Trump Campaign Asks Staff to Stop Leaking Already in Desperate Memo

Someone on Donald Trump’s campaign has leaked an internal warning to staff to please stop leaking.

In an email to staffers on Wednesday, Trump co-campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles warned employees that talking to the press could cost them their jobs. “You should not be independently speaking or communicating with any members of the press—on or off the record,” the threatening message reads.

“We have done a great job at preventing leaks,” LaCivita wrote (one hour before their warning was leaked). “And that has been because everyone knows what the policy is and what we expect from everyone. Information is power—and the press doesn’t give a damn if you lose your job because you spoke out of school.”

The instruction not to speak to the press and keep information tight for the next two months feels a bit ominous. “There must be a hot story in the works …” wrote Tara Palmeri of Puck News who posted the email on X.

Kamala Harris’s team caught wind of the news and went on to make a jab at the former president’s team. “We’re at the leaks about leaks part of the Trump campaign! We’ve all seen this movie before,” wrote Harris’s rapid response director Ammar Moussa.

Last month, the Trump campaign was rocked after at least three news outlets received leaked confidential material. Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for Trump’s campaign, placed the blame on outside forces in Iran and stated that “any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies.”

Meanwhile, other leaked news has revealed that the Trump campaign “no longer thinks New Hampshire is winnable” and is “pulling back” from that important swing state. It looks like there’s nothing to worry about over here …

Donald Trump’s town hall was mostly an uninterrupted rant about the Republican presidential nominee’s various grievances, including an attempt to set the stage to call the upcoming presidential debate rigged against him, regardless of its outcome.

But between the lines of Trump’s ramblings lay a darker truth: that he simply doesn’t remember who he is running against. During a section of his tirade Wednesday night, the former president seemed to romanticize running against President Joe Biden, to the point that he linguistically forgot which candidate he’s actually up against.

“And by the way, New Hampshire was so badly treated by the Democrat Party and by Joe Biden and her, I can’t imagine New Hampshire voting for him,” Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Anybody in New Hampshire—because they’re watching right now—anybody in New Hampshire that votes for Biden and Kamala, I really think, I call her Comrade Kamala because that’s what her ideology is, but you know that she did something after decades and decades and decades; it was Iowa, the first two—Iowa, New Hampshire—that’s what way people thought it was gonna be,” Trump continued. “He didn’t want to go to New Hampshire. He didn’t want to play the New Hampshire game.”

A pro-Trump account on X attempted to reframe the incident after the Harris campaign’s social media account posted a clip of the verbal flub, claiming that KamalaHQ was “purposely lying to their followers” by saying that Trump had forgotten who he was running against. But the full context revealed even more instances of Trump doubling down on his Biden beliefs than was originally posted by Harris’s team.

“He dumped New Hampshire. And I said to people today, who the hell from New Hampshire would vote for this guy?” Trump said.

Looking ahead to next week’s debate, the bloviating politician insisted that he would allow Harris time to speak.

“I let him talk—I’m going to let her talk,” Trump told Hannity. “There are those that say that Biden is smarter than she is. If that’s the case, we have a problem.”

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance still follows a self-proclaimed historian who this week claimed that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain of World War 2”—not Adolf Hitler.

Vance follows Darryl Cooper from both of his accounts on X (formerly Twitter).

Cooper drew increased attention Tuesday after X CEO and fascism enthusiast Elon Musk promoted Tucker Carlson’s interview with the controversial figure on his podcast, calling it “Very interesting. Worth watching.” After the interview was criticized by figures on the right and left, Musk deleted his tweet, but not before both he and Carlson were attacked for giving pro-Nazi propaganda a platform, especially since Carlson said Cooper “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States.”

As more scrutiny was focused on Cooper’s views, particularly his white nationalist sympathies, X user @styledape discovered two prominent followers of Cooper’s @martyrmade X account: @JDVance and @SenVancePress.

The fact that Vance follows such a personality suggests that he may hold similar views to Cooper but begs the question of why the Ohio senator would continue to follow him on two major social media accounts. Then again, Vance’s addition to Donald Trump’s presidential ticket has been followed by some damaging revelations from the past few years.

