him to skirt all responsibility by resuming an office that cannot be criminally prosecuted. Trump faced 91 criminal charges across four cases that prosecutors waited years to take to court. Separately, he was convicted on 34 criminal counts relating to covert hush-money payments made to porn actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election—but that sentencing dissolved just days after Trump won the election.

Some of those near-election trial delays were thanks to a game-changing Supreme Court decision in July, in which the nation’s highest court ruled 6–3 to expand a president’s immunity and redefine what constitutes an “official act,” nearly allowing Trump to get off scot-free.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor feared for the future of a country that legally permits the executive branch authority to commit crimes under the cloak of the office, arguing that the court’s decision made a “mockery” of the constitutional principle that “no man is above the law.” She warned that the court’s “own misguided wisdom” gave Trump “all the immunity he asked for and more.”