Guess Where Marjorie Taylor Greene Has Suddenly Gotten Popular?

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s conspiracy theories, vitriolic language, and xenophobia have made her a darling of the right and a pariah on the left—and now, she’s gained admiration from Russian state television.

Greene’s attempts to block aid to Ukraine, her criticisms of NATO, and her beliefs that the United States should withdraw from the alliance have drawn plaudits from TV hosts in Russia, The Daily Beast reported Friday.

“She believes that Americans should help Putin win. Yes, you heard that right. To help him win in Ukraine,” says host Evgeny Popov in one clip.

It’s a new development for Greene, who previously was mocked in the country for confusing gazpacho with Gestapo and claiming that Jewish space lasers caused the California wildfires. Russian TV even said her words were proof of “mental debilitation” in Western politics. But Greene may be happy to know that her echoing of Russian propaganda in the House of Representatives has paid off, despite the fact that the issue of aid to Ukraine has divided the Republican Party. It looks like former Representative Ken Buck was right on the money when he called her “Moscow Marjorie.”

Some experts have even suggested that Russia is buying off American politicians just like they do in Europe. Greene wouldn’t be the only Republican to spew Kremlin talking points, but she seems to be the most popular so far. As the new darling of Russian state TV, she’s filling a void left by Speaker Mike Johnson, who in recent days has come out in support of aid in Ukraine after months of blocking it. Johnson was so beloved on Russian television for blocking aid to Ukraine that one TV host called him “Our Johnson.”

Green also appears to have usurped erstwhile Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whose February interview with Putin fell flat, ending Russian TV’s love affair with him.

Russia’s praise of Greene, and other conservative personalities before her, is just further proof that post–Donald Trump, a large part of the Republican Party has pledged its allegiance to Vladimir Putin.

New York state Attorney General Letitia James on Friday asked the judge presiding over Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial to reject the former president’s bond, which has been dogged by reports of the insolvency of the company backing it.

Earlier this month, James gave Trump and Knight Specialty Insurance, the insurance company that underwrote his civil fraud case bond, 10 days to guarantee that the $175 million surety could be justified. Those 10 days are now up.

Trump and Knight Specialty Insurance, which is not licensed as a surety in New York state, could not prove the surety “meets the requirements of trustworthiness and competence,” according to a memo from James’s office,  and thus failed to demonstrate that they would be good for the $175 million. 

It’s not exactly a surprise, given that the bond would account for more than a third of Knight Specialty’s assets and more than its surplus funds. The company may also have not actually legally agreed to pay the bond for Trump. Trump has struggled to come up with the money to pay the various legal fees against him on his own; he enlisted the insurer Chubb to loan him the $91 million needed for the E. Jean Carroll defamation judgment.

As a result, James wants to give Trump a week to post another bond, this one backed by someone more trustworthy than the “king of subprime car loans.” If he cannot, James may begin seizing his assets to cover the judgment against him. 

Judge Arthur Engoron is set to hear arguments on the surety’s validity on Monday. Trump, meanwhile, won’t be far: His criminal hush-money trial, which now has a full jury, is set to proceed in New York the same day.

Matt Gaetz isn’t having a great week. It just got worse.

The House Ethics Committee, which is investigating Gaetz for illegal drug use as a member of Congress, received a sworn statement alleging that Gaetz attended a 2017 party in Florida where cocaine and MDMA use occurred, ABC News reported Friday. The statement also alleges that the girl at the center of a Department of Justice investigation into Gaetz attended the party and was seen naked.

The Justice Department began investigating Gaetz in 2020 over allegations that the Florida representative had paid a convicted sex trafficker to have sex with the girl, who was 17 at the time. It concluded the probe in 2023 and declined to charge Gaetz.

Gaetz has denied using drugs as a member of Congress. But, according to Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, he has bragged to co-workers about taking erectile dysfunction medicine–energy cocktails to “go all night.” He also allegedly, while standing on the House floor, showed colleagues nude photos and videos of women he had slept with.

