Todd Blanche Loses His Mind Over Looming Democratic Investigations

Attorney General Todd Blanche has completely lost the plot.

The Justice Department chief effectively confessed on CNN Sunday that the historically independent agency will investigate Democratic lawmakers at Donald Trump’s behest.

Leaning on their forthcoming congressional majority, Democratic lawmakers have advertised their intent to use oversight tools to investigate alleged misconduct and corruption in Trump’s MAGA administration. The president attempted to preempt the looming inspection over the weekend by likening it to a “criminal act,” which he ordered Blanche to investigate.

When explicitly asked by State of the Union host Dana Bash on Sunday whether he would comply with the president’s directive, Blanche flippantly accused Democrats of threatening “anybody that’s conservative and anybody that happens to be a Republican.”

“And over the last several days, we have seen the rhetoric even rise up, to the point where they’re already—before they’re even in power, they’re already talking about investigations and impeachments, with no basis, no facts, just out there running around,” Blanche claimed. “That should be something that President Trump is very concerned about, and certainly I am as well.”

But Blanche seemingly could not keep his cool after Bash brought up Congress’s constitutional duty to provide oversight. “Is that what you’re concerned about?” asked Bash.

“Wait. Hold on a second. Sorry,” Blanche responded. “Wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, no, no. They have a very unique role in oversight. I agree. Have you been listening to the rhetoric the past couple days? You honestly think that all they’re doing is talking about their oversight obligations when they’re talking about going after basically every member of the Cabinet, they’re talking about impeachments, they’re talking about going after companies, private companies who happen to have made investments in this country over the past couple of years?”

“That is not oversight,” insisted the attorney general. “I welcome oversight. Oversight is exactly something they should be doing.”

But amidst Blanche’s sprawling rant, he failed to identify a single criminal act by the Democratic Party. In another portion of the interview, Blanche concurred that it was his duty as the DOJ chief to represent administration officials during impeachment proceedings.

Contrary to Blanche’s opinion, the Justice Department is supposed to be independent and free from presidential interference. That’s been true since at least Watergate, after which the agency established interdepartmental policies and new political norms to distance its operations from the White House.

But that started to shift in 2024, when the Supreme Court sided with Trump to expand his presidential immunity. At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts penned a majority decision that effectively transformed the Justice Department into an arm to be leveraged by the Oval Office, opening communication channels between the federal law enforcement agency and the presidency for all future investigations.

Since then, Trump has repeatedly used the Justice Department for his own personal gain, directing prosecutors to lead his retribution campaign, to investigate election records, and to strongarm other federal institutions.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up at a hospital in Los Angeles on Saturday and blocked off the ambulance entrance.

KABC-TV, a Los Angeles TV station, reports that ICE showed up at about midnight at Adventist Health White Memorial Medical Center with a person in custody who needed medical treatment in the emergency room. A hospital spokesperson said federal agents blocked the entrance to the ER for two hours.

“When agents formed a line across our ambulance entrance, which we did not request nor authorize, we diverted ambulances to nearby hospitals for about two hours to ensure every patient received timely, respectful, and culturally sensitive care,” the spokesperson told NBC Los Angeles.

Protesters soon showed up to object to the presence of ICE agents at the hospital, and one of the demonstrators, a teenage girl, was reportedly pepper sprayed by agents and needed medical attention.

Los Angeles Mayor-elect Nithya Raman showed up at the hospital as well. “What happened last night at this hospital was an affront to the wishes of the American people and to the people of Los Angeles,” she later said.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli (whose appointment was ruled illegal last month) attacked Raman in an X post.

“I know you’re new to this, but facts matter. ICE was there to get medical treatment for a detainee who requested to see a doctor. I assume you support federal agents providing medical care to illegal immigrants in custody?” Essayli wrote. “As a public official, you should know the applicable laws. Agents are enforcing federal immigration laws passed by Congress. As mayor, you have no say in federal affairs. It’s called the Supremacy Clause. I can send you a copy of the U.S. Constitution if you’d like to study up.”

The city’s outgoing Mayor Karen Bass also condemned ICE’s actions.

“A hospital should be the one place where people feel safe. No one should have to think twice about receiving care or fear that a loved one’s treatment could be interrupted because of their immigration status,” Bass posted on X. “I condemn ICE’s actions and call on the Trump Administration to stop all immigration enforcement in and around health care facilities. Hospital leadership also had a duty to step in right away to protect patients and neighbors, and by all appearances, that did not happen.”

Hospital president Daniel Fontura said that agents entered the hospital and wanted to be present when doctors were speaking with the patient in ICE custody. According to Fontura, hospital officials rebuffed the agents.

“There was a time when ICE actually wanted to break protocol and be present with the physician in that sacred physician-patient encounter and we said no,” Fontura said. He said that when ICE started to block access to ambulances and EMS vehicles, the hospital then contacted the Los Angeles Police Department for help.

President Donald Trump emerged Monday with muddled accusations of election fraud, nearly a week after saying he would accept the sweeping Republican losses in the midterm elections.

“Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong???” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote.”

“It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!” he added.

It was not immediately clear what polls Trump was referring to. Trump’s own personal pollster Tony Fabrizio had been warning since last year that Republicans would take a major hit in the midterms. In July, Fabrizio found that Republicans were lagging three percentage points on a generic ballot. Among 65 percent of highly motivated voters, a Republican would lag by seven percentage points.

Vice President JD Vance also disputed polls that showed a Democratic blowout, following his party’s disastrous midterm results. “There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up,” he wrote on X last week.

