Someone Is Using AI to Impersonate Marco Rubio

Someone was using AI to impersonate the secretary of state.

A State Department cable obtained by The Washington Post detailed that an individual, yet to be publicly identified, was using AI to send voicemails and write text and Signal chats in the tone and manner of Marco Rubio. They named themselves “Marco.Rubio@state.gov” on Signal.

The cable, dated July 3, said that this person “contacted at least five non-Department individuals, including three foreign ministers, a U.S. governor, and a U.S. member of Congress” for about two weeks. The State Department declined to reveal whether any of the officials messaged by the impersonator had actually been duped.

The administration has had issues with AI-based espionage attempts before. In May, the FBI announced that there was an “ongoing malicious text and voice messaging campaign” against the Trump administration, using AI. And their issues with—and fondness for—the Signal app are now infamous.

“You just need 15 to 20 seconds of audio of the person, which is easy in Marco Rubio’s case. You upload it to any number of services, click a button that says ‘I have permission to use this person’s voice,’ and then you type what you want him to say,” Hany Farid, a digital forensics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, told the Post. “Leaving voicemails is particularly effective because it’s not interactive.”

While there are clear competency and privacy issues within the Trump administration, this case also points to what the future of political espionage will look like.

Even Donald Trump’s most sycophantic followers are turning on him over his administration’s handling of the Epstein files.

Against the expertise of individuals who had worked on the case for decades, Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested in January that the pedophilic sex trafficker had maintained a “client list,” supercharging ideas and theories about which high-powered individuals could have been involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.

But the administration’s language changed abruptly on Monday, when the Department of Justice posted a memo confirming that no such “incriminating client list” existed, undercutting Bondi’s language. Far-right influencers who had absorbed themselves into the details of the case refused to believe that Bondi had misstepped—instead, they interpreted the sudden reversal as an administration cover-up.

“So I’m going to go throw up, actually,” said Alex Jones, the Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist. “Because I have integrity, and I just really need the Trump administration to succeed and to save this country, and they were doing so much good, and then for them to do something like this, it tears my guts out.”

But Jones wasn’t the only ex-Trump ally to lose his marbles over the update. Laura Loomer, who was not one of the lucky far-right influencers to receive an Epstein files “binder” from the White House earlier this year, called on Trump to throw his attorney general out of the government.

“President Trump should fire Blondi for lying to his base and creating a liability for his administration,” Loomer wrote on X, referring to Bondi as an “embarrassment.”

“I hope Trump realizes what an Fing LIAR Pam Blondi is,” Loomer continued in another post. “She’s useless. Covering for pedophiles and never arresting criminals.”

And Trump’s biggest 2024 campaign donor was similarly appalled by the DOJ memo.

“What’s the time? Oh look, it’s no-one-has-been-arrested-o’clock again,” Elon Musk posted.

The whole situation has thrown Trump’s position with his conspiracy-minded supporters into a bit of a pickle. The 79-year-old billionaire has achieved messiah-like status within the QAnon conspiracy circle for years thanks to the group’s principal belief that, despite his being named and photographed as an associate of Epstein’s and being a reputed fraudster, and despite being found liable by a jury for sexually abusing Elle columnist E. Jean Carroll, Trump will rid the world of Satan-worshipping, liberal-minded pedophiles who run the government and media.

Donald Trump said he may fold on his new deadline for tariff negotiations … again.

While sitting across the dinner table from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday evening, Trump was asked by a reporter whether the copy-paste “tariff letters” announcing the tariff rates for various countries were “final offers” or whether they were negotiable.

“More or less final offers,” Trump said. “We’re always subject to negotiate something that’s fair.”

“I would say the final—but if they call with a different offer and if I like it, we’ll do it,” he explained.

“Is the August 1 deadline firm now? Is that it?” the reporter pressed.

“No, I would say firm, but not a hundred percent firm,” Trump replied. “If they call up and say we’d like to do something a different way, we’re gonna be open to that. But essentially, that’s the way it is right now.”

Trump never seemed all that interested in committing to August 1. He dodged a question Sunday about extending the deadline, forcing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to step in and set one. The United States sent out a total of 14 letters Monday, announcing a tariff rate as high as 40 percent on Kazakhstan, Laos, Malaysia, and Myanmar. The stock market saw nearly one-percentage-point drops in the face of uncertainty.

