Biden Has Tone-Deaf Answer on Whether He Should Have Withdrawn Sooner

Former President Joe Biden doesn’t think the election would have been any different if he’d dropped out sooner.

“I don’t think it would have mattered. We left at a time when we had a good candidate,” Biden told the BBC, in his first interview since leaving the White House. “Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away. And it was a hard decision.… I think it was the right decision. I think that … it was just a difficult decision.”

Biden dropped out a mere four months before Election Day, in the midst of mounting fears regarding his mental acuity. The White House insisted over and over again that he was as sharp as ever. Senator Chuck Schumer called the fears “right-wing propaganda,” former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said he was “at the top of his game,” and Senator Bernie Sanders said that Biden “seemed fine” to him. But the truth came out at the first televised debate between Trump and Biden, in which Biden delivered perhaps the worst performance of all time—a bumbling, sad, and incoherent showing that made it clear that he was not mentally prepared to run again.

It’s easy to play the “what if” game in hindsight. But it’s painfully obvious that Biden dropping out sooner would have allowed the Democratic Party to have an actual primary, in which a diverse field of candidates would have been able to sharpen their positions and differentiate themselves from one another. Instead there was no primary, no differentiation between Harris and Biden, and a brutal loss to show for it.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has a message for a hypothetical little girl worried that she won’t have more than two dolls because of Donald Trump’s disastrous tariff policy.

“I would tell that young girl that you will have a better life than your parents,” Bessent said, during an appearance on Fox News Tuesday night. “That you and your family, thanks to President Trump, can now be confident again that you will have a better life than your parents, which, working-class Americans had abandoned that idea.”

“Your family will own a home, you will be able to advance. You will have a good education, you will have economic freedom,” Bessent continued.

“Confident” is an interesting choice of words for Bessent, after consumer confidence sank a whopping 7.9 points in April, to its lowest level since May 2020.

The beleaguered Bessent has been desperate to rebrand Trump’s isolationist America First economic policy as a Buddhist-like maxim on desire as the root of all suffering. In March, Bessent claimed that “access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.” In fact, being able to afford to live is a huge part of the American dream, and abundant consumer conveniences have become baked into our national identity.

But Bessent and Trump are insistent that they’re playing the long game—a little pinch in the present to make way for an expansive future they haven’t deigned to actually progress toward yet.

Small consumer grievances may illustrate the present-day realities of Trump’s tariffs, but they should not be used by the administration to obscure the larger picture. If we’re really going to play with hypotheticals, then we should imagine how a little girl’s “economic freedom” might be hurt by the collapse of her family’s soybean farm. Maybe then she can get a job in one of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s factories, and then her children can work there, and her children’s children. By then, maybe they’ll have dolls to play with.

The Trump administration is planning to use a military plane to deport immigrants to Libya in a cruel, arbitrary escalation of its mass deportation campaign. The deportations could happen as soon as Wednesday, and the nationality of the immigrants remains unclear. 

The situation in Libya is so unstable that the State Department dissuades its citizens from traveling there “due to crime, terrorism, unexploded land mines, civil unrest, kidnapping and armed conflict.” 

The detention centers where these migrants would be held are even worse. A 2021 Amnesty International investigation found “horrific violations” in the prisons there, calling them a total “hellscape.” The organization’s Middle East deputy director, Diana Eltahaway, noted that prisoners are “immediately funnelled into arbitrary detention and systematically subjected to torture, sexual violence, forced labour and other exploitation with total impunity.… The entire network of Libyan migration detention centres is rotten to its core and must be dismantled.”

This comes months after the administration pulled a similar move by sending Venezuelan immigrants to the infamous CECOT prison in El Salvador—an extrajudicial  move that is still being debated by the court.

The president’s Make Alcatraz Great Again pitch just got more fuel from one of his subordinates.

Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested Tuesday that alleged international drug traffickers, “if convicted,” should stay in American prisons—“maybe Alcatraz,” she added with a smile.

