Lindsey Graham Freaks Out Over Brutal Fact-Check on Trump’s Ballroom

Senator Lindsey Graham spiraled after he was faced with a simple question about his clueless campaigning for a new White House ballroom.

During a news conference Monday, a reporter asked the South Carolina Republican why he felt the failed attack on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner indicated the need for a White House ballroom at all. Especially considering that the WHCD was a “private event at a private location for a private organization,” and welcomed “twice as many guests as the White House ballroom would hold.”

“So, why do you find it appropriate to link these two events so closely?” the reporter asked.

“Well, I find it appropriate if you’re gonna have the president of the United States, the vice president of the United States, the speaker of the House, and half the Cabinet in the room, the room matters,” Graham said. “And the idea that you can’t do this in the ballroom will be up to the Correspondents’ Association.”

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner has been held at the Washington Hilton for the last 50 years. No one is arguing that this venue did not face glaring security issues, but that doesn’t mean members of the press should expect Trump—who regularly antagonizes the media—to roll out the red carpet for their yearly dinner. The construction of a White House ballroom would not address security concerns about this event in the slightest.

Still, Graham spoke about the ballroom as if it were the only solution to event planning in our troubled society. He announced he was pushing a bill to use $400 million of public funds (a.k.a. taxpayer dollars) to complete the construction project.

“We’re gonna have to accommodate the times in which we live. There are people out there that are nuts being driven to take up violence as an acceptable outcome in too many people’s opinion,” he said. “So no, we’re gonna build this facility. And I would suggest to the next president: ‘Don’t go to the Hilton!’

“The problem is you don’t have a choice. We’re gonna give people that choice,” he added, meaning the president, his lackeys, and his guests. Graham’s pleading comes as the Department of Justice has moved to squash a lawsuit challenging the massive construction.

It seems that Graham is merely offering his own dramatic reading of the lines fed to every Trump sycophant. Just hours after the shooting, some of the president’s most fervent MAGA supporters were already posting about the urgent need for a ballroom.

Journalist Molly Jong-Fast summed up the sudden ballroom mania on X: “When all you have is a ballroom everything looks like a nail,” she wrote.

Right-wing commentators and conspiracy theorists have expressed doubts about the legitimacy of the attempted assassination at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday. 

“Does anybody else just not care about the White House Correspondent’s Dinner shooting like at all,” said white nationalist and former Trump dinner guest Nick Fuentes. 

“Was this just a coincidence or another staged incident? Hours before the chaos, Karoline Leavitt told America to watch tonight because Donald Trump would bring the heat, and there would be ‘shots fired.’ Then suddenly, real shots were fired near the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” Tucker Carlson posited on his show. “Shots fired? The Secret Service rushes in and they let Trump continue to sit there? And now they’re going to resume the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and Trump still plans to deliver a speech?”

“I’m not saying this was staged to boost Trump’s tanking approval numbers, but it certainly looks odd,” Carlson continued. 

Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist  Alex Jones didn’t seem convinced the shooting was staged, but he still lent some credence to the idea, acknowledging that a lot of people he “really, really, really” respected who were “dead on on every other issue” believed it was. 

Former MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Green also raised questions regarding the alleged shooter’s manifesto. 

“Why does every shooter have a manifesto? Most shooter’s manifestos remain classified so they don’t inspire more would be shooter’s,” she wrote. “Why did they release Cole Allen’s manifesto almost immediately?”

This cloud of doubt on the right surrounding the correspondents’ dinner comes just over a week after Wired reported that a notable section of Trump’s base, including Carlson, believe the 2024 assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, was fake as well—suggesting eroding trust from those who were once his staunchest supporters. 

Musician Kid Rock reportedly got an AH-64 Apache helicopter ride with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Monday morning.

Ryan Grim of Drop Site posted on X that the musician, whose real name is Robert James Ritchie, flew to Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia on his private jet for the ride. The helicopters usually fly with two pilots, but Ritchie and Hegseth each rode in their own helicopter with one pilot. Apache helicopters aren’t stationed at the military base, raising questions as to where these aircraft came from. A base spokesperson referred questions to Hegseth’s office, according to Grim.

