Fauci Exposes Trump’s Unhinged Behavior Amid Covid Crisis

As a leading infectious diseases expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci was thrust into a leadership role during the Covid-19 pandemic and experienced volatile treatment from Donald Trump during his presidency, Fauci wrote in his new memoir.

Trump would “announce that he loved me and then scream at me on the phone,” Fauci wrote of the abusive behavior in On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, due to be published next week.

“Let’s just say, I found this to be out of the ordinary,” Fauci wrote. According to the immunologist, Trump would drop f-bombs often in conversations, including one where the then-president claimed Fauci cost the U.S. economy “one trillion fucking dollars.”

In his new book, Fauci talks about how badly Trump wanted to reopen the country and his embrace of poorly qualified advisers pushing unproven treatments, according to The Daily Beast. Fauci also discussed Trump’s hospitalization with Covid and his outrageous claim that bleach could kill the virus.

In the early days of the pandemic, Trump was not in a good mood. Fauci wrote about his “first experience [of] the brunt of the president’s rage,” just a few months into the outbreak.

“On the evening of June 3 [2020], my cell phone rang,” Fauci writes, “and the caller—the president—started screaming at me,” angry that Fauci told a journalist that immunity to coronaviruses was “usually six months to a year.” This meant that when a vaccine for Covid was developed, it would probably need booster shots.

While Fauci said this was common for illnesses like the flu, his remark was “wrongly reported on Twitter and in some media outlets as the Covid vaccine protecting people only for a very short time,” and this drew Trump’s fury.

“It was quite a phone call,” Fauci writes. “The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him. He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse.”

“I have a pretty thick skin,” Fauci added, “but getting yelled at by the president of the United States, no matter how much he tells you that he loves you, is not fun.”

Fauci’s time as the public face of the government’s efforts during the pandemic, as well as Trump’s treatment of him, led to right-wing figures spouting conspiracy theories about him and attacking efforts such as lockdowns and masks. Conservatives still hate the immunologist, and Republican lawmakers attempted to wildly smear him on a recent visit to Capitol Hill and proposed getting hold of his personal emails. If he makes public appearances to promote his book, as authors usually do, he’s likely to get more vitriol and attacks, despite his career in public service.

Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor torched her colleagues Friday in a dissenting opinion on the federal bump-stock ban.

In a 6-3 decision, the nation’s highest court tore up a Trump-era ban on bump stocks for semiautomatic rifles. All six conservative justices determined that although the attachments transform the guns into automatic rifles by allowing them to discharge hundreds of bullets a minute, the weapons do not qualify as machine guns and therefore do not face a legal precedent for a ban.

Joined in her opinion by the other liberal justices on the bench, Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sotomayor described how the court’s decision to uproot the ban—which was instituted after a mass shooter in Las Vegas shot thousands of rounds at a music festival and killed 60 people—would result in “deadly consequences.” She also slammed the court’s intense focus on trigger mechanics, rather than a shooter’s motions, as “myopic” and “contemporaneous,” noting that during oral arguments, the lawyer opposing the ban couldn’t point to a “single piece of evidence that supports the majority’s reading.”

“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” she wrote.

“The majority’s logic simply does not overcome the overwhelming textual and contextual evidence that ‘single function of the trigger’ means a single action by the shooter to initiate a firing sequence, including pulling a trigger and pushing forward on a bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle,” Sotomayor continued. “The majority’s artificially narrow definition hamstrings the Government’s efforts to keep machineguns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter. I respectfully dissent.”

And in a brutal move, Sotomayor cited each of her conservative colleagues in her dissent. She highlighted past arguments they had made in favor of respecting congressional intent, rather than imposing their own view on something—skewering their hypocrisy in Friday’s ruling.

The majority’s opinion hinged on a minute, hair-splitting distinction on the difference between assault rifles and machine guns, pitching that using a stock to “rapidly re-engage the trigger” did not constitute continuous shooting. Interestingly, Justice Samuel Alito threw the ball back into Congress’s court, arguing that the 2017 massacre demonstrated “that a semiautomatic rifle with a bump stock can have the same lethal effect as a machinegun,” and “strengthened” the case for amending the country’s gun laws.

It’s officially Martha-Ann Alito’s favorite holiday: Flag Day. And the internet won’t let her forget it.

