Donald Trump spent much of last week railing against California’s recent statewide primaries, baselessly insisting the slow process of tallying ballots must reflect a “rigged” system. This week, the president picked up where he left off.

In the early hours of Monday morning, he used his social media platform to argue there’s “no way” a candidate he liked has fallen behind in response to an updated vote count. Hours later, he emphasized the same point, insisting it’s “not possible” for his preferred candidate in Los Angeles’ mayoral race to lose ground as more ballots are counted.

None of that made logical sense, but it is part of an exasperating effort to undermine public confidence. During his latest “Meet the Press” appearance, the president was even more aggressive on the issue, making all kinds of unfounded allegations. When NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked him to substantiate his claims with evidence, Trump replied, “All I have to do is look.”

When the host explained that that wasn’t evidence, the Republican added, “And I listen to people.” (He didn’t say who, what they were saying or why he found these unnamed people to be more credible than official election results.)

The problem, however, is not just hysterical conspiracy-mongering, all of which is demonstrably incorrect, from a president who has long railed against election results he doesn’t like. Just as important as what Trump is saying is what Team Trump is doing. NBC News reported:

A federal prosecutor in California said Friday that authorities have launched investigations tied to the state’s recent elections following President Donald Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud.

Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said Friday morning on X that his office was pursuing “multiple election fraud investigations” alongside the FBI, without providing details.

To date, no credible fraud allegations have been made, so it’s not at all clear what the federal prosecutors in California intend to investigate.

Indeed, over the weekend, state Attorney General Rob Bonta told MS NOW there is no basis for the Trump appointee’s probe.

“There are no details, there is no specifics, there is no specific allegation of any individualized act of voter fraud,” the California Democrat said. “And every count, recount, hand count, court case and audit has shown time and time again — not just in California, but throughout this country — that there is no widespread voter fraud.”

Bonta added that claims of voter fraud are “only a figment of the imagination of Trump and others who follow that conspiracy theory.”

What I’m most curious about, however, is what happens when Essayli and his team look for evidence to bolster Trump’s accusations, only to come up short. Do they tell the truth and admit the election results were legitimate, inviting partisan rage from the right? Or do they bring baseless charges, inviting pushback from the courts?

The post Trump’s DOJ pretends California election conspiracy theories are worth taking seriously appeared first on MS NOW.

When the American job market struggled badly during Donald Trump’s first term, the White House not only struggled to come up with an explanation, but it also struggled to come up with anything to say at all.

The reticence was understandable, though embarrassing: The president promised to deliver an economic “boom” immediately after taking office, and he failed spectacularly, delivering the worst job market since the Great Recession (excluding the pandemic).

The White House was in a far better mood late last week, however, when the public learned that the economy gained 172,000 jobs in May, extending a three-month winning streak and getting closer to the kind of robust growth Americans saw during Joe Biden’s presidency.

But as the political and financial sectors digest the latest data, there’s a trend that’s worth dwelling on.

In the first four months of Trump’s second term, as 2025 was just getting underway, job growth slowly improved, and over the three months leading up to the unveiling of the White House’s trade tariffs agenda, the economy averaged monthly job growth of roughly 72,000.

Then the White House-imposed “Liberation Day” arrived, launching an avoidable and unnecessary trade war. In the 10 months that followed, the U.S. job market, on average, lost 4,900 jobs per month. That’s not a typo: For the first time in several years, the economy actually started losing jobs in a sustained way.

In February, to the hysterical outrage of the president, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his tariffs agenda. In the three months that followed, the economy added a combined 565,000 jobs — more than quadruple the total for the entirety of 2025 — for an average of more than 188,000 jobs per month.

Maybe that’s a coincidence, but I rather doubt it. To recap:

• Average monthly job growth in the immediate run-up to Trump’s tariffs: 72,000
• Average monthly job growth during Trump’s tariffs: -4,900
• Average monthly job growth in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s tariffs: 188,000

What this suggests is that if Trump wanted an economic success story, all he had to do was nothing. He inherited an economy firing on all cylinders, which was the envy of the world. If he had spent every day golfing, the job market almost certainly would have continued to hum along quite nicely.

