Trump’s Defense Pick May Bully His Way to a Senate Confirmation

It looks like bullying works. A frenzy of activity from the most determined MAGA acolytes appears to have moved the dial for some Republican senators who voiced their concerns about confirming television host Pete Hegseth to be the next secretary of defense.

During an interview Tuesday on Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt Tonight, Texas Senator John Cornyn said that he and his fellow Senate Republicans planned to confirm Hegseth.

“I’m supporting Pete’s confirmation, and I believe that ultimately he will be confirmed,” Cornyn said. When asked whether Hegseth had secured the “full support of the party,” Cornyn said he wasn’t aware of any Republican holdouts.

“I know of no one who said they will vote against him,” Cornyn explained, despite previous reports indicating at least six Republican senators opposed Hegseth.

This comes after weeks of MAGA losing it online over any Republican who has shown the slightest bit of reticence about Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department, or voiced their willingness to do their due diligence about the allegations against Hegseth, who is not only radically unqualified but also accused of excessive drinking and sexual assault.

“What a disgrace. If you’re a GOP Senator who voted for Lloyd Austin, but criticize @PeteHegseth, then maybe you’re in the wrong political party,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote in a post on X last week.

Elon Musk replied, “Yes.”

Iowa Senator Joni Ernst’s reluctance to readily back Trump’s bad pick led to an online firestorm of criticism from MAGA activists, who couldn’t seem to understand why a ​​retired Iowa National Guard lieutenant colonel would vote to confirm Democratic nominees but not a man who made disparaging remarks about how women should not serve combat roles in the military.

“Senator Joni Ernst (R) voted to confirm Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense who turned our military into a woke laughingstock but is refusing to say if she will confirm Pete Hegseth,” wrote LibsofTiktok, a prominent far-right troll account on X. “So she supports all this trash but doesn’t support a strong Conservative who will strengthen our military and hold the DC war machine accountable?”

LibsofTikTok was just one among a swarm of MAGA trolls attacking Ernst and threatening to mount challenges to unseat her in the next election.

As a top Trump ally anonymously told Fox News Digital, “It’s really this simple: If you oppose President Trump’s nominees, you oppose the Trump agenda and there will be a political price to pay for that. We are well aware that there are certain establishment Senators trying to tank the President’s nominees to make him look weak and damage him politically, and we’re just not going to allow that to happen.”

At the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday, Ernst expressed a desire to hear more from Hegseth.

“I am a survivor of sexual assault, so I have worked very heavily on sexual assault measures within the military, so I’d like to hear a little more about that, and I’d like to hear about the role of women in our great United States military,” she said.

And by Monday, after a second meeting with Hegseth, Ernst seemed to have changed her tune.

Without outright saying she’d support his nomination, Ernst said that she’d had “encouraging” conversations with Hegseth, and said she was supporting Hegseth “through the process,” according to Politico. She also said Hegseth was suddenly “very supportive of women in the military.”

Without holdouts such as Ernst, it’s more likely than not that Hegseth’s nomination will go through. How long he’ll last in Trump’s Cabinet is another matter entirely.

Just shy of 75 million Americans voted against a second Donald Trump presidency—but the Capitol police officers who stood between the forty-fifth president’s supporters and Congress on January 6, 2021, are especially aggrieved.

Former Capitol officer Harry Dunn told MSNBC on Tuesday that the MAGA leader’s election night win felt like a “dagger through the heart.”

“I honestly can say I wish I was surprised,” Dunn said. “This has been four years in the making.”

“I had the opportunity to speak to Michael Fanone today, and he said something, that what we spoke out for was just accountability,” Dunn continued, referring to a fellow ex-officer who defended Congress during the riot. “It was doing what’s right. To see that he skated that, and there are people in this country that prioritized him being president over seeking accountability, it was a dagger through the heart, to be very candid with you.

“Election Night it was like our spirits were crushed because we thought all of our efforts had been in vain,” he added.

Dunn, who served 15 years in the Capitol Police, has claimed that Trump’s supporters attacked him and shouted racial slurs at him on January 6. He was a witness for the House select committee on the January 6 attack, and testified in the seditious conspiracy trial of the Oath Keepers.

In the years following the attack, Dunn tried and failed to win one of Maryland’s House seats, but ultimately used his residual funds to continue his fight against Trump, starting a PAC in June to exclusively support candidates running against Trump’s acolytes.

Trump, meanwhile, has made his loyalty to his most violent and ardent followers clear: On Sunday, he reaffirmed his intentions to free the men and women who rioted through Congress in 2021 on his behalf, forcing the legislature to delay the certification of the presidential election results. In an interview with NBC News’s Meet the Press, the MAGA leader said he would act “very quickly” to release the January 6 defendents—as soon as his “first day” in office.