Other Republicans have similarly scrambled to make Trump’s bizarre Sunday evening order to “rebuild, and reopen Alcatraz” sound like a bright idea. Senator Eric Schmitt vaunted the plan as “very smart,” and Senator Markwayne Mullin endorsed it on X, while Representative Mary E. Miller got to work itemizing the most important Alcatraz inductees: “The first person to be sent to Alcatraz should be Anthony Fauci,” she wrote, referring to the pandemic-era director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In reality, there is practically zero possibility that the famed prison would reopen to house more prisoners. Alcatraz—which operated for just 29 years—was shut down in 1963, in part due to how expensive it was to operate. Data from the federal Bureau of Prisons shows that housing inmates at Alcatraz was three times more expensive than at other jails thanks to the fact that it was located on a remote island, requiring all of its resources, such as water, food, and fuel, to be shipped from the mainland.

“An estimated $3-5 million was needed just for restoration and maintenance work to keep the prison open. That figure did not include daily operating costs,” according to the Bureau of Prisons.

John Martini, an expert on Alcatraz history who previously served as an Alcatraz park ranger, told the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday that the building is “totally inoperable” and has no running water or sewage.

“It was falling apart and needed huge amounts of reconstruction, and that would have only brought it up to 1963 code,” Martini told the paper, noting that the building would need to be torn down and completely rebuilt to house prisoners again. “It was always an extremely expensive place to run.”

Meanwhile, the tourism centering around the former island prison rakes in $60 million in annual revenue, hosting 1.6 million annual visitors, according to the National Park Service.

Bondi must not have known this before throwing her weight behind Trump’s idea. Speaking with Fox Business Monday, the attorney general said she was “all for” putting prisoners back in Alcatraz, claiming that it would provide “cost savings.”

But Trump’s rationale for keeping the prison open apparently has nothing to do with nickels and dimes. Speaking with reporters at the White House Monday, Trump claimed an uncharacteristically picturesque attachment to the facility.

“It sort of represents something that’s both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak. It’s got a lot of qualities that are interesting,” he sentimentalized.

Speaking of pictures, Trump’s mysterious sudden fascination with the prison suspiciously coincided with weekend reruns of a 46-year-old Clint Eastwood movie, Escape From Alcatraz, on WLRN—a PBS affiliate that services the area around Mar-a-Lago. Go figure.

The Trump administration isn’t rushing to bring home Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident whom the White House mistakenly shipped to El Salvador on the basis of his alleged involvement with the transnational Salvadoran gang MS-13. Instead, they seem intent on finding enough evidence to keep him out of the country for good.

The Justice Department has been quietly investigating a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop involving Abrego Garcia, and recently spoke with an Alabama inmate—Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes—who it believed had potential connections to the 29-year-old, ABC News reported Tuesday.

At the time of the traffic violation, Abrego Garcia was driving Hernandez-Reyes’s car. Abrego Garcia was ticketed for speeding. He had eight passengers in the vehicle and told officers that they had been working construction in Missouri, according to ABC.

Hernandez-Reyes reportedly told investigators that he operated a “taxi service” in Baltimore. Sources familiar with the conversation told ABC that Hernandez-Reyes said he met Abrego Garcia in 2015 and sometimes hired Abrego Garcia to transport undocumented immigrants from Texas to other areas of the country.

It’s not clear if Hernandez-Reyes’s testimony is enough to charge Abrego Garcia, but what is plain is that the White House is not prioritizing his return home.

“The interview of Hernandez-Reyes, however, appears to be a new and aggressive step in the government’s efforts to gather potentially incriminating information about Abrego Garcia’s background–even as it resists calls for him to be provided typical protections to respond to such accusations through the American legal system,” according to ABC News.

Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. illegally more than a decade ago but was allowed to remain in the U.S. and evade deportation back to El Salvador when an immigration judge ruled in October 2019 that a return to his home country could expose him to violence or persecution from a local gang, Barrio 18. Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime, and the only alleged tie between the construction worker and MS-13 stemmed from a 2019 report of a since-fired Maryland police officer. The report also did not definitively link Abrego-Garcia to the gang.

Donald Trump himself appears confused about Abrego Garcia’s connection to Latin American gangs. The president entered into a terse exchange with ABC News last week when he insisted that a doctored photo of supposed gang tattoos on Abrego Garcia’s knuckles was real. Experts say the photo was obviously photoshopped.

Trump administration officials acknowledged in court filings last month that Abrego Garcia’s forced exit from the country was an “administrative error.” The Supreme Court has ordered the executive branch to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S., but the White House has since contested that ruling, arguing that Abrego Garcia “will never live” in America again.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has derided the idea that he would return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. as “preposterous,” protesting that he does not have the authority to remove “terrorists” from prisons.