But Trump couldn’t leave well enough alone, choosing instead to ignore literally everything we know about Economics 101 and imposing illegal tariffs that did economic, political and diplomatic harm to his own country.

Trump has repeatedly railed against the justices who ruled against him in the tariffs case, including two he appointed to the high court. The latest job numbers, however, suggest he owes them a fruit basket, not condemnation.

It’s something to keep in mind as the White House eyes new efforts to impose a fresh round of trade tariffs.

The post Improved job numbers make Trump’s trade tariffs look even worse appeared first on MS NOW.

All Donald Trump had to do was nothing. A group of lawmakers, hoping to extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, crafted a bipartisan solution that appeared likely to advance ahead of Friday’s deadline. If the president simply let the process play out, the White House’s position was on track to succeed.

But Trump wasn’t content to do nothing. Instead, with time running out, he announced last week that Bill Pulte, his highly controversial director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, would serve as the acting director of national intelligence, sending shockwaves through political and intelligence circles.

Pulte has literally no background in intelligence or national security, failing to meet the statutory qualifications for the office, and he’s earned a reputation as a hyperpartisan hatchet man who has routinely abused his office to target the White House’s perceived political foes. Complicating matters, MS NOW reported last fall that a federal grand jury investigated whether Pulte illegally shared sensitive information with unauthorized people.

Democrats let Republicans know the president’s move imperiled the FISA extension, at which point Trump made matters worse, telling reporters he expected his unqualified loyalist to “find out some things about the rigged elections.”

On Friday, the president went even further still. The Wall Street Journal reported:

President Trump said he wants Bill Pulte, his incoming acting director of national intelligence, to begin firing a large number of employees as part of a shake-up of the U.S. intelligence community. […]

Trump, in the interview, argued that Pulte’s acting status is an asset. “You’re less shackled,” he said. “It sort of gives you more power, you know, for a somewhat limited period of time.”

So from the president’s perspective, his acting DNI, who apparently didn’t have the security clearance needed to do the job, should quickly start firing U.S. intelligence professionals without having to worry too much about the “shackles” that come with congressional oversight or accountability.

This did not go unnoticed on Capitol Hill.

Politico reported that several Democrats who had been inclined to help Republicans pass a long-term FISA extension are now saying they are not interested in cooperating until Pulte is removed.

Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Politico, “You just couldn’t have thrown an uglier wrench into the process,” adding that Democrats are now running away from the bipartisan deal.

Soon after, the Connecticut Democrat appeared on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” telling host Margaret Brennan, “The president needs to sober up and realize that this appointment is arguably, in the basket of awful appointments he has made, this is probably the worst and most dangerous.”

Four days remain before the FISA deadline. Watch this space.

The post As Democrats slam Pulte as ‘dangerous,’ Trump expands acting DNI’s portfolio appeared first on MS NOW.

As last week got underway, Donald Trump used his social media platform to take swipe at, of all people, communists. “Communists always do well with the Voters or, as they would say, THE PEOPLE, in the Early Years!” the president wrote for reasons that were unclear. “But, in the end, the Country, State, or City, GOES TO HELL!”

He added soon after, “Has anyone ever seen a Happy Communist?”

With this rhetorical question still rattling around the algorithm, it was rather ironic to see the Republican end the week calling for a government stake in yet another private industry. The New York Times reported:

President Trump told reporters on Friday that he would soon meet with artificial intelligence companies to discuss partnerships that would give the United States government a stake in the burgeoning industry.

“There’s so much money and it’s so big,” Trump said, according to a pool report from his flight to Wisconsin on Air Force One. Trump added that in the deals he envisions “the American public essentially becomes a partner” in the growth of A.I.

Asked which private AI companies he was eyeing, the president replied, “All of them. All the big ones.”

The comment came just days after independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described socialist, wrote an opinion piece for the Times touting a congressional proposal he had introduced that would “give the public a direct ownership stake in the largest A.I. companies in our country.” The proposal was predictably panned soon after by the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal as “the road to AI state socialism.”

It was around this same time that Trump not only endorsed the same idea, he also told reporters that there was some overlap between his economic vision and the Vermont socialist’s.