“They’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open,” Trump said.

He also invited one of the protesters to serve on his transition team.

Trump has nominated Kimberly Guilfoyle for U.S. ambassador to Greece, fueling rumors that her longtime engagement to his son has come to a public end.

“Today, I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Kimberly Guilfoyle as the United States Ambassador to Greece,” President-elect Trump wrote on X on Tuesday. “For many years, Kimberly has been a close friend and ally. Her extensive experience and leadership in law, media, and politics along with her sharp intellect make her supremely qualified to represent the United States, and safeguard its interests abroad.”

The timing of this announcement is intriguing, amid reports of Guilfoyle and Donald Trump Jr. breaking off their engagement. Guilfoyle, 55, and Trump Jr., 46,. have been together since around 2018. But recently, Trump Jr. has been spotted with well-known Palm Beach resident Bettina Anderson, 38, according to The Daily Mail. The outlet posted pictures of Trump Jr. and Anderson walking hand in hand together just hours before the announcement of Guilfoyle’s nomination for U.S. ambassador. This was the third time The Daily Mail had spotted the pair since September. And according to the tabloid, Guilfoyle has known for a while. 

“Kimberly either didn’t know about Bettina—or didn’t want to know. Did she hear whispers that Don Jr. was fooling around with someone else? Probably,” a friend of Guilfoyle told The Daily Mail. “She’s no fool but it’s easy to deceive yourself when you’re so committed to someone and believe he’s committed to you.”

Trump Jr. chimed in on the news of her nomination. “I am so proud of Kimberly. She loves America and she always has wanted to serve the country as an Ambassador,” he wrote on X. “She will be an amazing leader for America First.”

Guilfoyle is a former Fox News anchor who was formerly married to current California Governor Gavin Newsom and CEO Eric Villency before linking herself to Trump Jr. and his father in 2018, serving as a senior campaign adviser in 2020 and 2024. 

Guilfoyle, like many of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, is not without her fair share of controversy and allegations.  

She left Fox News in 2017 after she was accused of exposing herself and showing naked pictures of herself and the men she slept with to an assistant. Fox News settled with the assistant for $4 million. At a fundraiser in 2004, she said that her then husband, Newsom, had a large penis and pantomimed oral sex. In 2019, she offered an event’s top donor a lap dance, and in November 2020, she told fundraising event attendees that Trump Jr. liked it when she dressed up as a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.

A bankruptcy court has rejected The Onion’s attempt to buy Alex Jones’s media platform Infowars, ruling Tuesday that the process lacked transparency. 

The decision came late at night after two days of proceedings in a Houston courtroom, where Judge Christopher Lopez said, “I don’t think anyone acted in bad faith here.”

“I think everyone was trying to buy an asset and put their best foot forward and play by the rules,” Lopez said, but added that he was troubled over the sealed bidding process overseen by court-appointed trustee Christopher Murray. 

The process “did not maximize value in any way, based on the record before me,” Lopez added. “I don’t think it was enough money.”

Jones celebrated the ruling, telling his followers on X, “A judge followed the law.” The  conspiracy theorist had been relentlessly whining about the sale to anyone who would listen, including right-wing personalities like Steve Bannon, and even had the support of tech billionaire Elon Musk, who sought to protect Infowars’ account on the X platform. 

Global Tetrahedron, which owns the satirical Onion, bought the conspiracy platform at a bankruptcy auction in November. Jones declared bankruptcy after losing a defamation lawsuit from the families of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting, which his platform repeatedly suggested was staged in some way. 

The Onion’s bid to purchase Infowars was backed by the families of eight Sandy Hook victims, who “agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of The Onion’s bid, enabling its success,” according to a statement last month. One day after the auction, though, Lopez paused the acquisition amid complaints from a losing bidder, First United American Companies, which is connected to Jones’s nutritional supplements business.  

In a statement, The Onion’s CEO Ben Collins said it would continue to try and purchase Infowars.

“It is part of our larger mission to make a better, funnier internet, regardless of the outcome,” the statement said.

While many social media accounts belonging to Luigi Mangione, the man charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, have been taken down since he was identified by police Monday, his X account remains online after a brief suspension.

Mangione’s X posts indicate engagement with center-right thought, self-improvement, and pop psychology and critiques of modern technology, consumption, and “wokeness.” Deleted posts from Mangione’s account reported by Business Insider Tuesday shed further light on the 26-year-old’s political views.