Despite that, Trump has claimed that he does actually have the power to bring Abrego Garcia home—but that he won’t do so.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was brutally called out Tuesday after she claimed the United States was not deporting its own citizens.

During a hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois asked Noem if she believed that the U.S. government had the authority to deport American citizens.

“No, and we are not deporting U.S. citizens,” Noem said.

“OK great, I’m so happy to hear that you do not believe that the law gives you that authority, because the federal government has no authority under U.S. laws to deport any American citizen,” Underwood said. “And as I know everyone viewing this hearing today knows that several American citizens have been deported to date.”

“No, they haven’t. That is not true,” Noem replied.

“Secretary Noem, that was not a question,” Underwood said.

Last month, the Trump administration deported three American children to Honduras, alongside their immigrant mothers. Attorneys for the mothers have said that they wanted their children to remain in the U.S., but authorities have said the opposite. Border czar Tom Homan insisted that the children hadn’t technically been deported, and that the mothers had made a “parental decision” to remain with their children.

“If we didn’t do it the story today would be, ‘Trump administration separating families again,’” Homan said. “No, we’re keeping families together.”

While the official number of deportees who are actually American citizens is unknown, The Washington Post documented at least 12 instances in which U.S. citizens had been swept up in Trump’s immigration crackdown. A DHS spokesperson told the outlet, “We don’t have data to provide you on the deportation of U.S. citizens because we don’t deport U.S. citizens.”

Crucially, as the Trump administration continues to conduct deportations while denying due process to detainees, it’s likely the number of U.S. citizens wrongly removed will only continue to rise.

Underwood also asked Noem if she believed that the Constitution guaranteed due process to everyone in America. Noem repeatedly refused to give a “yes” or “no” answer.

“Ma’m, I am trying to ascertain your understanding of the law as it applies to your department, and you as its leader should be able to give us a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, because judge after judge has ruled that the law is not being followed,” Underwood said.

The Trump administration has continued to fight judges, flouting a Supreme Court ruling requiring the government to allow detainees “to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” As a result of Donald Trump’s mounting threats against the judiciary, at least 11 federal judges and their families have been threatened and harassed since they ruled against Trump on issues of deportations, federal funding, and his war on “wokeness.”

Trump has instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into the legality of deporting prisoners who are U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, as he did with 238 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador in March. He even said he’d help fund the construction of new prisons overseas. Even though Trump’s scheme to outsource the incarceration of American prisoners has absolutely no basis in U.S. law, Bondi refused to give answers about the (il)legality of the idea.

The Supreme Court is allowing Trump to temporarily move forward with his ban on transgender people serving in the military. The court’s three liberal Justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—all dissented, according to the brief order.

Trump’s ban “generally disqualifies from military service individuals who have gender dysphoria or have undergone medical interventions for gender dysphoria,” according to Solicitor General D. John Sauer.

Trans people are a hindrance to “military effectiveness and lethality,” Sauer wrote in a filing to the high court’s justices.

Litigation over the constitutionality of the ban is still ongoing. A Bush-appointed judge in a lower court blocked Trump’s executive order banning transgender troops in the military, which he signed on his first day in office.

Judge Benjamin Settle in Washington issued a nationwide injunction in March, ruling there’s “no claim and no evidence that [plaintiff] is now, or ever was, a detriment to her unit’s cohesion, or to the military’s lethality or readiness, or that she is mentally or physically unable to continue her service.”

Trump’s ban—and the claims that trans people are worse at operating lethal machinery simply because they are trans—is nonsensical. This is purely a culture-war item, a bone to throw at a base that’s been obsessed with transgender people for years now.

This story has been updated.

Senator Thom Tillis is likely just tanked Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia.

Tillis is opposing Trump’s pick, Ed Martin—who has been described as a “far-right election denier” and a “conspiracy theorist”—on the grounds of his legal and political support for January 6 insurrectionists.

“Mr. Martin did a good job of explaining the one area that I think he’s probably right, that there were some people that were over-prosecuted, but there were some [200 to 300 of them] that should have never gotten a pardon,” Tillis told reporters Tuesday, adding that he met Martin the night before.

