Watch: Mike Pence’s Wife Snubs Trump at Jimmy Carter Funeral

It seems that Karen Pence still holds a grudge against Donald Trump for leaving her husband to the January 6 mob.

Politicians past and present gathered in Washington, D.C., on Thursday for the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter. President-elect Trump and his wife, Melania, walked past his former Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, who were sitting alongside another former vice president, Al Gore.

Gore and Pence both stood up to greet Trump and Melania, shaking their hands and saying a few words. But Karen Pence stayed seated, staring ahead icily instead of greeting the couple.

It’s highly likely the snub was intentional, especially as Karen was seen later greeting former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura.

Trump shunned Pence in 2020 after the vice president refused to stop the certification of the election results. “You can either go down in history as a patriot, or you can go down in history as a pussy,” Trump told Pence during the certification process, according to The New York Times. Pence chose to defy his president.

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” Trump tweeted during the January 6 riots shortly before shouts of “Hang Mike Pence” began ringing out from the crowd. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson later testified that Trump expressed support for the chants that day.

It’s likely that this was Trump and Pence’s first public encounter since January 6, 2021. For Karen Pence, those wounds still seem to be fresh.

While one of the most devastating wildfires in American history rages on in Southern California, Republicans in Congress have decided to focus on retaking the Panama Canal.

On Thursday, Representative Dusty Johnson introduced a bill that authorizes the president to begin negotiations to reacquire the canal, with 15 of his fellow Republicans as co-sponsors.

The move follows Donald Trump’s public calls to reacquire the canal even though Panama’s leadership has said the idea isn’t up for discussion. Foreign Minister Javier Martinez-Acha said Tuesday that “the sovereignty of our canal is not negotiable and is part of our history of struggle.”

Trump claimed last month that Chinese troops were stationed in the canal zone, which Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino called “nonsense,” saying that “there is not a single Chinese soldier in the canal.”

Johnson seems to be playing to Trump’s ego with the bill, if his words to Fox News on Wednesday are any indication.

“I think it is a Teddy Roosevelt moment,” the South Dakota representative said. “And frankly, America used to run this canal, and it was very well run under American leadership.”

In recent weeks, Trump has also floated taking over Greenland and adding Canada as the fifty-first U.S. state. Whether his plans are serious or not, they’ve already received pushback from leaders in the Danish territory, Canada, and even France, speaking on behalf of the European Union.

The case of Panama is unique, though: Trump has an outstanding tax evasion case in the country and could be looking to settle scores (and protect his wallet) with some saber-rattling. Maybe he also has some kind of financial interests in Greenland and Canada. If only the president-elect saw dollar signs in Southern California. Maybe then, people who are losing their homes and livelihoods to wildfires would be his priority.

The right is blaming diversity, equity, and inclusion and “wokeness” for the response to massive wildfires in Southern California.

Several conservative pundits and personalities have gone after their favorite bogeymen on social media this week as fires have spread throughout the Los Angeles metro area, afflicting liberals, conservatives, the wealthy, and the poor alike.

Some bizarrely claimed that the shortage in firefighters was because “Los Angeles deliberately set out to exclude white men from becoming firefighters,” in the words of Matt Walsh.

Others blamed DEI and wokeness more broadly.

Megyn Kelly went on a tirade on her radio show Wednesday, blaming Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley for prioritizing “diversity,” attacking Crowley’s background.

“Who gives a s–t if the fire chief is gay? I’m sorry but who gives a flying fig about who she likes to sleep with; can you fight the f–king fires, madam? That’s the relevant question,” Kelly said.

Chaya Raichik, the bigot behind the “Libs of TikTok” account, also went after Crowley.

Many on the right cited a 2017 speech by right-wing comedian Adam Carolla, who complained that he was rejected when he applied to be a Los Angeles firefighter because he was “not Black, Hispanic, or a woman,” as evidence. But Carolla’s story, if true, took place in the 1980s, not recently, a fact lost on these conservatives. And in another bizarre turn, pundit Charlie Kirk railed against sign language interpreters during emergency briefings, calling them a “distraction” and “over the top.”

In reality, one major reason for the shortfall in firefighters in Los Angeles is because Bass cut the city’s firefighting budget by $17.6 million, while increasing the police department’s by $126 million. But conservatives aren’t going to complain about a higher police budget. Nor are they going to realize that climate change is the root cause of increased wildfires. Maybe they think shooting at a wildfire can put it out.

Elon has zeroed in on his next political target: U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

The world’s richest man has been consulting with his right-wing allies to devise a strategy to oust the Labour Party’s Starmer before the next election, according to a report from the Financial Times Thursday.

Musk has been antagonizing Starmer on X for some time, but according to people familiar with the matter, he is now focused on finding a way to destabilize the Labour government and bolster other alternatives.

“His view is that Western civilisation itself is threatened,” one source told FT.

Musk has been rallying to free far-right, Islamaphobic hooligan Tommy Robinson from prison since the new year and thinks that all-out civil war is “inevitable” in the nation. He’s also been calling for a national investigation into the grooming and exploitation cases in the Midlands region of England. Musk blames Starmer, who was a director of public prosecutions at the time, for his oversight on the issue.

Musk’s attempted toppling of Starmer is another installment in his efforts to exert the same political influence he has in the United States in Europe. The billionaire has been singing the praises of Germany’s far-right, nativist Alternative for Germany, or AfD,  Party. He published an op-ed in a German newspaper in which he wrote, “Portraying the AfD as far-right is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Come on!” He has since been accused of election interference by the German government but has shown no signs of stopping. He is also scheduled to host AfD leader Alice Weidel live on X sometime before the German elections in February.

Meanwhile, Musk is also closing in on a massive telecommunications deal with Italy’s far-right government, entrenching himself in the Eurozone.

The highest court in New York has declined Donald Trump’s request that they stop his scheduled sentencing in his hush-money case on Friday. Judge Juan M. Merchan will sentence him unless the Supreme Court steps in to deny him.

The president-elect was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to hide an affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign. He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

Merchan has already said he does not intend to sentence Trump to prison. If he is fined, which also seems unlikely, his attorneys are expected to argue that this process is an undue burden on Trump as he prepares to take office again.

Trump has been begging the Supreme Court to help him evade sentencing for weeks now, even trying to incur his presidential immunity—but to no avail thus far.

“I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge by a corrupt judge who is just doing the work of the Biden/Harris Injustice Department, an attack on their political opponent, ME!” Trump railed on Truth Social last weekend.

This story has been updated.