Trump: Bernie Sanders lost, you know that I got many of his people — they voted for me. Because, as far as economics is concerned, we have certain things that are not that far apart pic.twitter.com/ZMaks3WS2Z

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 5, 2026

The debate can and should continue about the merits of such a policy, but it’s hard not to notice the familiarity of the circumstances. On the one hand, Trump seems to like condemning those who disagree with him as communists. On the other hand, he also seems oddly interested in having the government taking ownership of parts of a variety of private industries.

In fact, late last year, after the government became the largest shareholder in a company developing extreme ultraviolet lithography tools that are seen as key to the development of semiconductors, my MS NOW colleague Ja’han Jones noted that this extended the Republican administration’s “socialist — if not blatantly authoritarian — trend of making the government a stakeholder in supposed ‘free market’ enterprises.”

Indeed, Jones added, “This trend stands in clear contrast with an administration that publicly decries socialism and a conservative movement that has labeled things like free buses and government-owned grocery stores as anathema to private industry and the American way of life.”

There’s no reason to assume the list won’t keep growing. The president, by his own admission, isn’t eyeing stakes only in AI companies, he and his team have also raised the prospect of seeking ownership stakes in oil companies, pharmaceutical companies and, in one recent instance, the rare-earth metals industry.

This is the same Republican president who’s also spoken publicly about limiting private companies’ profits, dictating private industries’ prices and cutting salaries for some private sector executives.

The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip published a provocative analysis on this last summer, noting that Trump’s vision doesn’t quite constitute “socialism,” because it more closely resembles “state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises.”

During the 2024 race, when many business leaders lined up behind the GOP ticket, they likely thought Republican rule would mean corporate tax breaks and fewer regulations. And while those assumptions have proved correct — the White House has delivered corporate tax breaks and freed polluters from regulatory burdens — those same business leaders have also ended up with more than they probably bargained for.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Trump eyes a government stake in AI companies, adding to an unexpected pattern appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.

* In Texas’ closely watched Senate race, Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton is running despite an avalanche of scandals, including the fact that Texas’ Republican-led state House impeached him over alleged bribery, abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

The good news for Paxton is the Republican-led state Senate ultimately acquitted him. The bad news for Paxton is Dan Cogdell, a Houston-based defense lawyer who represented the Texas attorney general in both the impeachment trial and a long-running securities fraud case, told NOTUS in a statement that his former client “has lost sight of his core mission, which is to represent the people of Texas.”

Making matters worse, Paxton’s former defense lawyer, after getting to know Paxton and reviewing the evidence against him, endorsed his opponent, James Talarico, and contributed to the Democratic state lawmaker’s 2026 campaign.

* Graham Platner’s Democratic Senate campaign in Maine has confronted a series of damaging allegations — and this week, he’ll face voters for the first time in the state’s Democratic Senate primary. Technically, Gov. Janet Mills will be on the ballot despite the incumbent suspending her candidacy in late April, and there’s growing interest in whether Platner’s local Democratic detractors will turn out to register a protest vote against him.

* Speaking of Maine, both parties are also poised to hold gubernatorial primary elections, and many of the top candidates will have familiar last names: Among the top Democratic contenders are Angus King III (the son of Sen. Angus King) and Hannah Pingree (the daughter of Rep. Chellie Pingree). On the Republican side, there’s also a crowded field, which includes Jonathan Bush, George H. W. Bush’s nephew.

* As California continues to count its votes from last week’s primaries, we now know that Xavier Becerra, a former Democratic congressman who served as Joe Biden’s health secretary, has advanced to the general election in the state’s gubernatorial race. It’s not yet clear who his rival will be.

* Sen. Lindsey Graham is generally seen as the odds-on favorite in South Carolina’s Republican primary, but with one day remaining before the intraparty contest, it’s worth emphasizing that the GOP incumbent has already spent an astounding $27 million on his re-election campaign. As HuffPost noted, his Republican rivals combined have spent less than a fifth of that total.

* In Michigan’s closely watched Senate primary, Democratic leaders have made little effort to hide their concerns that Abdul El-Sayed might struggle as a general election candidate, but the former state health official nevertheless picked up a key endorsement over the weekend from the United Auto Workers.

