Obama Breaks Silence and Slams Trump’s “Weak Attempt at Distraction”

Barack Obama is hitting back at the Trump administration for accusing the former president of treason.

Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, last week shared documents that she misleadingly claimed proved that the Obama White House manufactured intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election “to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.”

The president seems keen on using this purported evidence of “sedatious” activity (as he inventively put it Tuesday) to force the national conversation off his perceived lack of transparency regarding the case of deceased sex criminal and his former friend Jeffrey Epstein.

The president on Sunday shared memes about imprisoning Obama. On Tuesday, he told a reporter with an Epstein-related inquiry that Gabbard’s story is what they “should be talking about” instead.

Later Tuesday, Obama spokesman Patrick Rodenbush responded to the attacks with a statement excoriating Trump’s allegations as “bizarre,” “ridiculous,” and “a weak attempt at distraction.”

“Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response,” the statement reads. “But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one.”

Rodenbush continues: “Nothing in the document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes.”

“These findings,” he also points out, “were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee,” which was then chaired by Marco Rubio—meaning that, somewhat uncomfortably for Trump, Gabbard’s accusations of “treasonous conspiracy,” taken at face value, would implicate the second-highest-ranking official in his Cabinet.

Bipartisan interest in publicizing the Epstein files has brought together the most unlikely of allies.

Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jamie Raskin, Lauren Boebert, and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are just some of the names who have co-sponsored H.Res.581, dubbed the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Introduced by Representative Thomas Massie, who has a habit of actually standing up to Donald Trump, the bill aims to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Attorneys’ Offices” relating to child sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

The text of the bill specifies the release of flight logs, travel records, the names of individuals and government officials connected to Epstein’s “criminal activities, civil settlements, immunity or plea agreements, or investigatory proceedings,” the names of corporations or organizations tied to Epstein’s trafficking networks, potential immunity deals or sealed settlements, as well as “internal DOJ communications.”

A dozen Republicans have signed on to the effort in total, including Representatives Tim Burchett, Eric Burlison, Jeff Van Drew, Eli Crane, Cory Mills, Tom Barrett, Max Miller, Nancy Mace, and Keith Self.

But the effort isn’t likely to get off the ground anytime soon. House GOP leadership announced Tuesday afternoon that “votes are no longer expected in the House on Thursday,” with last votes taking place on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. ET, ending the schedule a day early and starting the beginning of a five-week summer recess.

“I think everyone wants to see the information that was sealed away,” Greene told reporters inside the Capitol Tuesday morning, highlighting that at minimum, the prospective legislation would have to wait for the courts to reply to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s request to unseal the documents. “I’m all for voting on it, I’m all for transparency. We just have to be a little patient.”

House Republicans did already have a chance to stand up for transparency last week, but 211 of the caucus’s 212 members voted to block a Democratic-led effort to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files.

Donald Trump’s administration has signed off on building the country’s largest immigrant detention center, a sprawling tent camp at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.

The Department of Defense awarded the Virginia-based company Acquisition Logistics a nearly $232 million contract to establish and operate a 5,000-bed short-term detention facility, according to a contract notice Monday. In total, however, the contract is worth closer to $1.26 billion, two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named publicly told Bloomberg.

The new tent camp is estimated to be completed by the end of September 2027. Sitting close to the Mexican border, and with its own airport, the new facility would serve as a deportation hub for the Trump administration’s purge of immigrants from the United States.

For scale, an estimated 700 detainees are currently held at “Alligator Alcatraz,” but the Trump administration’s wetland-themed concentration camp in the Florida Everglades is also expected to have a capacity of up to 5,000 people, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Acquisition Logistics has no experience in detention, according to Bloomberg. The company specializes in supply chain and project management, as well as technical and engineering services, and has previously received $29 billion worth of contracts from the DOD for jobs such as providing logistical capabilities, or lodging and conference room services for the agency’s work at the Southern border.