It’s possible that Trump’s expectations were simply being manipulated by his sycophantic staff. A White House source told the Daily Mail that former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles had been promising a win right up to the end, telling people as recently as September that Republicans would sweep in the midterm elections. Trump announced last week that Stephen Miller would replace Wiles as top aide.

Trump’s latest missive represents a shift in the president’s outlook on the election results. On election night, Trump told The New York Times that he was “absolutely willing” to accept the election results and was looking forward to working with Democrats. Now he seems to be reverting back to his old tricks by making broad, unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.

This story has been updated.

MAHA stalwart Calley Means, who resigned from the Department of Health and Human Services two weeks ago, has accused former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and her team of insiders of bowing to “unrelenting” pressure from industry lobbyists—and even profiting from it.

In a two-hour interview with pugnacious podcaster Joe Rogan Friday, Means claimed that Wiles had withheld support from MAHA policies in order to keep corporate cash flowing ahead of the midterm elections. He accused her team of bowing to heavy lobbying for fruit-flavored vapes and Kratom, also known as “gas station heroin.” Means also claimed that any corporation that hired her daughter, Katie Wiles, a partner at political lobbying firm Continental Strategy, received “high priority” at the White House.

Means’s accusations arrived as Donald Trump announced that Stephen Miller would replace Wiles as chief of staff, following sweeping Republican losses in the midterm elections. Means resigned as a top adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last month, citing “a corrupt D.C. bureaucracy that is doing everything possible to protect the status quo.”

On Saturday, Means posted a public plea that Wiles and White House deputy chief of staff James Blair stop “harassing” him with texts and calls about his Rogan appearance. “If there is a factual inaccuracy in what I said, send it to me in writing and I will vigorously correct and apologize for any misstatements. I will note that everything I said is substantiated by other senior officials,” he wrote.

Behind the scenes, things quickly got ugly. “If you are gonna try to knife me, I’m happy to return the favor,” Blair told Means in a text message reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Blair is reportedly considering suing Means for defamation.

Speaking on CBS News’s Face the Nation Sunday, Means accused Wiles of being part of a “close-knit crew” of former lobbyists in the White House who “explicitly catered to special interests against the will of the voters” without Trump’s full knowledge.

“I think [Trump] had severe poor advice from people, I think, who treated him like a baby in many respects, and used him,” Means said.

The group of insiders allegedly consisted of Wiles, Blair, Richard Walter (the deputy White House chief of staff who exited ahead of Miller’s appointment), and Walker Barrett, assistant to the president for policy.

Means claimed that the group was working on behalf of the industries Trump ran on fighting, including the vape industry, the ultraprocessed food industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and the pesticide industry. The president was unaware that some of his advisers were “directly” taking money from these industries, Means said.

Means also pointed the finger at Tony Fabrizio, the president’s personal pollster, for playing an outsize role in approving Trump administration policy while getting paid by companies such as Pfizer and Pepsi. “It’s a matter of record that Tony Fabrizio is in the pocket of big pharma,” Means told The Washington Post. Fabrizio told the Post that this was “not only ridiculous, but demonstrably false.”

The president is claiming he’ll take a softer tone on immigration now that Stephen Miller, his despotic deportation chief, is his chief of staff—and his longtime MAGA allies are not happy with the unexpected switch-up.

Donald Trump appeared decidedly more diplomatic as he plotted out his new position post-midterms during a sit-down 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday. Speaking with host Ross Douthat, Trump singled out immigration as the one thing he’s looking forward to working on with the incoming Democratic majority in Congress, claiming that his previous positions were “too tough.”

“Do you think immigration hurt you in the midterms? Do you think the crackdown hurt you?” asked Douthat.

“I think it both helped and hurt,” Trump said, adding that he believed his deportation policies “hurt” him.

Then, in an incredible policy reversal, the president suggested that he could see a potentially viable pathway in which working, taxpaying, undocumented immigrants are offered a separate legal status.

“But there’s a group of people that I would say on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody taken out,” Trump said.

“Do any of those people work in your administration? Are they in the building with us right now?” asked Douthat, to which Trump simply responded, “Yes.”

The interview was filmed an hour before news broke that Trump had tapped Miller to replace his notorious “ice maiden,” former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. Trump had reportedly decided weeks earlier that Wiles would play the fall guy for Republican’s seismic midterm losses.

MAGA Republicans were aghast by the president’s newly sanitized take on his own immigration policies.

“Come again?” posted Fox News host Tomi Lahren, reacting to the interview clip.

“If President Trump softens on immigration enforcement, it will be a disaster,” commented former Trump adviser Steve Cortes.

“Stephen Miller needs to CLEAN HOUSE of advisors, because this is a HORRIBLE take,” wrote far-right commentator Nick Sortor. “WITHOUT DEPORTATIONS, OUR COUNTRY IS GONE. PERIOD. ICE IS NOT THE PROBLEM. THEY’RE THE SOLUTION.”

But it’s highly unlikely that Miller—the architect of some of Trump’s most horrific immigration policies—would actually bend to such an idea.

Miller was fundamental in crafting policies from Trump’s first term including separating families at the border, terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, and the executive orders that amounted to Trump’s Muslim ban. In May 2025, Miller issued a tyrannical order to his Immigration and Customs Enforcement underlings, directing them to arrest a minimum of 3,000 immigrants per day.

On its face, the duality appears to be an easy opportunity for Trump to sidestep blame (yet again) for his unpopular immigration policies, while still administratively green-lighting the agenda.