President Donald Trump eviscerated a reporter for asking a question he thought made no sense, according to the UK Daily Mail. When the reporter said he was from HuffPost, Trump said he hadn't "read them in years" and that he "thought they died."
Trump was speaking to the press aboard Air Force One as Trump was on his way to New Orleans on Sunday. A reporter asked him about a comment Vice President J.D. Vance had made about the role of judges in overriding executive authority.
A judge ruled over the weekend that the Department of Government Efficiency was barred from accessing records at the Treasury Department. "If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal," Vance posted to X, formerly Twitter, Saturday.
"If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power," he added.
The Question
The reporter set up the question by summarizing Vance's statement then asking Trump for his opinion. "JD Vance suggested that if the Supreme Court rules in a way that you don't like, they could just enforce it by themselves. Do you agree with that?" the reporter asked.
Whether it was the wording of the question or Trump's unfamiliarity with Vance's statements, the president had a strong response for the reporter. "I don't know even what you're talking about. Neither do you. Who are you with?" he asked.
"HuffPost," the reporter replied. Trump went in for the kill shot after that. "Oh, no wonder," the president shot back.
"I thought they, I thought they died. Are they still around? I haven't read them in years. I thought they died," Trump added.
Trump's Response
According to Fox News, Trump would later answer the question of whether he agreed with the court's decision to block DOGE from auditing the Treasury Department. "No, I disagree with it 100%. I think it's crazy," Trump said to host Bret Baier.
"And we have to solve the efficiency problem. We have to solve the fraud, waste, abuse, all the things that have gone into the government. You take a look at the USAID, the kind of fraud in there," Trump added, referring to the audit of the United States Agency for International Development.
As for the reporter, a spokesperson for HuffPost sloughed off the humiliation. "His loss — perhaps his biggest since 2020," the spokesperson said when asked by Fox News.
"Millions of Americans are tuning into HuffPost's coverage to stay informed about the consequences of Trump's presidency," the spokesperson added. Of course, the damage has already been done with Trump's cutting, relatable, and truthful remark.
The leftist media has been unfriendly to conservatives for decades, while Republicans just took it. Now Trump is dishing it right back to them, and they still can't handle it.
Vice President J.D. Vance, who used to be a senator from Ohio, is reportedly proving instrumental in getting President Donald Trump's more controversial nominations confirmed in the Senate, where he serves as President Pro Temps.
Sources familiar with the workings of the Senate told Fox Digital that Vance has gained Republican senators' trust and managed to help get both Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. through the process when they faced opposition from a few Republicans.
Gabbard had to get past the Intelligence Select Committee to be confirmed as DNI head, and Kennedy had to get past the Senate Committee on Finance.
Because of the committee structure, the nominees had to get all Republican votes to move on to a full Senate confirmation vote.
Vance's gift of gab
The vice president spoke to potential holdouts several times over a few days, and finally won them over.
Vance addressed specific concerns each Republican senator had before the vote and was able to reassure them that the nominees were solid.
In the case of Gabbard, the concerns were lack of intel experience and a concern that she was too pro-war. She was also a Democrat representative before leaving Congress in 2021.
For Kennedy, his perceived anti-vaccine views and a seeming tendency toward conspiracy theories threatened to derail the nomination.
Kennedy was also a Democrat before turning independent to challenge Trump and Biden for the presidency.
Trump offered him the HHS secretary position to get him to drop out of the race and endorse him for president over Joe Biden.
Very successful
Both nominees were ultimately confirmed. So far, Trump has managed to get all of his nominees confirmed despite controversies like this.
Vance is probably no stranger to skepticism about some of Trump's choices for key allies with which to surround himself.
When Trump chose him as a vice presidential candidate, many people were initially critical of that choice as well.
Vance has proven to be a strong choice since that time, showing that Trump knew what he was doing in picking him. If all of his appointees turn out as well, he will have a very successful four years.
President Donald Trump has been keeping his foot on the gas of governmental reform since taking office last month, but that is not to say that he has not encountered some noteworthy obstacles along the way.
Amid the administration's efforts to slash thousands of jobs at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a federal judge has put a temporary halt on the measure, siding with two employee unions who sued to stop Trump's momentum, as the New York Post reports.