Emma Winger, deputy legal director at the American Immigration Council, expressed grave concern to Bloomberg over the government’s plans to house immigrants in tents. “All the reasons why you and I live not in tents but in homes are going to inevitably come up in a facility that doesn’t offer people walls and floors and insulation,” she said.

“It’s very hard to imagine how soft-sided facilities could satisfy even the low detention standards that are reflected in ICE’s most recent standards,” Winger added. This latest contract comes amid reports of inhumane conditions at ICE facilities, where detainees have alleged physical abuse, medical neglect, and psychological torture.

Acquisition Logistics’ startling lack of experience setting up a detention facility, as well as the government’s own wavering commitment to safe conditions for detainees, ought to spark grave concern as the rate of immigration arrests and of deaths in ICE facilities continues to rise. The government has greenlit yet another concentration camp—and this one is on track to be the largest so far.

This latest contract comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that two army bases would be used to house immigrant detainees, one in New Jersey and the other in Illinois. The moves severely undermine his supposed commitment to maximizing so-called military “lethality,” by transforming his own training facilities into pit stops for his boss’s campaign of ethnic cleansing. Like those facilities, Fort Bliss had previously housed Afghan refugees as part of the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome.

The government previously operated an Emergency Intake Site at Fort Bliss under the Biden administration, erecting a tent city to house unaccompanied migrant children. One whistleblower account revealed horrific living conditions similar to those in ICE facilities now, with children subjected to constant light, collective punishment, and even burns from unsafe materials.

An obviously fake image, purporting to show a resignation letter by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, made the rounds in MAGA circles on X Tuesday. Among the duped was Republican Senator Mike Lee.

Among other eyebrow-raising details, the letter includes an abundance of end-of-line hyphens, as well as punctuation errors (e.g., “Over the past years. I have worked alongside …” and “public confidence in its independence and effectiveness, My decision comes from …”) and an awkward line break causing an apostrophe-s to appear alone at the beginning of a new line.

Most egregiously, the words encircling the seal of the Federal Reserve System at the bottom of the letter are largely gibberish—ridden with the glitchy characters one often finds in AI-generated images containing text.

Nonetheless, Lee shared the letter on X, with the caption “Powell’s out!” flanked by (false) alarm emojis. According to Politico’s Jordain Carney, the senator decided to delete the tweet shortly thereafter “out of an abundance of caution.” Lee also told reporters, “I don’t know whether it’s legit or not.”

MAGA influencer Benny Johnson similarly shared the image with an alarm emoji, writing, “BREAKING: Fed Chair Jerome Powell has resigned,” before removing the post. “Sorry. Bad look,” Johnson wrote in a follow-up. “I still want Jerome Powell to resign really bad.”

It’s no wonder many Trump supporters got over their skis, losing any eye for detail at the whiff of Powell’s fictitious departure. The Fed chair has been persona non grata in Trumpworld in recent months, with the president calling him just about every insulting name in the book (“numbskull,” “dumb guy,” “major loser,” “low IQ”) for the Fed’s refusal to cut interest rates (a decision that seems to be a cautious reaction to Trump’s capricious tariffs).

A Tennessee medical provider allegedly refused to provide prenatal care to an unmarried pregnant woman because it went against the doctor’s “Christian values.”

Speaking at a town hall in Jonesborough, Tennessee, last week, an unnamed 35-year-old woman claimed that she was forced to seek care in Virginia after her local medical provider effectively claimed religious exemption.

“I just found out that I’m pregnant again,” the woman said. “I’ve been with my partner for about 15 years though we’re not married.

“I just had my first visit and that provider told me that, thanks to that fact, they were not comfortable treating me because I am an unwed mother and that went against their Christian values,” she continued. The woman and her partner have a 13-year-old child together.

The woman underscored that she’s “lucky enough” to live along the Virginia state border, allowing her to receive out-of-state care. Still, she said she was “scared out of her mind” regarding the complications of the long drive.

