MAGA Desperately Claims Russian Propagandists Were the Real “Victims”

MAGA Republicans are more than happy to excuse the right-wing influencers at the center of a Russian propaganda scheme.

Right-wing influencers like Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern, and Benny Johnson all worked with Tenet Media, a Tennessee-based firm that the Justice Department revealed Wednesday was secretly funded by Russian state media employees in “a scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.” The indictment charges two Russia Today employees with providing nearly $10 million to the media company that often spouted Kremlin talking points.

In response to the charges, the pundits and their allies are saying they just didn’t know any better. In fact, they’re the real victims.

“Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived,” Pool wrote.

Johnson echoed the line, writing, “We are disturbed by the allegations in today’s indictment, which make clear that myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme.”

Even Representative Matt Gaetz bought their argument. “Tim and Benny were deceived, as the indictment clearly lays out,” he wrote just hours after news of the indictment.

Propagandist Ben Shapiro also came to the rescue, stating that Pool, Johnson, and Rubin “aren’t the issue” because “they were apparently deceived by the company founders, who were allegedly taking Russian cash.”

Donald Trump too boosted the talking point, as he posted a clip of conservative columnist Michael Shellenberger on Fox News arguing that “this is really small ball stuff” and “two of the influencers that were targeted did not know it was Russian money.” (If that is the case, wouldn’t it be true that the rest did?)

It’s hard to believe that the members of Tenet Media “didn’t know” anything about the scheme. In fact, you can watch Pool describe nearly exactly what he engaged in, during a podcast conversation: 

Let’s see if playing clueless works out for them.

Donald Trump’s trial over his attempts to overturn the 2020 election resumed in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, and it was off to a rough start as Judge Tanya Chutkan repeatedly shot down arguments from his legal team.

Trump’s team hid behind the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity two months ago, claiming that Trump could not be prosecuted over his “official acts” as president. Instead, Chutkan declared she would treat Trump like any other criminal defendant.

Trump attorney John Lauro tried to argue against special counsel Jack Smith’s legitimacy in one instance, citing the fact that Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed Trump’s classified documents case by ruling that Smith’s appointment was not legitimate. Chutkan again readily dismissed their argument.

Lauro tried to cite Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to support his argument but was forced to correct himself by Chutkan.

Lauro then tried to challenge prosecutors’ proposal that Trump’s team file a brief on the immunity issue by the end of September, calling it “extremely prejudicial.” Lauro also tried to claim Trump’s conversations with his vice president, Mike Pence, were “official acts,” only for Chutkan to rebuff him. Lauro also invoked originalism, which the Supreme Court’s conservatives adhere to, in his claim that Trump’s conversations with Pence were covered by the Supreme Court ruling. Chutkan shot down that line of thinking.

If Trump’s trial continues to proceed like it has on Thursday, then the former president and convicted felon is going to have a tough time. Smith already put together a superseding indictment taking into account the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, and Chutkan looks like she won’t be favoring Trump, unlike Cannon in Florida. We may have a long and brutal federal trial coming soon.

Donald Trump may have already completely screwed himself in his January 6 trial.

The federal election interference case, which resumed Thursday, was considered practically dead after the Supreme Court granted the former president wide-ranging immunity in July. But in the last week alone, Trump has managed to compromise that shoo-in all on his own by outright confessing to losing the 2020 election—a first-of-its-kind admission that legal experts believe could be used against him in court.

Trump “is forever trying his cases in the court of public opinion, where there are no rules of evidence, no rules of procedure and no rules of law,” argued former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner. “What he apparently doesn’t realize is that every word out of his mouth is admissible in a criminal trial. This is where the rules of evidence come into play—and where they will work to Trump’s extreme disadvantage at trial.”

That could include an eyebrow-raising soundbite from the Republican presidential nominee, who earlier this week admitted on the Lex Fridman podcast that he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden “by a whisker.”

That admission infuriated some members of Trump’s longtime fanbase, including white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who lamented having his money frozen and becoming “the most canceled man in America” for advancing the January 6 riot for what was—now by Trump’s own admission—a complete lie.

