Author name: moderat ereport

New concerns about President Donald Trump’s mental state are being raised after he recounted a story purportedly involving his college professor uncle and the Unabomber that simply never happened. Speaking in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, Trump claimed that his late uncle John Trump taught Unabomber Ted Kaczynski at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then claimed that he quizzed his uncle about his supposed student. “Kaczynski was one of his students. Do you know who Kaczynski was? There’s very little difference between a madman and a genius,” Trump told the audience. “I said, ‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John—Dr. John Trump? I said, ‘What kind of a student?’ And he said, ‘Seriously good.’ He said he’d go around correcting everybody. But it didn’t work out too well for him.” YouTube Video None of this ever happened. As CNN reports, Trump’s uncle died in 1985. While Kaczynski’s streak of homicidal bombings began in 1978, his identity was unknown to the public until his arrest in 1996—11 years after John Trump’s death. Also, Kaczynski was not a student at MIT. He attended Harvard University and the University of Michigan. “We have no enrollment record or information that Ted Kaczynski ever attended MIT,” a spokesperson told CNN. The completely invented interaction gives renewed fodder to ongoing concerns about Trump’s mental state. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump In June, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said that Trump “lost it,” and that he noticed a change in Trump’s behavior compared to past personal interactions. “He is not the same person that I dealt with just four years ago, and he’s incapable of even a train of thought,” Newsom told Fox 11 Los Angeles. And this keeps happening. Trump has repeatedly mixed up key historical facts and figures, including forgetting the leaders of foreign nations—a vital part of his job as president. When running for office in 2024, he confused former Speaker Nancy Pelosi with his then-GOP rival Nikki Haley. While corporate media tirelessly went after President Joe Biden’s mental acuity and age, there has largely been silence about Trump’s numerous episodes of mental misfiring. As recently as last Friday, Trump even claimed that he saw Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “on Fox News this morning.” Hegseth did not appear on the network. As commander in chief of the U.S. military, Trump recently used his presidential power to order a strike on Iran. In addition to his other duties, which give him access to national security secrets, his inability to demonstrate mental soundness adds to existing concerns about his fitness to lead.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats walked out of a hearing on Thursday in protest of their GOP colleagues advancing President Donald Trump’s nomination of his scandal-plagued personal criminal defense lawyer, Emil Bove, to serve as a lifetime judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Democrats were irate that Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, refused to hear a whistleblower’s testimony accusing Bove of willfully defying court orders that blocked some of Trump’s deportations. Grassley instead ended debate and called for a vote to advance Bove’s nomination to the Senate floor. “This lacks decency. It lacks decorum. It shows that you do not want to simply hear from your colleagues,” Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey said as Grassley ordered the vote. “This is us simply trying to rush through one of the most controversial nominees we’ve had under this presidential administration.” And Democratic Sen. Mazie Hironi of Hawaii called the Senate Judiciary Committee a “kangaroo court” as she walked out. YouTube Video Democratic Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont explained why he and his colleagues left instead of casting their votes—which wouldn’t have mattered anyway, given that every Republican voted in favor of Bove’s nomination. “Senator Grassley violated the rules and refused to allow Senators to speak against Emil Bove’s lifetime judicial appointment. So I and every Democrat on the Judiciary Committee walked out of the hearing,” Welch wrote on X. Emil Bove, President Donald Trump’s former personal criminal defense lawyer and nominee for a lifetime federal court appointment Bove, for his part, doesn’t deserve to step foot in a federal court, let alone serve as a lifetime judge on one. Aside from being accused of willfully defying a court order, Bove also oversaw the pardons of hundreds of Capitol insurrectionists—many of them violent—and then led the charge to purge the Department of Justice of agents and prosecutors who worked to bring those traitors to justice. Bove also ordered federal prosecutors to dismiss the charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for Adams’ cooperation with Trump’s deportation agenda. And he’s even been accused of lying in court. So it’s unsurprising that hundreds of former DOJ officials and dozens of retired judges have spoken out against Bove’s nomination. “It is intolerable to us that anyone who disgraces the Justice Department would be promoted to one of the highest courts in the land, as it should be intolerable to anyone committed to maintaining our ordered system of justice,” read a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was signed by more than 900 former DOJ employees. Related | Trump rewards yet another one of his defense attorneys with a cushy gig Similarly, several retired judges signed on to a letter declaring that Bove does not deserve to be a federal judge. “Mr. Bove’s egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power, and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position,” the judges wrote. But that didn’t stop Senate Republicans from advancing his nomination—including Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who recently claimed that he would never vote for a Trump nominee who supported the Jan. 6 insurrection. Apparently TACO applies to the rest of the GOP, too.