When it was first officially signed into law in 1949, Flag Day was meant to serve as a reminder of a unified nation, which found common ground under one symbol. Cut to 75 years later, and the wife of a U.S. Supreme Court justice has gleefully subverted that edict, cheered on the destruction of Democracy, and fantasized about new ways to sow division and hate.

So it’s only right that users on X, formerly Twitter, are having a little fun with it.

Things even got a little topsy-turvy…

But we’re sure that Alito will figure out which way it’s supposed to go.

Just last month, it was first reported that an upside-down flag was seen hanging at the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in the weeks following the January 6 insurrection, a common symbol of Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” MAGA mob. Desperate to retain the illusion of neutrality, Alito blamed his wife for the flag, and thus her reputation as a virulent vexillologist began. Since then, it’s only gotten more apparent that Martha-Ann Alito sure does love her flags.

Shortly after the first flag came to light, it was reported that an Appeal to Heaven flag, a symbol favored by a Christian nationalist sect, was once flown outside their family’s beach home. House Speaker Mike Johnson flies this flag outside his office, and—desperate for some culture-war currency—MAGA Senator Tom Cotton now has one too.

Earlier this week, in a secret recording, Alito revealed that once her husband is no longer a pillar of the U.S. judiciary, she hopes to use flags to communicate every little political thought she has. Meanwhile, she whined about her neighbor’s flying a Pride flag.

“I’m gonna send them a message every day. Maybe every week I’ll be changing the flags. They’ll be all kinds,” she gushed. She revealed that she’d even designed a flag of her very own, displaying the Italian word for “shame,” that she dreamed of raising in an effort to antagonize those neighbors.

Instead of continuing to get dredged up in Alito’s drama, please enjoy this list of really cool flags.

The Supreme Court released an extreme ruling on Friday overturning a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, an attachment used to convert a semiautomatic rifle into an automatic rifle and which dramatically increases capacity for causing mass death. The Supreme Court overturned that ban in a 6–3 vote on Friday, with all liberal justices dissenting.

Bump stocks were initially banned by the Trump administration following the Las Vegas massacre, where a shooter using a bump stock fired more than 1,000 rounds at concertgoers over the course of 11 minutes in October 2017, killing 59 people and injuring more than 500. But even gun-friendly Trump’s restriction was a step too far for the high court.

Delivering the ruling, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that bump stocks don’t convert rifles into machine guns, which are banned. Thomas’s logic is that because a bump stock allows a shooter to “rapidly re-engage the trigger” instead of continuous shooting, bump stocks don’t convert assault rifles into machine guns. This splitting-hairs distinction evacuates any consideration for how much a bump stock transforms a rifle—converting the number of bullets that can be shot per minute from 180 to anywhere between 400 to 800.

The Supreme Court’s ruling focuses on granular differences between high-capacity weapons of mass death—as if how frequently a finger pulls a trigger makes much difference to the loved ones of those killed under a hail of bullets.

Speaker Mike Johnson tried to claim to Sean Hannity that Donald Trump didn’t trash Milwaukee in his meeting with House Republicans on Thursday, despite the fact that Trump admitted he made the insult.

On Fox News Thursday night, Hannity asked Johnson point-blank if Trump called Wisconsin’s largest city, the site of the Republican National Convention this summer, a “horrible city.”

“No, I didn’t hear it, and I was sitting right next to him,” Johnson said, seemingly unaware that Trump had already doubled down on his comments on Fox News itself. 

Trump’s insult of Milwaukee spread quickly and prompted denials and explanations from Republicans Thursday, including Wisconsin representatives who were present. Johnson appears to have taken his cue from Representative Bryan Steil, who also denied that Trump attacked the city, while three other Republicans from the state tried to explain it away, not knowing that Trump would later own his comments.

Wisconsin Democrats have already pounced on Trump for his words, with Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson mocking the convicted felon and former president and Representative Gwen Moore joking that Trump’s presence in Milwaukee would raise the city’s crime rate. Meanwhile, the Republican presidential nominee’s other bizarre comments in his House meeting have been overshadowed, including his mention of Taylor Swift and his even stranger claim that one of Nancy Pelosi’s daughters had told him he and her mother “would be perfect together.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea: that get-in-line remark from Donald Trump was definitely a compliment.