For example, Vance’s comments attacking people without children and derisively referring to “childless cat ladies” have given his campaign quite a bit of negative attention, even drawing the ire of some of his fellow conservatives. He’s praised a book by conspiracy theorist and Pizzagate promoter Jack Probesic and was caught bashing immigrants with another right-wing podcast host in 2021. Maybe Vance needs to go through the skeletons in his closet before another scandal hurts his vice presidential prospects.

Russian agents have allegedly been spreading disinformation through a right-wing U.S. media company that houses a few popular MAGA commentators. 

The Department of Justice unsealed an indictment Wednesday against two Russia Today employees, Elena Afanasyeva and Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, alleging that the two had illegally acted as foreign agents and funneled roughly $10 million into a U.S. media company to produce propaganda that aligned with the Russian government’s interests. 

“While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine,” the indictment said.  

The Tennessee-based media company has posted nearly 2,000 videos that have garnered more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, according to the indictment. The U.S. company failed to disclose to its viewers that it was being funded and directed by R.T., which has been banned in the U.K., EU, and Canada. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in November 2022, R.T. suspended its activities in the United States, as well.

The indictment doesn’t say the name of the U.S. media company that is responsible for producing Russian propaganda—but it wasn’t that hard to figure out. The indictment says the company is registered in Tennessee and describes itself as a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.”

As Aric Toler and Alan Feuer of The New York Times pointed out on X, there is only one company that fits this description: Tenet Media, a hub of six pro-Trump far-right commentators, including Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, and Benny Johnson. 

Earlier this summer, Pool attacked Kamala Harris by calling her a “Communazi Despot come to put conservatives in concentration camps.” The attack was so over the top that it even drew a reply from white nationalist Richard Spencer, who wondered, “A bit much?”

In addition to MAGA acolytes, it looks like the group members were also—likely unwittingly—Russian propagandists. Maybe they’ll add that to their résumés as they search for new jobs? 

The indictment alleges that Afanasyeva and Kalashnikov worked together to “deceive” two of the company’s commentators “who respectively have over 2.4 million and 1.3 million YouTube subscribers.” The commentators mentioned are likely to be Rubin and Pool, respectively, based on their follower counts. 

The indictment also lists two “founders” who were made to act as foreign agents, though their names are not listed in the indictment. To hide where the money was coming from, the founders allegedly invented a private investor named Eduard Grigoriann who was sponsoring their work.*

Tenet Media is owned by conservative host Lauren Chen, a contributor to Turning Point USA, which is helping Donald Trump out with his presidential campaign, and her husband Liam Donovan. 

According to the indictment, Afanasyeva pushed for content to be covered from an angle that was beneficial to Russia. After a bombing in Moscow in March, for which ISIS admitted responsibility, Afanasyeva directed one of the Tenet founders to have a commentator to “focus on the Ukraine/U.S. angle” and claim that “mainstream media spread fake news that ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack yet ISIS itself never made such statements” and saying it was “suspicious” that the attackers had fled toward the Ukrainian border. 

In February, Afanasyeva shared a video of “a well-known U.S. political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia” to be posted to the site. One producer remarked in the Discord chat that “it just feels like overt shilling” but, after urging from one of the founders, did it anyway. 

In June, one of the founders gave Afanasyeva and Kalashnikov permission to post their own content directly onto the company’s channels, according to the indictment. 

Afanasyeva and Kalashnikov have been charged with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

* This story originally misstated who invented the private investor.

It’s 61 days out until the election, and conservatives seem to be Harris-curious.

On Wednesday, Fox Business host Stuart Varney interrupted RNC Co-Chair Michael Whatley in order to highlight the significance of one of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tax policies.

“I just want to press the point, when a political candidate comes up with what I think is a good idea, I have to call it a good idea,” Varney said. “And a $50,000 tax cut—not tax cut but tax credit—for small businesses, coupled with less red tape, I gotta say that is a good idea. Regardless of her other tax ideas.”

That seemed to get Whatley’s attention.

“While that may be a good idea, it’s hard to see how she’s going to move forward with it, and she’s certainly not going to reduce red tape,” Whatley speculated.