Please support PoliticusUSA by considering becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now Republicans in the House and Senate are so desperate to do Donald Trump’s bidding before they potentially lose power next November, that they are now violating the rules of their bodies to please Donald Trump As Senate Democrats walked out of the Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Emil Bove to the federal bench, ranking member Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said behind to deliver a statement before he too left. Booker said: Why are you doing this? This is outrageous. This is a kangaroo court. That’s all we have here. Mr. Chairman, to violate your own rules without going by the mandates of the parliamentarian. This is unbelievable. There’s a way to do this if you want to force this through. If you want to ram this through, there’s a way to do it in accordance to the rules as spelled out by the parliamentarian. It is simple. It is clear there’s a pathway to achieve what you’re trying to achieve. It shows that you do not want to simply hear from your colleagues. This is absolutely wrong. And, sir, this is this is, to me, one of those moments where we are not showing common respect for each other on both sides. I have sat here when we were in the majority and listened to my colleagues arguments, listen to their passionate statements, and then we voted. This is not that. This is us simply trying to rush through one of the most controversial nominees we’ve had under this presidential administration, sir. God bless America. You are a good man. You are a decent man. Why are you doing this? What is Donald Trump saying to you that are making you do something which is violating the decorum of this committee, the rules of this committee, the decency and the respect that we have each other to at least hear each other out? PoliticusUSA is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I’ve sat through so many long speeches of my colleagues, heard their objections. Listened with sincerity to try to see what their arguments are. But we are not doing that, sir. This is wrong, and you know it. There are some people on this committee who are the least firebrand people, and they’ve walked out some of the least controversial people in the Senate, some of the people that worked the hardest to find bipartisan common ground have just walked out of this committee, and you don’t even seem to care. But I know you do. I know your heart, Senator Grassley. This is wrong. I know the kind of person you are, and you know this is wrong. There’s no this is not necessary. What is another half an hour to allow senators to be heard? It’s what the Constitution mandates. It’s the ideals of the United States Senate. The world’s most deliberative body should take a decent amount of time to deliberate. But here, we’re not doing that here. We are jamming this through with some sense of false urgency. It’s one thing not to hear from whistleblowers. It’s another thing not to hold another hearing. But to not even allow my colleagues to have their moment to speak against this justice. It’s just wrong. And I know you know this. I know you know this. The only time this rule has ever been overturned by both parties was done when one minority was trying to pull some stunt to stop the committee from hearing this is not that. This is not the two-hour rule. This is a basic element of the ideals of this committee, sir. It is the basic understanding of having debate and deliberation. It’s a basic understanding of we can listen to each other, even if we disagree, that we should have time and space and a forum to listen. Sir, this is just wrong in every way. It is wrong in every single way. This is an abuse of power. It’s an undermining of the well-being and the integrity of this, this senate and this committee that I have for so long. I’ve been so honored to be a part of. This is wrong, sir. And I joined with my colleagues and leaving. This is a sham vote. This is wrong. Committee Republicans violated the committee rules that require at least two members of the minority party be present before a vote can be held. Chairman Chuck Grassley held the vote on the nomination with zero Democrats present. Republicans took these extreme steps to silence a whistleblower whose claims suggest that Bove is completely unfit and unqualified for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. What was more important than the Democratic walkout was Cory Booker explaining exactly why they were walking out. The American people need to understand that the disease of lawlessness has infected more than the White House. It has also consumed the Republican majorities in Congress. Republicans are abusing their power, and it is up to Democrats to expose them. What do you think of the Democratic walkout and Republican abuse of power? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Leave a comment