The post Monday’s Campaign Round-Up, 6.8.26: Paxton’s impeachment lawyer endorses Talarico in Texas appeared first on MS NOW.

A couple of months after taking the reins at the Department of Health and Human Services, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat down with Dr. Jonathan LaPook, CBS News’ chief medical correspondent, who pressed the Cabinet secretary on some of his most controversial decisions. RFK Jr., however, repeatedly said he wasn’t aware of the actions LaPook was describing.

It was an embarrassing moment, but it wasn’t an isolated incident. About a month later, during back-to-back appearances before House and Senate committees, the HHS secretary ran into a similar problem: Lawmakers kept asking Kennedy about steps he and his department had taken, and he kept responding with answers such as “When did I do that?”

It reached the point at which Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington eventually told RFK Jr. that she wasn’t sure whether he was “the one making decisions” at the department he ostensibly leads.

All of this came to mind while reading The New York Times’ new reporting on the way Kennedy manages HHS — or, in his case, fails to manage HHS. From the article:

Mr. Kennedy has shown little interest in managing the details of work in his department, according to multiple colleagues. Instead, they say, he is single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful.

Deeply mistrustful of career civil officials, the secretary has surrounded himself with a close circle of handpicked advisers and stacked agencies with political appointees aligned with his views. While major posts have sat vacant and a wave of veteran health experts and scientists have departed, Mr. Kennedy has remained isolated from much of the department’s top staff.

The Times’ reporting (which has not been independently verified by MS NOW) was based on accounts from a dozen people at HHS, including many who have had direct contact with him as secretary, who agreed that Kennedy rarely engages with department employees or members of Congress.

Even his work hours have proven controversial: When he’s in the department’s headquarters in the nation’s capital, he “keeps a low profile” after arriving around 10 a.m., before departing by 4 p.m.

The reporting is striking, but it isn’t too surprising. When Donald Trump nominated Kennedy, the list of reasons not to confirm him was long, though it emphasized his lengthy record of weird and conspiratorial beliefs related to public health, medicine and science.

But there was a related practical concern that in hindsight probably received too little attention: The Department of Health and Human Services is a massive federal bureaucracy, which has a direct impact on the well-being of hundreds of millions of Americans.

Even putting aside his unscientific vision, Kennedy simply didn’t have the requisite skills, background or experience to lead a Cabinet agency of this size or importance. Indeed, by all appearances, he didn’t even express any meaningful interest in being a managerial technocrat.

RFK Jr. is an activist and an advocate for his discredited conspiracy theories. Of course he’s disengaged as a secretary, preferring instead to focus his energies on his pet causes. Kennedy has been put in a position for which he was wholly unprepared and ill suited.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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Before Donald Trump abruptly ended his latest “Meet the Press” interview, NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked the president to reconcile his pre-election assurances about not starting new wars with his decision to start a war with Iran. The host started to ask, “Did you break that promise to the American …” when the Republican interrupted to say, “No.”

Welker pressed forward, adding, “So you’re saying you didn’t break your promise. And yet, Mr. President, in your first term, you held to that promise, and it was so fundamental to who you were as a candidate, to a first-term president. What changed, because you insisted ‘no new wars’?”

Trump replied, “First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world?” (As the exchange continued, the president tried to defend his position by referring to the stock market and then pivoted to attacking Welker’s professional integrity.)

Let’s not brush past the rhetorical question the president posed. Indeed, the Republican seemed to suggest he had increased defense spending precisely because he intended to go to war, which is quite an admission. It also reflects the mindset of someone desperate to rebrand the Department of Defense as the “Department of War.”

But the underlying point is just as important, if not more so, since Trump’s record is unambiguous.

Trump: "I didn't guarantee no war."Trump guaranteeing no more wars:

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2026-06-07T16:26:26.795Z

Throughout the 2024 election cycle, Trump and his team went to bizarre lengths to present the Republican as the “peace” candidate who would “expel the warmongers” from the federal government and lead as a “peacemaker,” while rascally Democrats prepared to lead us into war. Common sense might have suggested any thinking adult would know better than to believe such obvious nonsense, but some voters accepted these absurdities at face value and cast their ballots accordingly, optimistic that the GOP nominee would pursue a foreign policy rooted in restraint.

