Matt Gaetz Reveals Judge Cannon’s True Motive Behind Trump Ruling

Representative Matt Gaetz has exposed what may be Judge Aileen Cannon’s real motive in every pro-Trump ruling she makes.

After the Trump-appointed judge on Monday dismissed the former president’s classified document’s case, Gaetz posted a headshot of her on his personal account, captioning the photo “Future Supreme Court Justice Cannon.”

On his professional X account, Gaetz wrote, “I applaud Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision dismissing the Trump documents case in federal court in the free State of Florida.”

It’s not the wildest notion. The former president nominated Cannon to the bench at the tail end of his term. Since then, the inexperienced judge has handed him win after win in his classified documents case—some of which were such flimsy rulings that she was repeatedly shut down by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

If Trump does retake the White House, it’s incredibly possible he could have the chance to appoint a fourth Supreme Court justice—and perhaps he’d like to reward the judge who helped save him from what was the strongest case against him.

Other Republicans, including failed V.P. picks, made celebratory posts after Cannon’s ruling as well. “Dismissed!” Senator Marco Rubio chimed in, and Senator Rick Scott called it a “big win.” Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene celebrated the “major blow” to the Justice Department while warning about future attacks from the Democrats, writing “they are going to keep going after every single one of us who opposes their agenda.”

Donald Trump has named Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate, bucking the wishes of Republican donors and the party establishment.

Trump posted on Truth Social Monday afternoon that he was choosing Vance, saying that Vance “will be strongly focused on the people he fought so brilliantly for, the American Workers and Farmers in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, and far beyond …”

It’s an interesting pick, given the senator’s previous, quite vocal criticisms of Trump. Vance was only elected to the Senate in 2022, partially due to the fame of his bestselling book, Hillbilly Elegy, published in June 2016, which was later adapted into a movie. The book, based on Vance’s life growing up in rural Ohio, drew criticism for trafficking in myths and stereotypes about the white working class. 

In the book’s heyday, it was seen as an insight into the voter attitudes that gave rise to Trump, even though the then presidential candidate was not mentioned in the book. Vance even criticized Trump while promoting the book, saying, “I think that he’s noxious and is leading the white working class to a very dark place.”

“I’m a Never Trump guy,” Vance said in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2016. “I never liked him.” In February of that year, he reportedly privately wondered whether “Trump was America’s Hitler.”

A few months later, when the infamous Trump Access Hollywood tape came out, Vance warned, “Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us. When we apologize for this man, lord help us.” Throughout 2016 and 2017, Vance liked tweets critical of Trump, including that he committed “serial sexual assault” and was “one of USA’s most hated, villainous, douchey celebs.” In a set of since deleted tweets, Vance also criticized Trump’s response to the 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, writing, “There is no moral equivalence between the anti-racist protestors in Charlottesville and the killer (and his ilk).”

But of course, like many other Republicans, the self-described “Never Trump” Republican soon changed his tune on Trump, fully backing Trumpism by the time he began his run for the Senate in 2022 and fomenting right-wing attacks on “wokeness” and “critical race theory.” His time in the Senate has continued along those lines, as he has sponsored culture-war bills like one that would completely gut diversity, equity, and inclusion principles in the federal government and claimed he would have tried to overturn the 2020 election results if he was vice president.

The possibility of Vance becoming Trump’s running mate drew objections from several top Republican donors who were concerned about his lack of experience, both in business and in politics. Other top candidates like North Dakota’s Doug Burgum and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida were seen as safer picks, particularly with Rubio’s foreign policy orthodoxy.

But Vance won out in the end thanks to his antiestablishment credentials. He had the support of Silicon Valley tech moguls like Peter Thiel and David Sacks, and Rubio was opposed by several in the Trump camp, including Donald Trump Jr, whom Vance seems to have successfully buttered up.

One Republican strategist criticized Vance’s lack of experience when he was still only on Trump’s V.P. shortlist, saying, “J.D. Vance is a guy who wrote a book and helped with a Netflix show.” Well, now J.D. Vance is the Republican vice presidential nominee, and if Trump wins in November, he’ll be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Thanks to Wisconsin state law, guns will be allowed in the outer perimeter of the Republican National Convention even after Saturday’s assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

People can open-carry guns and conceal-carry with a permit in a less strict perimeter surrounding a “hard” perimeter controlled by the Secret Service around the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee as the RNC begins tonight. A Milwaukee city ordinance, however, bans tennis balls and paintball guns in the outer perimeter. Effectively, an AR-15 can be carried within walking distance of the RNC hall, but a paintball gun can’t, and it’s all thanks to Wisconsin’s open-carry laws.

“[It’s] utterly ridiculous,” Milwaukee City Alderman Robert Bauman told ABC News. “I mean, I could just picture this image of somebody coming up to the entry point with, you know, an AR-15 strapped over one shoulder, a long rifle over another, and two pistols in his belt, and the cops asking him, ‘You got any tennis balls?’”

