Category: News

Donald Trump is often late to scheduled events at the White House despite not having to travel more than across the White House. Maybe it is because he is busy with more important business? The press largely ignores this, so it is usually conjecture as to what could have caused the delay. Today it wasn’t. He was late as he was meeting with a singer.

Today the White House’s own schedule says he was to greet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at 1 PM Eastern. 16 minutes later White House press pooler Meridith McGraw of the Wall Street Journal noted that Zelenskyy’s arrival still hadn’t happened. It couldn’t be that Zelenskyy was struck in traffic, as he was staying at the Blair House, which is across the street from the White House. She also provided this note:

As we wait, the faint sound of music — “Chiquitita” by ABBA, “Maria” from West Side Story — is coming from the Rose Garden area.

WH comms adviser Margo Martin posted on social media the president is meeting with opera singer Andrea Boccelli. Some of his music has been playing, too.

Margo Martin’s post was at 12:57. She posted another clip of Donald Trump and Andrea Boccelli at 1:21. At 1:30 she posted a clip of the delayed greeting of Zelenskyy. That was three minutes after McGraw says that the greeting happened.

At 1:15 a lunch meeting between the two was supposed to start, which was delayed as well. Among those that were also attending the meeting and were presumably left waiting were the Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Treasury, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

If a US President other than Donald Trump was making an evidence free claim that a Governor’s life was be threatened it would be a big story. But with so much that Donald Trump says, his claim of that involving Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has been all but ignored. He appears to have first made the claim publicly on October 9 while he was interacting with the press while on the way to leave the White House:

But you have a lot of paid people in Chicago, too. I believe the politicians are under threat because there’s no way somebody can say that things are wonderful in Chicago.

And I think that Pritzker, he’s not a stupid person. I think that Pritzker is afraid for his life.

No reporter followed up on that claim at the time.

Four days later at a Cabinet meeting he made a similar claim:

I think they’re are afraid. I think they’re threatened. They don’t tell us. But I think Pritzker is threatened by people. Because there’s no other reason that this could be possible, that they don’t want to have a safe Chicago.

Again, no reporter followed up on that claim at the time.

This comes across as garden variety conspiracy theorizing, which should be a big story when it involves a President. The local NBC affiliate in Chicago covered his claim, but it doesn’t appear any other major outlets did.

On Thursday, Donald Trump held a truncated Cabinet meeting after he was over an hour late to the meeting. Despite the limited time, time was made for RFK Jr. to speak on Tylenol (acetaminophen) again. During that, he made this claim:

This morning before I came in here, somebody showed me a TikTok video of a pregnant woman, eight months pregnant, she is an associate professor at the Columbia Medical School and she is saying “F’ Trump” and gobbling Tylenol with her baby in her placenta. And the level of Trump Derangement Syndrome has now left political landscapes and it is now in the realm of pathology. And a mother could overwhelm millions of years of maternal instinct to put her baby at risk.

Surely, journalists would follow up to try to verify his claims about this supposed video? That doesn’t appear to have happened.

Looking around there is almost no mention of it. When it did get mentioned, it was almost always like this PBS coverage:

Kennedy noted during the meeting that he had seen a TikTok video on Thursday, which he said featured a pregnant woman “gobbling Tylenol” and cursing Trump. “The level of Trump derangement syndrome has now left the political landscape and now in the realm of pathology,” he said. Kennedy also said the woman was taking Tylenol “with a baby in her placenta.”

A fetus develops in the uterus, not the placenta. The placenta is a temporary organ that develops in the uterus during pregnancy and provides oxygen, nutrients, and hormones to the growing fetus.

The one attempt at that we found was from Matt Novak of Gizmdo,

It’s not entirely clear what TikTok video Kennedy was referring to, but the Russian propaganda account RT posted a video Sept. 23 showing a woman who was taking Tylenol while 28 weeks pregnant. The video became popular on TikTok, and RT claims the woman is a “teaching doctor at New York’s Columbia University,” though the TikTok account has been set to private, and Gizmodo could not confirm the person’s employment.

Why was “tech news blog” covering this? Perhaps it falls under the category of “internet culture,” which they cover.

He doesn’t mention reaching out to the department RFK Jr. runs, but it at least is an attempt to fact check RFK Jr.

Politifact also pointed the same video as what RFK Jr. was most likely referring to.