“So what was the point? Like, what’s the point of any of it? You lost in 2020? Seriously? What are we even doing anymore?” Fuentes said on his web show, figuring out the charade in real time. “You’re a loser. You just lost. Then you lost to Joe Biden. You deserve to be charged!”

“So why did we do Stop the Steal? Why did anyone go to January 6th? Why is anyone sitting in jail? Why did anything bad happen to anybody?” Fuentes continued, torching Trump for ushering his supporters toward the Capitol that day, resulting in more than 1,000 arrests. “Why did that need to happen? If you’re just going to walk it all back and say, ‘Oh, I lost.’”

Donald Trump’s January 6 trial finally got underway again Thursday, and his attorneys have already managed to trip themselves up.

While deliberating the trial schedule, Trump attorneys Todd Blanche and John Lauro argued that they would need “significant time” to parse through what elements of the case would be unsealed, reported NOTUS’s Jose Pagliery.

But that’s not in line with what this same defense team recently accomplished. In July, days after the Supreme Court finally issued its immunity ruling that postponed the federal election interference trial by nearly a year, Blanche issued a whopping 52-page report—and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan took notice.

“Congratulations Mr. Blanche!” Chutkan said with a smile, sending Blanche sinking into his chair while chuckling to himself.

But Trump’s team saw another avenue of attack: Lauro pressed that they would need to start from scratch because the superseding indictment was filed just last week. But Chutkan wasn’t having any of it.

“You say a new indictment, but it’s a slimmed-down version. It’s not more, it’s less,” Chutkan told him.

The pared-down indictment largely focuses on Trump’s private and nonofficial actions, since the Supreme Court granted the former president broad immunity for official acts, thereby nixing them as evidence. As Lauro laid out his argument, it became clear that Trump’s team believed it could be entitled to new evidence in the case as a result, reported Pagliery.

“We have 14 million pages of documents,” Lauro told Chutkan. “We’re still getting discovery in this case … we need to look at this discovery with an eye toward the immunity issues now.”

Prosecutor Thomas Windham, however, explained that his team doesn’t “expect any more disclosures.”

Trump is not at the trial in person. The case hinges on the allegation that Trump knew he had lost the election but still tried to subvert the results, as proven by conversations he had with then–Vice President Mike Pence and his lawyers. Admissions by Trump from just this week—including that he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden “by a whisker”—could further damn his chances at trial.

Donald Trump still can’t get over being called weird along with running mate J.D. Vance.

At a Fox News town hall Wednesday night with his confidant Sean Hannity, the Republican presidential nominee said, “J.D. is not weird, he’s a solid rock. I happen to be a very solid rock.”

“We’re not weird. We’re other things, perhaps, but we’re not weird. But [Tim Walz] is a weird guy, he walks on the stage, there’s something wrong with that guy, and he called me weird. And then the fake news media picks it up, that was the word of the day. Weird, weird, weird, they’re all going. But we’re not weird guys,” Trump said as a raucous crowd laughed in support of him.

The Kamala Harris campaign quickly seized on Trump’s answer, posting it to their X account the same night.

It’s pretty clear that the “weird” criticisms, which Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz is credited with inspiring before Kamala Harris even chose him as her running mate, is driving Trump nuts. He can’t stop talking about it, which in turn is giving the word traction and a continued association with him and Vance. His repeated denials only drive the point home even further, and neither he nor Vance has come up with an effective response.

It also doesn’t help that Trump’s own words seem to validate the attack, whether he’s fumbling through a rally speech, seemingly forgetting who he’s running against, or suddenly flip-flopping on major policy positions. And Vance hasn’t helped, either, with his odd views on family, his associations with neo-Nazis, and his complete inability to order donuts like a normal person (which Walz has no problem doing). With Trump’s debate with Harris less than a week away, the convicted felon runs the risk of the entire country seeing his weirdness on live television next to a former prosecutor.

Speaking at a Fox News town hall in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Wednesday night, Donald Trump got weirdly threatening with his voter base.

“You have no choice,” Trump said. “You’ve got to vote for me, even if you don’t like me.”

As Trump continues to get bad news in the polls, it appears he is getting increasingly desperate to escape a prison sentence and reclaim power. The new election threat comes on the heels of him repeatedly telling voters this summer that after this election, they’ll never have to vote again.

