Trump Adds Lame Insults to Presidents’ Portraits in White House

To President Donald Trump, a picture is apparently not worth 1,000 words. It’s important to get some real words in there too, in case things aren’t clear.

As if Trump’s new hallway of presidential portraits wasn’t enough of an eyesore, he’s now added long, rambling plaques summarizing the accomplishments of each of our past leaders. And they are just as petty, biased, and indelicate as you would expect.

Under Joe Biden’s “portrait”—which is just a picture of an autopen signing Biden’s name—the plaque begins, “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History.” The plaque features a number of totally accurate and not at all exaggerated “facts” about Biden’s tenure, including blaming him for both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

For Barack Obama, the plaque reads that he was “one of the most divisive presidents in American History,” and credits him with passing the “‘Unaffordable’ Care Act, resulting in his party losing control of both Houses of Congress.”

Even George W. Bush is catching strays: “President Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, but started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which should not have happened.”

But, like a shining city on a hill, one president remains above criticism: Ronald Reagan. “Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, and transformed American politics and the Conservative Movement,” the plaque reads. “He was a fan of President Donald J. Trump long before President Trump’s Historic run for the White House. Likewise, President Trump was a fan of his!”

Was this true? The Washington Post seems to think not, as Trump reached out to the Reagan White House with invitations at least six times back in the 1980s, and each time was ignored or rejected. But what does truth have to do with anything when you’re the man who, as Biden’s plaque reads, would “get Re-Elected in a Landslide, and SAVE AMERICA”?

Thank goodness this man isn’t in charge of the Smithsonian—oh, wait.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, Kash Patel’s woefully underqualified No. 2,  is finally headed for the exit.

The former talk radio announced Wednesday that he will leave his position next month, the AP reported. Bongino reportedly told confidants that he was not planning to return to FBI headquarters at all this year, eight people told MS NOW.

Donald Trump also confirmed Bongino’s exit while speaking to reporters Wednesday. “Dan did a great job. I think he wants to go back to his show,” the president said.

Bongino, who had no prior experience working for the FBI, previously spread conspiracy theories about the bureau where he would later manage day-day-operations. He once claimed that the plot to plant pipe bombs at the Democratic and Republican National headquarters on January 6, 2021, reeked of an “inside job.” 

Patel also reportedly granted Bongino a waiver to bypass getting a key security clearance, but the deputy director was still given access to highly classified information, such as the president’s daily brief, which collates essential information from the intelligence community.

News of Bongino’s potential exit comes after another report that Trump was considering removing Patel, as the hapless leader’s blunders start to pile up. The report also comes amid the FBI’s ongoing manhunt for a mass shooter at Brown University. 

This story has been updated.

The Federal Communications Commission website no longer reflects that the FCC is an “independent” agency after FCC Chair Brendan Carr testified to Congress on Wednesday that he didn’t consider it to be one.

Axios’s Sara Fischer caught the change, and posted about it on X: “This is INSANE. I took this screenshot of the @FCC website at 11:52 a.m. ET where it explicitly states the FCC is an independent agency. 25 minutes later, it has been removed following Carr’s comments during this hearing! See before and after screenshots below.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, there is no mention of the FCC being an “independent agency” on its website, only a “U.S. agency.” (The last publicly available confirmation of the word “independent” appearing on the site was October 1.)

During the hearing, Carr was pressed on whether he considered the FCC to be an independent agency: Though he had previously said himself that the agency was “long ago determined” by Congress to be independent, he claimed on Wednesday that his position had changed, and he now believes it to no longer be independent, since its members are subject to for-cause removal by the president.

One senator even read from the FCC’s website. New Mexico’s Ben Ray Luján said, “Just so you know, Brendan, on your website it just simply says, man, the FCC is independent.... This isn’t a trick question.”

Unluckily for Luján—and for the American people—it doesn’t say that anymore. Whether the change was the Trump administration’s attempt to protect Carr from appearing to lie during congressional testimony, or just a mask-off moment about the sad state of the FCC, it’s clear that the agency can no longer be trusted to act independently of the president.

President Donald Trump wants to pretend like he’s not crippling the economy, but job growth in 2025 has dropped by more than half, and it’s all his fault. 

Only 499,000 jobs were created between February and November 2025, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, down from 1.57 million new jobs during the same period last year—or a nearly 68 percent decrease year over year. 

Although the job market started off strong, job creation began to falter in April, around the same time that Trump announced his “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs. CNN reported that 2025 has shown the weakest job-growth levels since the pandemic, and before that the Great Recession. 

The BLS reported Tuesday that unemployment rose to 4.6 percent in November, the highest rate in four years.

The Trump administration has touted the addition of roughly 687,000 private-sector jobs (while shedding 188,000 government jobs), claiming that 100 percent of the job growth can be attributed to “native-born Americans.” However, the jobs report does not faithfully record workers’ nationality or legal status, so its claims about who exactly is getting these jobs are pure fiction.  

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr admitted that he sees President Donald Trump as his boss, during a congressional hearing Wednesday, and refused to say that it would be wrong to do the president’s bidding as the chairman of what is supposed to be an independent agency.

Senator Andy Kim came at Carr with a targeted line of questioning about the FCC’s independence. Carr claimed that, contrary to what he had himself said to Congress in the past, the FCC isn’t technically independent because it isn’t protected from for-cause removal, meaning the president can fire FCC commissioners whenever he wants.

Kim followed up: “I’m just trying to get a sense from you: If you don’t think that the FCC is independent, then is President Trump your boss?”

“President Trump has designated me as chairman of the FCC; I think it comes as no surprise that I’m aligned with President Trump on policy,” Carr meandered, until Kim pressed him again.

“The president designated me as chairman,” said Carr. “I can be fired by the president, the president is the head of the executive branch.”

“So he’s your boss,” Kim responded. After Carr attempted to shift responsibility for his actions onto the other two members of the FCC, Kim asked, “You swore an oath when you came into your job. Does the oath have the word ‘president’ in it?”

Carr wouldn’t answer the question.

In response to Carr’s either feigning confusion or genuine perplexity about why anyone would care whether the president of the United States has influence over the media’s governing body, Kim decided to switch to a more direct line of questioning.

“Have you ever had a conversation with the president or senior administration officials about using the FCC to go after critics?” Kim said.

“First of all, senator, I don’t get into the specifics of conversations that I have,” Carr said.

“OK, let me reframe it then. Would it be appropriate for the president or senior administration officials to give you direction to pressure media companies?”

Carr, apparently committed to no longer answering questions, responded, “I’m sorry, I’m not gonna get into hypotheticals.”

Kim, looking exasperated, said, “The easy answer is, ‘No.’ It’s not a hypothetical. It’s literally just trying to determine whether or not you are understanding your job belonging to the American people. Trump is not your boss. The American people are your boss,” Kim continued.

As Kim, Carr, and many of us know, Kim’s questions aren’t about a hypothetical situation. Trump has repeatedly threatened to revoke the licenses of news networks, and Carr and the FCC have been all too happy to enforce the president’s desire to muzzle late-night hosts and media outlets.

“He did intentionally try to pressure you. This is real,” Kim said.