Biden’s Attempt to Prove His Fitness Just Blew Up in His Face

ABC News anchor George Stephanopolous was caught on film expressing doubt that President Joe Biden will be able to handle another term in the White House, only a few days after he did an exclusive interview with the embattled commander in chief.

In a low-quality video published by TMZ Tuesday, a pedestrian approached Stephanopoulos on the street in New York City. “Do you think Biden should step down? You’ve talked to him more than anybody else has lately,” the man asked.

“I don’t think he can serve four more years,” Stephanopolous replied, in a candid moment.

It’s a troubling response from the journalist whose interview with the president last week was meant to assuage national anxieties about Biden’s mental acuity, following a disastrous performance in last month’s presidential debate on CNN.

Stephanopolous’s comment also comes amid a high-stakes week for the president, as Biden continues to face calls from within his own party to withdraw from the presidential race, while also attending the NATO summit in Washington, D.C.

Stephanopoulos confirmed to TMZ that he had in fact made that statement but sought to walk it back some. “Earlier today, I responded to a question from a passerby. I shouldn’t have,” he told the outlet.

An ABC spokesperson clarified to TMZ that “George expressed his own point of view and not the position of ABC News.”

Donald Trump gave a particularly incoherent speech during a recent rally, as he rattled through a lengthy list of odd grievances that didn’t quite ring true, devoid of some very necessary segues.

In front of a crowd of about 700 people (although Trump claimed it was 45,000) in Doral, Florida, on Tuesday, the former president hit all of the normal beats of his campaign trail speeches, and then some.

Trump attacked President Joe Biden for his weak performance in the presidential debate last month, and for many of his policies. He dropped Kamala Harris’s name more than a few times, arguing that it doesn’t matter who the Democrats’ candidate is, he will beat anyone in a “thundering landslide.”

Over sweeping music, Trump went for a tear-jerking moment, only to suddenly veer into complaining about something else. It’s included in full because it’s just that wild.

“We will institute the powerful death penalty for drug dealers, where each dealer is responsible for the death, during their lives, of 500 people or more,” he said.

“Mothers will never again be forced to watch their children overdosing in hosp … and we will never allow mothers to watch their child hopelessly dying in their arms screaming, ‘What can I do, what can I do? Help me God, what can I do?’ We are a nation whose once revered airports are a dirty, crowded mess,” Trump continued, pivoting suddenly.

“You sit and wait for hours and then are notified that the plane won’t leave, that they have no idea when they will. Where ticket prices have tripled. They don’t have the pilots to fly the planes, they don’t seek qualified air traffic controllers, and they just don’t know what the hell they are doing.”

From the death penalty to crying mothers and crappy airports, if Trump was hoping for an emotional moment, he seems to have missed it by a mile. His breakneck pace and awkward delivery suggests that the presumptive Republican nominee doesn’t actually care about a single one of his randomly assembled points. How can anyone take him seriously when he speeds from his often-repeated, baseless claims about immigrants to whining that as a country, “We don’t eat bacon anymore”?

Trump continued to rely on blatant fearmongering to excite his supporters, who grew sleepy and disinterested as the former president rattled on through his 75-minute speech, according to The Guardian.

“We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation in Washington, D.C., and clean it up, renovate it, and rebuild our capital city, so that it is no longer a nightmare of murder and crime. But rather it will become the most beautiful capital anywhere in the world,” Trump said.

“Right now, if you leave Florida, ‘Oh, let’s go, darling, let’s look at the Jefferson Memorial, let’s look at the Washington Monument, let’s go and look at some of the beautiful scenes,’ and you end up getting shot, mugged, raped,” he warned, promising that he’d run the city “tough and smart.”

The violent crime rate in D.C. has dropped 30 percent since 2023, according to the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia. But of course, Trump is unconcerned with actual crime statistics. Instead, he’s interested in keeping his base in red states ignorant, fearful, and angry about life in blue states.

Donald Trump Jr. doesn’t want Senator Marco Rubio to be his father’s running mate, fearing that it would tempt establishment Republicans into impeaching the elder Trump.

The younger Trump expressed his fear on his video podcast Triggered Monday evening, in response to a submitted question during a live Q&A, where the questioner claimed that “Rubio guarantees another impeachment,” to which the host agreed.

If Rubio was the vice president on the ticket, “by the time my father’s hand moves off in the swearing in process … 12 p.m. January 20, the second it goes off, impeachment!” Trump Jr. said. “That’s how fast it would be.”

“There is something about having someone from outside the establishment to sort of further protect you from that establishment,” Trump Jr. added.