Restraining order issued
One of the agencies targeted for massive cost-cutting by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is USAID, and after an initial review of its operations, plans were announced to cut its workforce down from over 10,000 to just a few hundred.
In response to the administration's stated direction, the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees sued, contending that the planned layoffs would jeopardize the safety of workers placed abroad as well as the continuity of nongovernmental organizations that rely on USAID funding to operate.
Countering that position was Trump Justice Department lawyer Brett Shumate, who argued that Trump had the authority to place USAID workers on leave due to findings of “corruption and fraud” said to be rampant at the agency.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols concurred with the unions -- at least for now -- and ordered the administration to reinstate all agency employees placed on leave, also barring anyone else from being placed on leave or being ordered to return from overseas posts on any “expedited timeline.”
The stay on any such significant personnel moves will remain in place until at least Feb. 15, according to Nichols, and the parties will reconvene for a preliminary injunction hearing that is now set for Feb. 12.
Agency's future in question
The Trump administration, despite the setback from Nichols, appears undeterred in its plans to dismantle or dramatically reshape USAID, with the president himself stating, as the Daily Mail noted, that it has “been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been named acting administrator for USAID, lamented the tumultuous nature of the attempted changes, saying, “I'd have preferred not to do it this way.”
However, he added, “When we tried to do it from the top down by getting cooperation from the central office and USAID, what we found instead are people trying to use the system to sneak through payments and push through payments despite the stop order. We found people that were uncooperative in terms of giving us information and access.”
Rubio assured concerned parties that the administration is not abandoning the concept of foreign aid, but rather initiating reforms to ensure that it is delivered in an appropriate way.
“The United States will be providing foreign aid. But it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest,” priorities that DOGE and the president believe have been missing in the agency's operations.
Battle poised to continue
Both sides in the dispute over USAID appear to be fully entrenched in their positions, with the federal unions contending that the administration's efforts to dismantle the agency are invalid due to the lack of any congressional authorization for them.
Trump, however, has insisted that he has executive authority to combat what he says is corruption “at levels rarely seen before,” but whether his -- and Musk's -- position will ultimately win the day, only time will tell.
Rescuers searching for a small plane that went missing found the wreckage in western Alaska Friday near its last known location, MLive reported. U.S. Coast Guard officials said that all 10 individuals on board were dead.
The single-engine Cessna Caravan plane operated by Bering Air was headed from Unalakleet to Nome Thursday when it went missing. On board were nine passengers and the plane's pilot.
Less than an hour into the flight, officials lost contact with the plane for unknown reasons as the weather conditions were light snow and fog with a 17 mph wind when the plane went down. The U.S. Civil Air Patrol was able to piece together radar data from the time the plane went missing.
Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Benjamin McIntyre-Coble said that "some kind of event which caused them to experience a rapid loss in elevation and a rapid loss in speed" at that time. "What that event is, I can’t speculate to," McIntyre-Coble added.
The Wreckage
The Coast Guard sent a helicopter to investigate, which led to the discovery of the crash site on sea ice. McIntyre-Coble reported no distress signals were received from the plane, including from a device meant to transmit if exposed to seawater.
With no survivors, the mission changed from rescue to recovery Friday. As CNN reported, Nome Volunteer Fire Chief Jim West said authorities were working to "bring folks home" from the twisted wreckage.
"We don’t know how long that’s going to take. It could go hours; it could go potentially days," West told reporters.
"Coming up to tomorrow, we have 18 hours of potential recovery time," he added. The area is experiencing a winter storm that moved through Saturday and is expected to last through Sunday.
A Community Mourns
The city of Nome hosted a vigil for the crash victims on Friday at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. "In the coming days, in the weeks, as we begin to hear of which families are impacted, our hearts are going to break over and over, and it’s okay to mourn and grief, but please do not isolate," pastor Amanda Snyder told mourners.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski joined the vigil on a video call and expressed her condolences. "Words can’t express the loss we’re all feeling; we’re all connected in so many ways," Murkowski said.
