Vladimir Putin Is “Gleeful” Over This Trump Cabinet Nomination

Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to be the next director of national intelligence may not be making you happy, but it’s certainly making someone happy: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Russia, the response to the former Hawaii representative’s nomination has been “gleeful,” The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian newspaper, fawned over Gabbard in an article last week, noting that “the CIA and FBI are trembling.” The article also noted that Ukrainians considered Gabbard to be “an agent of the Russian state.”

Trump’s decision to nominate Gabbard, of all people, signals his distinct willingness to cozy up to Putin.

“Nominating Gabbard for director of national intelligence is the way to Putin’s heart, and it tells the world that America under Trump will be the Kremlin’s ally rather than an adversary,” authoritarian scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat told the Times.

Gabbard has defended Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, claiming that the U.S. had provoked Russian aggression and that Ukraine housed U.S.-funded biolabs that were developing secret bioweapons—a piece of foreign state propaganda that earned her the reputation as a Russian asset.

Virginia Representative Abigail Spanberger sounded the alarm about Gabbard on MSNBC, noting that, if confirmed, Gabbard would be responsible for putting together the president’s daily briefings, and would likely include Russian propaganda.

Former CIA Director John Brennan also voiced his concerns about Gabbard on MSNBC Tuesday. “[Gabbard] has done things and said things over the years that really [have] caused great concern about where her sympathies and sentiments lie, but also she has no experience and background in the intelligence profession,” he said.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told MSNBC that Gabbard had been known to “toe the line of brutal despotic regimes.”

Russia isn’t the only authoritarian state Gabbard’s defended: She’s also backed Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.

Donald Trump’s secretary of defense nominee, Pete Hegseth, is having a hard time defending himself.

The Fox News star has been the subject of increased scrutiny after a police report from 2017 surfaced, documenting an instance in which Hegseth allegedly assaulted an attendee at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California.

Speaking to a crowd of reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday ahead of a meeting with senators regarding his confirmation, Hegseth minced words about the attack, failing to say that he hadn’t actually sexually assaulted anyone at the event.

“As far as the media is concerned, it’s very simple,” Hegseth said. “The matter was fully investigated, and I was completely cleared, and that’s where I’m gonna leave it.”

But specifying that he was “completely cleared” isn’t wholly accurate. The 22-page police report, published by Mediaite on Wednesday, does not mention that Hegseth was cleared. Instead, it recommends that the case be forwarded to local prosecutors. Ultimately, no charges were filed in the case.

In a statement to The Washington Post on Saturday, Hegseth’s attorney Tim Parlatore said that Hegseth had paid his accuser in exchange for her signing a nondisclosure agreement in order to stop her from filing a lawsuit and to protect his future at Fox News.

A friend of the victim reportedly shared details of the attack with Trump’s transition team in a memo last week, but the news apparently did not shake the MAGA leader’s confidence in his nominee.

“This police report confirms what I have said all along that the incident was fully investigated and police found the allegations to be false, which is why no charges were filed,” Parlatore told Mediaite in a statement.

Meanwhile, Hegseth’s nomination may have already sunk. Reports from inside Trump’s transition team indicate that the forty-seventh president-elect is quietly assembling a list of alternatives to the white nationalist–connected conservative.

Matt Gaetz may be out of the running for attorney general, but Donald Trump still has plenty of horrific nominees he’s trying to push through Senate confirmation—and he’s threatening to unseat any Republican that gets in his way.

Trump, JD Vance, and their transition team have been “playing hard ball” as they try to garner support for the president-elect’s nightmare slate of Cabinet nominees, according to ABC News’s Selina Wang.

One Trump adviser told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl that the message to Republican senators had been, “If you are on the wrong side of the vote, you’re buying yourself a primary. That is all. And there’s a guy named Elon Musk who is going to finance it.”

“The president gets to decide his Cabinet, no one else” the adviser added.

The Trump team’s newest threat makes it clear: No dissent among Republicans will be tolerated under the Trump administration. Technocrat billionaire Musk’s super PAC helped to fund Trump’s successful presidential run, and he could continue to fund challenges against any of the vulnerable Senate Republicans not willing to get in line behind the president-elect.

Gaetz withdrew his nomination Thursday less than an hour after he was notified that CNN was planning to report that the House Ethics Committee had heard testimony about a second alleged sexual encounter between the Florida Republican and a 17-year-old girl.

