Trump’s Latest Truth Social Posts Look Awfully Anti–Gag Order

Donald Trump’s social media addiction may soon cost him big time.

Judge Tanya Chutkan on Sunday reinstated an October 16 gag order on the former president in his federal election subervsion trial, denying a request to freeze the order while his defense scrambles to appeal it, noting that the order will remain in effect while a federal court undergoes its review, reported The New York Times.

“The First Amendment rights of participants in criminal proceedings must yield, when necessary, to the orderly administration of justice,” Chutkan wrote in a statement issued alongside the original order, which still permitted Trump to critique the current government and its administration, to claim his prosecution is politically motivated, to claim his innocence, or to make statements criticizing current political rivals in the presidential election.

But just hours after the order was brought back, Trump ran his mouth on social media—attacking both Judge Chutkan and a potential key witness in the case.

“I have just learned that the very Biased, Trump Hating Judge in D.C., who should have RECUSED herself due to her blatant and open loathing of your favorite President, ME, has reimposed a GAG ORDER which will put me at a disadvantage against my prosecutorial and political opponents,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Mere hours before, Trump also attacked one of the potential witnesses in his D.C. trial, which hinges on four felony charges related to his effort to subvert the 2020 election: former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr.

“I called Bill Barr Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB. He just didn’t want to be Impeached, which the Radical Left Lunatics were preparing to do. I was tough on him in the White House, for good reason, so now this Moron says about me, to get even, “his verbal skills are limited.” Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before. Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER,” Trump posted.

Either Trump won’t learn his lesson or he just doesn’t care about the consequences. The former president was also slapped with a gag order in his New York bank fraud trial with Judge Arthur Engoron, which Trump has violated twice so far, first earning a $5,000 fine and then a subsequent $10,000 fine along with the threat of jail time.

Israel’s military began a heavy aerial bombardment of Gaza after nightfall on Friday and announced that it is “expanding” its ground operations into the territory—but did not declare a full-scale ground invasion that has been expected for weeks.

Internet and phone service in Gaza has been mostly, if not entirely, cut off amid the bombing. The International Committee of the Red Cross cannot reach its medical personnel. A Washington Post reporter said the paper cannot reach its colleagues, either.

Some people, communicating via satellite phones, have described the attack as the “heaviest bombardment yet,” according to independent journalist Sharif Kouddous.

“People can’t call ambulances or civil defense. We are being bombed in an unprecedented manner,” said an unidentified journalist at a Gaza hospital, according to a translation by The Nation’s Palestinian correspondent, Mohammed El-Kurd. “The sky around us just lights up [with explosions], and no one knows what’s going on.”

The Post reported earlier Friday that the Biden administration has urged Israel to rethink its plans, backing a “surgical” operation reliant on drone strikes and special operations forces instead of an all-out ground invasion, which they fear could lead to mass Palestinian civilian casualties and the loss of Israeli soldiers. Such an invasion would also threaten to upend negotiations with Hamas to free around 200 hostages.

It remains to be seen if what’s occurring tonight is a limited ground operation, as the U.S. has pushed for, or something worse.

Since Hamas’s October 7 attack, Israel has cut off access to water, food, and power in Palestinian territories. Israeli attacks have killed at least 7,028 people in Gaza and injured more than 18,000, according to figures from the Gaza Health Ministry. On the Israeli side of the conflict, more than 1,400 people have been killed and another 5,400 injured.

A poll published Friday found that only 49 percent of Israelis want to hold off on the ground offensive against Hamas, down from 65 percent last week.

Representative Dean Phillips announced Thursday that he’s opening a bid as President Joe Biden’s Democratic primary challenger. But as the election landscape shapes up to be another razor-thin rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump, the effort begs the question: What the hell is Phillips thinking?

Phillips, a multimillionaire former chairman and co-owner of Talenti Gelato, and heir to one of America’s largest liquor dynasties, was elected to Minnesota’s 3rd congressional district in 2018—the first Democrat to win the seat in nearly 60 years.

And for the last 15 months, Phillips has been campaigning for “prominent young Democrats” to challenge the 80-year-old president, reported The Atlantic, believing it’s time for Biden, who he has described as a “president of great competence and success,” to “pass the torch.” Failing to find that candidate, the 54-year-old Phillips has apparently decided to throw himself into the race.

“Democrats are telling me that they want not a coronation but they want a competition,” Phillips said during an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation.

He might be onto something. Although the self-described eternal optimist’s chances of unseating the incumbent president are slim, they’re not zero. A recent poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 77 percent of Americans believe Biden is too old to be effective for another presidential term.

That same poll found that Democrats thought both Biden and Trump, age 77, were too old for the gig, while just 28 percent of Republicans felt that Trump’s age would make him ineffective for another term.

Yet if Phillips somehow, against all odds, beats Biden in the Democratic primary—will he be popular enough to keep Trump from office? It’s probably safe to assume that this is the first time many Americans are even hearing about Phillips.

The Democratic establishment is also still firmly behind Biden.

“Biden’s already beaten Trump once,” Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, Jim Messina, told The Atlantic. “He’s the one guy who can beat him again.”

Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to distance himself from his deeply homophobic track record by claiming he can’t remember much of it.

During an interview on Fox News, Johnson was asked about comments he made while he was an attorney for the far-right Christian advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom. During his tenure as senior attorney and spokesperson for ADF, he called homosexuality “sinful” and “destructive,” advocated against same-sex marriage, and pushed for the criminalization of gay sex.

Hearing his own comments repeated back to him by Fox’s Sean Hannity, Johnson said simply, “I don’t even remember some of them.”

Quickly moving on from the “I forgot” defense, Johnson argued that making homophobic statements was just a part of his job in defending the state marriage amendments, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

“I was a religious liberty defense lawyer, and I was called to go in and defend those cases in the court,” he said.

“I am a rule-of-law guy,” Johnson said. “When the Supreme Court issued the Obergefell opinion that became the law of the land, I respect the rule of law,” referring to the case that made same-sex marriage legal.

Despite his attempt to revise history, Johnson’s record speaks for itself. In September 2004, for example, the future House speaker wrote an op-ed for a local paper in Shreveport, Louisiana, in which he called homosexual relationships “unnatural,” “harmful,” and “dangerous.”

Johnson isn’t trying to be confusing. He admitted to Hannity that if people want to know what this “rule-of-law guy” believes, “go pick a Bible off your shelf and read it.”

Ivanka Trump may have a new job in her father’s real estate empire: help dissolve it.

On Friday, a federal court judge ruled that the Trump heiress cannot block the subpoena calling her to testify against her father and brothers, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., in their $250 million New York fraud case.

“A trial is a search for the truth,” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron said before ruling against her.

Ivanka Trump has until November 1 to appeal the decision, after which she will be required to take the witness stand.

The businesswoman was originally expected to be named as a defendant in the fraud trial, though a New York appeals court struck down her inclusion, ruling that the claims against her were too old.

Judge Arthur Engoron issued a summary judgment in September that found New York Attorney General Letitia James had already proved Trump misvalued his properties and committed business fraud, soon after dissolving the business certificates of Trump’s companies. What remains to be seen in the trial is whether Trump violated other laws and, ultimately, what kind of financial penalty he might have to pay.