Trump Thinks It’s a Compliment to Call People “Animals”

Donald Trump is insulting his supporters—again.

In the midst of a White House press event Wednesday promoting the executive mansion’s upcoming UFC tournament, mixed martial artist Justin Gaethje attempted to praise the president for normalizing UFC tournaments and humanizing its fighters. Instead, he got sucker-punched by an unexpectedly emotional jab from the man behind the Resolute Desk.

“I’m not sure many know how big of a part you were to the UFC becoming mainstream in the early ’90s, when nobody would let us—no one would believe in us, they thought they were absolute animals, and you gave us a chance to fight in your properties—” Gaethje said, before Trump interjected.

“Well, they were right about that,” Trump chirped.

But the joke was tepidly received.

“Well,” Gaethje said, hanging his head. “Somewhat, somewhat.”

Trump is a lifelong fan of boxing and MMA—so much so that he’s planning to host a UFC tournament on the White House lawn on his birthday, June 14. The main card will pit Gaethje against Ilia Topuria for the lightweight title, and Alex Pereira against Ciryl Gane for the interim heavyweight title. UFC’s parent company, TKO Holdings, has promised that the entire event—which is expected to cost around $60 million—will be funded entirely by the sports organization and come at no cost to taxpayers.

It will be the first UFC event ever hosted at the White House, and while the fight itself may be unprecedented, Trump’s derogatory comments are anything but. Trump has made a career of grifting his supporters, pledging his love for them one moment while backhanding them the next.

Over the course of the last year, Trump has derided his base as “stupid” and “weaklings” for caring about the Epstein files (and Trump’s prominent place in them), suggested that American workers lack skill, and told a bloc of supporters at a senior community in Florida that the crowd likely wouldn’t be able to pass the cognitive exams he had taken to convey his mental acuity. (Trump’s recollections of the tests have called into question whether he actually took them at all, as some of the tests’ creators have said their exams are to check for dementia, not cognitive speed.)

Trump has a history of having a big mouth. Over the course of his political ascent, he has famously referred to women by their genitals, called deceased veterans “suckers” and “losers,” claimed that he loves the “poorly educated,” and said he could get away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, suggesting his base is gullible and blindly loyal.

Tennessee Republicans kicked Democratic lawmakers, journalists, and constituents out of a special redistricting session Wednesday as protests over their new congressional map engulfed the state House.

After one round of protests forced Republicans to shut down their meeting, they relocated to a new room, according to The Tennessean, and prevented anyone from entering.

Democratic state Representatives Gloria Johnson and Gabby Salinas were both told to leave the Judiciary Committee meeting as lawmakers discussed the GOP’s new congressional map, which would eliminate Democratic Representative Steve Cohen’s majority-Black Memphis area district and give Republicans a 9–0 majority in the state.

“Well folks, here we are—this special session where the people are yet again being ignored,” Johnson said in a video recorded outside of the meeting room doors, while dozens of chanting protesters raised their voices around her. “I thought I could go in the Senate Committee—they won’t even let me in. I got kicked out. I got kicked out. They are not letting members into committee.... The people were kicked out earlier.

“This is a travesty of justice,” Johnson continued. “If you can get down here, we need you down here fighting with us. Because this is a clear power grab taking away the voice of the people. This is the Republicans’ white power rally.”

Fellow Democrat Justin Pearson was barred from entering the meeting entirely, instead standing in the doorway while Cohen spoke.

The Senate Judiciary Committee later approved the map by a vote of 9–2, pushing it to the wider chamber, where it is expected to pass.

The 29-year-old woman Kristi Noem handpicked to oversee ICE’s billion-dollar budget just lost her nomination bid in an Ohio congressional primary.

Madison Sheahan, a former ICE deputy director, was in third place Wednesday when the Associated Press called the state’s 9th district Republican primary for former state Representative Derek Merrin.

Republican operatives consider Ohio’s 9th district one of the party’s best chances to flip a House seat, The Washington Post reported. The seat is currently held by Representative Marcy Kaptur, who has held onto it for 22 terms.

Sheahan had left her role at ICE to pursue her congressional campaign, shortly before her apparent mentor Noem was unceremoniously fired.

In her role, Sheahan reportedly wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on 2,500 custom-wrapped vehicles that read “ICE.” The gaudy cars feature massive ICE logos, red stripes, and a golden decal of President Donald Trump’s name on the back window. The vehicles first appeared in a DHS video intended to make ICE look cool. But the fleet of ostentatious cars proved useless to the masked militia, which prefers to disappear people using unmarked vehicles.

On the campaign trail, Sheahan touted her work with ICE, but political analysts found that immigration did not play as large a role in the primaries as economic issues such as the job market and tariffs, the Post reported.

Her candidacy was considered an early bellwether for how voters felt about Trump’s handling of immigration policy, and her resounding failure could signal disaster for other candidates too closely tied to the president’s unpopular policy initiatives.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee claimed Wednesday that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick lied several times during his testimony about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

During a closed-door hearing to discuss his ties to the alleged sex trafficker, Lutnick reneged on past claims about Epstein recording his guests’ sexual misconduct and using it to blackmail them, Representative Ro Khanna told reporters after the hearing. Lutnick had previously called Epstein “the greatest blackmailer ever.”

“So, somebody obviously got to him, from the administration. In fact, he said he talked to people in the administration and that’s why he’s changed his tune,” Khanna said. “And the question is not just why he’s lying, the question is why he’s covering up. The question is why he’s no longer willing to share what he knows about Epstein’s abhorrent behavior.

“If Donald Trump had seen the video transcript he would’ve fired Howard Lutnick. It was very embarrassing,” the California Democrat added.

Lutnick swore in an interview last year he did not see Epstein after 2005, but it was then revealed he coordinated a family trip (with his young kids) to the financier’s “pedophile island” in 2012. Lutnick then confirmed he’d kept in touch with Epstein over the years, even after Epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor.

“Howard Lutnick should resign,” Virginia Representative Suhas Subramanyam told reporters following the hearing. “That was absolutely mind-boggling, what we just heard in the room. He was evasive, nervous. He was dishonest.”

“He would not admit to lying, which he clearly did in the podcast,” Subramanyam said, referring to Lutnick’s remarks on the New York Post’s Pod Force One in October 2025, when the secretary claimed that after meeting Epstein, he decided he would “never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”

“I had to ask him whether he and I were in the same room, just now, because I couldn’t understand his meaning of ‘we were in the same room together,’” Subramanyam said.

Lutnick also refused to provide any explanation for why he and his family traveled to Epstein’s island.

“We asked him over and over again, ‘Why did you go to the island?’ He says he doesn’t remember, that it was inexplicable, and he simply didn’t know how to answer the question at that point,” Subramanyam said.

The Tennessee GOP’s new election map would eliminate the state’s only Democratic representative and carve up the majority-Black Memphis-area district he represents.

The map would gerrymander away Democratic Representative Steve Cohen’s Shelby County district and likely give Republicans a 9–0 majority in the state. The Memphis metropolitan area would be divided up into three separate districts.

“This is insane. The GOP’s newly proposed TN Congressional maps would have people in Shelby County all the way to Williamson County—200+ miles apart—being “represented” by the same Congressman,” Cohen wrote on X after the map was announced. “It’s a blatant, corrupt power grab that would destroy the Black community’s and our entire city’s voice.”

The redrawn map is the latest in a barrage of Republican gerrymandering efforts in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that crippled Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act last month. Section 2 granted protections to African Americans and other racial minorities against redistricting.

The new map is expected to pass in a Thursday vote.