"It’s hard to accept the reality of our loss," she added. Because of the punishing landscape, Alaskans routinely take the kind of flight as the ill-fated aircraft to move through the state. "It’s just heartbreaking. Because every single person in this room has been on one of those planes, it hits home," Snyder told the local newspaper.
This crash marks the third in less than two weeks as the White House examines the safety of air travel in the U.S. A passenger jet and military helicopter collided in Washington, D.C., which led to President Donald Trump's renewed scrutiny of air travel hiring and practices.
Air travel is relatively safe, but accidents are catastrophic when they happen. There will be a full investigation to determine what happened and hopefully to prevent future crashes like this one.
A federal judge has further narrowed the Department of Government Efficiency's access to Treasury Department records, Fox News reported. This comes after the Justice Department limited access down to a pair of "special government employees" from the Elon Musk-led organization.
A number of government employee unions filed a lawsuit against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. They objected to what they claimed was the department sharing private financial and other personal information with DOGE representatives.
On Thursday, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that the temporary restraining order should be issued. In her opinion, she stated that officials at the Treasury Department "will not provide access to any payment record or payment system of records maintained within the [Treasury] Bureau of Fiscal Service."
The handpicked DOGE representatives were already limited to read-only access to Treasury payment records after another legal decision on Wednesday. The exposure is significant as the Treasury's Fiscal Service processes 90% of federal payments.
Democrats Resist
President Donald Trump promised to unleash Musk to cut government waste during the 2024 campaign and likely received some votes because of it. Now that he's been sworn in, Trump is making good on that promise.
This has predictably upset the Democrats, who rely on bloated government budgets to buy votes. They claim that Musk's team's to the system amounts to "threats to the economy and national security, and the potential violation of laws protecting Americans’ privacy and tax data," the Associated Press reported.
On Friday, a group of Democratic lawmakers sent letters to Bessent, the deputy inspector general, and the acting inspector general for tax administration for the Treasury. They were led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) but had many signors.
Warren claimed in her letter to Bessent that he has "deflected and avoided key questions" and has "provided information that appears to be flatly contradicted by new public reports," she claimed. "The American people — including millions of families who are worried that you have jeopardized their Social Security payments, their Medicare payments, their local programs, and their economic security deserve straight answers," Warren wrote in her letter.
Despite her hysteria, the Treasury Department said that the review is a high-level audit and will not directly make any changes. However, the AP claimed that "two people familiar with the process" said that Musk's team attempted to block payments to the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Writing on the Wall
Democrats are desperate to cut DOGE off at the knees because they can see the writing on the wall. The organization has already uncovered shocking waste while Democrats caterwauler about the process, the Washington Examiner reported.
"I would just say a strong message to Democrats who are out there pretending to be outraged about the long list of crap that this administration is cutting. Democrats are outraged that the American people … want their taxpayers going to good uses, not stuff like this," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said to reporters Wednesday.
She listed some of the most infamous sources of waste at the USAID, including "$2 million for sex changes and 'LGBT activism' in Guatemala" and "$6 million to fund tourism in Egypt." Another $20 million went to a Sesame Street program in Iraq called Ahlan Simsim.
The BBC received $2.1 million from American taxpayers to shore up its presence in Libya "to value the diversity of Libyan society." Another $2.3 million was doled out to the Amazon for "artisanal and small-scale gold mining." Several more millions went to various countries and causes for the LGBT agenda and other ridiculous endeavors.
Americans are tired of government waste, but Democrats are viscerally opposed to any measures to stop it. They will continue with their legal action, but Trump and his team seem determined to do the will of the American people in cutting out this insanity.
Saikat Chakrabarti, former chief of staff to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), will take on Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to represent San Francisco, Fox News reported. Chakrabarti chastised the Democratic Party for being "paralyzed and unprepared."
Chakrabarti made a name for himself managing Ocasio-Cortez's successful 2018 campaign. He was her chief of staff until resigning in 2019 after he excoriated members of the Democratic Party for not being radically progressive enough.
Now Chakrabarti is continuing his crusade against establishment Democrats by going after Pelosi, who was the former House Speaker. The 84-year-old is running for her 21st term, and Chakrabarti explained his reasons for challenging her in a lengthy post to X, formerly Twitter, Wednesday.