If that is the video, then RFK Jr. got almost every detail wrong. The woman in question is a fellow, not an associate professor. She is 7 months, not 8 months pregnant. She didn’t gobble Tylenol. And didn’t’ say anything at all about Donald Trump. And of course there wasn’t a baby in this woman’s placenta. The person that would come looking deranged from that isn’t the TikToker but RFK Jr.

If a member of Biden’s Cabinet or another President’s had said something like this it seems highly unlikely the press would have simply ignored it as has largely happened here.

Yesterday, Politico’s Meredith Lee Hill and Mia McCarthy stated that House Speaker Mike Johnson was trying to pressure Democrats by ruling out a standalone bill to pay US troops during the shutdown. It’s unclear how that is supposed to pressure them, as he would be the one blocking their pay. Today a Democratic bill to pay the troops was blocked by Republicans.

That Democrat effort gives lie to a claim made by an anonymous Trump administration official. Another Politico report from Diana Nerozzi, quoted the official as saying “[n]o bill at this time, unfortunately. No sense running legislation to a chamber the Democrats have shut down.” Democrats haven’t shut down either chamber of Congress and Democrats have actually put forward a bill to pay the troops.

There is another method pay them, tariff money. That would be one of the many things that tariff is money is supposed to be used for. The process of using that food aid seemed to be running into problems according to a report by Politico’s Marcia Brown. Diana Nerozzi’s story suggested that might be on the table for paying the troops. The top Senate Republican was expecting that this would happen, instead of putting forward a bill to address this. The next pay date is October 15, giving the Trump administration limited time to address this themselves.

On Sunday, DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, in one of her many Fox News appearances, made this claim while talking about still unclear incident in Chicago where it was claimed that people boxed in federal agents and someone was shot by a federal agent:

So our intelligence indicates that these people are organized. They’re getting more and more people on their team as far as attacking officers, and they’re making plans to ambush them and to kill them. We have specific officers and agents that have bounties that have been put out on their heads. It’s been $2000 to kidnap them, $10,000 to kill them. They’ve released their pictures, they’ve sent them between their networks. And it’s an extremely dangerous situation and unprecedented. So we’ve put protective detail around those individuals, changed some of our operations to keep our officers safe.

That is a rather concerning claim, but details were not provided.

On Monday, the Border Patrol’s hype guy Gregory Bovino, in one of his many Fox News appearances, and made a similar claim:

it’s a war zone out there. Secretary Noem mentioned a bounty on the heads of federal agents that $2000 to kidnap, $10,000 to kill senior Border Patrol officials and senior ICE officials here in Chicago.

Also on Monday, the DHS put out a press release that told a very different story, though with certain elements that matched the previous story. They claimed that a bounty had been placed for those amounts, but for only one person, Gregory Bovino. This was based on a claimed confidential information and a Snapchat message:

Kristi Noem stated “[t]hey’ve released their pictures.” The picture included in the Snapchat message is a crop of a photo taken by Brian Cassella of the Chicago Tribune of Gregory Bovino during “an immigration blitz show of force”. It wouldn’t be hard to find other photos of Bovino, as he loves public attention.

The press release includes a photo of the person who was supposed to issued the bounty. Based on his attire, it appears he works in construction. Does he have $10,000 for a bounty on this guy? Would somebody think that $10,000 is worth it to try to kill such high profile official? Was the whole thing a set up by a confidential informant? Kristi Noem claimed “they’ve sent them between their networks,” who was the Snapchat message even sent to. Was the confidential information the one sent the message? These would be all good questions for reporters to ask Kristi Noem and DHS.

Back in 2018, Donald Trump claimed that he kept more promises than he made, which isn’t possible, obviously. At the CPAC conference in February of that year, he claimed that somebody else had made the claim, not him:

somebody got on television recently and they said actually this is the first time I can remember, Trump made campaign promises, he may be the only person that actually fulfilled more promises that he made, I think that’s true. I fulfill more promises.

In November of that year, he didn’t attribute it someone else:

You know I have actually kept more promises than I made. When didn’t you ever hear that from a politician? Maybe never.

He had not actually kept all of his promises. Remember how Mexico was going to pay for a wall? That still hasn’t happened.