Tennessee’s Medical Ethics Defense Act went into effect in late April, allowing medical providers to opt out of participating in specific procedures that conflict with their “conscience”—a legally defined term in the Volunteer State that refers to sincerely held ethical, moral, or religious beliefs.

The aggrieved woman had her first prenatal visit less than three months after the measure was implemented.

Speaking with the Nashville Banner on the condition of anonymity, she recalled that “instantly, I felt my stomach drop and I knew this wasn’t right, this wasn’t okay.”

“I didn’t want to react in a place of anger, because I felt like that was just going to support any judgment that the provider already had against me,” she told the paper. “I said ‘thank you for your time’ and left, because if you’re not willing to provide the best care to me, regardless of the reason, I don’t want any part of this.”

She has since filed complaints with the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance and the American Medical Association, according to the Banner. At the town hall, the woman said she had called Senator Marsha Blackburn’s office twice a day since the incident happened, but believed that she was either blocked or that Blackburn “had all calls going directly to voicemail.”

“I’ve never even reached a staffer,” she said.

Senator Bill Hagerty, however, did answer—though his staffers had bad news: “I was told he’s not obligated to listen to his constituents,” the woman said.

Just living in Tennessee as a pregnant woman, in the wake of the state’s total abortion ban, terrifies her. Speaking with the Banner, the mother recalled what happened to Adriana Smith in Georgia and feared that the same could happen to her in her home state.

Smith, a 30-year-old woman, was declared brain dead in February after developing multiple blood clots in her brain. But because she was about nine weeks pregnant at the time—past Georgia’s six-week limit on abortions—the state opted to use her body as an incubator until the fetus was viable.

“The fear for me is if something [high risk] happens, I can’t guarantee that the provider I see is going to value my life over the life of this fetus,” the Tennessee woman said. “And while we do very, very much want this baby, I have one here already who very, very much relies on me.”

Tennessee has the highest maternal mortality rate in the country, with more than 41 deaths per 100,000 births, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also has a staggeringly high infant mortality rate—two factors that, combined, contributed to its ranking as the worst state to live in in the U.S., according to a CNBC ranking.

State Republicans pushed for the passage of the Medical Ethics Defense Act, bargaining that the legislation would help the state retain its medical professionals, but that hasn’t been the case.

Tennessee has been bleeding its medical expertise since the state’s abortion ban went into effect in 2022, and the state’s future isn’t much brighter. A 2024 study from the Association of American Medical Colleges found that overall medical residency applications in the state had plummeted by more than 12 percent between 2023 and 2024, with obstetrics facing the worst decline, falling by 20.9 percent.

Federal judges in New Jersey have ousted Alina Habba as the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, refusing to extend the 120-day appointment President Trump gifted her in March.

Trump appointed her as interim attorney, but to stay full-time, Habba would need to be approved by district judges or have the Senate confirm her position. On Tuesday, New Jersey’s federal judges instead chose to replace Habba with longtime prosecutor Desiree Leigh Grace, who served as Habba’s assistant.  

Habba was Trump’s personal lawyer, unsuccessfully defending him in his hush-money and E. Jean Carroll defamation cases. She made headlines for multiple alarming gaffes unbecoming of a U.S. attorney, and went to great lengths to defend the president, even making excuses for his falling asleep during his own trial. In March, she claimed that the thousands of military veterans indiscriminately fired by DOGE were simply unfit. She is also currently being sued by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for malicious persecution after she briefly charged him with trespassing following his arrest by ICE for attempting to enter a local detention center.  

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche railed against Habba’s firing, calling it politically motivated and arguing that the deadline was supposed to be longer. 

“The district court judges in NJ are trying to force out @USAttyHabba before her term expires at 11:59 p.m. Friday,” he wrote Tuesday on X. “Their rush reveals what this was always about: a left-wing agenda, not the rule of law. When judges act like activists, they undermine confidence in our justice system. Alina is President Trump’s choice to lead—and no partisan bench can override that.”

