Trump sends message to Obama: He ‘owes me BIG'
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Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
CNN host laughs at Republican senator as he fact-checks him on Epstein ‘sweetheart' deal
CNN's Jake Tapper repeatedly fact-checked a Republican senator on air Sunday as the lawmaker insisted that Democrats and Barack Obama's administration were at fault for a 'sweetheart' deal that allowed Jeffrey Epstein to escape his 2008 conviction on child sex charges virtually unscathed. Sen. Markwayne Mullin appeared on CNN's State of the Union and repeatedly claimed that a plea agreement to keep Epstein from being charged federally for child sex crimes was signed in 2009, under the Obama administration. But Epstein's plea agreement was drafted in 2007 and signed in 2008, when he pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for sex, before Obama was even president. 'It was 2008,' Tapper corrected him, chuckling. Tapper noted that the U.S. attorney who oversaw the non-prosecution agreement was Alex Acosta, who went on become Donald Trump's secretary of labor during his first administration. 'It all took place in 2008,' Tapper said. Mullin then shot back, asking 'who was in office at the time?' — seemingly making the error of assuming that Obama was the president. Obama won the presidential election that year but was inaugurated in January 2009. 'In 2008, George W. Bush was the president,' Tapper said, as he was cut off by Mullin repeating his question. 'George W. Bush.' Mullin went on to insist that because the case was 'sealed in 2009' that Democrats were somehow involved. A clearly exasperated Tapper responded that 'the point is, the 'sweetheart deal', which was completed in 2008, was under the Bush administration.' The plea agreement inked between Acosta and Epstein's attorney, Alan Dershowitz, was staggering in its leniency. Epstein was allowed to leave the prison facility for hours at a time for 'work release' to the headquarters of a nebulous enterprise called the 'Florida Science Foundation' he founded shortly before beginning his sentence and shut down when it concluded. Inside the prison, Epstein was allowed to maintain his own office, just as he'd done at Harvard University for years, while watching television and was watched by guards who wore suits and were partially on his payroll. Mullin and other Republicans closely aligned with the president are treading a careful line on the issue of the Epstein investigation. The Trump administration ignited a firestorm early in July when the Department of Justice and FBI announced that the agencies would not release any more documents related to the Epstein investigation despite having promised to do so. The agencies cited a refusal to release identifying information about victims and graphic sexual imagery involving children. Most glaringly, the agencies also declared in that early July announcement that a so-called 'client list' of Epstein's alleged co-conspirators had not been found. Having latched on to the issue long before Trump was elected to a second term, his MAGA base descended into chaos. Many of the president's 2024 supporters called the reversal a betrayal by the administration, while some questioned whether Trump himself was involved in a cover-up to protect himself or other powerful men named as Epstein's accomplices in the files. Some Democrats latched on to the issue at the same time, joining calls for transparency. Then, a pair of articles in The Wall Street Journal purported to outline Trump's own connections to the investigation. The newspaper reported the contents of a message allegedly penned by Trump to Epstein as part of a 50th birthday celebration in 2003, including allusions to a 'secret.' Trump firmly denied authoring the note, and sued the newspaper and its reporters in response. A second article from the WSJ days later reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi informed Trump in May that he was mentioned in the Epstein investigation multiple times, thought it was not clear in what context The White House called that story 'fake' and has repeatedly insinuated that Democrats including Joe Biden tampered with the Epstein files in response. Being mentioned in the files does not mean wrongdoing, and hundreds of names are reportedly included. Republicans on Capitol Hill are caught in the middle. Some are joining on to a bipartisan effort led by Thomas Massie — a Republican who clashed with the president over the GOP budget reconciliation package earlier this year — and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna to force the Justice Department to release the entirety of its document trove, with redactions for child sexual assault material and the names or identifying information of victims. Others more aligned with leadership, including House Speaker Mike Johnson. But Johnson and others have been careful not to label the Epstein story a distraction, to the White House's annoyance. Johnson called the August recess early this past week, sending lawmakers home for the month to avoid a vote legislation from Massie and Khanna.