Harris is expected to roll out her new tax plan at a New Hampshire campaign event on Wednesday. The $50,000 allotment would be 10 times the current allowable deduction. Under the new guidelines, small businesses could spread the deduction over several years or postpone it until they turn a profit, an unidentified Harris staffer told NBC News. The initiative would also aim to erase some of the bureaucracy surrounding small businesses, including by reducing barriers for occupational licenses and creating a standard tax deduction, according to Politico.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, has spent much of his campaign focusing on corporate tax cuts and advertising an expansion to his 2017 tax plan, which is set to expire in 2025. An analysis by the Tax Policy Center found that the proposed $5 trillion in tax cuts under Trump’s plan would benefit the upper class rather than middle or lower-class households, with the vast majority of cuts going to households earning more than $450,000 a year. It would also add significantly to the national deficit and shift the benefit of funding the government to lower-income Americans.

After four people were shot and killed at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday, Governor Brian Kemp said he was “praying for the safety of those in our classrooms.”

But what has the Republican governor done to actually keep Georgia students safe from gun violence? Not a lot. And his critics were quick to point that out.

In 2022, Kemp signed a bill into law that expanded gun rights, allowing Georgians to carry handguns in public without a license or background check. A “lawful weapons carrier,” or any person who is eligible to purchase a firearm, can now concealed-carry a handgun. Long guns could already be carried in many places without a permit.

The governor has previously flagrantly defended his anti–gun control agenda to skeptics. After Georgia’s public media station in 2021 reported that the Giffords Law Center gave Georgia a failing grade on gun control, even before Kemp’s expansion of gun access, Kemp proudly delcared, “I’ll wear this ‘F’ as a badge of honor.”

When he campaigned for governor of Georgia, Kemp ran on expanding access to firearms. This included a nearly unbelievable ad where the then secretary of state sat with a shotgun in his lap, surrounded by even more guns, while speaking to a young boy about dating one of his daughters.

When he isn’t shilling for the gun lobby, Kemp has been keeping busy downplaying Donald Trump’s attempts to overthrow Georgia’s election in 2020. Last week, he co-headlined a fundraiser for the former president and convicted felon.

Today’s shooting was the 218th shooting at a K-12 school this year.

Right-wing media have tried to create controversy over a series of Facebook posts from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz’s brother, but Jeff Walz threw cold water on that effort Tuesday.

In his Facebook posts last week, which were reported on by the New York Post, the older Walz declared he’s “100% opposed to all his ideology,” referring to his brother, the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Jeff Walz also replied to another Facebook commentator who urged him to publicly endorse Trump.

“I’ve thought long and hard about doing something like that! I’m torn between that and just keeping my family out of it,” Walz, a 67-year-old Florida resident, said. “The stories I could tell. Not the type of character you want making decisions about your future.”

Jeff Walz donated to Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, and reportedly hasn’t spoken to his brother Tim in eight years, aside from one conversation through their mother last month. But despite his differences with his brother Tim, Walz decided not to dive further into politics, telling NewsNation that the stories were mostly of the embarrassing family nature. He mentioned that Tim was carsick as a child and was prone to throwing up in the car on family trips, with no one wanting to sit beside him. “There’s really nothing else hidden behind there,”  he added.

“I was getting a lot of feedback from my friends, old acquaintances, thinking that I was feeling the same way that my brother did on the issues, and I was trying to clarify that just to friends,” Jeff Walz said to NewsNation. “I used Facebook, which wasn’t the right platform to do that. But I will say, I don’t agree with his policies.”

“There is going to be no further statements to anybody, and we’re not campaigning or anything for him or against him or anything like that,” Walz added. 

The whole effort seems to be yet another flat GOP effort to smear the Harris-Walz ticket, much like their attacks on Tim Walz’s military service or the bizarre conspiracy theory that he faked his dog Scout’s identity. Perhaps Republicans should be more worried about their own vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, who was easily mocked by the Minnesota governor ordering donuts like a normal person.

Donald Trump’s Truth Social stock has reached a new low, highlighting just how bad things have gotten for the former president and his media company. 

