GOP Senator Speaks in Riddles Instead of Answering RFK Jr. Question

Senator Bill Cassidy gave a puzzling answer about his role in placing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services.

During a Sunday appearance on Face The Nation, moderator Margaret Brennan asked if Cassidy—a physician whose support of vaccines has put him at odds with Kennedy—regrets his February confirmation vote.

Brennan observed that Cassidy decided to vote for Kennedy after receiving assurance that a key CDC vaccine advisory committee would be maintained “without changes”; Kennedy went on to fire all of its members, anyway, and appoint new ones, including vaccine skeptics, in their place.

In lieu of an answer, Cassidy offered the following gem: “You live life forward. Again, you just do,” he said, going on to quote Matthew 6:34. “Let the day’s own troubles be sufficient for the day.”

The senator continued, “He and I have publicly disagreed on some matters, but I strongly agree with him on others, and so, so that’s how I’ll answer your question.”

“That sounds, um, like yes,” Brennan noted.

Online, social media users mocked Cassidy’s enigmatic comments. “Translation: Yes, but I’ll pretend it’s a philosophical riddle,” wrote one. “Cassidy sounds like a fortune cookie,” posted another.

Before giving his nonanswer, Cassidy noted that “every reporter asks me that.” One would think he’d have a better response by now.

Far-right politician Marjorie Taylor Greene became embroiled in a bitter public fight with President Donald Trump this weekend which led her to receive threats against her life, she said—but she still supports him.

Their falling out highlights a growing divide in MAGA world, as Trump’s connections to convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein and his administration’s clumsy attempts to make the issue go away enrage some members of his base.

Greene, a Republican representative from Georgia, recently joined Democrats and three other House Republicans in signing a discharge petition intended to force a vote to make the DOJ’s Epstein files public, which displeased the president.

Greene said she texted Trump Friday about the files, and urged the president to be transparent and support the full release of the documents. She shared screenshots on social media of the purported texts.

In response, apparently, the president grew enraged, and denounced his former supporter in a post on Truth Social on Friday. Trump said he was withdrawing support for Greene and referred to her as a “raging Lunatic,” among other things. He kept going on Saturday, inventing new disparaging nicknames for his former ally and calling her a traitor.

Greene said she found his aggressive response “shocking,” that he had said things that were simply not true, and that she had received threats after his attacks on social media.

But speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday morning, the Georgia Republican pointed out that she had supported Trump and the Trump administration in the past, and still would.

“I stood with President Trump when virtually no one else did,” she said. “Campaigned all over the country, spent millions of my own dollars helping him get elected, and I think that’s incredibly important, and I do support him and his administration.”

His remarks had been hurtful, she said. “However, I have something in my heart that I think is incredibly important for our country, and that is to end the toxic fighting in politics. And this has been going on for years.… The most hurtful thing he said, which is absolutely untrue, is he called me a traitor. That is so extremely wrong. Those are the types of words used that can radicalize people against me and put my life in danger.”

It’s worth mentioning here that Greene has engaged in more than her share of vile, hateful rhetoric over the years. She’s espoused white supremacist and antisemitic views, endorsed conspiracy theories, and more.

The president’s attacks on her, however, seem to have crossed some sort of a line, as far as Greene was concerned.

“What do you think happened, what do you think is the reason for this is?” Bash asked.

“Unfortunately, it has all come down to the Epstein files,” Greene said.

Later in the interview, Bash asked if she could see a situation in which she and the president resolved things.

“I certainly hope that we can make up,” Greene said.

President Donald Trump is lashing out at Indiana Republicans for rejecting his redistricting effort in the state.

On Friday, Indiana state Senator Rodric Bray, a Republican, announced that, after “thoughtful consideration” of a plan to redraw the state’s congressional maps to help the Republicans gain more seats in Congress, “there are not enough votes to move that idea forward, and the Senate will not reconvene.”

In response, Trump on Sunday cast aspersions on Bray and a fellow Republican state senator, Greg Goode, for “not wanting to redistrict their State, allowing the United States Congress to perhaps gain two more Republican seats.” 

He called the two “politically correct type ‘gentlemen’” and “RINO Senators”—meaning Republicans in name only.

Trump also blasted Indiana’s Republican governor, Mike Braun, who supported the redistricting effort but, in the president’s view,  may not be giving his all “to get the necessary Votes.” Trump applied pressure to Braun, whom he described as his “friend,” adding, “Mike wouldn’t be Governor without me.”

The president concluded his tirade by threatening Indiana Republicans who oppose his redistricting scheme with a primary challenge.

Indiana is just one red state Trump is pressuring to redraw its congressional maps in his favor, as Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Missouri have already done so. Democratic officials in California and Utah have adopted redraws of their own, and others are attempting to do the same.

President Donald Trump and his Federal Communications Commission chair, Brendan Carr, are apparently continuing their war on the media.

The president on Saturday took aim at comedian Seth Meyers, who, on Late Night with Seth Meyers the day prior, said Trump is “the most unpopular president of all time.” The notoriously thin-skinned Trump took to Truth Social, diagnosing the host with an “incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a term MAGA frequently uses to dismiss its critics, and urging NBC to fire him.

