Trump Reportedly Told January 6 Militant and Hate Leader “I Love You”

The former leader of the Proud Boys claimed that he spoke with Donald Trump on Saturday night, and that the president “loves” him.

Enrique Tarrio, the convicted ex-chief of the far-right hate group, was one of the nearly 1,600 people who received clemency from the president for his actions on January 6, mere hours into Trump’s second term. But that was apparently not the last time that Tarrio would interact with the president. Instead, Tarrio and his mother, Zuny Duarte, were ushered to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago, where a member had personally invited them to dine, reported The New York Times.

“He called me and my Mother over while we were at dinner and said he was sorry for what Joe Biden did to all J6ers,” Tarrio posted on X. “He knew the hardships me and my family faced for [three] long years.”

“He knew how many times they moved me. And he said he is working on making things right. I thanked him for giving me my life back,” Tarrio continued. “He replied with … I Love You guys.”

“To the J6ers he wanted me to send y’all a message,” Tarrio wrote. “He said … Thank you.”

Tarrio’s presence at Mar-a-Lago was made all the more strange considering that he would have had to be personally screened by the Secret Service before entering the Florida resort.

By Monday, Trump had not denied the exchange, and a White House spokesman contacted by the Times did not respond.

Tarrio was one of four Proud Boys to be convicted of seditious conspiracy for his actions on January 6. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison—the longest sentence received by any Proud Boys member—for effectively planning the attack on the Capitol to keep Trump in power after his 2020 loss. Tarrio served less than two years before Trump’s pen set him free. Since then, Tarrio has sparked a podcast and a Proud Boys–oriented crypto coin, and has become a far-right social media influencer.

In an interview with Alex Jones in January, Tarrio promised “retribution” against people who worked on prosecuting January 6 cases.

Donald Trump blew his top on Sunday night after being skewered by prominent Republican political strategist Karl Rove on Fox News.

During an appearance on Sunday Night in America With Trey Gowdy, the former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush slammed Trump on several areas, including the president’s recent admission that as a result of his tariffs “children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

“He sounds like Mr. Scrooge, and the ordinary American is like, ‘Wait a minute, I thought you were on my side, I didn’t think you were on the side of saying I need to do with less! You got plenty of money, I gotta make mine stretch as far as I can,” Rove said.

Trump didn’t take kindly to Rove’s feedback.

“I don’t need to have Karl Rove of FoxNews to tell me what to do. The guy’s a total Loser who’s been wrong about almost everything!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

It’s been almost a month since the president announced a 90-day pause on his so-called reciprocal tariffs (while an across-the-board 10 percent tariff remains in effect), and he has yet to announce a single deal. Last week, Trump claimed he’d struck 200 trade deals, but there aren’t even 200 countries in the world.

Rove didn’t just criticize Trump‘s “really problematic” defense of his tariffs. He also criticized Trump for posting a “deeply offensive” AI-generated picture of himself wearing papal clothes and sitting on a throne, and for his attacks on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongly deported to prison in El Salvador. The Trump administration has claimed without evidence that Abrego Garcia was “one of the top MS-13 members.”

“The fact is, is bring him back to the United States, lay out the facts in a court of law, and get it done,” Rove said. “It does no good to let that then go out there for four or five weeks, and eat away at the president’s approval on immigration.”

Rove also hit Trump for outright lying about inflation, and the price of gas, adding, “And there’s a lot of concern about the economy. The President’s ratings on the economy and tariffs are in the 30s. And his overall approval is in the mid to low 40s. That’s not a good place to be a 100 days in.”

New York Republican Representative Mike Lawler had yet another chaotic town hall on Sunday, in which multiple disgruntled constituents of his were forcibly removed by private security and a state trooper.

As his constituents grilled him with questions, and often loudly booed his answers, Lawler remained steadfast in his loyalty to the Trump administration and its destructive positions on tariffs, bureaucracy, Ukraine, and more.

“The courts have given the president the authority on tariffs,” Lawler said. He was met with groans and jeers, and even one “blah, blah, blah.” But he continued as security removed people from the crowd. “Well, if people would behave then there wouldn’t be a problem,’ said Lawler, which led to even more, louder boos from his constituents. “If they do not reach agreements within the next 30 to 45 days, then Congress will have to intervene—”

The crowd drowned Lawler out while more officers rushed to take a woman away by her ankles. An elderly constituent was given the same treatment. She flashed double peace signs as she was manhandled by security, as seen in a viral photo taken by Seth Harrison of The Journal News. The Associated Press reported that at least two more constituents were also removed from the town hall.

Lawler, who represents a swing district, is one of the few Republicans to keep holding town halls. Late last month, he had a similarly hostile town hall experience, where he lied about cuts to Medicaid as his constituents called him an authoritarian.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s “eyes and ears” in Hollywood seem to have hand-delivered him his shocking idea to tax foreign films.

On Sunday, Trump revealed that he would be instituting a “100 percent tariff” on films produced outside of the United States.

“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat.

“It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands,” Trump continued. “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”

Days before Trump took office in January, he announced online that he’d be tapping Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone, and Jon Voight to be his special envoys to Hollywood, mentioning that he would “get done what they suggest” in order to spark another “Golden Age of Hollywood.”

Months later, it appears that Voight—also known as the film industry’s most ardent conservative—spoke with Trump, and Trump listened.

Voight has reportedly spent weeks talking to the Directors Guild of America, Teamsters, and IATSE, Deadline reported Friday. The fruit of those conversations, according to sources with knowledge of them who spoke to the entertainment publication, was supposed to be a tax incentive that Hollywood has been clamoring for.

Instead, Trump went the way of the tariff, which squares into an administration that has aggressively curtailed spending in order to extend extremely expensive tax breaks for billionaires.

The details of the tariff were still being sorted out by Hollywood executives as of Sunday night, reported Reuters. It’s unclear, per Trump’s post, whether the tariffs would only impact movies in the theater or if they would also apply to streaming services. It’s also unclear if the tariffs would be calculated based on production costs or box office revenue, the newswire noted. By Monday, Netflix, Disney, Paramount Global, and Fox Corp stocks went tumbling.

President Trump may have gotten his half-brained idea to reopen and expand the infamous Alcatraz prison from a movie that aired on WLRN this past weekend. 

“REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ! For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” the president wrote on Truth Social Sunday evening. 

“I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders,” he continued. “We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our Country illegally. The reopening of ALCATRAZ will serve as a symbol of Law, Order, and JUSTICE. We will, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”  

A Bluesky user provided some more details on this seemingly random announcement. 

“I may have context for this! Last night WPBT in Palm Beach broadcast the 1979 Clint Eastwood film ‘Escape from Alcatraz,’” they wrote. Trump was in Palm Beach on the night in question. 

Trump potentially making major policy decisions based on the last movie he watched is bleak but unsurprising. Alcatraz is a dilapidated full-time museum off the coast of San Francisco that closed in the 1960s because it was too expensive to operate and many of the buildings were falling apart. Getting it back to a full-time jail would be incredibly costly and labor intensive. 

“Alcatraz closed as a federal penitentiary more than sixty years ago. It is now a very popular national park and major tourist attraction,” California Representative Nancy Pelosi wrote on X. “The President’s proposal is not a serious one.”