The MAGA soldier was thrilled that the presumptive GOP presidential nominee even recognized her among the crowd of House Republicans during his closed-door meeting with the caucus on Thursday.

“He’s always so sweet, recognizing me, and he said, ‘Are you being nice to Speaker [Mike] Johnson?’” she told CNN’s Lauren Fox.

“He was joking. And I said, ‘Eh,’” she continued, gesturing with her hands. “He said, ‘OK, be nice to him,’ and I nodded my head.”

But interpreting the interaction as anything other than high praise from an idol to his sycophants is completely off the books. Greene made a point to furiously correct Politico’s Olivia Beavers, who reported that the room had “erupted” after Trump ordered the instruction.

“Nothing’s worse than a reporter that only reports half the story,” Greene wrote on X, sharing a screenshot of Beavers’s description of the meeting. “She left off all the nice compliments Pres Trump said about me to our conference.”

“President Trump is right. I’m loyal and unapologetically support him everywhere and all the time, and I am capable. That’s why I’ll be nice to Johnson as long as he’s nice to my favorite President,” she continued. “And that means Speaker Johnson better use the full weight of his office to stop the politically weaponized government and pass our Republican agenda, not Biden’s agenda.”

Greene and Johnson were diametrically opposed as recently as last month, when the Georgia Republican forced a vote to strip Johnson of the gavel. Her motion to vacate fell apart after the House voted 359-43 to keep Johnson in leadership.

But the time-consuming and chaotic effort came at the cost of Greene’s already minimal popularity in the lower chamber, with Republicans insisting that she be stripped of her committee assignments for leading another attempt to divide an already thin and historically unproductive majority.

Lawrence O’Donnell tore into Senator Ted Cruz for submissively applauding Donald Trump, who famously hates him, even after the presumptive GOP nominee had walked out of his meeting with Senate Republicans.

During his show on MSNBC Thursday night, O’Donnell reminded viewers that during Trump’s first run for president, he made several depraved comments about Cruz. Trump had made the wild assertion that Cruz’s father killed President John F. Kennedy. He also attacked Cruz’s wife’s appearance, threatening to “spill the beans” on her. Cruz tossed a few volleys of his own, calling Trump a “pathological liar,” a “sniveling coward,” and a “serial philanderer.”

O’Donnell reminded viewers that, “There was real suspense then going into the 2016 Republican Convention about whether or not the deeply offended Senator Cruz would even endorse Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president. But Senator Cruz looked into his heart and found … nothing,” O’Donnell said.

“Nothing that would prevent him from endorsing the presidential candidate who attacked and lied about his father and attacked and lied about his wife. And there was Senator Cruz today in that lineup of utterly egoless Republican men craving their moment with Donald Trump, craving a possible handshake, or a possible pat on the back, or a wink or a smile, a glance, anything from Donald Trump.”

When it became apparent that Trump would seize the nomination in 2016, the Texas senator put the bad blood aside, and has since repeatedly sold his soul for a ticket on the Trump train. In January, Cruz announced he was “enthusiastically” endorsing him for president.

O’Donnell highlighted how Cruz’s spinelessness was once again on display during Trump’s meeting with Republican senators Thursday. In footage from the event, Trump can be seen moving down a line of senators hoping for a handshake. He stopped in front of his fanboy, Cruz, for a moment, before swiftly moving down the line. As Trump made his way out the door, Cruz kept clapping—and continued applauding even after Trump was out of the room.

“He kept clapping after Donald Trump left the room, after the door was closed,” O’Donnell scoffed. “Did he think Donald Trump could see through the door?”

Another day, another manufactured ragebait: Conservative media is circulating a video of Joe Biden apparently wandering off during a G7 summit gathering in southern Italy with claims that fascist Italian Prime Minister Meloni had to “pull him back to focus.” The incident caused a stir among right-wing outlets—and was totally doctored.

The clip that circulated among tabloids at home and abroad, including the New York Post, Sky News, and Times of India—was first blown up by right-wing account “RNC Research,” an account managed by Trump’s campaign team and the Republican National Convention and that claims to be “exposing the lies, hypocrisy, and failed far-left policies of Joe Biden and the Democrat Party.”

