Breaking News
Breaking News
from Washington and beyond

Lost Track of Trump’s Weekend Verbal Gaffes? Here’s a Full List.

Donald Trump is saying so many incomprehensible things it’s getting near impossible to keep track.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Donald Trump does not seem OK. The GOP front-runner was alarmingly loose-lipped during back-to-back campaign rallies in Richmond, Virginia, and Greensboro, North Carolina, on Saturday, during which he admitted to hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, framed President Joe Biden as a national enemy, threw around the nuclear word, and confused the man currently in the White House for his old nemesis, former President Barack Obama.

“Shortly after we win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled. I know them both very well, and we will restore peace through strength. Get that war settled. It’s a bad war. And Putin has so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word. You heard that. Nuclear. He’s starting to talk nuclear weapons today,” Trump said in Virginia, drawing stunned silence from his typically uproarious crowd.

It wasn’t the first time Trump has confused the two on the campaign trail, transparently attempting to cover up the blatant memory lapses by claiming that “Obama is running the show.” But if that wasn’t enough, Trump went on to try to take credit for Veterans Choice, which was passed in 2014 under Obama.

Trump also mistook Argentina for a person, calling MAGA the “greatest movement … maybe in the history of any country, even Argentina.”

“You know, Argentina, great guy. He’s a big Trump guy. He loves Trump. I love him because he loves Trump. Anybody that loves me. I like them,” Trump said.

As Trump became increasingly flustered and overwhelmed, he couldn’t figure out how to say “Venezuela” and repeatedly short-circuited.

And while in North Carolina, Trump aligned himself with the January 6 rioters, hailing them as “hostages,” while pegging himself as “a proud political dissident” and “a public enemy of a rogue regime.”

And, despite awaiting trial in relation to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, Trump condemned President Joe Biden as “the real threat to democracy.”

“Biden’s conduct on our border is by any definition a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America,” he said in Greensboro. “Biden and his accomplices want to collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters, and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations.”

Other glitches included mistaking a poll for a legislative bill, calling the country the “United Stage” and a “nation that’s no longer respectered,” and just generally making an uncanny assortment of noises for a candidate for the most powerful office in the world: “Diiiiing, boom. This is me, [unintelligible] bing!”

Ahead of the weekend, Trump’s campaign signaled that it had no intention of reeling in the GOP front-runner’s alarming rhetoric.

“Donald Trump is Donald Trump. That’s not going to change. Our job is not to remake Donald Trump,” senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita told the Associated Press.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung added that Americans “deserve a president who will not sugarcoat what’s happening in the world.”

And Biden’s campaign appears ready to rely on that.

“Donald Trump is still Donald Trump—the same extreme, dangerous candidate voters rejected in 2020, and they’ll reject him again this November regardless of the team he has around him,” said Biden spokesman Kevin Munoz.

Trump has worked to distance himself from the issue of age, slamming Biden for similar verbal gaffes despite joining the 81-year-old as one of the oldest presidential candidates in U.S. history.

Over the last few months, Trump has repeatedly prided himself on “acing” a dementia test, insisted that immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border “don’t speak languages,” claimed that he would stop banks from “debanking” Americans, mixed up former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and his only remaining rival in the GOP race, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, and described his plan for America’s missile defense system by going, “Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.… Boom. OK. Missile launch. Woosh. Boom.”

He also appeared with mysterious, unexplained red sores on his hands that political commentators couldn’t help but notice looked an awful lot like syphilis.

Desperate James Comer Has a New Excuse After Losing His Star Witness

The House Oversight chair has a new theory on his Biden impeachment crusade after the indictment of ex–FBI informant Alexander Smirnov.

Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg/Getty Images
House Oversight Chair James Comer

House Oversight Chair James Comer has a new explanation for why the main witness in his rapidly crumbling impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden was indicted for lying to the FBI: It’s all a deep state conspiracy.

Comer made his latest claims about Alexander Smirnov during an interview on Newsmax, which the Kentucky representative shared on social media Sunday. Smirnov, an ex-FBI informant, claimed that Biden and his son Hunter accepted bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. But the Justice Department has since charged Smirnov with making false statements and revealed he admitted that Russian intelligence operatives fed him the accusation. Smirnov was arrested, released on bail, and then arrested again for fear of being a flight risk.