While speculation abounds, there still is no indication as to who Trump will pick as his vice president. Some reports say the shortlist has three people: Rubio, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. Other names have been mentioned in the past few months, including Senator Tim Scott, Representative Elise Stefanik, and Representative Byron Donalds.

In Rubio’s case, though, his presence on the ticket would seem odd considering how much Trump mocked the Florida senator on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, calling him “little Marco.” Rubio eventually fell in line like the rest of the GOP and backed Trump, but his political career never quite got over Trump’s bullying and his unsuccessful attempts to shoot back.

Lately, Rubio has been defending the former president and convicted felon from attacks related to the Heritage Foundation’s extreme playbook Project 2025, downplaying the manifesto and Trump’s connection to it. Will Trump overlook Rubio’s establishment ties to get a staunch defender like him as his vice president? According to one Trump adviser, the decision should be known to everyone by next Monday.

Project 2025’s prominence as a master plan for a Trump administration continues to gain prominence—and weaponized ridicule. “Google Project 2025,” President Joe Biden posted on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday morning. The Democratic National Committee on Tuesday also put up several billboards fusing Donald Trump to Project 2025 in Doral, Florida, where Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in the evening.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump claimed on Friday. “I have no idea who is behind it.” Yet, the Republican Party’s platform—adopted from a proposed platform crafted by Trump’s campaign—has clear ties to Project 2025. Russ Vought, the RNC platform committee’s policy chair, and Ed Martin, RNC deputy policy director, were installed in their RNC roles in coordination with the Trump campaign. Vought, a former Trump appointee, wrote a chapter of Project 2025, and both men are on Project 2025’s advisory board, according to ABC News. Trump’s attempts to distance himself from the project has provoked ire from far-right pundits such as Alex Jones and white supremacist Nick Fuentes, who both insinuated Trump is being controlled by the establishment of the Republican Party.

“Donald Trump is lying again now,” Biden said in a statement released on Saturday in response to Trump denying affiliation to Project 2025. “He’s trying to hide his connections to his allies’ extreme Project 2025 agenda. The only problem? It was written for him, by those closest to him. Project 2025 should scare every single American.”

Project 2025, or the Presidential Transition Project, is a massive 900-page planning document offering pathways to dramatically overhaul the federal government in line with Trump’s aspirations and to pursue extreme policies Trump has floated. It’s the work of former Trump staffers and led by right-wing hate groups and top conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, whose president Kevin Roberts stated last week, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless—if the left allows it to be.”

As the BBC notes, Project 2025 echoes Trump’s own policy agenda, dubbed Agenda 47 on the basis of Trump becoming the forty-seventh president if he wins in November. While Trump’s campaign has denied Project 2025 as a policy platform endorsed by Trump, the document in actuality functions as a high-speed pathway to institute the policies he desires. When Trump stated he wants to deport 20 million people, for example, Project 2025 released a portion of the document that details exactly how he could do that. As Trump faced multiple federal investigations, Project 2025 crafted and released a plan for how he could turn the Department of Justice and FBI into his personal attack dogs.

Some aspects of Project 2025, such as a nationwide abortion ban, stray significantly from Trump’s stated positions. But as Rolling Stone notes, Trump’s “softened” position on abortion adopted by the RNC is nothing more than a gambit to dupe voters.

Similarities between much of the Project 2025 plan and Trump’s own campaign ambitions continue to spoil Trump’s efforts to distance himself from the extreme agenda. According to The Free Press, sources close to the Trump campaign have tried signaling to Project 2025 to stop pitching itself, saying, “The message we are sending to Heritage and others is the same as it was in December: You’re not helping.” An ex-adviser to Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence this week decried Trump’s efforts to distance himself from Project 2025 as “ludicrous.”

A lawyer working for a megachurch pastor, whom Donald Trump once lauded as a “spiritual adviser,” has accused a 12-year-old girl of initiating “inappropriate” sexual conduct with his client.

Last month, Robert Morris, who until recently led the Gateway Church in Dallas, was publicly accused of sexual assault by Cindy Clemishire. Clemishire claimed that the pastor began abusing her when she was only 12, starting in 1982 and continuing for five years. At the time, Morris was a traveling evangelist and a friend of her family’s.

Twenty-five years later, Clemishire realized that what had happened to her was a crime and hired attorney Gentner Drummond to sue Morris for $50,000, according to NBC.

In January 2007, Drummond wrote a letter to Morris’s attorney, J. Shelby Sharpe, that contained a draft lawsuit, explaining that the pastor had convinced Clemishire that “they were having a special relationship that had to remain secret” and that she was “responsible for what he did to her.”

In a response letter from February 2007, obtained by NBC Tuesday, Sharpe defended the pastor by repeating Morris’s claim that Clemishire was responsible for what had happened.