Habba made a similar statement on Sean Hannity’s show Monday night, insinuating that New Jersey Senators Corey Booker and Andy Kim deliberately froze her out of her job, putting her at the mercy of judges who, to her, were biased and corrupt. 

Habba has too many moments of incompetence for this firing to be entirely politically motivated, especially since she’s being replaced with the assistant she chose. And even if that is the case, her firing is only as political as her hiring was to begin with.  

The head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue Branch has resigned, telling colleagues that the Trump administration’s disastrous response to the deadly flooding in Texas had driven him over the edge, CNN reported.

Ken Pagurek, who had worked in that branch for more than a decade, reportedly told colleagues that his departure Monday from FEMA had come after mounting frustrations with the Trump administration’s efforts to gut the disaster aid agency. But Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s pitifully delayed response to the flooding over the Fourth of July weekend was apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Noem had severely botched FEMA’s Texas response by failing to renew contracts with companies staffing FEMA call centers, resulting in a majority of calls going unanswered for days as the floodwaters raged. The secretary dismissed the reporting as “fake news.”

She also reportedly delayed FEMA’s initial response by instituting a policy that required her to personally sign off on all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000. FEMA officials, who were unaware of the new rule, didn’t receive Noem’s go-ahead for 72 hours.

In his resignation letter, Pagurek didn’t mention the floods at all. “This decision was not made lightly, and after much reflection and prayer, it is the right path for me at this time,” he wrote. “I have been continually inspired by the unwavering dedication, unmatched courage, and deep-seated commitment we share for saving lives and bringing hope in the face of devastation.”

One DHS spokesperson defended the response to the floods, while another criticized Pagurek’s decision, saying that it was “laughable that a career public employee, who claims to serve the American people, would choose to resign over our refusal to hastily approve a six-figure deployment contract without basic financial oversight.”

“We’re being responsible with taxpayer dollars, that’s our job,” the second spokesperson said.

Last month, Donald Trump said he plans to “phase out” FEMA after this year’s hurricane season, and future disbursements would come straight from him. “We’re going to give it out directly. It’ll be from the president’s office. We’ll have somebody here, could be Homeland Security,” Trump said at the time.

Clearly, putting Noem in charge of personally approving decisions in a disaster comes at a cost, and the Trump administration’s mismanagement of relief is more far-reaching than just the flooding in Texas.

Asked about the latest developments in the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein fiasco, President Donald Trump quickly shifted attention to the accusations that his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is making against former President Barack Obama.

Trump’s deputy attorney general and former personal lawyer Todd Blanche on Tuesday announced that he will meet with convicted Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell to find out “about anyone who has committed crimes against victims” of the late convicted sex criminal.

The move seems to be an effort to stamp out the ongoing fire surrounding the administration’s perceived lack of transparency in the Epstein case, not to mention Trump’s own reported ties to the disgraced financier (though a closed-door sit-down with Maxwell might not exactly allay suspicions that the administration is in on a cover-up).

When asked about Blanche’s anticipated meeting with Maxwell on Tuesday, Trump replied curtly.

“I don’t really follow that too much. It’s sort of a witch hunt, just a continuation of the witch hunt,” said the president, who has in recent days sought to dismiss the Epstein affair as a hoax spun up by Obama and Hillary Clinton.

He then hastened to change the subject to Gabbard’s recent allegations against those very MAGA bêtes noires.

“The witch hunt that you should be talking about,” he continued, “is they caught Obama absolutely cold, Tulsi Gabbard.” Accusing Obama and Clinton of rigging the 2016 and 2020 elections, Trump added, “After what they did to me, and, whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people.… So that’s really the things you should be talking about. I know nothing about the other.”