During Wednesday’s town hall, hosted by Sean Hannity, Trump couldn’t even take the time to enjoy a friendly crowd without getting worked up about Kamala Harris.

Trump launched into the ominous order to voters after saying Harris will ban fracking nationwide, which is a lie. “If she won, you’re not gonna have any fracking in Pennsylvania,” Trump exclaimed. Though Harris floated limiting fracking during her 2020 campaign for president, she has since aligned with President Joe Biden’s policy position on the issue. She told CNN last week that she now believes that her administration could create a “thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.”

The two candidates appear to be tied in the polls in Pennsylvania, hence Trump’s drumming up fear about the industry in the state and begging for votes.

Just a handful of months ago, Donald Trump glided through New Hampshire’s Republican primary. After his first match-off with President Joe Biden in June, Trump’s campaign was so confident it would carry on with the Granite State’s support in November that it had legitimately spooked Democrats. 

Things could not be more different now.

After a weekend kerfuffle in which a top Trump volunteer released an email indicating that the campaign should back out of its efforts in New Hampshire, Team Trump officials seem all too ready to ignore that they ever thought they had a fighting chance to win the battleground state.

“This election is going to be won in those seven swing states” and not in New Hampshire, the Trump campaign’s New Hampshire co-chair Lou Gargiulo told Politico, referring to Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. “That’s where the effort’s got to be put.”

Despite making recent promises that his attention was still trained on its voters, Trump has reportedly not visited the Granite State since he won its primary. His campaign has failed to match the energy of Democrats in the state, with no surrogates carrying the torch in his absence.

“The Trump campaign does not appear to be matching or contesting” New Hampshire, according to Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist from the state and former Trump administration appointee who spoke with Politico.

The Trump campaign was caught off guard on Sunday when a top volunteer, Tom Mountain, issued an internal message notifying fellow volunteers that “the campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state.” Mountain also wrote that internal polling indicated  Trump could lose New Hampshire by a wider margin than he did to Joe Biden in 2020. 

Mountain is reportedly no longer with the campaign, but his message was, apparently, not a one-off. Instead, other New Hampshire Republicans have also signaled that the race in their state is a done deal, according to CNN correspondent Steve Contorno.

Speaking with Erin Burnett on CNN’s OutFront Tuesday night, Contorno argued that the tides have turned for the Trump campaign among New Hampshire voters.

“When I talked to other Republican operatives in the state, they said that this volunteer is painting a pretty clear picture that’s really illustrative of what’s happening there,” Contorno said.

One such Republican was GOP strategist Mike Dennehy, who said that Trump could lose New Hampshire by six to eight percentage points.

J.D. Vance thinks the high cost of daycare can be solved with one easy trick: Just ask your family for help!

At a Turning Point Action event in Mesa, Arizona, Wednesday, conservative pundit Charlie Kirk asked the Republican vice presidential nominee how to lower the cost of childcare. Vance’s answer seemed more than a little tone-deaf.

“One of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for daycare is, maybe grandma and grandpa wants to help out a little bit more. Or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more,” Vance said. “If that happens, you relieve some of the pressure on all of the resources that we’re spending on daycare.”

For parents who do not have access to help from relatives, Vance said that more people have to get training in childcare and that certain certifications have “nothing to do with taking care of kids.” He falsely implied that childcare specialists were forced to have a “six-year college degree” and thus had to charge more for daycare.

Vance’s solutions, if one could call them that, seem out of touch at best. Family help is not a policy solution, nor is it even practical for many parents who do have family willing to help. Childcare certifications also typically don’t require advanced college degrees, or even college degrees at all. While Washington, D.C., has a degree requirement, it’s only for a two-year associate’s degree.

Yet again, Vance seems to have some weird, archaic views on families. In 2020, the Ohio senator agreed with a podcast host who said having grandmothers help raise children is “the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female.” He has policy proposals that would make life harder for people without children and has faced heavy criticism for insulting “childless cat ladies.” Perhaps he should just stop talking about children and families, especially since he doesn’t speak well about his own children.

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.”