In other words, many Americans believed Trump when he told voters, among other things, “I’m going to be the one that keeps you out of war”; “we’re not going to have war in the Middle East”; and “they said, ‘You will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Under the circumstances, the president could at least try to make the case to the nation that despite what he said on the campaign trail, he concluded it was in the nation’s best interest to go to war anyway. To be sure, that wouldn’t be an easy sell under the circumstances, but it would at least be an honest response when pressed on his pre-election promises.

But that’s not the path the Republican has chosen. Instead, the candidate who promised not to launch a war has been reduced to “I didn’t guarantee ‘no war,’” as if we don’t remember the events of two years ago.

I’m reminded of a George Orwell quote from “1984” that I emphasized in my book about GOP efforts to rewrite recent history: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

The post On campaign promises about foreign wars, Trump rewrites recent history appeared first on MS NOW.

With Donald Trump in the White House, one of the most important times of the week is Friday night. That’s when the president and his team have an unnerving habit of announcing news they hope the public won’t notice.

Take this past Friday night, for example. The New York Times reported:

President Trump has pardoned Stephen E. Buyer, a former Republican representative from Indiana who was convicted of insider trading in 2023.

The pardon for Mr. Buyer was endorsed by current and former Republican lawmakers, including Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and former House Speaker John Boehner, according to the proclamation, which was dated June 4.

Buyer’s congressional career came to an unfortunate end in 2010, when the Indiana Republican faced allegations that he used a scholarship fund as a front to travel to pricey vacation locales to hobnob with donors. In fact, the fund reportedly never awarded a single scholarship.

Almost immediately after the controversy came to light, Buyer announced his retirement, although he said his decision was related to his wife’s health.

After leaving Capitol Hill and beginning a private consulting career, Buyer’s troubles managed to get worse, and in 2023 he was sentenced to 22 months in prison stemming from four counts of securities fraud related to a pair of insider trading schemes in 2018 and 2019.

Trump pardoned him anyway, which wasn’t exactly surprising, given his track record: The incumbent president appears to have a real soft spot for politicians accused of — and in some cases, convicted of — assorted felonies.

In the president’s first term, for example, he pardoned seven former Republican members of Congress, each of whom had been convicted on corruption charges: New York’s Chris Collins, California’s Duncan Hunter, Texas’ Steve Stockman, Arizona’s Rick Renzi, North Carolina’s Robin Hayes, Michigan’s Mark Siljander and California’s Randall “Duke” Cunningham.

In his second term, Trump has picked up where he left off, issuing pardons to many politicians who were indicted for or convicted of corruption, or both. The list includes Rod Blagojevich, Illinois’ former Democratic governor, but mostly it’s Republicans who have benefited: former Reps. Michael Grimm and George Santos of New York, former Gov. John Rowland of Connecticut, former state House Speaker Glen Casada of Tennessee, former state Sen. Brian Kelsey of Tennessee, former Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins of Virginia and former Las Vegas City Council member Michele Fiore of Nevada.

As outlandish as this might seem, Trump has now extended clemency to nearly all of the Republican congressmen convicted of felonies in the 21st century. (The most notable exception: Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican House speaker in American history, who pleaded guilty to illegal hush money payments to those he’d sexually assaulted.)

Let’s also not forget that Trump’s Justice Department has abandoned the criminal case against a former Republican congressman who’d already been found guilty of corruption by a jury, while simultaneously abandoning a corruption investigation targeting an incumbent Republican congressman.

The message to politicians convicted or accused of corruption couldn’t be clearer: You have a friend in the Oval Office.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Trump finds yet another former Republican lawmaker to reward with a pardon appeared first on MS NOW.

Every year, there’s an event in France to honor the anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, and every year, a prominent U.S. official speaks at the commemoration ceremony to honor those who helped save the world.

The ceremonies are never controversial. This year, however, was an exception.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration decided to dispatch Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to speak at this year’s event, and there was pushback before he even arrived in France. A local group in Normandy issued a statement criticizing the Pentagon chief’s role at the event, arguing, “This individual carries values contrary to democracy, human rights and peace.”