A New Guard
The election of young politicians like Ocasio-Cortez seemingly represented a renewal of the Democratic Party. However, Chakrabarti blames old holdovers like Pelosi for President Donald Trump's election, which also brought Tesla billionaire Elon Musk into the mix.
"Watching Trump and Elon freely unleash chaos in their illegal seizure of government, it’s become clear to me that the Democratic Party needs new leadership. I don’t understand how DC’s Democratic leaders are so paralyzed and unprepared for this moment after living through President Trump’s first term — and after Trump and Elon warned us exactly what they planned to do," Chakrabarti wrote.
Chakrabarti pointed out that the world is much different than when Pelosi first took office implying that she is out of touch with the needs of today's citizens. "When Nancy Pelosi was first elected to Congress, you could buy a home on a single income," he pointed out.
"A summer job could pay for college. Republicans believed in climate change and respected election results. Now, the things that defined the American Dream — being able to afford health care, education, a home, and raise a family — are impossible for most people," Chakrabarti lamented.
"And the Republican Party is overtly conspiratorial and anti-democracy. The Democratic Party needs to stop acting like it's competing against a normal political party that plays by the rules, and it needs a bold vision for how to raise living standards, quality of life and security for all Americans. America is stuck, and Americans want real solutions that are as big as the problems we face," he urged.
More Leftism
The last presidential election was arguably a smackdown of the far left's ideas about the future of this nation. Instead of learning that lesson, Chakrabarti is running on his progressive bona fides.
"After a career in tech, I joined the Bernie campaign in 2016 because I wanted to be a part of solving those problems. I launched a project to elect a new generation of leaders, and one of them was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez," Chakrabarti explained.
As if that weren't enough, Chakrabarti has a history of going after Democrats who aren't leftist enough, such as accusing Rep. Sharice Davids of propping up the system he insists is built on racism because she voted for a Senate border security bill. It didn't matter that the Kansas Democrat broke the glass ceiling to become one of the first women who was Native American to serve in Congress.
Chakrabarti also went after moderates in his party as the "new Souther Democrats" because they didn't sign onto the liberal border bill. He charged that they "certainly seem hell bent to do to black and brown people today what the old Southern Democrats did in the 40s" in a since-deleted social media post.
Although Chakrabarti has a point about the glut of octogenarians in Congress, his read on the situation is all wrong. The good thing is that if Democrats continue to make the same mistakes, Republicans will remain in power.
Vice President J.D. Vance is confident that President Donald Trump will "get every single one of our nominations through" for his new cabinet, he said in an exclusive to Breitbart. The left has fought hard against his picks, including his most controversial choices.
Pete Hegseth has already made it through to become the new Secretary of Defense, thanks to the tie-breaking vote Vance cast in the Senate. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may not be far behind as his nomination advances for Health and Human Services Secretary.
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is also advancing for Director of National Intelligence while Kash Patel is on his way to becoming FBI Director. Despite major opposition from Democrats along the way, they have yet to derail any of Trump's picks.
Vance sees this as a very good sign. "Knock on wood, as you know I’m very superstitious," Vance said about the chances for all of Trump's cabinet to be confirmed.
Battle Worn
Although the Trump administration has gotten the nominees through, it hasn't come without a fight. "Looking at this from sort of the perspective in December at the nominations that we had—we had Kash Patel, we had Tulsi, we had Bobby, we had Hegseth," Vance said.
"You had a lot of people where we saw this sort of immune response from the swamp to a lot of these nominations, and I definitely thought to myself, 'Okay, how many of these guys are we going to be able to get across the finish line? And if you told me we would have been able to get all of them across, I would have been happy," Vance went on.
"So, it’s been a lot of work. We’ve definitely had to have a lot of, I think, tough conversations with some of my former Republican colleagues in the Senate," Vance said of the GOP lawmakers who sided with Democrats to resist Hegseth's nomination.
"But I think sitting here right now, I think we get every single one of our nominations through, which is a really, really big testament, frankly, to the president’s political influence. I mean, if you had a garden variety Republican president, do I think we would have been able to get all of these nominations through?" Vance asked rhetorically.
"No, I don’t. It’s us working the process, it’s the president’s political influence, and it’s the nominees working hard to get through," Vance boasted.
