Trump’s U.N. Pick Fumbles When Asked About Elon Musk’s Salute

Trump’s U.N. nominee, Elise Stefanik, bent over backward in her confirmation hearing Tuesday to avoid admitting that Elon Musk did indeed perform a Nazi salute. 

“What do you think of Elon Musk, perhaps the president’s most visible adviser, doing two ‘Heil Hitler” salutes last night at the president’s televised rally?” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy asked Stefanik. 

“No, Elon Musk did not do those salutes,” Stefanik answered disdainfully. “I was not at the rally, but I can tell you I’ve been at many rallies with Elon Musk, who loves to cheer when president Trump says ‘We need to send our U.S. space program to Mars.’” 

“Elon Musk is a visionary,” Stefanik continued. “That is simply not the case. The American people are smart, they see through it, they support Elon Musk.”

But when Murphy pivoted to reading positive reactions to Musk’s salute from white supremacists and others on the right, Stefanik seemed to fumble. 

“Lemme share with you what a few Americans have said about it,” Murphy began. “Evan Kilgore, a right wing-political commentator, wrote on X, ‘Holy crap! Did Elon Musk just Heil Hitler at the Trump inauguration rally? This is incredible, we are so back.’ Andrew Torba, who’s the founder of the right-wing Christian nationalist social platform Gab said, ‘Incredible things are happening,’ as he amplified the visual. The Proud Boys chapter in Ohio posted the clip on a Telegram channel with the text ‘Heil Trump.’ The chapter of the white nationalist group White Lives Matter posted on Telegram ‘Thanks for hearing us Elon, the white flame will rise again.’ I could keep going. Over and over last night, white supremacist groups and neo-Nazi groups in this country rallied around that visual,” Murphy said. 

“Does it concern you that those elements of the neo-Nazi and white supremacist element in the United States believe that what they say last night was a Neo-Nazi Salute?”  

“What concerns me is these are the questions you believe are most important to ask,” Stefanik responded. 

Anyone with eyes to see and an awareness of world history can deduce that Musk’s gesture looked much closer to a Nazi salute than it did a nervous tic.

Donald Trump’s executive order taking aim at birthright citizenship is already facing several lawsuits. 

On Monday night,  Trump was hit with lawsuits in federal court in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts, with more than a dozen Democratic states filing another lawsuit the following day. More lawsuits against the order are expected to be filed in California and Illinois, Politico reports. 

The lawsuits come after Trump on his first day as president signed an executive order ending the right to birthright citizenship for some children born in the United States. The order directs the Social Security Administration and other federal agencies not to recognize the citizenship of anyone whose mother was not a legal U.S. resident and whose father wasn’t a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident; people whose mothers only had temporary legal residency in the U.S.; and people with fathers who were not citizens or legal permanent residents when they were born. 

The lawsuits allege that Trump’s order violates the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, as well as other federal law going back over 80 years, and may leave some children stateless. 

“Neither the Constitution nor any federal statute confers any authority on the President to redefine American citizenship,” the New Hampshire lawsuit states. “By attempting to limit the right to birthright citizenship, the Order exceeds the President’s authority and runs afoul of the Constitution and federal statute.”

Trump’s executive order came on the same day that he took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Trump’s choice for attorney general, Pam Bondi, was evasive about protecting birthright citizenship during her first confirmation hearing last week, saying only that she would “study” the issue. But the language of the Fourteenth Amendment is explicit: 

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 

Trump’s barrage of executive orders from his first day in office have been met with several lawsuits, including over his removal of certain employment protections and over the authority of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. 

Those lawsuits have now entered the federal court system, where their fates will depend on which judge will preside over them. During Trump’s first term, he appointed 234 federal judges, many of whom are now responsible for approving conservative priorities and defending Trump from legal action. Now Trump will depend on these friendly judges to rule against the lawsuits filed against his executive orders. 

President Biden and his fellow Democrats did prioritize appointing liberal judges over the last four years, throwing a snag into conservative hopes for a rubber-stamp judiciary. Ultimately, though, the decision over birthright citizenship will likely reach the Supreme Court itself, where conservatives enjoy a 6–3 majority. Will they be willing to disregard the Fourteenth Amendment altogether?

This story has been updated.

Tulsi Gabbard’s team scrambled to minimize the appearance of her 2017 meeting with former Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence has repeatedly come under fire for her defense of violent authoritarians, including Assad, the brutal dictator who fled Syria for Russia after opposition forces overtook Damascus in December.

Gabbard’s two meetings with Assad during her three-day trip to Syria in January 2017 were not originally on her itinerary delivered to the Ethics Committee. In fact, her schedule included no meetings with any Syrian politician or official.

