Comedy World Righteously Roasts Trump Over Gettysburg Gaffe

Speaking outside Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, Donald Trump left everyone confused when he attempted to explain the Battle of Gettysburg, praised (and invented a quote from) Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and generally had no idea what he was talking about.

When his off-the-cuff remarks hit late-night television on Monday, the hosts couldn’t hide their laughter.

“You have to hand it to this guy: On the weekend before his unprecedented criminal trial begins, he somehow manages to overshadow it with this broken-brained interpretation of what happened at Gettysburg during the Civil War,” Jimmy Kimmel quipped.

“What a stirring orator. I look forward to Ken Burns’s updated documentary,” Stephen Colbert said.

“That is plagiarized almost directly from my seventh-grade book report, ‘Gettysburg: Wow,’” said Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

Donald Trump’s knowledge of history has long been suspect—we’re still not sure if he knows who Frederick Douglass is, for example. His remarks on Saturday aren’t even the first time that he’s made this bizarre recounting of the Battle of Gettysburg. Perhaps he should follow in Abraham Lincoln’s footsteps and pay a visit to the actual battlefield—though he clearly didn’t learn much from an October 2016 visit. But how much free time will he have before the election, since he has to be in a courtroom most of the time?

House Speaker Mike Johnson just lost one more party member to the simmering Republican effort to strip him of his job.

Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie announced on Tuesday that he had sided with Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene to rid the lower chamber of Johnson’s leadership.

“I just told Mike Johnson in conference that I’m cosponsoring the Motion to Vacate that was introduced by @RepMTG,” Massie wrote on X. “He should pre-announce his resignation (as Boehner did), so we can pick a new Speaker without ever being without a GOP Speaker.”

And the straw that broke the camel’s back?

“All of the above. This camel has a pallet of bricks,” Massie wrote, following a string of tweets pointing to the Ukraine-Israel-Taiwan foreign aid package, the expansion of a “warrantless” domestic surveillance program, a proposal to ban TikTok, and the lack of a border bill.

Johnson has, according to Massie, already issued his response, telling the Kentuckian that he “won’t resign.”

“I said to him that he is the only one who can prevent us from going through what happened last fall,” Massie posted.

Massie’s defection from the pro-Johnson camp adds incredible pressure to the speaker’s already tenuous position in a monumentally divided House GOP. As of Tuesday, Greene needs just one more conservative defector in order to oust Johnson—or, if the vote takes place after Republican Representative Mike Gallagher takes his leave from Congress on Friday, the pair might be enough to give Johnson the boot on their own.

In March, Greene filed a motion to vacate after Johnson worked with Democrats and Republicans in the Senate to pass a $1.2 trillion omnibus bill, torching him for accomplishing one of the legislature’s primary annual responsibilities: funding the government.

But last week the Georgia Republican ramped up her attacks, circulating a vicious five-page memo calling for his removal while accusing the caucus of ignoring the wills of its constituents via the party’s alleged “complete and total surrender” to Democrats under Johnson’s helm.

Donald Trump’s lawyer is complaining that her client is being denied due process because he can’t attend all of his legal proceedings.

Alina Habba slammed Judge Juan Merchan Monday night for not making a special exception to allow Trump to attend the Supreme Court case on presidential immunity in Washington, D.C. She insisted that refusing to do so violated a basic right outlined in the Constitution.

“Not even allowing a person due process, the right to go sit in front of the Supreme Court and hear a case that determines many lawsuits that are currently against President Trump on immunity,” Habba complained to Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

“Due process” simply means that legal proceedings must be carried out according to certain rules. Trump is getting due process by going to trial over alleged hush-money payments. Due process does not guarantee him the right to go sit in the Supreme Court.

Another issue is that New York state law requires a criminal defendant to attend every day of their trial unless they receive an exception from the judge. Trump’s hush-money trial began Monday, with Merchan outlining that requirement. Merchan also noted that it was too early to say if Trump could attend his son Barron’s high school graduation.

Trump and his fellow Republicans may finally be realizing that even a former president is subject to the same laws and rules as every other criminal defendant. This is Trump’s first criminal trial, and he can’t expect to continue his life as normal while the trial is ongoing, even if that means less traveling around the country campaigning or celebrating. And he’s not completely restricted: Trump can still be on the campaign trail every weekend, evening, and Wednesday as long as the case continues.