The Florida Republican made headlines earlier this week after he and Wisconsin Representative Derrick Van Orden traded insults amid House GOP chaos over foreign aid packages. He also drew the ire of another colleague, New York Representative Mike Lawler, who on Thursday charged him and his “seven useful idiots” with sowing division in the Republican caucus by moving to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

McCarthy, for his part, has pointed to his refusal to shut down the ethics investigation into Gaetz as the motivation behind Gaetz’s October motion to vacate. Gaetz has admitted as much privately.

Whatever the ethics probe turns up, it’s clear that his colleagues in the House are sick of him.

Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes got told off Friday for his company’s terrible stock performance in a blistering statement that puts Donald Trump’s angry Truth Social barbs to shame. 

Nunes, a former congressman who helms Trump’s social media venture, wrote a letter to the CEO of NASDAQ, Adena Friedman, asking her to prevent “naked short selling,” a technique used to try to benefit from an asset declining in value. Nunes asked Friedman to make sure trading firms disclose whether they are short-selling $DJT stock.

Truth Social’s stock value has plummeted since it debuted on the stock market a few weeks ago. As of Friday, it is worth about $35 a share, half of its initial price.

Citadel Securities, one of the firms named in the letter, had some choice words in response to Nunes’s complaint.   

“Devin Nunes is the proverbial loser who tries to blame ‘naked short selling’ for his falling stock price. Nunes is exactly the type of person Donald Trump would have fired on The Apprentice. If he worked for Citadel Securities, we would fire him, as ability and integrity are at the center of everything we do,” the firm said in a statement, the likes of which is not usually heard on Wall Street. 

Trump Media fired back with a statement of their own. 

“Citadel Securities, a corporate behemoth that has been fined and censured for an incredibly wide range of offenses including issues related to naked short selling, and is world famous for screwing over everyday retail investors at the behest of other corporations, is the last company on earth that should lecture anyone on ‘integrity,’” a spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal.

Naked short selling, an illegal practice, differs from conventional short selling, which is when traders borrow stock shares before selling them, hoping to profit later by buying back the stock at a lower price. In naked short selling, a trader never follows through on the promise to borrow. This can severely hurt a company’s stock price, and there is no shortage of people who would want to see Trump’s stock fail. 

But the former president’s social media venture might not need the help. While its stock price was slightly up today, it has plummeted since its initial public offering a few weeks ago, hurt by the news that two of its investors were arrested for insider trading as well as poor revenue numbers reported from its SEC filings. Trump is legally barred from selling any shares in Trump Media for six months without board approval, and who knows what the company will be worth by the time he decides to sell.

Donald Trump fired off an all-caps rant on Truth Social Friday about his presidential immunity Supreme Court case—despite sitting in the courtroom for his hush-money trial as the posts went up.

Trump complained bitterly about the importance of presidential immunity to protect sitting and former presidents, one of his go-to lines of argument as insists that he should be shielded from criminal prosecutions.

Trump simply can’t stop posting, despite having been warned by the judge presiding over the trial to stay off his phone, both inside and outside the courtroom. And it’s starting to hurt his case: On Thursday, Judge Juan Merchan refused to provide Trump’s lawyers with a list of the prosecution’s first three witnesses. 

This isn’t the first time Trump’s account has mysteriously posted while the former president himself was indisposed. During his defamation trial in January, his account made 30 posts disparaging E. Jean Carroll while he sat in court without access to his phone.  

If it’s not Trump behind these morning social media screeds, then who is it? It may be Dan Scavino, former White House deputy chief of staff and current adviser to the Trump campaign. Scavino ghostwrote many of Trump’s tweets during his time as president, and even though Trump no longer posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, the two maintain a close relationship that may include sharing access to Trump’s social media accounts. Trump recently joked that Scavino “could say, ‘I don’t like you voters, I don’t like you at all. I’m fed up with you. I can’t stand you.’ And that’s the end of my political career.” 

Regardless of who’s actually doing the posting, Trump’s Truth Social account has gotten him in trouble in a number of courtrooms as of late. He’s been accused by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg of violating a gag order against attacking witnesses in the hush-money trial. Like any seasoned poster, though, Trump (or whoever he shares his account with) keeps posting through it. Maybe he’s just trying to juice the stock.