In the Trump administration, it seems that a deal is not a deal, it’s a threatening letter, the terms of which are completely subject to change. Meanwhile, a deadline isn’t even a deadline, but an endless cycle of, in this case, nonexistent negotiations.

Stocks tumbled on Monday as Donald Trump unveiled new tariff rates for a number of countries, taking a few steps closer, once again, to the brink of a global trade war.

Trump in early April paused a number of hefty planned tariffs from going into effect for 90 days, promising to secure 90 trade deals in that time. The administration had only announced three deals with that deadline—this Wednesday—fast approaching, so Trump this week pushed the deadline to August 1. He also said his administration would announce a combination of tariff letters and trade agreements throughout the week.

Throughout Monday afternoon, the president took to Truth Social to share photos of 14 such letters on Truth Social—and they read not unlike Trump’s wild Truth Social posts. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, South Africa, and several smaller countries were told they will be hit with tariffs ranging from 25 to 40 percent, effective August 1.

“Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal,” stated the letters, which were all identical but for the addressees and rates (leading TNR’s Jason Linkins to dub them “the Lorem Ipsum Accords”). The U.S. trade deficit “is a major threat to our Economy and, indeed, our National Security!” they continue, and the tariffs, Trump warns, “may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country.”

The stock market didn’t take kindly to Trump reviving the prospect of trade war, as the Dow, S&P, and Nasdaq fell 0.9, 0.8, and 0.9 percent, respectively.

Planned Parenthood is suing President Trump over a provision in his “big, beautiful bill” that effectively defunds the crucial service provider. 

“The prohibition specifically targets Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its member health care providers in order to punish them for lawful activity, namely advocating for and providing legal abortion access wholly outside the Medicaid program and without using any federal funds,” Planned Parenthood wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed in Boston federal court Monday. “Thus, this statute must be doing something more — and it is. The Defund Provision is a naked attempt to leverage the government’s spending power to attack and penalize Planned Parenthood and impermissibly single it out for unfavorable treatment.” 

The Trump administration is celebrating this defunding under the guise of stopping more abortions. But the true impact of the cuts will be more people losing basic health care like pregnancy tests, cancer screening, and contraception. Under the Hyde Amendment, health care providers, like Planned Parenthood, have been banned from using federal funds for abortion for more than 40 years.

“This case is about making sure that patients who use Medicaid as their insurance to get birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment can continue to do so at their local Planned Parenthood health center, and we will make that clear in court,” Alexis McGill Johnson, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.  

According to a report from The Daily Beast, Senator Ted Cruz was vacationing in Greece as tragedy struck his state. Over the July 4 weekend, flash flooding took the lives of at least 95 people in Texas, including 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, an all-girls camp along the banks of the Guadalupe River.

Cruz was sightseeing in Athens as first responders began launching search and rescue operations, The Daily Beast reports. The senator reportedly landed in Greece on Thursday, July 3; was spotted at the Parthenon on Saturday, July 5; and is believed to have not caught a plane to San Antonio, Texas, until Sunday.

Cruz was accompanied at the Parthenon by his family and a security guard, according to a reported eyewitness, who told The Daily Beast: “As he walked past us, I simply said, ‘20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?’” The senator is said to have “sort of grunted and walked on,” while his wife, Heidi Cruz, “shot [the source] a dirty look,” before “they continued on with their tour guide.”

During Cruz’s reported vacation, the senator posted about the flooding a number of times on social media.

He wrote on Friday, from his personal X account, “Please pray right now for everyone in the Hill Country, especially Camp Mystic,” adding that he’d spoken with Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, as well as with President Trump.

On Monday, Cruz reiterated that he had spoken on the phone with the Texas officials “in the first few hours of this flood” and had told Trump, “early in what was transpiring,” that “this appears to be bad, really bad. There may be a very significant loss of life unfolding right now in Texas.”

On Friday and Saturday, Cruz shared messages on his official congressional X account, saying that he and his wife were “lifting up the victims of the central Texas floods in our prayers.”

