TV News LIES

In 2017, watching a two-hour Bastille Day procession, Donald Trump told the French president that we’d have one too, only better. That time, the grown-ups said no. The reasons given were costs – estimates ran to $92m – hellish logistics, and the Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser’s worries that tanks and other armored vehicles would tear up Washington’s streets.

Some retired generals objected publicly to the totalitarian-adjacent optics, especially given the US president’s praise for such bad actors as Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin. Several Republican lawmakers also expressed their distaste. “Confidence is silent, and insecurity is loud,” the Louisiana senator John Kennedy told MSNBC. “America is the most powerful country in all of human history ... and we don’t need to show it off. We’re not North Korea. We’re not Russia, we’re not China,” he continued, “and I don’t wanna be.”

This time, as Washington prepares for a huge military shindig on 14 June, Trump’s 79th – and, oh yes, the US army’s 250th – birthday, the generals are silent. The Republicans have sworn allegiance to the king. And the media are focused on the price tag, the potholes and the impending pomp; on tensions between the blue city of Washington and the red capital; and on the decimation of veterans’ healthcare, housing, and pensions while the administration throws $25m to $45m at a circus of war.

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Elon Musk arrived in Washington, D.C., with high hopes. He left with a literal and reputational black eye.

President Donald Trump marked the end of Musk's tenure as a government employee with an event in the Oval Office May 30, where he thanked the billionaire for his work leading the Department of Government Efficiency and gave him a golden key.

“Elon’s delivered a colossal change in the old ways of doing business in Washington,” Trump declared.

A second federal court blocked the bulk of President Trump’s tariffs on Thursday, ruling he cannot claim unilateral authority to impose them by declaring emergencies over trade deficits and fentanyl.

The ruling from U.S District Judge Rudolph Contreras, an appointee of former President Obama who serves in the nation’s capital, comes hours after the U.S. Court of International Trade similarly blocked a series of Trump’s tariff announcements.

The administration quickly appealed both rulings.

Since February, Trump has attempted to impose tariffs by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA). The law authorizes the president to impose necessary economic sanctions during an emergency to combat an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” but a series of businesses and plaintiffs have argued the law doesn’t authorize tariffs.

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President Trump denounced a court ruling blocking his tariffs in a lengthy Truth Social post Thursday night that targeted Leonard Leo, who played a central role in shaping Trump’s judicial picks during his first term.

“Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY. Backroom ‘hustlers’ must not be allowed to destroy our Nation!” Trump wrote.

Trade block the bulk of Trump’s tariffs before an appeals court lifted the order. The tariffs were also blocked by a separate court, but that ruling doesn’t go into effect for two weeks.

Alongside his condemnation of the ruling, Trump went after Leo, who spent decades forming a conservative judicial pipeline as a longtime leader of the Federalist Society and advised Trump on judge selections during his first stint in the White House.

“I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges,” Trump wrote in the Truth Social post.

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Attorney General Pam Bondi told the American Bar Association (ABA) Thursday that the Trump administration would no longer cooperate as the organization vets its judicial nominees.

In a letter, the Department of Justice (DOJ) accuses the bar association of failing to “fix the bias in its rating process,” a claim that follows the organization labeling some of President Trump’s nominees as unqualified for the bench.

“Unfortunately, the ABA no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees’ qualifications, and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic administrations,” Bondi wrote in the letter to ABA President William Bay.