“It was your client who initiated inappropriate behavior by coming into my client’s bedroom and getting in bed with him, which my client should not have allowed to happen,” Sharpe wrote.

Sharpe also claimed Clemishire “acted inappropriately with two other men” who stayed at her home during the same time period. Clemishire has denied that accusation and said that she was also sexually assaulted by those two men. In one instance, Morris had allegedly instructed her to go into the bedroom of one of the men.

Morris offered Clemishire $25,000 if she would sign a nondisclosure agreement. When she refused, the talks fell apart, and she walked away with nothing.

When contacted by NBC, Sharpe denied knowing that Clemishire was a child, although her age was clearly stated in the letter from Drummond, who is now Oklahoma’s attorney general. When the reporter offered to send Sharpe a copy of the email from Drummond, he said he didn’t have time to read it and declined to provide his email address.

Drummond confirmed Clemishire’s description of the 2007 negotiations but did not give a comment.

Since the allegations were made public, Morris has resigned from leading the megachurch, which Trump visited in 2020. The former president had also named the pastor to his spiritual advisory board.

The far-right House Freedom Caucus may be teetering on the brink of collapse.

Politico reports that the group is divided after a vote to expel Representative Warren Davidson, who was removed from the caucus by a 16–13 vote Monday night. The move was not taken well by the congressman’s supporters, as it took place when some of them were not present and may have violated its bylaws. Some members, such as Representative Troy Nehls, said they would leave the group as a result.

“I’m sure we’ll have some,” Representative Ralph Norman said about more members resigning from the group. “We’ve got a lot of issues to address.”

The move was pushed by allies of caucus chair Representative Bob Good after Davidson endorsed his opponent in the primaries, John McGuire. Good’s move, coming after he lost the Virginia Republican primary to McGuire, seems to have exposed a fault line within the group.

Usually, members of the Freedom Caucus are tight-lipped, but the Davidson decision has caused members to complain publicly and privately, according to Politico. According to caucus bylaws, members fall out of good standing only if they don’t pay their dues or attend meetings. Davidson hadn’t had any issues with either requirement, but Good’s allies were upset about the endorsement and retaliated against him. With Good on the verge of losing his House seat barring a recount in his primary race, the caucus could soon have a leadership crisis, with some members angling to push him out early.

The crises seem to be compounding for the caucus, which has been divided at least since some of its members took part in the effort to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year. The group was also conflicted over whether to support removing Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this year.

Last year, the caucus kicked out Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the first time they had ever removed a member. In that case, the reason given was that Greene’s feud with fellow caucus member Lauren Boebert had gone too far. Looking back, though, that event might have signaled bigger divisions on the horizon that may now seal its fate.

Florida Representative Byron Donalds has found a broad cast of critics in his race to become Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick—but one name in particular stands out from the crowd: his ex-wife Bisa Hall, who believes that his far-right bid is “super dangerous.”

In an interview with the Florida Trident, Hall described her former husband as an “opportunistic” person and as someone unafraid to create elaborate lies in order to achieve his end goals, such as pretending to be from Jamaica in order to score a date with her during their freshman year at Florida A&M University.

“He was trying to fill a void and get what he didn’t have,” Hall told the publication.

According to Hall, Donalds wasn’t politically active whatsoever during their eight-year on-again, off-again relationship—except when he registered to vote as a Democrat in Tallahassee.

Hall also contested Donalds’s account of his run-ins with the law. According to the congressman, he was arrested in 1998 for possession of marijuana, and then the following year for bank fraud. He served no jail time for either offense, and the second charge was expunged, meaning no details of the case are publicly available.

But according to Hall, Donalds was arrested the first time for marijuana possession with intent to distribute, and the second time for stealing while working at his campus bookstore.

Hall was reportedly reluctant to go on the record about her time with Donalds but became willing to make a statement after she saw her former partner grandstanding for Trump, a politician that she believes is, fundamentally, a “bad person.” Trump has, after all, bragged about sexually assaulting women and was found by a jury to have raped E. Jean Carroll; fueled and refused to stop the January 6 insurrection; and faced 91 criminal charges after his presidency ended for supplying hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, stealing droves of classified documents and national security secrets from the National Archives, and for his efforts related to attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in his favor.

“To see [Trump and Donalds] in collusion together, it was like, ‘If [Donalds] were a good human, would this very bad person be pushing him as a poster child?’” Hall asked the Trident rhetorically. “They’re both very opportunistic. You trot him out there and it makes some people feel better about Trump. I think what he’s doing is super dangerous and I think morally he and I have no crossover at all.”