During the Newsmax interview, host Greg Kelly said he feared that Smirnov’s life “could be in danger.”

“You’re exactly accurate,” Comer said. “This stinks to high heaven. It wasn’t an important part of our case. It was a tip that we got from Charles Grassley. We investigate every tip, but at the end of the day, the more they do to this Smirnov guy, and the more that they use it in their media narrative, the fishier it sounds to me.”

In reality, Smirnov’s claims—which the FBI repeatedly warned were never confirmed—served as the entire basis for the Republicans’ investigation into the president and his family. But since Smirnov’s indictment, Republicans have rushed to rewrite their inquiry, deleting references to him from witness request letters and even the Oversight Committee website. Comer has accused the FBI of being “suspicious” and undermining Smirnov’s supposedly rock-solid credibility.

Comer’s behavior directly contradicts a promise he made last May, toward the start of the Biden investigation. “The Committee will assess the form it has subpoenaed from the FBI,” he said at the time, referring to the FD-1023 form outlining Smirnov’s claims. Those forms are only used to document unverified tips to the FBI.

“[As] has been my practice, we will report to you only facts when they are verified and indisputable,” Comer continued. “This committee will not pursue witch hunts or string the American people along for years with false promises of evidence that is beyond circumstantial evidence.”

And yet, despite Comer saying just last week that he was “ready to try to begin to close this investigation,” he and the other committee chairs spearheading the Biden probe have continued to levy accusations against the president and even summon more witnesses to testify.

Earlier in the Newsmax interview, Comer claimed that Hunter Biden lied while testifying to the Oversight Committee, because investigators had found proof and heard witness testimony confirming that the father-son duo were involved in criminal business practices overseas.

Every single witness Republicans have called has refuted these accusations. And ironically, Comer left toward the beginning of Hunter’s testimony, so he missed most of what the embattled first son said.

Ex–Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg Bites the Dust Again

Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg has pleaded guilty to perjury in Donald Trump’s fraud trial.

Allen Weisselberg tucks a folded item into his suit pocket and holds a water bottle in his hand
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

A loyal former lieutenant of Donald Trump who served as a key witness in the former president’s New York fraud trial pleaded guilty to perjury on Monday morning.

Allen Weisselberg, a former top executive of the Trump Organization, was a key witness out of the 40-odd people who took the stand during the fraud trial, in which Trump was ultimately penalized more than $450 million for massively overinflating his net worth in order to broker better (and fraudulent) deals with banks and insurance companies.

Weisselberg faces five months in jail after admitting he lied to investigators from the New York attorney general’s office in Trump’s civil fraud trial. The sentencing hearing is expected to take place April 10, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a press release.

The 76-year-old bookkeeper has been a faithful ally and confidant of Trump’s, reaping under-the-table luxuries like expensive apartments and cars as rewards for helping to camouflage a sprawling tax fraud scheme.

Weisselberg’s plea agreement comes at a critical juncture in Trump’s legal journey, just weeks before Trump will stand trial on unrelated charges pertaining to hush-money payments made by another one of his fixers, attorney Michael Cohen, to cover up his affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels shy of the 2016 presidential election.

Last month, prosecutors were taking a particular interest in claims that Weisselberg had made on October 10 about Trump’s penthouse at Trump Tower, which had been overvalued on his financial statements, being inaccurately reported as three times its actual size.

But Trump’s ability to navigate his upcoming criminal trials is still unclear, given that the self-purported billionaire can’t seem to scrape together the funds to put his civil penalties behind him.

On Wednesday, a New York appeals court judge rejected Trump’s last-ditch effort to postpone paying the full amount in lieu of a $100 million bond. The judge did, however, grant some relief after Trump’s legal team argued in an 1,800-page court filing that it would be “impossible” to secure a bond covering the full amount of the multimillion-dollar ruling. The granted request will allow Trump to continue borrowing money, though the ruling is temporary until a full panel of judges deliberates on the order.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg—Trump owes an additional $88.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for sexually assaulting her and then defaming her twice in his rabid denials. He owes $400,000 to The New York Times and has racked up thousands more over gag orders he’s violated amid all these trials. And in the realm of non–court ordered debts, Trump’s former right-hand man, America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani, claimed he still hasn’t been paid for the legal services he provided to the former president and is reportedly waiting on a sum of about $2 million.