According to Business Insider, Mangione reshared a post in which Edward Snowden advocated for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be named the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. “Darkly amusing to watch panicked dems suddenly searching under the couch cushions for a candidate when kennedy is literally standing right there,” Snowden posted in early July, as Biden faced increasing pressure to drop out amid concerns about his age and mental acuity.

Another post shows that Mangione viewed both Biden and Trump disapprovingly. “Both parties—Trump with his refusal to accept the results of an election, and Biden with his refusal to accept his age and step down—are simultaneously proving how desperately individuals will cling to power,” Mangione wrote in a reply to political writer and analyst Nate Silver, according to Business Insider.

Business Insider also uncovered that Mangione reposted a tweet from a self-described “fascist hipster,” which said: “My experience with the medical profession—and yours is probably similar—is that doctors are basically worthless unless you carefully manage them, and 2/3 of them are worthless even in that case.”

Mangione reportedly suffered from severe back pain and underwent back surgery. His manifesto, published by journalist Ken Klippenstein Tuesday afternoon, condemned companies that he said “abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has [allowed] them to get away with it.”

Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was discovered with a brutal manifesto in which he admitted to the crime and apologized for the “strife” he caused, but stated plainly that “these parasites simply had it coming.”

Mangione was arrested Monday at a McDonalds in Altoona, Pennsylvania, carrying a 3-D printed gun similar to that used in the killing, several fake IDs, and the following manifesto. While sections of the manifesto have already been published, it was published in full on Tuesday by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein.

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone,” Mangione wrote.

“This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there,” he wrote.

“I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done,” Mangione wrote. “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.

“A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but [h]as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it,” he wrote.

“Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain,” Mangione wrote.

Mangione was likely referring to filmmaker Michael Moore, a staunch critic of the U.S. health care system who made the 2007 documentary Sicko, and Elizabeth Rosenthal, who wrote the 2017 book An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back.

The reality of the U.S. health care system is somehow even more grim than Mangione described. The U.S. was ranked sixtieth in the world for life expectancy per the most recent data from 2021, according to the U.S. News & World Report, and among its wealthy peer group in the OECD, the U.S. ranked 30 out of 38.

The U.S. does have the most expensive health care system in the world. Health care costs in the U.S. tallied up to an average of $12,318 per person in 2021, while in Germany, which has the second-most-expensive system, costs amounted to an average of $7,383 per person, according to the World Economic Forum.

“It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play,” Mangione concluded. “Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

Mangione appeared in Blair County Court in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, Tuesday, where he was denied bail. On his way into the courtroom, Mangione could be heard shouting, “It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience!”

Mangione’s lawyer, Thomas Dickey, said that he would challenge his client’s extradition to New York.

Luigi Mangione, suspected of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week, yelled out to the press and public as he was led to a Pennsylvania court Tuesday for his extradition hearing to New York.

“It’s completely out of touch and is an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience!” Mangione yelled as police officers escorted him, while wearing shackles, into the Blair County Court in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.

It’s a statement sure to spark conspiracy theories and more discussions about Mangione’s motive. In court Tuesday, Mangione said he would challenge extradition to New York, where Thompson was shot outside of a midtown Manhattan hotel last Wednesday. Mangione is being held in Pennsylvania on charges related to his possession of a 3-D printed handgun and silencer, as well as multiple fake IDs and a U.S. passport.

Mangione’s motive has been highly scrutinized, with his complicated right-wing politics and a manifesto being pored over by media outlets. In recent years, according to online posts and one of his friends, Mangione suffered from severe back pain, and underwent surgery. His profile page on X had a picture of an X-ray showing screws in his spine.

Some Americans have reacted positively to the shooting due to widespread dissatisfaction with American health care, a sentiment allegedly shared by Mangione, who wrote in his manifesto that the U.S. has the “most expensive healthcare system in the world” but “ranks #42 in life expectancy.” Mangione’s legal proceedings promise to be closely followed and, if he is extradited to New York, will likely be a media circus.

Donald Trump promised Tuesday to give special treatment to billionaires.

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “GET READY TO ROCK!!!”

If this strangely broad offer sounds specially designed to delight billionaire and official presidential hanger-on Elon Musk, that’s probably because it is.

“This is awesome,” Musk replied in a post on X. Yeah dude, for you—and for any other government contractor or company that plans to fill the holes created by Musk and Trump’s plot to dissolve essential features of the federal government. Yeah, those guys stand to make a killing. How “awesome.”

It’s unclear what kinds of companies or individuals would be eligible for this offer, or what kinds of projects they would produce. It’s possible that Trump plans to implement this offer as part of “Drill, Baby, Drill!” his stupidly named plan to expand fossil fuel production and gut environmental protections.