Soon after, the former Fox News host delivered his comments, at which point things went from bad to worse. NBC News reported:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used a speech marking the anniversary of D-Day in France on Saturday, commemorating 82 years since the 1944 push to liberate Nazi-occupied Europe, to lambast what he described as another “invasion” of Europe’s shores.

“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth said in a speech at the Normandy American Cemetery in ​Colleville-sur-Mer. “Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is ​it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”

On D-Day, the lesson was supposed to be alliance, sacrifice, and the defense of democracy. Hegseth turns that memory into an anti-migrant “invasion” riff.

— The Steady State (@thesteadystate.org) 2026-06-06T23:00:03.785Z

That Hegseth has an anti-immigrant vision is unsurprising, but context is everything. This wasn’t CPAC or a conservative media interview, these were prewritten remarks at a D-Day commemoration ceremony.

A day later, even Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, conceded during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” that Hegseth’s remarks were “inappropriate.”

The Texan, who’s retiring at the end of his term, added, “Look, there’s a time and a place for these issues of immigration. That was not the day, not the anniversary of D-Day. I think out of respect to the veterans, and myself being the son of a D-Day veteran, those remarks were out of place. I think it should have been about their sacrifice, their service to their country, and what they did to protect the free world at a time of great peril against Nazi Germany.”

After the ceremony, a British official said of Hegseth and his remarks, “I hope he regrets it.”

Given everything we know about the defense secretary, that seems unlikely.

The post Hegseth faces pushback after voicing anti-immigrant message at D-Day commemoration appeared first on MS NOW.

In the years following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump would routinely boast that he’d soon present evidence in support of his absurd electoral conspiracy theories. That never happened, of course, because there was no evidence to share: The Republican lost fair and square.

Gradually, and with no meaningful fanfare, his posture evolved. Trump stopped saying that he’d eventually find proof that he’d secretly won the election that he’d lost and started saying that he’d already found proof — but no one was allowed to see it.

In fact, as the president’s second term unfolded, he incorporated this belief into his talking points, as they were a foregone conclusion that had already gained mainstream acceptance. As recently as last week, he sat down with The New York Post’s Miranda Devine for a podcast interview in which he said, in reference to the 2020 race, “It’s been proven to be rigged.” Proved by whom? He didn’t say.

The quote, however, was hardly unfamiliar. The president declared at an Oval Office event in April, “They’re finding out the 2020 election was totally rigged.” Who are “they”? And what did they “find out?” No one knows. Two weeks earlier, Trump similarly told Maria Bartiromo during a Fox News interview, “Look, the election was rigged. You know that; I know that; everybody knows that now. It’s all come out.”

For Trump, it’s simply a foregone conclusion that his election delusions aren’t just real; they’ve been proven real — by “them,” and the unidentified information that’s “come out,” thanks to what “they” have “found out.”

Amid all of this nonsense, at literally no point has the president made even the slightest effort to substantiate his claims with evidence. He instead just repeats his assertions, ad nauseam, confident in his ability to bully reality into submission.

Once in a great while, however, he’s confronted with a word that practically causes a presidential allergic reaction: evidence.

During a brief Q&A with reporters in March, “PBS News Hour” reporter Liz Landers asked Trump for evidence of his 2020 election conspiracy theory. He responded by calling her a “rotten reporter” and quickly turned his attention to a different reporter.

Nearly three months later, the president sat down with NBC News’ Kristen Welker for his latest “Meet the Press” interview, and when the host dared to use the “e” word, he couldn’t simply shift his focus to a different reporter, so he instead abruptly ended the interview. MS NOW reported:

“You’re either crooked or you’re stupid,” Trump told Welker, who kept a cool demeanor despite the president’s barrage of disparaging slurs.

Moments before he attacked her, Trump — without providing any evidence — said he believes elections in the U.S. are rigged. Then he lambasted television news networks, singling out NBC, CBS and ABC.

“They’re crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked,” Trump said.

In context, there was no great mystery as to what triggered the president and generated his interview-ending meltdown: After Trump wrapped up a conspiratorial rant about Jan. 6 rioters, Welker emphasized for viewers, “Just to be very clear, there’s no evidence of what you’re saying.” He was clearly not pleased.

“There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence,” he said, pointing to proof that doesn’t exist. “The election was rigged. It was a dirty election.”