Supreme Court: Trump Can Stay on Colorado Ballot, Forget the 14th Amendment

In a doozy ruling, the Supreme Court has decided that Colorado can’t kick Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot based on the Fourteenth Amendment.

Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that Donald Trump can appear on the Colorado state primary ballot, shutting down dozens of similar efforts to ban him from the election for his role in the January 6 insurrection.

The nation’s highest court heard arguments in early February about whether Colorado could disqualify Trump from its ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The majority of the justices had seemed skeptical at the time, and apparently remained so by the time they issued their ruling.

Trump is now eligible to receive votes in Colorado’s Republican primary on Tuesday. The justices’ decision means that Maine and Illinois, which have also disqualified Trump from their presidential primary ballots, must reinstate him.

“Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the States, responsible for enforcing Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse,” the justices wrote in their ruling.

Although the ruling was unanimous, the justices were divided in their reasoning behind it. Five conservative justices determined that the Fourteenth Amendment can only be enforced through a law passed by Congress.

The three liberal justices agreed that Colorado couldn’t make such a massive decision on its own, but strongly disputed that the amendment can only be applied through legislation. Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson slammed the majority for overstepping the bounds of the lawsuit at hand, and in doing so, “ruling out enforcement under general federal statutes requiring the government to comply with the law.”

“By resolving these and other questions, the majority attempts to insulate all alleged insurrectionists from future challenges to their holding federal office,” the three justices wrote in their dissenting opinion.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not rule on the dispute on congressional enforcement, but still, the ruling notes, “All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”

The Colorado state Supreme Court ruled in December that Trump had engaged in insurrection during the January 6 attack and was therefore ineligible to appear on the primary ballot. Little more than a week later, Maine’s secretary of state also barred him from the state’s ballot.

Multiple other states either are currently weighing or have decided whether Trump can appear on their ballot. The range in decisions prompted many to urge the Supreme Court to weigh in quickly, to avoid confusion ahead of the election.

Trump’s lawyers had said repeatedly they expected the Supreme Court to rule in their favor, even hinting it would be because some of the justices owed Trump some form of allegiance. Trump appointed three of the current justices.

Monday’s decision will provide a single rule for all states for the rest of the election cycle. But it will also likely shape how the Fourteenth Amendment’s language will be interpreted going forward.

This story has been updated.

Trump Loses His Mind After Also Losing His First Republican Primary

Donald Trump is trying the world’s most pathetic excuse after losing the Republican primary in Washington, D.C.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Congratulations to Nikki Haley on winning her first primary. She should probably thank Donald Trump, who definitely let her win on purpose—at least, according to him.

Haley dominated on Sunday in Washington, D.C.’s Republican primary, notching about 63 percent support. She won all 19 of the city’s Republican delegates, putting an unceremonious halt to Trump’s otherwise unobstructed cruise to the GOP nomination.

Trump, who has far outstripped Haley until now, won just 33 percent support. But that’s OK, because he totally planned it that way.

I purposely stayed away from the D.C. Vote because it is the ‘Swamp,’ with very few delegates, and no upside. Birdbrain spent all of her time, money and effort there,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Over the weekend we won Missouri, Idaho, and Michigan—BIG NUMBERS—Complete destruction of a very weak opponent.”

Trump called Haley “Birdbrain” again in another post and slammed her for saying Sunday morning that she no longer felt bound to support the former president if he is the GOP nominee, despite signing a pledge to the Republican National Committee to support whoever wins the nomination.

“Birdbrain is a loser, record low performance in virtually every State,” Trump posted. “I enjoy watching the Bird disavow her PLEDGE to the RNC and her statement that she would NEVER run against President Trump (‘A great President’). Well, she ran, she lied, and she LOST BIG!”

Trump’s campaign released a statement Sunday night branding Haley the “Queen of the Swamp” and promising Trump would drain said swamp if he is reelected—despite the fact that Trump actually left Washington “swampier” than when he first arrived.

Despite the D.C. hiccup, Trump is still by far the front-runner in the Republican primary. He has won nearly six times as many delegates as Haley, although he still needs to win another 1,215 before officially claiming the nomination.