The Daily Beast’s report recalls the infamous February 2021 incident in which the senator took a trip to Cancun, Mexico, during a historic winter storm that killed an estimated 246 Texans and left millions more freezing without power and drinking water.

During that 2021 scandal, which Cruz admitted was “obviously a mistake,” the senator shipped out to the tropics with his family, who wanted to escape the “FREEZING” weather, per texts from Heidi Cruz unearthed by The New York Times. Senator Cruz said he had planned to stay in Cancun for the weekend but returned to Texas early on “the first available flight,” as “leaving when so many Texans were hurting didn’t feel right.”

The MAGA influencers who victoriously walked out of the White House in February holding white binders titled “THE EPSTEIN FILES: PHASE 1” are now enraged at the Trump administration’s announcement that there is no damning client list, and that disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein did indeed commit suicide in 2019. 

Conservative commentator Liz Wheeler, who received one of those binders from Attorney General Pam Bondi in February, is now calling for her head, as the MAGA right is scapegoating Bondi for whatever actions Trump has yet to take on their white whale of a case. 

“Going back to that day at the White House in February … Pam Bondi bragged to us about making that cover sheet on the binder, the one that read ‘the most transparent administration in history.’ She said she had made it, she had printed it, she was proud of it.… To call that a severe lack of judgment would be the understatement of the year,” Wheeler said on the Glenn Beck Show on Monday. Wheeler then insisted that Bondi told her in February that the binder didn’t contain all of the juicy, incriminating details MAGA wanted because someone from the “deep state” had infiltrated the FBI to block the notorious client list from being released.

“Contextualizing all of this, this seems like unforgivable behavior. How could she give the American people those ‘phase 1” binders that contained nothing? While at the same time bragging about the cover sheet that she made … and tell us that the SDNY had the real goods, that the binders were just proof of a deep state cover-up, only now to say, ‘Sorry, there’s actually nothing,’” Wheeler continued. “I think the administration is probably just now coming to the realization of how much goodwill this whole debacle has cost them with their voters, and Pam Bondi is not worth it.” Wheeler later called for Bondi’s outright firing. 

Wheeler does unfortunately have a point. Bondi went on Fox News two separate times to promote the release of the Epstein files, saying  in February that “they’re on my desk right now” and claiming the next month that she had a “truckload of documents” about Epstein coming to her. People like Rogan O’Handley (DC_Draino) and Chaya Raichik (LibsofTikTok) celebrated these announcements at the time but are now publicly seething, feeling betrayed and confused. 

“2 truths: Epstein didn’t kill himself & Epstein didn’t sex traffick to himself,” Handley wrote on Monday. “I understand the rage people have for demanding the Epstein client list and arrests. Every influencer there that day feels the same anger watching pedo elites get away with the most heinous crimes. We want justice and almost all of us have called for the client list and arrests for years,” he continued. 

“I want answers on Epstein. As many as possible. Not press releases. Answers,” said Jack Posobiec, another binder receiver. “We were all told more was coming. That answers were out there and would be provided. Incredible how utterly mismanaged this Epstein mess has been. And it didn’t have to be,” he opined.

The most hardcore of the MAGA conspiracy theorists seem to be taking this pretty hard. Not only are they unable to acquit their president, who has his own Epstein connections, but they have also been shown yet again that the Trump administration will only deliver lip service to their most important fantasies. Whether it’s releasing the client list or ending endless wars, Trump has skewed more neocon than MAGA, and this time angered his base once again. 

A federal judge torched Department of Justice lawyers Monday for providing slippery answers on their case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was returned to the United States after being deported to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”

During the hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis said that attempting to get a straight answer from the DOJ was like “nailing jello to a wall,” according to Politico.

It’s not just that the Trump administration has openly refused to fully comply with Xinis’s requests for information. They’ve also provided wildly contradictory answers to the court’s questions—and continued to do so on Monday.

During a hearing last month, one Department of Homeland Security agent revealed that he was only asked to look into Abrego Garcia’s case on April 28 of this year. But during Monday’s hearing, a DOJ attorney claimed that the investigation into Abrego Garcia’s alleged criminal activity had begun before then.

“Now I have real concerns, as if I haven’t for the last three months,” Xinis said.