He came back to that this term in June of this year, when speaking a dinner with Republican Senators:

we’ve fulfilled so many of our promises. Uh in fact, somebody said today a person that’s not particularly good for us said that we actually fulfilled more promises than we promised, which is pretty nice statement. You don’t hear that very often, but it’s true by a lot actually.

His claim that someone “that’s not particularly good for us” said is probably made up, but the other possibility is that it was someone making fun of him and he didn’t realize it.

Once again, the claim isn’t true, as it isn’t hard to find a promise that he hasn’t kept.

In recent days the news media has been reporting on a 21-point peace plan for Gaza from the Trump administration. Earlier today, Donald Trump’s spokesperson said that “Ambassador Witkoff, special envoy Witkoff,sent a very detailed 21-point plan to both sides.” Later in the day, the White House released a 20-point plan. They did that in an odd way, through an X post from the account of the Official White House Rapid Response. So what happened to one of the points? News media coverage looks to have largely ignored the obvious discrepancy, so we investigated.

On Saturday, The Times of Israel claimed to have revealed the 21-point plan. Comparing that to plan released by the White House today, most of the points were largely the same. (There were some minor differences, for example, the timeline for releasing hostages went from 48 to 72 hours.) That would suggest that The Times of Israel reveal was real.

There was one point that was in the 21 -point plan that was missing in the 20-point plan:

Israel agrees not to carry out future strikes in Qatar. The US and the international community acknowledge Doha’s important mediating role in the Gaza conflict.

Presumably that was addressed by the call with Qatar’s leader during the Donald Trump’s meeting today with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As the US gets closer to a federal government shutdown, it is worth highlighting what Donald Trump was doing in the lead up.

Due to the filibuster in the Senate, he was going to need Democratic votes to get the 60 votes need to pass a bill to keep the government funded. Despite that, on September 15 he called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a name in a post on Truth Social:

Congressional Republicans, including Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson, are working on a short term “CLEAN” extension of Government Funding to stop Cryin’ Chuck Schumer from shutting down the Government.

He did it again three days later:

TOMORROW, House Republicans are taking a very important Vote to pass a CLEAN TEMPORARY FUNDING BILL. The Leader of the Democrats, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, wants to shut the Government down.

Why do that? A simple explanation is that he thought he only needed Republican votes to pass the bill. On September 3, when asked if a shutdown could be avoided, he told the press in the Oval Office that, “Yeah, I do. I think the Republicans will vote for an extension. We won’t have any Democrat votes.” He then proceeded to rant about Democrats for five minutes.

A similar thing happened when he appeared on Fox and Friends on September 12. When asked about avoiding a shutdown, he said, “we have to get Republican votes.” When one of the hosts referenced the filibuster by saying, “You have to get 60, don’t you?” Donald Trump responded, “No, we we we’re going to do a probably continuing resolution or we’re going do something.”

The day after his second post calling Chuck Schumer “cryin,” he read off prepared remarks and stated, “But in the Senate, we have 53 republicans total and we need 60 votes. That means we need Democrat votes.” So with less than two weeks to go, he finally presented as if he understood he needed Democratic votes.

ICE posted a clip of the Acting Director of the agency Todd Lyons being interviewed by Glen Beck (who it turns out is still around), which they captioned in part “ICE Homeland Security Investigations special agents will be investigating the ringleaders of anti-ICE domestic terrorist efforts and track the money backing them.” The clip, though, involves Glen Beck bringing up a flyer that was supposedly found on the Georgetown University campus for a group called the John Brown Club. Glen Beck quoted text on the flyer that reads “Hey, Fascist! Catch!” and “The only political group that celebrates when Nazis die.”Nowhere on the flyer is there any mentions of ICE. The “Hey, Fascist! Catch!” message seems related to the shooting of Charlie Kirk, who wasn’t part of ICE. So why did ICE assume that is must be about them?

Perhaps the answer is that ICE itself sees it self as comparable to fascists and Nazis. They could change how they handle things to lessen that comparison. But so far the response from the Right has been to try to shut down people making the comparison, despite ICE appearing to instinctively make the connection on their own.

(On a related note, numerous right-wing news outlets claimed that the John Brown Club mentioned on the flyer must be the John Brown Gun Club, despite the lack of “gun” in the name of the group on the flyer. Plenty of them ignored the obvious discrepancy. Hardly what you would expect from a news outlet.)