After a failed campaign buoyed by the Never Trump movement, Nikki Haley’s pathetic caving to Donald Trump stooped to a final, new low on Tuesday: Politico reported Haley will be releasing her 97 delegates and telling them to back Trump at the Republican National Convention next week. Adding salt to the wound, Haley was allegedly not invited to attend the RNC, according to Politico.

Haley spokesperson Chaney Denton told Politico that Haley won’t be attending the RNC next week because she wasn’t invited, “and she’s fine with that,” Denton said. “Trump deserves the convention he wants. She’s made it clear she’s voting for him and wishes him the best.”

“The nominating convention is a time for Republican unity,” Haley will announce in a statement, according to Politico. “Joe Biden is not competent to serve a second term, and Kamala Harris would be a disaster for America. We need a president who will hold our enemies to account, secure our border, cut our debt, and get our economy back on track. I encourage my delegates to support Donald Trump next week in Milwaukee.”

Haley built a campaign as a moderate conservative alternative to Trump’s extreme agenda, and was boosted by Republicans disinterested in a second Trump term. After grim primary results, Haley ultimately suspended her campaign in March, the last Trump contender to do so. However, her lifeless campaign continued eating into Trump’s lead through the remainder of the primaries. Haley’s zombie campaign picked up 6.4 percent of Republican voters in Kentucky’s primary in May and an eye-popping 21 percent in Indiana’s primary, and pulled 8.6 percent away from Trump in New Mexico’s June primary—three months after she suspended it. In May, Haley stated she would be voting for Trump in November but stopped short of explicitly directing voters to support the man she once described as “totally unhinged,” whose presidency would be “suicide for our country.”

Trump raised racist birther conspiracies about Haley while she was running for president, alleging that she couldn’t be president because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born, and mocking her legal first name, Nimrata. Trump also called her a “birdbrain” in September 2023, saying she “doesn’t have the TALENT or TEMPERAMENT to do the job.” Haley interpreted Trump’s remarks as a compliment, a sign that her campaign was gaining momentum, responding, “Love this. It means we are in 2nd and moving up fast.” After she suspended her campaign, Trump suggested Haley may have a place on his team, calling her a “capable person” and noting “we have a lot of the same ideas, the same thoughts.”

Ahead of a private House Democratic Caucus meeting Tuesday, a smaller group of Democratic lawmakers from swing districts met to discuss President Joe Biden’s candidacy—and were apparently more than a little depressed.

“There were actual tears from people, and not for Biden,” one anonymous lawmaker told Axios, who explained that the group of lawmakers was “pretty much unanimous” that Biden has “got to step down.”

Biden has repeatedly insisted that he will not drop out of the presidential race, despite criticism from his party. While only six lawmakers have outright asked him to drop out, it seems the dissatisfaction has spread throughout the party.

Another lawmaker simply called the meeting “intense,” according to Axios.

Democrats at the morning’s main meeting seemed far less in agreement about what the president ought to do, but the vibe was reportedly also disconsolate and frustrating. One lawmaker said it “felt like a funeral,” while another said that notion was “an insult to funerals.”

Speaker Mike Johnson doesn’t like where the contempt resolution against Attorney General Merrick Garland is going, and is trying to get the MAGA representative behind the effort, Anna Paulina Luna, to back down.

Johnson reportedly told Luna in the Republican conference Tuesday to back off of introducing a resolution this week, but she’s refusing.

Earlier, Luna told the conference that she would introduce the contempt resolution on the House floor Wednesday, with an amendment that it wouldn’t be to arrest Garland but to fire him. Johnson said he is also concerned about the attorney general, but the House’s lawsuit to enforce the congressional subpoena against Garland is enough, sources told Politico’s Olivia Beavers.

Last month, the House voted along party lines, with only one Republican against, to hold Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over audio of a privileged interview between President Biden and special counsel Robert Hur about the classified documents found in his former office. Despite an obvious double standard, Johnson claimed last month that Garland’s refusal to answer a congressional subpoena is not comparable to the House Republicans who ignored subpoenas from the House January 6 committee, saying, “There couldn’t be a more clear contrast.”

It’s clear that Republican attempts to target Garland are a politicized attempt to take revenge against the Justice Department for pursuing criminal cases against Donald Trump. The convicted felon and his GOP allies, like the now-imprisoned Steve Bannon, have made no secret of their desire to enact retribution against Trump’s enemies. Trump was reportedly upset at a lack of action on his behalf from Republicans after his conviction.

With Trump now effectively above the law after the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, he will be able to target whoever he wants if he wins in November. His team is already creating an enemies list of federal employees, and Trump himself has already suggested throwing his political opponents in jail. He has an army of right-wing lawyers waiting in the wings as soon as he enters the Oval Office.