The schedule of the trial, and how it conflicts with the other legal proceedings, can hardly be considered a constitutional question. In fact, it is in large part due to Trump’s legal strategy: repeatedly delaying proceedings as long as possible to hopefully push decisions about him until after Election Day, which might not even work out in his favor.

And it’s not the first time that Habba has seemingly failed to grasp important pieces of the law. During Trump’s defamation trial in January, she repeatedly failed to understand courtroom procedure and spoke out of turn, and was admonished by Judge Lewis Kaplan several times.

Donald Trump issued some fresh vitriol against Judge Juan Merchan Tuesday morning, clamoring once again for the gag order imposed on him to be removed, even though he seems to be willfully ignoring it anyway.

“MY TRIAL IS AN ASSAULT ON AMERICA!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

“This conflicted, Trump Hating Judge won’t let me respond to people that are on TV lying and spewing hate all day long,” he continued. “He is running rough shod over my lawyers and legal team. The New York System of ‘Justice’ is being decimated by critics from all over the World. I want to speak, or at least be able to respond. Election Interference! RIGGED, UNCONSTITUTIONAL TRIAL! Take off the Gag Order!!!”

The GOP presidential nominee isn’t really forbidden to speak, though. The partial gag order forbids Trump from speaking publicly about courtroom staff, prosecutors, or any of their family members. Comments about jurors are also prohibited, as well as comments about witnesses—but wiggle room still exists within the order that allows Trump to attack Merchan, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, or anybody else, for that matter, including his political rivals.

According to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Trump may have already violated his gag order several times—including at least one instance in which he seemingly posted while in court.

But none of this should be news to Trump, who so far has been hit with two other gag orders in his prior legal trials. In October, Judge Arthur Engoron silenced the former president after he ushered a wealth of far-right venom onto Engoron’s chief law clerk. Trump was later fined $15,000 for violating the order. Judge Tanya Chutkan also imposed a gag order on Trump in his election interference trial.

Still, the level of punishment for Trump’s disregard of his gag order could vary, according to MSNBC analyst Caroline Polisi, who noted on Monday that it might range from a “tongue lashing” to “monetary sanctions” to actually “putting him in jail.”

“The judge is in a tough spot here,” Polisi said during live coverage of the first day of the trial. “No judge wants to be that, you know, person. That is, the one to throw former President Trump in jail for criminal contempt. I personally just don’t see that happening. But the judge’s hands may be tied here. You know, we’ve seen previous judges issue these sort of escalating sanctions, monetary sanctions.”

Donald Trump had a strange claim at the end of the first day of his hush-money trial: He said that the judge had barred him from attending his son’s high school graduation next month.

“It looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son who’s worked very, very hard and he is a great student,” Trump told reporters outside of Manhattan district court Monday. “It looks like the judge isn’t going to allow me to escape this scam. It’s a scam trial.”

Trump’s legal team had filed a motion requesting the former president be allowed to attend the graduation ceremony. Judge Juan Merchan declined to decide the issue on Monday, saying it depends on if everything is running on schedule.

But the thing is, if Trump can’t go, then he has no one to blame but himself. Trump’s legal strategy has been to delay, delay, delay in order to keep the rulings in his many legal cases as late as possible, hopefully past the November election. But now that strategy may backfire on him—but in his personal life.

It’s an unexpected development in the legal saga of the former president who, in addition to his Manhattan hush-money trial, is on trial in Florida for mishandling classified documents; in Washington, D.C., for attempting to overthrow the election; and in Fulton County, Georgia, for interfering in that state’s election.

He’ll be required to be in court for every session of his New York trial—which is standard procedure for criminal trials but beyond the pale to Trump and his Republican supporters—and he’ll only be able to be on the campaign trail every weekend, evening, and Wednesday as long as the case continues. If he misses a day in court, he could even face prison time.

The former president had to know that dragging each case out would eventually cause a scheduling issue between his presidential campaign and his personal life. It’s unprecedented for a former president to face criminal charges, let alone while they are campaigning for reelection, so this is probably not the end of any new, weird developments. In the end, though, if Trump is still in court by the time Election Day comes around in November, it could be bad for his chances of returning to the White House.