About a half-hour later, Carr made a point to post a screenshot of Trump’s comments, without further comment, on X.

As Matthew Gertz of Media Matters noted, Comcast, the parent company of NBC, is reportedly looking to acquire some of Warner Bros. Discovery, which would require Carr’s approval.

The posts are just the latest example of the president seeking to censor those he believes have cast him in a critical light; he recently threatened the BBC with a billion-dollar lawsuit.

The targeting of Meyers especially recalls Trump and Carr’s jawboning of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night talk show. After Kimmel ridiculed MAGA’s response to the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, Carr threatened those who platformed the host. Broadcasting companies with business before the FCC then pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live, which was subsequently cancelled by ABC before the network reversed course.

At the time—before Kimmel’s show returned to air—Trump claimed shows are “not allowed” to excessively bash him and urged NBC to suspend Meyers’ show, as well as The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Residents of Charlotte, North Carolina, are rallying in opposition to the invasion of their city by federal immigration enforcement agents under President Donald Trump.

On Saturday, Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin announced that the Trump administration is “surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte” in an operation dubbed “Charlotte’s Web.”

Agents conducted searches and arrests across the Democratic-led city, which is home to a significant immigrant population. Thus far, the operation has targeted local retail stores and a church. Many businesses closed down because, as a local bakery owner told The Charlotte Observer, “They’re not chasing criminals. They’re chasing anyone who looks, speaks like me, who has an accent like me, who looks like me.”

In one incident, agents detained a U.S. citizen—who had also been stopped previously by agents—after shattering the window of his truck.

In a statement, Charlotte’s mayor and other local officials said the operation was “causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty in our community as recent operations in other cities have resulted in people without criminal records being detained and violent protests being the result of unwarranted actions.”

Hundreds have peacefully protested the agents’ presence, with one major demonstration at a park in uptown Charlotte, and others at locations where Border Patrol agents were spotted.

“They’ve been doing terrible things in Chicago, and we’re not happy that they’re bringing it here to North Carolina,” one protester, who held a sign that read “Stop kidnapping our neighbors,” told the Observer.

As President Donald Trump and Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s feud over Jeffrey Epstein boils over, survivors of the late sex criminal have reportedly issued a collective statement of support for the Georgia Republican.

The bizarre development comes amid a deepening internal rift in the MAGA movement.

The letter, as reported Saturday by MeidasTouch News, thanked Greene “for standing up against the intimidation, silencing, and abuse that Epstein survivors have endured for decades.”

“When you speak the truth and refuse to bow to threats, you become a survivor by proxy—an ally who carries part of the fight with us,” the message continued. “That courage matters. You have our full support. We stand united with you against any attempt to bully, rewrite history, or shut down accountability.”

The 27 reported signatories, who faced or were otherwise impacted by Epstein’s abuse—such as Maria and Annie Farmer, Courtney Wild, and the family of Virginia Roberts Giuffre—promised to defend Greene “with everything we have” and offered “to help and to talk.”

Greene, a far-right politician, former Trump disciple, and frequent purveyor of bigotry and conspiracy theories, has drawn the president’s ire in recent days for her efforts to compel government transparency on the Epstein case.

She was among four House Republicans to back a successful bid to force a (now forthcoming) floor vote on the release of the Justice Department’s Epstein-related documents.

The president, in turn, has publicly withdrawn his support of Greene, dubbing her a “RINO”—or Republican in name only—as well as nicknames like “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene” and “Marjorie Taylor Brown” (because, he explained, “Green grass turns Brown when it begins to ROT!”).

Greene on Saturday said Trump’s abuse has “fueled and egged on” threats against her.

President Donald Trump thinks it’s possible that, some time in the past year or so, his political enemies planted damaging information about him in Jeffrey Epstein case files.

Following the latest release of Epstein-related records, Trump on Friday was asked about the possible publication of more such files.

The president floated a wild theory.

“If they had anything, they would have used it before the election, OK?” Trump said, evidently referring to Democrats. “I can’t tell you what they put in since the election, but if they had anything, you don’t think they would have used it before the election?”

This week, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 pages of documents obtained from Epstein’s estate, including private emails mentioning Trump. In one such message, the disgraced financier suggested Trump “knew about the girls” he had trafficked. The recent dump followed the committee’s release of tens of thousands of pages of Epstein-related documents in September.

Friday was not the first time Trump or his allies have baselessly claimed that Democrats fabricated Epstein documents. “I can imagine what they put into files,” the president said in July, as the controversy was gaining steam.

And in September, when the House Oversight Committee published Epstein’s 50th birthday book from 2003, featuring a lewd letter from Trump, the White House claimed the subpoenaed document was a fake. MAGA lawmakers joined in on the conspiracy theorizing, with Representative Tim Burchett saying the Biden administration may have forged the letter and somehow gotten it into a decades-old book in possession of the Epstein estate.

