MAGA Loses It Over Game-Changing Announcement on Biden-Trump Debate

Trump supporters are outraged that Thursday’s presidential debate will be fact-checked. On Wednesday, CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale posted that he’d be live fact-checking the debate, an extension of the work he already does fact-checking things Biden and Trump say.

Dale’s post sparked immediate outrage from Trump supporters, who insinuated that facts aren’t real if they come from CNN. Stephen Miller, Trump’s white nationalist former adviser, went so far as to claim the process of fact-checking the debate is an effort to “smear and spin for Biden.”

One user who described CNN as the “Communist News Network” asserted that CNN gave “Joe robbin’ ya Biden” the questions and that makeup artists will be implanting a “listening device” on Biden to help him remember his answers.

It’s a charming fable, but pretty far outside the bounds of reality. Debate questions tend to focus on each campaign’s platform, recent news items, and public statements. In addition, there’s no indication from Dale’s post that CNN will be interrupting the debate to provide the fact-checks or altering on-screen information to publicize a fact-check, just that one of the best fact-checkers in the business will be posting fact-checks as the debate happens.

Trump has a track record of lying prolifically, but that doesn’t mean Biden never gets fact-checked on CNN or that doing the heavy lifting of catching all of Trump’s lies in real time is a bias for Biden. It’s just that a leaky faucet isn’t as noticeable when placed next to an exploded water main. The simple truth is if Trump said fewer factually untrue things, he wouldn’t get fact-checked all the time.

This latest outrage over live fact-checking comes after weeks of Team Trump insisting Trump’s going to lose the debate, with excuses ranging from claims Biden will be doped up on hard drugs and that moderators are biased against him as he struggles to not be a “raging asshole.”

The New Republic will also have a live watch party for the debate. You can tune in at 9 p.m. E.T. here.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, while attempting to call out the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, inadvertently owned herself and fellow supporters of Donald Trump.

Speaking in Congress Wednesday night about 2025 State Department and foreign operations spending, Greene proposed reducing USAID chief Samantha Power’s salary to $1, slamming her as a “globalist, left-wing activist who uses government positions to force the regime’s views on the American people and the rest of the world.

“A person who abuses her position in government to meddle in democratic elections should be nowhere near public office,” Greene said, the reality of the remark whistling over her own head.

According to former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the House January 6 committee, Greene had asked the Trump administration for a pardon after the Capitol insurrection. What did she think she needed a pardon for, if not for attempting to meddle in the 2020 presidential election?

Plus, there are the charges that Trump faces for election interference in Georgia, as well as for January 6 in Washington, D.C. By Greene’s logic, that means Trump should be kept far away from the White House. And there’s the myriad of Trump allies who are charged for election interference in places including Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. Does Greene think that all of those officials should be barred from public office?

Greene probably wasn’t thinking. She freaks out if anyone insinuates she’s less than adored by the former president and convicted felon. Her words and actions have alienated her from her colleagues in Congress, and she’s pushing conspiracies ahead of Thursday night’s presidential debate. It’s funny that she thinks Samantha Power should be far away from government, when Greene is trying so desperately to keep Steve Bannon out of prison for contempt of Congress charges directly related to election interference.

One day, the contradictions in Greene’s head will drive her insane. Then again, there are a lot of people who think that’s been the case for a long time.

It seems like Taylor Swift isn’t the only one with a grudge against Kim Kardashian: The former president seems to have bad blood with the billionaire multihyphenate, as well.

In the soon-to-be released book Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, the presumptive Republican nominee told Ramin Setoodeh, Variety’s co–editor in chief and the author of the book, that he was “disappointed in Kim.”

“With Kim I did a lot of prison reform that she couldn’t get done with anybody else, and I let people out of prison that I thought were deserving to be let out,” Trump said.

“And then after it was all over she announced that she’s not supporting me,” he continued. “She only did that to be cool in Hollywood.”

Kardashian has been an outspoken advocate for criminal justice reform, and championed the former president’s work on the issue. In 2018, Kardashian was a central figure in advocating for clemency for Alice Johnson, who was sentenced to life in prison plus 25 years for her involvement in a drug conspiracy. Once freed, Trump touted Johnson at political events as proof of his so-called commitment to prison reform—until she eventually refused to endorse him.

According to ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl’s book Tired of Winning, Trump agreed to help Kardashian get commutations in return for getting NFL players to appear at the White House.