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Number of Democratic voters who are ‘extremely motivated' to vote in next election skyrockets
Nearly three-quarters of Democratic voters say they are 'extremely motivated' to cast their ballots in the 2026 midterm elections, a dramatic uptick from four years ago, polling shows. Just six months after Republicans took control of the White House and Congress, 72 percent of Democrats and Democratic-aligned voters say they are 'extremely motivated' to vote in the next election, a CNN poll conducted by SSRS this month found. By contrast, only 50 percent of Republicans say the same. Democrats are now looking to enter midterm elections in 2026 under similar circumstances as 2018 in an attempt to break up the GOP's control of both chambers of Congress and the White House. During the 2018 elections, voters dealt a massive blow to President Donald Trump's first-term agenda, with House Democrats gaining 23 seats to take control of the House. In October 2022, two years into President Joe Biden's term when Democrats narrowly controlled the trifecta, just 44 percent of Democratic voters expressed the same motivation to vote in the midterm. That figure was just slightly higher for Republicans, with 48 percent saying they were eager to vote. In that election, Republicans clinched the House of Representatives while Democrats retained control of the Senate. Still, the poll shows Democrats could have some work cut out for them. Just 28 percent of respondents said they view the Democratic Party favorably. Meanwhile, 33 percent expressed a favorable view of the Republican Party. 'I think that the Democratic Party, we have a lot of work to do to make sure we are meeting voters where they are, listening to what they have to say, and talking to them about issues that they want us to take action on,' Virginia Democratic Congresswoman Jennifer McClellan told CNN in response to the poll. "What's going to matter is what we're doing on the ground in these districts.' Recovering from Kamala Harris' defeat to Trump in 2024, Democrats are looking to harness an electorate that they lost in the last election. A separate poll by Lake Research Partners and Way to Win analyzed 'Biden skippers,' those living in battleground states who voted for Biden in 2020 but sat out of the 2024 presidential election. The survey poked holes in the idea that Harris was 'too far left.' Progressive lawmaker Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez topped the list of public figures respondents viewed positively, with 78 percent having a favorable view of Sanders and 67 percent having a favorable view of Ocasio-Cortez. Republicans are also making moves ahead of the 2026 midterms. The White House is already strategizing to ensure the GOP retains the trifecta. The plan reportedly includes Trump returning to the campaign trail as well as him having a hand in advising which candidates run and which 'stay put' in the upcoming election, sources told Politico.
New York Post
19 minutes ago
- New York Post
Good riddance to UNESCO — a hate-America shouting gallery
President Donald Trump is pulling America out of UNESCO for the third time. Maybe this time it'll be for good. Once lauded for its work in preserving important cultural sites, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations became a platform for miseducation by every tinpot tyrant trying to score points by defaming America and its allies. It also adopted a full-on woke agenda, backing divisive DEI and social-justice causes that, as a Team Trump aide explained, conflicted with American values. Advertisement 'Continued involvement in UNESCO is not in the national interest of the United States,' the State Department declared. The agency's focus on the UN's 'Sustainable Development Goals,' for example, follows the Paris Climate Accords program of deindustrializing the developed world, while paying the Third World to help it catch up. It admitted the 'State of Palestine' as a full member, though the United States does not recognize such a state, believing the Palestinian issue should be decided by Israel and Palestinian Arabs, not the striped-pants brigade from third-party nations. Advertisement UNESCO has also politicized Jewish holy sites, calling Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem a 'mosque,' which it never was. And it's been China's running dog, promoting Beijing's domination of Tibetan and Uyghur culture — arguably genocidal — as perfectly fine. UNESCO's odious record goes back decades. Washington first withdrew from the group in 1984, under Ronald Reagan, when it sought to have US media companies submit to the control of a 'New World Information Order.' Advertisement Trump's withdrawal from UNESCO follows his exit from the UN's equally vile Human Rights Council, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio's sanctioning of its 'special rapporteur' on Palestinian issues, Francesca Albanese, who was obsessed with falsely depicting Israel as a perpetrator of genocide. Those moves were well deserved. Call it a Turtle Bay trifecta.