Last month’s revelation was considered an especially damning admission, because April 28 was more than a month after Abrego Garcia was sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process. It was also a full week after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed, seemingly out of nowhere and without providing any evidence, that Abrego Garcia had “engaged in human trafficking.” Clearly, the Trump administration was attempting to dig up dirt to retroactively justify Abrego Garcia’s unlawful removal.

The Trump administration had also repeatedly claimed that Abrego Garcia could not be returned to the United States under any circumstances—but last month, he arrived in Tennessee to face two charges related to illegally transporting undocumented immigrants for cash.

“For three months, your clients told the world they weren’t going to do anything to bring him back. The president said it in two interviews,” Xinis said Monday. “Am I really supposed to ignore all that?

“How is that not relevant to this inquiry?” she pressed.

Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General Bridget O’Hickey said the situation was “unique.”

“We have acknowledged this was an administrative error,” O’Hickey said, breaking from the White House’s official line about Abrego Garcia being a hardened gang leader who was intentionally deported, opting for the truth as it was stated months ago.

Despite a judge ordering Abrego Garcia’s release, he still remains in custody after claiming that he feared he’d be deported by immigration authorities. Xinis ordered that the DOJ produce a witness from the Department of Homeland Security Thursday to testify about the agency’s plans for Abrego Garcia.

Fox News pushed back Monday on the Department of Justice’s claim that Jeffrey Epstein did not keep a list of clients, citing the head of that very agency, who’d claimed she’d seen the list.

During a press briefing, Fox News’s senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy questioned press secretary Karoline Leavitt about the DOJ’s memo declaring that the alleged sex trafficker kept no “incriminating ‘client list.’”

“So, what happened to the Epstein client list that the attorney general said she had on her desk?” Doocy asked.

“Well, I think if you go back and look at what the attorney general said in that interview which was on your network, on Fox News—” Leavitt began.

“I’ve got the quote,” Doocy said.

Doocy recounted that when Pam Bondi had been asked in February whether the DOJ was planning on releasing a list of Epstein’s clients, she’d replied, “It’s sitting on my desk right now to review.”

“Yes, she was saying the entirety of all the paperwork, all of the paper in relation to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. That’s what the attorney general was referring to, and I’ll let her speak for that,” Leavitt stammered in reply.

Leavitt insisted that the Trump administration had never promised to release names but had committed to conduct “an exhaustive investigation.”

“That’s what they did, and they provided the results of that. That’s transparency,” she said.

The shocking conclusion of the Trump administration’s investigation into Epstein has already produced stark schisms within the MAGA world. Laura Loomer, a prominent MAGA influencer with the president’s ear, has singled out Bondi, suggesting that she be fired.

In response to MAGA supporters seeking accountability for Epstein’s collaborators, Leavitt had this to say: “This administration wants anyone who has ever committed a crime to be held accountable.”

Well, clearly not everyone: Her boss happens to be a convicted felon and sex criminal. Not to mention the 1,500 recipients of Trump’s sweeping Inauguration Day pardon for violently opposing his loss in the 2020 presidential election.

On Monday, Donald Trump announced new tariffs on five countries in letters shared to Truth Social that were identical in all but their addressees and rates.  

Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Kazakhstan will all face 25 percent tariffs; South Africa will face 30 percent tariffs; and Laos will face 40 percent tariffs.

“Our relationship has been, unfortunately, far from Reciprocal,” the letters state. Beginning on August 1, the will be placed on “any and all [of the countries’] products sent into the United States,” which will be separate from sectoral tariffs, or those specifically applied to products from certain industries.

The copy-paste letters state that the U.S. trade deficit with all countries “is a major threat to our Economy and, indeed, our National Security!”

The letters also warn, “If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the [tariffs] that we charge,” and the tariffs “may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country.”

Trump in early April paused planned tariffs for 90 days, promising to secure 90 trade deals in that time—and falling 88 short as of Monday morning, with two days to go. Since then, Trump has extended the deadline and said, in lieu of trade deals, he would send unilateral “tariff letters” to hundreds of countries to establish rates; on Fox News last week, he said such letters might say: “Dear Mr. Japan, here’s the story. You’re going to pay a 25 percent tariff on your cars.”

This story has been updated.