Gabbard last week released documents that she purported “detail a treasonous conspiracy by officials at the highest levels of the Obama White House to subvert the will of the American people and try to usurp the president from fulfilling his mandate.” Trump has pounced on the dubious findings, sharing memes about imprisoning Obama this weekend in a Truth Social posting spree that touched on just about everything but the Epstein-shaped thorn currently lodged squarely in his side.

If Gabbard’s wild accusations were not concocted expressly to distract from the persistent controversy surrounding the late sex criminal, the president’s remarks Tuesday show that he’s happy to use them for just that purpose.

The president is still gung-ho that the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein is a “witch hunt”—to the point that he didn’t even know his own government was continuing its investigation.

Speaking with reporters at the White House Tuesday, Donald Trump was apparently completely out of the loop regarding the Justice Department’s investigation into the pedophilic sex trafficker, unaware of the DOJ’s requested interview with Epstein’s imprisoned associate, Ghislaine Maxwell.

“Do you support the DOJ seeking an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell?” asked a journalist in the pool.

“I don’t know anything about it. They’re gonna what? Meet her?” said Trump.

“The deputy attorney general has reached out to Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorney, asking for an interview,” the reporter clarified.

“Yeah, I don’t know about it, but I think it would be something—sounds appropriate to do, yeah,” Trump responded.

The reporter then asked if Trump believed it was appropriate for deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche—who had previously worked as Trump’s personal attorney—to conduct the interview.

“He’s a very talented person, he’s very smart. I didn’t know he was going to do it, I don’t follow it too much, it’s sort of a witch hunt,” Trump said.

Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in 2022, when she was sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in the pedophile network, helping Epstein abduct and abuse underage girls over the span of a decade.

Trump has a well-documented history with Epstein. Prior to his death, the New York financier described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together several times; the first time that Trump slept with his now-wife Melania was reportedly aboard Epstein’s plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express”; and Trump allegedly penned a salacious letter to Epstein for the pedophile’s 50th birthday, as reported by The Wall Street Journal last week.

Facing enormous pressure from his base last week, Trump ordered the Justice Department to release additional documents pertaining to its investigation into Epstein. The White House did not specify at the time if the documents would be made public, and did not explain the sudden contradiction after Trump had spent the better part of the last week insisting that the Epstein fiasco was a Democrat-invented “hoax.”

But rather than demonstrate a vested interest in making the case files transparent, Trump decided to double down on his “witch hunt” language, deflecting by telling the roomful of reporters that they should instead be focused on former President Barack Obama, reiterating a debunked conspiracy while claiming that his administration “caught” Obama “absolutely cold” trying to “rig” the 2020 presidential election.

President Trump says two more late-night TV hosts are “next,” just days after CBS ended The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. 

“The word is, and it’s a strong word at that, Jimmy Kimmel is NEXT to go in the untalented Late Night Sweepstakes and, shortly thereafter, Fallon will be gone,” the president wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. “These are people with absolutely NO TALENT, who were paid Millions of Dollars for, in all cases, destroying what used to be GREAT Television. It’s really good to see them go, and I hope I played a major part in it!”

This is exactly what it looks like. Colbert was canceled mere days after he called out CBS parent company Paramount for capitulating to the Trump administration by agreeing to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit over how they edited a 60 Minutes interview of failed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, something news organizations regularly do for the sake of time. 

Colbert argued that Paramount was well aware that Trump’s lawsuit was “completely without merit” but agreed to pay a “big fat bribe” to ease its sale to Skydance Media—a deal that required Trump’s approval. The president has mocked Colbert since his cancellation, calling for Jimmy Kimmel’s job next, and stating that Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them. This Tuesday is just more of the same. Kimmel’s show is hosted by ABC, which also settled with Trump for millions of dollars after George Stephanopoulos said that the president was liable for the rape of E. Jean Carroll, instead of just sexual abuse.  

The president is more focused on getting late-night talk show hosts fired than on governing. CBS sacrificed Colbert for political goodwill, dumping a popular host to kiss the king’s ring. And now Trump is calling for more heads. Only time will tell how the networks respond.