RNC Research’s post conveniently cropped out a skydiver repacking his parachute that Biden turned to talk to before another skydiver began addressing the group of global leaders. After the New York Post shared the video of the incident on X, it was quickly met with a Community Note debunking the claim. While the New York Post’s article admits Biden was speaking with a skydiver, the headline and included video are nonetheless deceptive, provoking criticism of the Post’s coverage of the non-incident incident.

In the full video, world leaders are informally gathered around each other, talking and looking around as Biden moves to chat with a skydiver repacking his parachute. While he’s speaking to the skydiver, another skydiver begins talking to the group, at which point the gaggle of world leaders begin to shuffle and adjust to listen to the skydiver. It’s at that point Meloni taps Biden to notify him that another skydiver is speaking to them behind him.

Wisconsin Democrats have not been as forgiving as their conservative counterparts to Donald Trump’s closed-door insult against their home state, instead opting to torch the former president for calling Milwaukee a “horrible city” with a terrible crime rate.

Speaking to MSNBC on Thursday, Representative Gwen Moore turned the script back on Trump, joking that—because he’s a convicted felon—Milwaukee’s crime rate will actually go through the roof when he arrives for the Republican National Convention in July.

“I don’t know many people in Milwaukee who have 34 felony counts against them,” Moore said, adding through a laugh that “our crime rate sure is going to go up when he joins us.”

Trump’s wild explanation that he was referring to the city’s crime rate—and its recent decision to indict participants in his 2020 fake elector scheme—arrived hours after the open-ended insult, and after his Republican allies had had their chance at individually trying to explain away the comment. Some rushed to provide justifications that included whining about the city’s delay in answering the former president’s request to expand the security perimeter around the Republican National Convention in an effort to keep protesters even further out of vision. But others bizarrely jumped to claim that Trump never made the comments at all.

And speaking to Fox News’s Aishah Hasnie about whether or not his pick for vice president was in the meeting of House Republicans early Thursday, Trump doubled down that he wasn’t looking forward to trekking to Milwaukee for the convention.

“I don’t want to go, but I think [it] will probably get announced during the convention,” Trump told Hasnie.

Ultimately, Trump’s claim that the city’s crime numbers are “terrible” was actually just plain wrong. In reality, crime in Milwaukee is way down, with homicides in the city decreasing by 42 percent when compared to 2022, according to data from the Milwaukee Police Department. Crimes such as rape, aggravated assault, theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson have also dropped off drastically in the Brew City.

“A few weeks ago I had a meeting with our police chief, and you know crime has gone down all over America, and we are really proud of the fact that crimes like murder and rape have gone down in double digits and one of the biggest problems we have in Milwaukee right now, it is reckless driving,” Moore told MSNBC.

Wisconsin is shaping up to be a key swing state in the 2024 presidential election. Only time will tell if they remember the flub come November.

Donald Trump is already doing damage control for his upcoming debate with President Joe Biden.

The former president laid out a few different excuses, attempting to explain away why Biden might perform well on the stage in two weeks, during an interview Thursday night on the far-right news network Real America’s Voice.

“I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I can say this. If he does make it through, which I think he will, they’re gonna feed him a lot of stuff,” said Trump. “And we should do a drug test, I’d love to do a drug test before.”

Trump, who rarely casts an accusation that is not also a projection, previously suggested that Biden was “higher than a kite,” during his State of the Union address.

The presumptive Republican nominee also joked Thursday that he might decide to throw the event, but his reasoning made little to no sense. Trump explained that his polling suggests that Biden is more popular than any of the Democrats that the party might tap to replace him, should they somehow choose to pull the plug on his campaign after the debate.

“This guy does better than the Democrats that you’re talking about, including [Gretchen] Whitmer,” Trump said, referring to the governor of Michigan. “He does better than them, I don’t quite understand that. I’m a little surprised. But, he actually polls better than all the people you’re talking about, and so, they don’t want to take him off, it depends.”

“Maybe I’m better off losing the debate, I’ll make sure he stays. I’ll lose the debate on purpose, maybe I’ll do something like that,” Trump added.

It’s less likely that Trump wants to keep his opponent, who is by his own admission popular among Democrats, in the race, and more likely that Trump wants to create a sort of safety rail in case he flubs his performance. Trump’s game plan is simple: if he does poorly, it was on purpose, and if Biden does great, it’s because he was on drugs.

CNN will host the first Biden-Trump debate on June 27.