Explaining the Opposition
Vance noted that the legacy media is colluding with the Democratic Party to protect the Washington, D.C. establishment swamp to keep out these "change-makers" Trump put forth. "It’s because they’re people who don’t plan to go along to get along—they actually plan to meaningfully change how the government operates," Vance said.
"If you look at Pete Hegseth, this is a guy who believes, rightly in my opinion, that the Pentagon has become too focused on bureaucrats and too focused on process and not focused enough on giving the warfighter what they need," Vance said. He noted that there is too much money at stake for those who have enriched themselves from "a procurement process that has become bloated and inefficient."
As for Kennedy, Vance said he persuaded fellow Republicans to embrace Kennedy. His "non-conventional views" and solutions to chronic disease were a hard sell, but Vance said it's all part of electing a leader like Trump.
"I think this is just what happens when you have a guy like Trump coming in, and he’s not saying here’s some things we want to tinker around the edges with. He wants to fundamentally transform the people’s government to make it more responsive to the interests of the American people, to make it more responsive to the interests of citizens as opposed to non-citizens, and that is not an easy challenge, and you have some backlash to it, but you work the process and make it happen," Vance said.
Things are looking up on just about every front for the new administration. Vance has good reason to be optimistic about Trump's cabinet picks as voters have given Trump a mandate to do exactly what he's doing.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele offered to house convicted criminals who are American citizens in his nation's "mega-prison" after meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Breitbart reported. This marks a victory for Rubio on his first foreign visit in the role.
Rubio recently revealed the advantageous terms after his visit to El Salvador to meet with the leader. The agreement was also confirmed in Bukele's post to X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday.
"We have offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system. We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted U.S. citizens) into our mega-prison (CECOT) in exchange for a fee. The fee would be relatively low for the U.S. but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable," Bukele wrote.
A Relationship Restored
Rubio championed the agreement he brokered with Bukele. Rubio said it was "the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world" for Bukele to make such an offer.
"He’s also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentence in the United States even though they’re U.S. citizens or legal residents," Rubio added. A "senior Trump admin official" further stated that "El Salvador has agreed to accept U.S. deportations of any nationality, including violent criminals."
As Trump has ramped up deportations, some nations have refused to take back their citizens. Reuters reported that Colombia initially refused its own citizens deported from the U.S. until quickly relenting after Trump threatened tariffs and sanctions.
Bukele's offer likely comes because of his mutual respect for Trump due to their prior dealings. After President Joe Biden took office, he torpedoed that relationship.
Trump recently rekindled the commitment he had with Bukele to pursue the gangs and stop illegal immigration into the U.S. An American official made it clear that although the Trump administration felt it Bukele's offer was "significant," there are currently no "plans to try to deport American citizens."
El Salvador Prisons
Bukele takes great pride in his mega-prison as a key factor in tamping down crime in El Salvador, the Associated Press reported. He opened the Terrorism Confinement Center in 2023 as a way to crack down on violent gangs.
The conditions are intentionally harsh, with some prisoners being isolated and others subjected to vast overcrowding. Rather than focus on ideas like education and rehabilitation, the time there is meant to be a severe punishment as a deterrent to crime.
In 2023, Bukele touted its effectiveness. "El Salvador has managed to go from being the world’s most dangerous country, to the safest country in the Americas," he posted to X at the time.
"How did we do it? By putting criminals in jail. Is there space? There is now," Bukele said.
Rubio did a great job smoothing things over with El Salvador, and it appears the nation's leader is ready to help out. The left will balk at such an offer from Bukele, but the fact that he made it speaks volumes about the unprecedented clout of the Trump administration.
Former President Donald Trump has temporarily cut off U.S. funding to South Africa while its new land expropriation law is investigated.
Trump posted about his plans on TruthSocial Sunday night, saying, "South Africa is confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY. It is a bad situation that the Radical Left Media doesn’t want to so much as mention. A massive Human Rights VIOLATION, at a minimum, is happening for all to see. The United States won’t stand for it, we will act. Also, I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!"
South Africa receives between $272 and $440 million from the U.S., depending on the source consulted. There are also various trade deals with the U.S. that could be impacted by the cutoff of aid.