The stock price of Trump Media & Technology Group dropped to $17.40 per share on Wednesday, its lowest rate since it hit the market after it merged with a publicly traded shell company in March, when it was valued at a high of $79.38 per share.

Since its stock market debut, the value has dropped more than 70 percent, The New York Times reported.  

Trump’s majority stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, which is roughly 115 million shares, or a 60 percent stake, was once worth a whopping $6 billion. Now it’s worth only $2 billion. 

Since spiking around July 15—the Republican National Convention—the value of Truth Social stock has steadily declined, following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. Shares of Trump’s media stock have often corresponded with how well investors think Trump’s presidential campaign is going, according to the Times. 

Halfway through August, his stock took a dive after he posted on X, Truth Social’s competitor, hitting its lowest rate in months, around $24.60. Even a booming stock market couldn’t rescue Trump’s lame stock, which continued to sink in value. 

The stock’s prior low was set late last month, when it hit $19.38 per share. Now it seems things have gotten even more dire. 

Trump’s lowest rate ever comes a little more than two weeks away from September 19, when he and other major investors will finally be able to offload his volatile DJT stock at the end of their “lock-up” period. While Trump has not indicated that he will sell his risky shares, it’s more than likely that everyone else will, according to Forbes. 

After Republican vice presidential pick J.D. Vance went viral last week for being extraordinarily awkward at a donut shop in Georgia, Democrat Tim Walz had to poke fun at him during a snack stop in Pennsylvania.

Pursuing sweets like whoopie pies and donuts at Cherry Hill Orchards in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Walz slid in a joke while speaking to voters.

“Look at me, I have no problem picking out donuts.”

Walz and his daughter, Hope, talked with the manager about his business that has existed in the area for over 50 years, and took back whoopie pies and apple cider donuts for volunteers. Compare Walz’s pit stop to that of Vance and you can draw a representative picture of the candidates.

“I’m JD Vance, and I’m running for vice president,” the Republican candidate said to a worker as he walked into Holt’s Sweet Shop in Valdosta, Georgia, last week.

“OK,” she responded. Vance then ordered “a lot” of glazed doughnuts, “some sprinkle stuff,” cinnamon rolls, and “whatever makes sense” before he was asked to stop filming.

Though certainly being able to order dessert isn’t the most important pressing political skill, being able to speak to others like a human being sure doesn’t hurt.

A website called KBSF-San Francisco News painted a horrible picture: According to the site, then–California Attorney General Kamala Harris hit a 13-year-old girl with her car in 2011, fleeing the scene before she could be caught or identified. The site included a video, credited to KBSF-TV, of a young woman in a wheelchair—the alleged victim, Alicia Brown—recalling the harrowing moments after their vehicles collided.

Except none of it appears to be real.

There is no KBSF-TV in San Francisco, and, according to a BBC Verify investigation, the original website that published the story was registered less than two weeks ago. The photograph attached to the article, which supposedly depicted the crash itself, was actually snapped in Guam in 2018. And the video of Brown—whom the article and video misname several times—also appears to be a deepfake. The x-ray images of Brown’s spine, allegedly taken after the accident, can be traced back to medical journals that have no relation to the supposed crash.

Strangely, it’s not the only recent instance of a wildly fabricated story taking root against Democrats. Behind the operation is John Mark Dougan, a former Florida cop who has since relocated to Moscow to work full-time inventing fake news sites in an effort to spread misinformation among American voters ahead of the 2024 election, according to the BBC.

Another site launched by Dougan, The Houston Post, accused the FBI of illegally wiretapping Donald Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. Other sites bore equally American names, including the Chicago Crier, Boston Times, and DC Weekly. According to the BBC, most of the stories posted on the sites were not necessarily fake, but rather poor copies of actual news items that had been reworked by A.I. engines. Some of the articles still sported the user’s instructions to the bot at the bottom of the text, at the time of the BBC’s investigation: “Please rewrite this article taking a conservative stance.”

“Russia will be involved in the U.S. 2024 election, as will others,” Chris Krebs, who oversaw election integrity during the 2020 presidential election as director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, warned the BBC.

“We’re already seeing them—from a broader information operations perspective on social media and elsewhere—enter the fray, pushing against already contentious points in U.S. politics,” he said.