Still, Trump and his team are working to push through his other nominees who are allegedly sexual predators, such as Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, who is embroiled in a rape allegation from 2017 that he seemingly kept from the Trump team, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who allegedly sexually assaulted his children’s former babysitter two decades ago.

Donald Trump is taking fresh aim at the press before he is sworn in for his second term, asking Republicans to block a federal shield bill that would protect journalists from federal investigators. 

The New York Times reports that the president-elect attacked the bill Wednesday afternoon in a Truth Social post in which he cited a news article, writing “REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!” The measure in question is the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act, or PRESS Act. 

The PRESS Act previously received unanimous, bipartisan approval by the House in January, but has since stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee as Democrats in the upper chamber rush to approve President Biden’s judicial nominees before he leaves office and the GOP takes over the chamber next year. 

The bill would provide reporters with stronger protections regarding confidential sources, protecting them against prosecution. In his first term, Trump’s routine anger over leaks from his administration led to him secretly subpoenaing reporters’ private communications. Bipartisan support for the measure was probably fueled by the fact that attacks on journalists have, in recent years, been a bipartisan problem. 

Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, left his own checkered legacy on press freedom behind—the former president routinely deployed the Espionage Act to put “a number of people in jail for daring to help national security journalists report on classified government programs.”

President Joe Biden took a different tack. His attorney general, Merrick Garland, issued a Justice Department rule banning federal prosecutors from using such practices, including search warrants, to seize journalists’ information or force them to testify about their sources. But since the Biden administration’s actions could easily be overturned by a future administration, the PRESS Act was written to erect sturdier safeguards. 

But Trump has always been extremely hostile towards journalists, and his 2024 presidential campaign was no exception. He threatened news networks such as ABC and CBS with removing their broadcast licenses for what he considered unfavorable treatment and coverage. He joked to a rally audience in Pennsylvania only days before the election about a potential assassin having “to shoot through the fake news,  and I don’t mind that so much because I don’t mind. I don’t mind that.” 

Since at least 2017, Trump has called the press “the enemy of the people,” and when he is sworn in next year, he’ll have a pliant Congress behind him to treat the press as the enemy of the state. If passed, the PRESS Act might have protected at least some journalists from legal action under Trump’s second administration, but now it might be too late. 

On top of everything that’s gone wrong for Democrats in November, Anthony Weiner is mulling making a political comeback.

The New York Times is reporting that the registered sex offender and repeatedly-shamed former New York congressman has floated a return to his once thriving political career, despite the known existence of an incalculable number of New Yorkers who might currently be better suited to hold literally any elected office. Weiner used a recent barbershop interview with failed Republican state comptroller candidate Jonathan Trichter to test these waters. 

“I got removed from society. That happened. I was removed from society for 18 months and five days, and for years I have lived as a civilian in this neighborhood,” Weiner said, strategically deploying the passive voice as he discussed the matter during his haircut. “Maybe this campaign will be an opportunity for me to engage those people, even if they do not like what I did.”

A reminder: That whole “what Weiner did” thing was getting caught for sexting lewd images to women and an underage girl over and over again. In 2011 he accidentally posted his bulge showing through his underwear publicly on his Twitter timeline, and then denied doing that for days before finally resigning from Congress. More sexual messages to a 22-year-old woman were exposed during his New York City mayoral campaign in 2013. He was caught sexting another woman and a 15-year-old girl in 2016. Weiner surrendered to the FBI in 2017 and was found guilty of “transferring obscene materials to a minor.” He spent almost two years in prison.  

Weiner’s inability to keep his rampaging libido in check may have world-historical ramifications, as many argue that his sexting scandal was a critical domino to fall in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 email-server fallout. Emails regarding Hillary Clinton’s controversy were found on Weiner’s laptop that he used for sexting. Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, was vice chair of Clinton’s campaign, leading former FBI Director James Comey to reopen investigations into Clinton just days before the 2016 election. Many within the party blame Comey’s decision, initiated by Weiner’s own vile desires, for Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump. 

Today, Weiner is eyeing a seat back at where it all started—the New York City Council. But other candidates in his district, which covers Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side, aren’t exactly enthusiastic about Weiner’s triumphant return to politics. “Everyone deserves a second chance, but this guy has had third, fourth and fifth chances,” council candidate Sarah Batchu said. 

Another candidate, Andrea Gordillo, offered scathing remarks of her own. “Families in Lower Manhattan deserve better than failed New York and Washington politicians using our moment of need for their own political comeback.”