Blabbering Donald Trump Agrees to Debate Biden on These Terms

“Make my day, pal.”

Biden and Trump, both presumptive presidential nominees, are trading barbs like two creaky prizefighters offering to debate one another, giving a glimpse into the type of back and forth voters can expect ahead of the general election in November.

The latest banter battle comes on the heels of Biden formally notifying the Commission on Presidential Debates that he won’t participate in its scheduled debates slated for later in the fall. Biden instead challenged Trump to two debates, in June and September—and surprisingly, Trump seems to have accepted.

Side-stepping tradition, Biden’s campaign chose the dates to account for early voting and to compensate for what they claim is the commission’s inability to enforce traditional debate rules in 2020, according to reporting by CNN. This shift follows the Republican National Committee’s breakaway from committee-run debates two years ago.

In a video posted to his social media accounts, Biden pointed out Trump’s prior refusal to participate in all Republican presidential candidate debates and how it contrasts with his desire to debate Biden now, insinuating that Trump is simply afraid to debate.

On Truth Social, Trump quickly accepted the offer, and suggested they schedule more than just two debates and a “very large venue” for “excitement purposes.”

“Just tell me when, I’ll be there. ‘Let’s get ready to Rumble!!!’” Trump wrote.

“Let’s pick the day, Donald. I hear you’re free on Wednesdays,” said Biden, a nod to the ongoing hush-money trial against Trump, which breaks each Wednesday.

In his video challenge to Trump, Biden noted that he won their past debates in 2020, reflected by polling data. In response, Trump posted to Truth Social that “Crooked Joe Biden is the WORST debater I have ever faced,” which says very little considering he’s avoided every debate since 2020.

Shortly after issuing his public offer to debate Trump in June and September, Biden announced receiving an offer from CNN, an outlet Trump is notoriously hostile toward, to debate on June 27. “Over to you, Donald,” Biden said. “As you said: anywhere, any time, any place.”

Trump accepted soon after: “I’ll be there,” Trump told Fox News, adding that he’s “looking forward to being in beautiful Atlanta.”

CNN confirmed that Trump has accepted the debate invite. The debate will be held in its Atlanta studios with no audience present, a rarity in presidential debates.

Since this morning’s challenge and June debate offer, Trump and Biden have both accepted a second debate hosted by ABC News on September 10.

This story has been updated.

Representative Greg Murphy joined his fellow Republicans in suggesting that  Israel could use nuclear weapons in its already brutal war on Gaza.

Speaking to Chris Salcedo on Newsmax Tuesday afternoon, the North Carolina congressman compared the situation to Japan and the United States during World War II.

“If you look at what imperial Japan did to the United States, we came back and said basically you’re going to have to unconditionally surrender, and when they didn’t, we had to drop the two atomic bombs on them,” Murphy said. “This is where Israel has every single right in the world to press this conflict further.”

The congressman’s extreme rhetoric follows that of Senator Lindsey Graham, who on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday similarly suggested Israel could drop nuclear bombs on Gaza.

“When we were faced with destruction as a nation after Pearl Harbor, fighting the Germans and the Japanese, we decided to end the war by the bombing [of] Hiroshima [and] Nagasaki with nuclear weapons,” Graham said. “That was the right decision.”

He added, “Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war. They can’t afford to lose.”

Graham and Murphy aren’t the first in Congress to suggest nuking the besieged Palestinian territory, though, as Representative Tim Walberg, another Republican, suggested that “it should be like Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” at a town hall meeting in late March.

Nuking aside, much of Gaza has already been reduced to rubble by Israel’s bombing campaign, which has killed more than 35,000 people, including at least 14,500 children. One wonders what would be enough for Republicans (and some Democrats) to recognize a genocide and humanitarian catastrophe enabled by the policies they help to enact, and do the right thing themselves. Instead, they seem to be more upset at the college students who are trying to do something.

The first day of cross-examination against arguably the most consequential witness in Donald Trump’s hush-money case resulted in … practically no results for the GOP presidential nominee’s legal defense.

Over the course of several hours on Tuesday, Trump’s attorneys badgered Cohen about his juvenile social media posts—including calling his old boss a “Cheeto-dusted cartoon villain”—and whether Cohen hoped that his sentence would be reduced in exchange for cooperation in the trial. But legal experts didn’t feel that the cross was very effective at positing a new or reformed narrative that would help their client or have any sway with the jury whatsoever.

MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin wrote that the cross-examination had “not accomplished much” beyond showing that Cohen is still a wealthy individual who has made money off books he’s written about Trump, that his opinion of Trump had changed after he was sentenced in December 2018, and that he’s thrown a bevy of insults at Trump.

Unfortunately for Trump’s defense, none of that was news.

“We’re likely just over 15 minutes from the end of … today, and I’m still unsure what the defense gained from the start of the cross, if anything,” wrote Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien. “No checks, no business records, no alternate theories of the case presented.”

Ultimately, the effort was a startling contrast to a prosecution team that started the morning by arriving with a cartful of documents, ready to burst into action.

The trial will resume on Thursday, though even that opportunity to continue developing a defense out of Cohen’s testimony will be cut short by a preapproved appointment for a juror, ending the trial slightly early at 4 p.m.

Trump is accused of using Cohen to sweep an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony charges in this case for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime. Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.

House Republicans have inadvertently debunked one of their biggest lies about January 6—that the police opened the doors of the Capitol building so the rioters outside could enter.

Journalist Jamie Dupree on Tuesday posted footage from inside the main doors of the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, showing rioters not only breaching the doors but also pushing past police officers.

In November, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson announced that most of the security footage from that day would be released to the public. He may not have considered how much of it might debunk the stories he and other Republicans have been telling in an attempt to minimize the events of that day. Just last month, Johnson claimed that innocent Americans were just “walking through the building.”

Republican politicians have touted numerous conspiracy theories about January 6, from claiming that the secretary of the Army delayed calling the National Guard in order to get a job with the Biden administration, to saying that fake Trump supporters arrived in Washington, D.C., on “ghost buses.” Trump was also caught on tape saying he could have stopped the riots—when in reality, he wanted to join them. Many in the GOP still believe that the federal government instigated the whole thing.

This latest discovery still may not convince die-hard Trump supporters, who ignore the fact that many January 6 defendants say that they were there on Trump’s orders. At the very least, though, there is now video proof against one of the many January 6 conspiracy theories.

As the hush-money trial for former President Donald Trump resumed on Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson held a press conference outside the courthouse and issued a slew of falsehoods in defense of Trump, denigrated the legitimacy of the judicial branch, and even attacked the adult daughter of the judge who is overseeing the case, Juan Merchan.

The move was quickly noticed by court reporters, who asked Trump if he was using Johnson and others to sidestep the gag order prohibiting him from making the types of statements levied by Johnson moments earlier. Trump responded expansively while saying nothing: “I do have a lot of surrogates, and they are speaking very beautifully.”

Trump further called for the gag order to be lifted, claiming that there has “never been anything like this in the history of our country,” though it is in fact typical to restrict an actively hostile defendant who is targeting people in order to disrupt the case against them. Trump has incited violence both against the electoral system and against the courts overseeing his corruption trials.

Many were quick to notice that, were Trump to say any of what Johnson said on Tuesday, he’d be found in violation of his gag order. Former Representative Liz Cheney criticized Johnson’s appearance, writing, “I’m surprised that @SpeakerJohnson wants to be in the ‘I cheated on my wife with a porn star’ club.”

Part of Trump’s gag order prohibits him from directing others to make statements on his behalf. Judge Merchan last warned Trump that if he violated the gag order again, he could face jail time.