Last month, two Apache helicopters flew over a “No Kings” protest in Nashville, Tennessee, and then performed maneuvers next to Ritchie’s mansion in the suburbs nearby, prompting an investigation and the air crews’ suspension. Days later, Hegseth lifted their suspension and announced that the soldiers would not be punished, posting “Carry on, patriots. 🇺🇸” on X.

Ritchie seems to be hanging out with Cabinet officials a lot these days, having taken part in a bizarre ice bath and workout video with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in February to promote his public health policy. The purpose of the alleged helicopter flights doesn’t seem to be national security, and as of 2022, an Apache helicopter costs $5,171 per hour to operate.

One of the Trump administration’s newest immigration judges said that some women are just a “warm, wet hole.”

Melissa Isaak, an Army veteran and reservist, was hired by the Justice Department on April 8 as a temporary immigration judge. She was permitted to begin hearing cases immediately, according to an announcement from the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

In 2007, Isaak graduated from Barry University School of Law, a low-ranked law school where less than half of recent grads passed the bar exam on their first try. Afterward, she joined the law firm Brock & Stout in Alabama for two years, and in 2009 began her own private practice, self-styled as a “divorce attorney for men,” where she has worked ever since.

She does not have any immigration court experience, but her name was attached to several high-profile, non-divorce cases. Isaak was a defense attorney for three of the January 6 Capitol rioters (she later withdrew from two of the cases), and she also helped Alabama Republican Roy Moore dismiss a defamation suit from a woman who said he molested her when she was 14. That legal saga is still ongoing—an appeals court overturned Moore’s multimillion-dollar win against his accuser late last week.

During an interview with pickup artist Anthony Dream Johnson in 2021, Isaak claimed that “there are two types of women.”

“There are good, solid, valuable women who are major assets to men, if you’re a good woman,” Isaak said. “And then there’s a warm wet hole.”

The following year, she gave a speech on the matter for Johnson’s manosphere convention, 21 Studios’ Make Women Great Again, titled “Divorcing Feminism.”

“If the only thing you have to offer a man is sex, that’s what you are,” Isaak said. “And guess what? Guess who else has a warm, wet hole? Every other woman out there. What a horrible existence.”

She compared that to a “real woman,” a subtype that she said was meant to “catapult a man.”

“We’re powerful women, we are, if we use it in the right way,” Isaak said, specifying the necessity to use that energy for men.

“I’ve had people get offended, and they say, ‘You know, it’s horrible that you say warm, wet hole.’ I mean, well, if you have one and it’s not warm and wet you might want to seek some gynecological intervention,” Isaak said to crickets.

Germany thinks Iran is getting the better of Donald Trump in negotiations.

On Wednesday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told a group of secondary school students in western Germany that “there is a sense that a whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by these so-called Revolutionary Guards,” Bloomberg reports. 

“It is quite obvious that the Americans have absolutely no coherent strategy whatsoever,” Merz said to students in his home district of Marsberg. “And the fundamental problem with these kinds of conflicts is always the same: It is not enough to simply get yourself in—you must also figure out how to get yourself out.”

Merz’s criticism is a bad sign for Trump, who has complained about a lack of support from European powers for his war with Iran. Merz visited Trump last month and seemed to be on good terms with the president at the time, telling the press that “we are on the same page in terms of getting this terrible regime in Iran away.”

“We will talk about the day after, what will happen then, if they are out,” Merz said March 3, less than a week after the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran.

Days later, though, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said the country would not send ships to the region. Last week, Merz said that he and other leaders were not consulted prior to the initial attacks on Iran, adding that he has expressed his concerns to Trump in two separate conversations. 

“If I had known that this would go on for five or six weeks and keep getting worse, I would have made my point to him even more forcefully,” Merz said. Rising fuel prices as a result of the war are affecting economies all around the world, especially Germany, the leading economy in Europe, a point Merz stressed in his remarks. 

“This war against Iran has a direct impact on our economic performance and must therefore be brought to an end as soon as possible,” Merz said.

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has given it the upper hand in the conflict with the U.S., and the world is noticing that Trump hasn’t produced any results from negotiations in Pakistan. The longer this conflict drags on, the worse it reflects on the president.