Trump’s relationship with Kardashian supposedly soured after the 2020 election, when—although she’s never publicly stated whom she voted for—Trump became convinced she’d voted for President Joe Biden. That seems to be the one crime Trump just can’t forgive.

Months after Trump left office, he reportedly hung up on the reality TV star when she called him for a favor with a clemency case. Kardashian hasn’t let Trump spoil her advocacy, though, and recently appeared at the White House with Vice President Kamala Harris to celebrate Biden pardoning 11 people and commuting the sentences of five others convicted of nonviolent drug offenses.

Trump’s comments about Kardashian stand in sharp contrast to his fawning over Swift. In Setoodeh’s book, he gushed over the popular singer’s looks, calling her “beautiful” multiple times.

Swift and Kardashian are known to have a long-standing beef with each other, after the singer alleged she’d been secretly recorded by Kardashian, who posted videos of their conversation on Snapchat in support of her then-husband Kanye West. West had brutally humiliated Swift at the 2009 Grammys, and then years later went on to say that he might “still have sex” with the singer in a song.

Swift claims she was bullied by the former couple and never received an apology, and she has referred to the feud in multiple songs. Meanwhile, Kardashian has said she likes a lot of Swift’s music.

Trump literally phoned it in for a roundtable event with Black business leaders in Atlanta on Wednesday. The Trump campaign held a “roundtable” of six barber chairs lined up next to each other as part of a “Black Americans for Trump” event. Trump skipped the event, instead calling in to ramble about the tax cuts he’s looking to give the ultrarich and their billion-dollar corporations.

The roundtable setup featured Representative (and Trump V.P. wannabe) Byron Donalds, former Trump Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, and Representative Wesley Hunt in attendance. The seats were positioned in a semi-arc facing a gaggle of cameras and sea of white people, and everyone looks abundantly unenthused to be there.

The event highlights Trump’s lackluster attempts to bolster support among Black voters, a voting bloc that played a pivotal role in Biden’s victory in 2020 and still favors Biden over Trump. In May, Trump hosted a small rally in the Bronx to gin up the Black vote after an even smaller appearance at a Harlem bodega in April. And in June, Trump appeared at a Black church in Detroit before skipping off to a white nationalist convention. The church stunt was a flop: At least half the audience was white, none of the attendees reporters spoke with were actual congregants, and the megachurch’s pastor said people laughed in his face when he scrambled to find people to fill the pews for the event.

After Representative Jamaal Bowman’s defeat Tuesday night, Representative Cori Bush could be the next progressive in Congress to face trouble, as a new poll shows her narrowly behind a primary challenger.

The poll, commissioned by Democratic Majority for Israel, shows Bush behind St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell, 42 percent to 43 percent. DMI was one of the major donors to Bowman’s opponent, George Latimer, helping to make that race the most expensive House primary race ever, with Latimer outraising Bowman $5.7 million to $4.2 million.

While the poll was within the margin of error, a previous poll from January showed Bell trailing by 16 percentage points, suggesting that something has moved public opinion against Bush. Judging by the commissioned poll, it could be for the same reason that Bowman suddenly had a well-funded challenger: donors aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its PAC, the United Democracy Project, who flooded the race with money supporting Latimer after Bowman accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Latimer now calls himself a staunch supporter of Israel, opposing potential cease-fires on the basis that Hamas is a terrorist organization.

Bush seems to think something similar is happening in her St. Louis district, telling The New York Times in February, “I’m being targeted by AIPAC because not only do I believe Palestinians deserve to live freely and peacefully just like Israelis, but because I want to protect our democracy from Republican extremism.”

Bell claims that his focus is more on local issues, but his website reads, “In Congress, I’ll fight to make sure the United States remains Israel’s strongest ally.” He is also the recipient of plenty of United Democracy Project money. This has not endeared him to some progressives in Bush’s district.

“I don’t see Wesley Bell as a progressive,” Hannah Rosenthal, co-founder of Progressive Jews of St. Louis and a Bush supporter, told the Times. “His allegiance with AIPAC supporters is a prime example.”

As the war drags on, with the U.S. funding weapons that kill more and more Palestinian civilians each day, it seems that pro-Israel donors will keep spending as much as they can in local political races to ensure that Israel can continue the war indefinitely with U.S. support. Politicians and voters should realize this will only perpetuate a human rights catastrophe. Such donors are even on the wrong side of the NAACP when it comes to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza.

Perhaps these donors are afraid of actions that would actually end the conflict and promote peace: spurning a prime minister accused of war crimes and ending weapons shipments to Israel to force an immediate cease-fire.