Apparently, Gabbard’s team was also kept in the dark about her meeting, according to correspondence and files reviewed by the Post. Four staffers involved in discussions about the meeting told the Post that they were surprised to learn that Gabbard had met with the Syrian president at all. One of the staffers, who opposed the meeting, said that they had a difficult time getting Gabbard to provide answers about the details of her schedule.

Gabbard has claimed that while her meeting with Assad was not originally planned, she couldn’t pass up the opportunity once it arose.

One of Gabbard’s meetings with Assad on January 16, 2017, was scheduled to begin at 12:15 p.m. Her next appointment was with Assad’s wife at 3 p.m., according to a timeline reviewed by the Post. This differs from the report delivered to Congress, which detailed that her meeting with Assad had lasted only 90 minutes and her face time with Assad’s wife began at 2 p.m.

Once her staff learned about her meeting, they knew that it looked bad. Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff had warned that her meeting with the dictator seemed “rather long” and urged that “formalities” be skipped to “cut down on the time that it appears you two sat and talked.” Gabbard’s press secretary pitched grouping her meeting with others so it could “appear more like” one of many “protocol meetings.”

One of Gabbard’s former staffers recalled that the ex-representative’s first meeting with Assad was listed as “somewhere around three hours.”

“I remember thinking, ‘That’s insane,’” the staffer told the Post. “What do you talk about for three hours in a supposed unplanned meeting?”

Gabbard’s confirmation hearing is still forthcoming, but this report draws into sharp relief the efforts of nearly 100 former U.S. diplomats and intelligence and national security officials who urged Senate leadership to review the government’s files on Gabbard behind closed doors.

Officials said in December that her past actions “call into question her ability to deliver unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and to the entire national security apparatus.”

Now that he’s in office, Donald Trump suddenly doesn’t seem so confident in his position on Israel’s war on Palestine.

“How confident are you, Mr. President, that you can keep the ceasefire in Gaza?” asked a reporter in the Oval Office while Trump signed a flurry of executive orders Monday night.

“I’m not confident,” Trump responded. “It’s not our war. It’s their war.”

The comments stood in stark contrast to a more defiant version the forty-seventh president pitched at his inaugural address, in which Trump claimed that America’s success would be measured “not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end.”

And just last week, Trump—who at the time hadn’t been in office for any portion of the war—jumped to take credit for the historic and fledgling ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I am thrilled American and Israeli hostages will be returning home to be reunited with their families and loved ones.”

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the press that “both President Trump and President Biden gave full backing to Israel’s right to return to fighting, if Israel comes to the conclusion that negotiations on Phase B are futile.” Phase two of the ceasefire agreement would see the removal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

But Trump’s perspective on Gaza, which he freely shared on Monday, appeared tainted by his years as a real estate developer. Referring to a photo he had seen of the devastation in the region, Trump referred to Gaza as a “demolition site” before going on to suggest that the territory could be completely remade.

“It’s got to be rebuilt in a different way,” Trump said. “Gaza is interesting. It’s a phenomenal location. On the sea. The best weather. You know, everything is good. Some beautiful things could be done with it, but it’s very interesting. Some fantastic things could be done with Gaza.”

It’s not the first time that a member of the Trump family real estate empire has hinted that Palestine could be a developer’s paradise. In March, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner praised Gaza’s waterfront beachfront property as “very valuable.”

“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner told his interviewer, Harvard’s Middle East Initiative faculty chair Tarek Masoud. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”

Republican lawmakers are already shifting goalposts to justify Trump pardoning or commuting the sentences of nearly 1,600 January 6 insurrectionists—many of whom assaulted police officers, an issue Republicans hold near and dear. 

When asked about the pardons, Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Tuesday pointed the finger at Joe Biden, stating that the former president opened the floodgates by pardoning his son Hunter, according to CNN’s Manu Raju.

“We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward,” Thune continued. “I think they were case-by-case.” 

“I assume you’re asking me about the Biden pardons of his family,” said Senator Chuck Grassley, when asked by Semafor’s Burgess Everett. “I’m just talking about the Biden pardons, because that is so selfish.”

“I don’t know whether there were pardons given to individuals who assaulted police officers,”  said Senator Susan Collins, “or whether there were pardons given to people who damaged property, who rummaged through desks, who broke windows in the Capitol. I disagree with those pardons if they were given.”

Pardons were indeed given to individuals who assaulted police officers. Senator Tommy Tuberville told Raju that he “didn’t see it,” referring to the pardons of people who attacked police officers. 

Trump pardoned multiple Proud Boys who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, including one man who pepper-sprayed a Capitol Police officer and another who swung a baseball bat at one.