The more the president made false assertions about election conspiracy theories, the more “Meet the Press” asked for evidence that Trump couldn’t provide.

And so, he unraveled, ultimately walking away from questions he simply wasn’t prepared to answer, raised by a journalist who dared to ask him to back up his baseless claims.

WOW – Trump crashes out & cuts his interview w/ Welker short as she presses him on his lack of evidence for claiming elections are rigged"You're either crooked or you're stupid. I've had enough. Thank you darling," he tells her""I traveled all the way to Wisconsin for this interview," she pleads

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-06-07T14:50:42.139Z

It was a timely reminder of a few unavoidable observations. First, Trump tends not to do lengthy interviews with independent news organizations, which leaves him unprepared when they ask the kind of questions conservative outlets avoid.

Second, and relatedly, it’s no secret that the president has surrounded himself with sycophants and yes-men at the White House. He grew visibly enraged with Welker, not just because she professionally pushed back against obvious falsehoods, but also because she exposed Trump to reality in ways that obviously made him uncomfortable.

And third, amid public discussion about his mental fitness, the president’s furious reaction suggested he’s also struggling to regulate his emotional outbursts.

As for the near future, the unpleasant exchange on NBC News should hopefully lead to additional questions in which Trump is again pressed for the 2020 evidence he claims exists, but which he’s refused to show.

The post On election claims, Trump triggered by ‘evidence’ callout on ‘Meet the Press’ interview appeared first on MS NOW.

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* A potentially important ruling: “A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration last year unlawfully paused final immigration decisions for individuals from countries affected by its so-called travel ban. The lawsuit, brought forward in March by various nonprofits representing immigrants, criticized several Citizenship and Immigration Services policies that paused final decisions on asylum, green card and citizenship applications for individuals from any of the 39 countries under the current travel ban.”

* The ceasefire isn’t holding: “Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah showed little sign of abating on Friday, a day after the Iran-backed militant group rejected a U.S.-brokered cease-fire, as Israeli forces bombarded towns across southern Lebanon and ordered residents to flee.”

* An early morning vote: “After a marathon session of votes Thursday and Friday, senators passed a roughly $70 billion reconciliation bill funding immigration enforcement as more moderate Republicans abandoned efforts to constrain President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion settlement fund — and a host of other controversies — and advanced the legislation without imposing any new restrictions on the president.”

* Also on Capitol Hill: “After successfully adopting a war powers resolution Wednesday aimed at reining in President Donald Trump’s military authority in Iran, House Democrats again bypassed GOP leaders on Thursday, delivering another rebuke of the president by advancing aid for Ukraine and new sanctions on Russia. The House passed the Ukraine legislation 226-195, with 18 Republicans joining all but one Democrat — Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. — in support of the bill.”

* Those who tout family values should value families: “As grocery prices continue to rise nationally, the House on Thursday passed an appropriations bill that would cut funding for a program that helps pregnant women and children purchase healthy foods. By a vote of 213-210, the House passed an appropriations measure to fund the Agriculture Department among other agencies.”

* In this case, a lawyer from Trump’s Justice Department told a judge that the administration has the unilateral authority to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty: “A federal appeals court panel expressed skepticism Friday about the Trump administration’s view that courts are powerless to stop the construction of the White House ballroom now that the East Wing had been demolished.”

* When officers steal things, it’s a problem: “A New Jersey police sergeant has been charged with stealing $10,000 worth of cameras and other equipment from a photojournalist who had been injured covering tense protests outside a Newark immigration jail. Darryl Brown, a sergeant in the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, was caught with the missing items after the photojournalist used a geo-tracking device to trace her missing gear to his home, the state’s attorney general said Thursday.”

* I’m not sure if I would’ve made this call, but they had to choose from bad options: “The three remaining ‘60 Minutes’ correspondents — Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim — have committed to remaining at the show after a series of tumultuous changes, including Scott Pelley’s firing this week. In a joint memo to colleagues obtained by MS NOW, the correspondents wrote that they decided to stay because ‘we don’t want to see ‘60 Minutes’ die.’”

Have a safe weekend.

The post Friday’s Mini-Report, 6.5.26 appeared first on MS NOW.