For example, in return for a hefty investment from an energy company, Trump could revoke certain pollution controls that prevent corporations harvesting natural gas from contaminating groundwater supplies.

If this proposal is approved, the responsibility for executing his lofty promises and expediting production will fall to Lee Zeldin, the unqualified loyalist Trump has nominated to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

It’s also unclear whether this would affect existing programs incentivising investment, such as the much-beloved CHIPS Act, which created subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. Trump recently called the CHIPS Act a “bad deal,” shortly before House Speaker Mike Johnson announced his intention to revoke it (though he later made a limp attempt to walk back that particular comment).

Crucially, it’s not apparent that Trump has the authority to make the offer in the first place—but he sure has done it before.

At a meeting at Mar-a-Lago in April, Trump promised oil executives and lobbyists that he would roll back crucial environmental regulations, in return for a small campaign contribution of $1 billion, according to The New York Times.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on Trump’s mass deportation plans, Republican Senator John Kennedy, as is his wont, pestered a witness with questions he didn’t care to hear answers to.

The hearing, titled “How Mass Deportations Will Separate American Families, Harm Our Armed Forces, and Devastate Our Economy,” focused on the damaging effects of Trump’s proposed immigration agenda. But in one bizarre line of questioning, Kennedy asked the same question over and over again while pretending not to hear the answer.

Witness Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, testified that a mass deportation campaign could cost as much as $1 trillion and lead to a loss in total gross domestic product of 4.2 to 6.8 percent.

Louisiana’s John Kennedy was evidently more concerned with a November 2022 tweet in which Reichlin-Melnick criticized Texas and Louisiana for taking legal action against the Department of Homeland Security “for NOT expelling Haitian migrants to Haiti under Title 42,” when, in reality, he wrote, Title 42 expulsions were down “because Haitians stopped crossing illegally!”

“Both Texas and Louisiana have their knives out for Black immigrants,” Reichlin-Melnick posted at the time. “Once Haitians stopped crossing irregularly, it’s so telling that the plaintiffs once again demand that a federal court wield Title 42 against Haitians to stop them from entering at ports of entry too.”

Kennedy, apparently offended by the criticism from over two years ago, asked whether Reichlin-Melnick remembered the tweet. The witness said he did not recall the exact context.

“Who in Texas had their ‘knives out’ for Black immigrants?” Kennedy asked nonetheless, and Reichlin-Melnick began to respond before he was interrupted by Kennedy, who ordered, “Give me a name.”

As Kennedy spoke over him—intoning, “Give me a name. Give me a name. Give me a name”—Reichlin-Melnick answered that he was likely referring to the states’ attorneys general, mentioning Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton by name.

“Give me a name,” Kennedy continued.

“I just did,” said Reichlin-Melnick.

“You don’t have a name, do you?” asked Kennedy.

“I just said Ken Paxton,” replied Reichlin-Melnick.

“You don’t have a name, do you?” asked Kennedy, again.

“I just said Ken Paxton,” repeated Reichlin-Melnick.

This is not the first time Kennedy has malfunctioned, as progressive outlet Heartland Signal put it, while badgering a congressional witness. In September, while grandstanding during a hearing on hate crimes against Arab and Jewish Americans, the senator accused Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. Kennedy spoke over Berry’s repeated denials, making headlines for telling her she should “hide [her] head in a bag.”

One of Donald Trump’s former lawyers, Kenneth Chesebro, is in further trouble for taking part in a fake electors plot to overturn the 2020 election.

Wisconsin has filed 10 new felony charges against Chesebro, fellow Trump lawyer James Troupis, and Michael Roman, head of Trump’s 2020 Election Day operations, for their role in trying to overturn the presidential election results in the state. The charges include 10 counts of forgery, for the 10 fake electors they duped.

In June 2024, all three were charged with forgery for attempting to send fake certified elector documents—which falsely claimed Wisconsin and Michigan electors chose Trump—to Washington, D.C., ahead of 2020’s presidential electoral certification process. Tuesday’s charges come from interviews with fake electors who say that they were duped by the trio.

According to the charging documents, the fake electors were told that what they were doing was legal, with historical precedent from John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon’s election in Hawaii. None of them believed that their signatures were going to be submitted to the president of the Senate during election certification on January 6, 2021, and they did not give their consent for that, either.

Chesebro is cooperating with the state of Wisconsin but is still facing charges elsewhere. He’s a co-conspirator in Georgia’s fake elector case, where he has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with the state. He’s also facing charges for fake elector shenanigans and cooperating with the state in Michigan. Since all of these cases are at the state level, Chesebro can’t be pardoned by Trump and ultimately, if he’s found guilty, could go to prison.