“If Mr. Martin were being put forth as a U.S. attorney for any district except the district where January 6 happened, the protest happened, I’d probably support him, but not in this district.… Whether it’s 30 days or three years is debatable, but I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on January 6.”

Martin did his part to spread misinformation to help Trump on January 6, writing on X: “I’m at the Capitol right now. Abd [sic] I was at the POTUS speech earlier. Rowdy crowd but nothing out of hand. Ignore the #FakeNews.” Now this is coming back to bite him.

Tillis’s lone “no” vote among Republicans is likely enough to cause Martin’s nomination to die in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The U.S. attorney to D.C. serves as both the legal representative of the federal government and the local district attorney.

At least one thing has Republicans in D.C. on edge: Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s quest for power.

Now that Governor Brian Kemp is officially out of the race, the fervent MAGA acolyte is rumored to be one of a dozen conservatives considering a run for a Georgia Senate seat. 

But moving Greene to the upper chamber isn’t the concern—instead, Republicans worry that her conspiratorial, shock-and-awe style isn’t enough to win over Georgia voters beyond her district, believing that a Greene run could “alienate independent voters and disillusioned Republicans,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday.

In a hypothetical matchup conducted by the paper, Senator Jon Ossoff led Greene by double digits, crushing her with a 17-point lead. That’s in large part thanks to Greene’s lack of popularity with independents in the state,  according to AJC. Just 25 percent of independents in the mock poll backed a Greene Senate bid—a significant drop from Kemp’s 46 percent favorability with the same bloc.

Conservatives had flagged Kemp as the party’s best bet to snag what is believed to be the Democrats’ most vulnerable Senate seat. Instead, his exit announcement has given Ossoff—and the Democratic Party—a remarkable lift.

“It’s possible that Greene could win a Republican primary,” Republican consultant Mark Rountree told AJC. “But it’s unlikely she could win a general election, and conservatives would once again have blown an opportunity to defeat Democrats in Georgia.”

If the Jewish space lasers conspiracy theorist does decide to run, her platform would likely be nearly identical to Donald Trump’s. On Monday, Greene lamented that conservatives in both chambers weren’t completely on board with Trump’s plan, and that party members should simply “stick with the agenda” and “ignore the people” trying to do something different.

But nothing is set in stone right now.

“The polling shows that I can win the governor’s primary or the Senate primary or continue to represent my district,” Greene said to NewsNation Monday about a prospective bid. “That’s a choice that I can make. And I’ll give it some thought.”

President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that the U.S. doesn’t “have to sign” any trade deals, inadvertently admitting that his administration hasn’t made any progress during the 90-day pause on his disastrous tariffs.

During a tense meeting to discuss tariffs with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, the president attempted to move the goal posts on actually completing any agreements with foreign countries.

“Everyone says, ‘When, when, when, are you going to sign deals?’ We don’t have to sign deals!” Trump said.

“We don’t have to sign deals. They have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market, we don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market. They want a piece of our market,” Trump rambled.

The president’s unwieldy statements downplaying the importance of the trade deals seemed to be cushioning the likelihood that negotiations would ultimately fail. Trump’s remarks also revealed that his administration has yet to complete a single trade deal.

Last month, Trump claimed to have already struck 200 trade agreements with foreign countries, a remark so outlandish it sent members of his administration scrambling to make it make sense. (There are also only 195 countries in the world.)

Instead of pledging to sign deals, Trump presented his own plan Tuesday. The president claimed that “at some point over the next two weeks,” he intended to sit down with members of his Cabinet and offer individualized deals to each country seeking tariff relief.

“We’re gonna say, ‘Here’s what this country—what we want, and congratulations we have a deal!’ And they’ll either say ‘Great,’ and they’ll start shopping, or they’ll say, ‘Not good, we’re not gonna do it,’” Trump said.

Trump claimed that the offers would include “very fair numbers,” but that they might also include other requests. He also said that his administration would be open to adjusting the deals based on how the countries responded.

“And then you people will say, ‘Oh it’s so chaotic,’ no, we’re flexible,” Trump said, referring to the press.

In any case, Trump continued to emphasize that his goal wasn’t actually to make deals, just to put out offers. “In some cases we’ll sign some deals, it’s much less important than what I’m talking about,” he said. He warned that in one day, he could present 100 offers, but “they don’t have to sign.”

Still, Trump said he wanted countries to “pay for the privilege of being able to shop in the United States of America.”