Understandable
The recently passed law has been compared to one in Zimbabwe that led to the confiscation of white farmers' land and subsequently, mass starvation in the country.
It's understandable that the country's Black leaders would want to see the law implemented to make farming opportunities more available to all races, but the reality of how the legislation is likely to play out may not be positive overall.
In Zimbabwe, the Black farmers who took over the expropriated land had little skill with farming, and production plummeted.
The same thing is likely to happen in South Africa, if there are even farmers willing to take over the confiscated land.
Apparently, there is little interest to do so. Furthermore, the opposition party is in charge of implementing the new law, so it will probably not happen much anyway.
Not helping
The attention the law is garnering may push for faster implementation, however, and Trump isn't helping matters by posting about it and making it a bigger issue.
If the conflict between parties comes to a head, it could even shatter the unity government currently in power.
The expropriation of land has been on Trump's radar since 2018, when a number of white farmers were murdered in a rural crime wave in the country.
South Africa has not been much of an ally to the U.S. in recent years.
It has cozied up to Russia and China, and has sided with Palestine against Israel.
The Senate confirmation process for several of President Donald Trump's key administration nominees has turned into something of a media-induced soap opera in recent days.
Despite the drama and confusion stemming from the “will-they-or-won't-they” reporting from the mainstream media, Sen. Tom Cotton remains confident in the steps he and others are taking to ensure approval of Trump's personnel picks, as Breitbart reports.
Media plants seeds of doubt
Since Trump began naming his top choices to key administration roles soon after prevailing in November, media outlets began casting doubt and engaging in rampant speculation about each nominee's chances of confirmation.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, for instance, abandoned his bid to become attorney general, perhaps in large part due to media focus on past controversies, and the nomination of Pete Hegseth for Defense secretary was thrown into serious doubt before he eventually won sufficient votes to secure the job.
Now, media attention seems to have focused on the question of whether Director of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard will be able to overcome what some believe are serious obstacles to her confirmation and receive approval from the upper chamber.
Outlets such as The Hill have suggested that Gabbard's Thursday hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee did little to help her chances of confirmation, and NBC News quoted a source familiar with the state of the process as saying, “It's 50-50-she gets through.”
The Hill also quoted Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) as saying that with regard to Gabbard, “I think there's a lot of questions still that my Republican colleagues have. I think some of them have been answered, and probably in a way that she was hoping would have gone the other way,” and it was further reported on Sunday that Republican Sen. Todd Young (IN) is leaning against her confirmation.
Cotton weighs in
During an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday, Cotton suggested that current scuttlebutt about Gabbard's supposedly dwindling prospects is the result of “speculation” without much substance, suggesting that the process of deliberations and information-seeking about the candidate is still very much ongoing.
“It just takes time for senators to digest all the information we have,” Cotton said. “As is the case with all committees, we just got some written questions, follow-up questions from our members out the door to her last night. She has those. I'm sure they'll get answers back promptly so we can move forward to a vote. That's a very common practice.”
Cotton added, “All of the media speculation about this one's in trouble, that one's on the rocks, they can't get there...is just that -- speculation.”
Detailing his position on the situation, Cotton said, “I'm voting for Tulsi Gabbard. I'm encouraging my colleagues to vote for Tulsi Gabbard. To the extent any of them are undecided, I'm working through their concerns and explaining why I think that we should vote her out of committee, confirm her on the Senate floor, and put her in place as the Director of National Intelligence, and why Donald Trump wanted her there.”
Further attempting to tamp down any undue press influence on the current scenario, Cotton added, “So, again, I would not believe much of what you read in the media about these things.”
Hopeful signs emerge
Perhaps giving credence to Cotton's take on where things presently stand, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), often a hard sell when it comes to Trump's personnel decisions, offered some positive -- yet still noncommittal -- words about Gabbard, saying, “I was happy with her responses to my questions, including the question of whether she would recommend a pardon of Edward Snowden, where she clearly said no.”
In addition, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), whose support was the subject of speculation in recent weeks, said on Sunday that he is a “yes” on Gabbard, but whether she will secure the full measure of support needed in the end is something that remains to be seen.