Wisconsin’s laws also prevent local governments from passing gun laws stricter than what the state allows, preventing efforts to have guns added to the city’s ordinance. Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, asked the Secret Service to extend a gun prohibition to the softer outer perimeter but was rebuffed, with the Secret Service stating that it was an issue of state law.

“Unless there’s something that is against state law, we have to respect Second Amendment rights, especially in regards to open-carry and conceal-carry if you’re licensed,” said Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman.

With Republicans having a strong pro-gun reputation, there was always going to be an issue of how firearms would be allowed at the RNC. But the fact that guns can’t be restricted thanks to open-carry laws, supported by Republicans, in the wake of an assassination attempt against Trump seems like an oversight at best, and dangerous at worst. The gunman who targeted Trump on Saturday was just outside of the Secret Service’s perimeter too.

Granted, the convention will be in a closed arena this time, unlike in Pennsylvania where the Trump shooting took place. But with Republicans still engaging in escalated political rhetoric, the Secret Service will have to be running a tight ship.

The Republican Party appears to have gone all in on Donald Trump’s messianic status in the wake of the assassination attempt, advancing a theory that the felonious, adulterous, insurrection-inciting, election-denying, convicted rapist was spared by God—even if that same God chose not to save a retired firefighter who died from the bullets shot at Trump.

By Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson was already a full believer that the former president’s life was spared by an act of divine intervention. Pointing to a history of what he believed to be God-like acts that guided the historic leaders of this country, Johnson claimed that Trump had experienced his own God-given miracle.

“Not to over-spiritualize everything, as you and I are accused of, Ben—but this is a big thing,” Johnson told Ben Shapiro. “I think God’s gonna give our nation another chance, and I think President Trump is gonna be the leader that does that.”

Online, Johnson had gone even further, claiming Sunday on X (formerly Twitter) that “GOD protected President Trump.” But he wasn’t the only right-wing leader to make the overzealous claim. Evangelical minister Franklin Graham told Fox News that Trump was spared by “God’s hand of protection.” From inside prison, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon stated that Trump “wears the armor of God”; Texas Governor Greg Abbott added that Trump was “truly blessed.”

Johnson has already announced that a “full investigation” will be conducted of the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting.

“The American people deserve to know the truth. We will have Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and other appropriate officials from DHS and the FBI appear for a hearing before our committees ASAP,” Johnson posted on social media Sunday.

So far, little is understood about the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, or his motives, save that he was a 20-year-old white male from Bethel, Pennsylvania. Former classmates described him as a bullied “loner” and “outcast” with a penchant for wearing military and hunting clothes, and who was by all measures “definitely conservative.”

In the days following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Republican lawmakers and right-wing media pundits have ramped up the religious rhetoric when speaking about the former president’s narrow brush with death. While prayers and well wishes were to be expected, conservatives’ insistence that Trump survived the attempt on his life by divine intervention, just so that he could be reelected, crosses the line into cult territory.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a known Christian nationalist, took to X (formerly Twitter) Sunday to share his theory that “GOD protected President Trump” during the chaotic shooting, which killed one rallygoer and injured two others. Florida Senator Marco Rubio, whose hopes of being named vice president on Monday were reportedly dashed, expressed a similar sentiment. But these comments only skimmed the surface of Republican reactions.

“God spared our great leader Donald J. Trump,” said Representative Mary Miller Monday during a breakfast with the Illinois delegation to the Republican National Convention, according to the Chicago Sun Times.

During a prayer at that same event, Demetra DeMonte, the Republican National Committeewoman for Illinois, reportedly said, “Thank you for sparing Donald Trump … surely you sent an angel.”

Fox News hosts Emily Compagno and Kayleigh McEnany also argued Monday that the failed assassination attempt against their Republican candidate was proof of God’s guiding hand in the universe.

“And there by the grace of God, President Trump is still standing there before us,” Compagno said, calling the former president’s subtle head movement “a miracle at a minimum.”

“It is a miracle,” McEnany agreed. “Providence comes to mind, you know. He clearly had Christ protecting him in that moment.”

On Newsmax, anchors Bianca de la Garza and Larry Elder discussed the belief that Trump had survived due to divine intervention.

“Speaking of divine intervention, the greatest football catch in NFL history is called the Immaculate Reception. I call this the immaculate protection,” Elder said. “Just a fraction of an inch. He could’ve been hit in the head.”

But Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick might take the cake for most over-the-top cultism.

Patrick took to X to share a text he sent to Trump shortly after the attempt on the former president’s life.

“By the slightest turn of your head in a mere microsecond or the shield of a teleprompter, your life was spared by the Grace of a Merciful and Holy God,” Patrick wrote. “I shared with you not long ago, on our flight to Houston, that God has had his hand on you since you first ran for President. That I believe. No man could survive all you have been through without the Grace of God upon you.

“The Bible verse ‘And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?’ appears in the book of Esther 4:14,” Patrick wrote. “Praise God your life was spared ‘For such a time as this.’”

The religious fervor for Trump was quick to spread online, as some people claimed to spot a spiritual sign hanging above Trump’s rally before the former president had even mounted the stage: a flag that got twisted looked kind of like an angel.