Next week—despite Trump’s best efforts—the House is expected to vote on legislation that would force the Department of Justice to release all of its Epstein-related records.

After days of deliberations with high-ranking officials, President Donald Trump thinks he may have come to a decision about a major foreign policy issue.

He’s not quite sure, though, and he definitely isn’t sharing what his decision might be.

“I sort of have made up my mind,” Trump told CBS Friday on the topic of Venezuela, during a meeting with the press on Air Force One.

However, the president continued, “I can’t tell you what it is.” He added that they had “made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping drugs from pouring in,” however.

As The New York Times reported Friday, Trump has been applying military pressure to the South American country, but it remains a mystery for what purpose or what end.

The U.S.’s biggest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, was moving into a position close enough to carry out strikes on the country, the Times reported, and the president was meeting with officials to review military options. He hadn’t ruled out direct action inside the country.

Trump has engaged in saber-rattling toward Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro for some time now, saying he’s allowing armed gangs to smuggle drugs in the U.S. Venezuela’s military is now on high alert, creating a pressure-cooker situation, though, as several outlets have reported, Trump officials and aides have said contradictory things about the purpose of these moves.

The U.S. military has also engaged in numerous strikes over the past few months on more than 20 boats it claims were moving drugs from South America to the U.S. While the legality of these strikes are questionable, they’ve killed dozens of people in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, and have created a surge of anger and displeasure among the international community, and Americans—and even Trump’s base.

As The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, a secret leaked memo from the DOJ showed that the administration was linking the boat strikes to fentanyl and stating that they were a chemical weapons threat, a claim that hasn’t been substantiated.

After pardoning a far-right militia member for his role in the Capitol riot, President Donald Trump gave him another pardon for an unrelated conviction for illegally possessing firearms.

On January 6, 2021, Dan Wilson, of the Oath Keepers and a Three Percenters–associated militia, breached the Capitol. Days earlier, per prosecutors, he had sent a disturbing text message to a Telegram group chat with other anti-government militia members: “I am ready to lay my life on the line. It is time for good men to do bad things.”

Wilson was ultimately convicted for conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. He pleaded guilty to the gun charges after authorities searched his Kentucky home and discovered firearms, some loaded, that he was forbidden from possessing due to previous felony convictions.

Trump did away with the conspiracy charges this January, when he pardoned “individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

Since then, Wilson’s lawyers have argued that the pardon also applied to his gun charges.

But as Trump-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich ruled in March, the “plain language of the pardon” did not cover them. However, the judge noted at the time, Trump “has the constitutional authority to pardon Wilson for all of his crimes. He still may do so.”

On Friday, the president did just that, Politico reported Saturday—signing a full and unconditional pardon for Wilson that specifically cited his gun case. An unnamed White House official told Politico’s Kyle Cheney that Trump is pardoning Wilson because the search that led to the firearm conviction “was due to the events of January 6, and [the investigators] should have never been there in the first place.”

In recent days, Trump has issued slews of eyebrow-raising pardons for his political allies, though this one stands out as a particularly egregious example.

As Democratic Senator Chris Murphy wrote on social media, “Trump is now pardoning January 6th rioters for unrelated crimes, just to reward them for their violence to keep him in power. The Republican Party is in the full time business of endorsing and incentivizing political violence.”

President Donald Trump made a baffling comment after receiving an MRI, calling into question his grasp of basic medical treatment—or what he could be hiding from the general public.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, the president said that he had undergone a physical and received an MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging test, as part of the exam.

He (predictably) reported that the results were extremely positive.

“Mr. President, can you tell us why you needed to get an MRI?” a reporter asked. “I understand that the results were good, but what was it for?”

“Because it’s part of my physical,” he said. After some back and forth, the president broke it down for the reporter.

“Here’s what the story is. I had an MRI. The doctor said it was the best result he has ever seen as a doctor. That’s it.” Trump said. “But, I had an MRI as part of my standard, yearly—or, I think they do it every two years. But I have the physical every year. But the result was outstanding.”

“Was it your brain, or … ?” the reporter asked.

“I have no idea what they analyzed, but whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well,” the president said.

For what it’s worth, an MRI is a fairly involved process that involves removing clothing, donning earplugs, and lying completely still in a large scanner for extended periods of time with the goal of obtaining quality images of internal structures of the body, according to Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine. Given the amount of effort this process takes, several people on social media pointed out, patients would generally know what body part is being tested.

Trump, who is the oldest person ever elected president, has been the subject of swirling theories and concerns about his health for months, which seems to have put him on the defensive. The president breezed past his ignorance about the test and continued the conversation with the reporter, lauding his mental acuity, as he is wont to do.

“The other thing I took is, I took, as you know, a … very advanced test on mental acuity. Because I think a president should have to do that. And as you probably heard I aced it, I got a perfect score … and the only reason I tell you that is that it’s one subject, unlike Biden, and others, that you can take off your plate,” he said.

But for someone who claims not to know what his MRI “analyzed,” it’s hard to see how this could be true. Or maybe he just doesn’t want us to know. Either way, we’re left with a lot more questions than answers.