ABC slammed for settling Trump ‘rape’ defamation case as Romney admits MAGA has won Republican party: Live

Chris Rock made the crowd groan during his Saturday Night Live monologue with a joke about Twitter CEO Elon Musk.

The 59-year-old stand-up comedian and actor hosted the sketch comedy show last night (December 14).

During his monologue, Rock made reference to Donald Trump’s successful year, noting that he’d survived an assassination attempt, been re-elected to the US presidency and been named Time’s Person of the Year.

Ingrid Lewis-Martin is resigning from New York city hall, according to The New York Times. She was Eric Adams’ top advisor on government affairs, and had withstood weeks of critical coverage for the criminal allegations the mayor now faces.

Adams, a Democrat, has turned to Donald Trump and Magaworld for a positive embrace as he faces isolation and ridicule in his own party while facing five criminal counts related to alleged corruption.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is calling on Washington to do more about the mysterious drones spotted in recent weeks above the Northeast.

The governor said in a statement on Saturday on X that drone activity prompted officials to shut down Stewart Airfield in New Windsor for about an hour last night.

CNN’s State of the Union interviewed retiring senator Mitt Romney on Sunday. The Republican senator has been one of Donald Trump’s last remaining opponents in the GOP, but bowed out of the Senate this year.

Romney seems to have come to terms with the future of the Republican Party as a Trumpified political movement.

“MAGA is the Republican Party and Donald Trump is the Republican Party today,” the Utah senator told Jake Tapper, adding: "Democrats have badly misread the direction of the country... and President Trump took advantage of that."

Watch a clip here:

Donald Trump announced on Saturday that Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes and the president-elect’s Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell have been selected to serve in his upcoming administration.

Nunes, as former California House Representative, was tapped for to serve as Chairman of Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board, while Grenell was picked to serve as his Presiential Envoy for Special Missions.

While Nunes was in office he served on the House Intelligence Committee and consistently backed any move then-President Trump made. He also led the two-year investigation into US’s responde to the 2012 Benghazi attack, which ultimate found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the US State Department under Hillary Clinton.

Nunes also refused to back an investigation into Trump former national security adviser and Q-Anon conspiracy theorist Michael Flynn after it was revealed he had unreported discussions with Russian officials while serving under Trump.

“From everything that I can see, his conversations with the Russian ambassador—he was doing this country a favor, and he should be thanked for it,” Nunes said at the time.

Grenell formerly served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany and his Director of National Intelligence.

Prior to his involvement in Trump’s administration, Grenell was a consultant for an eastern European oligarch, Vladimir Plahotniuc. He faced criticism after he wrote articles defending the oligarch without making clear he was being paid to manage the man’s image.

Grenell is a former Fox News contributor and was named as a VP at the far-right media outlet Newsmax in 2021. He earned the ire of the media in 2020 when, during a Trump press conference, he refused to identify himself to reporters and publicly accused the state of covering up incidents of voter fraud in order to help the election prospects of then-Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

These claims were made without evidence, and Mr Grenell refused to answer questions from journalists who demanded he prove his assertions.

Joe Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, on Sunday addressed the spotting of small drone aircraft in New Jersey in an interview Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

“There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” he said. “I want to assure the American public that we in the federal government have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings.”

A transgender activist who staged a sit-in at the US Capitol to protest House Republicans’ new policy targeting a transgender incoming member of Congress tells The Independent that the 2024 election cycle shows that LGBTQ+ Americans really can’t trust Democrats to have their backs in a fight.

“Unfortunately, the signals coming from our government right now, under a Democratic president, are telling us that we’re essentially on our own,” the 33-year-old activist told our Io Dodds in an interview.

Donald Trump’s incoming “border czar” has suggested the president-elect’s plans for mass deportations will begin in Chicago, part of a plan that would deploy law enforcement officers into communities across the country for broad sweeps targeting people living in the country without legal permission.

The Windy City’s mayor is vowing to protect his city’s residents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents who could push into schools and workplaces, butting against so-called “sanctuary” policies barring federal forces from using local police for deportation enforcement.

“What the Trump administration has called for is for local police departments around the country to behave as ICE agents. In sanctuary cities, that is not permissible,” Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson told CNN.

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Senate Republican leader and polio survivor Mitch McConnell on Friday condemned “dangerous” efforts to abolish the polio vaccine following news that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lawyer’s tried to do just that.

Attorney Aaron Siri in 2022 petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its approval for multiple critical childhood vaccines, including the polio vaccine. News of Siri’s action resurfaced just weeks after RFK Jr. was named by President-elect Donald Trump as his pick to be secretary of Health and Human Services. Siri is currently helping Kennedy vet officials to serve in the department.

Kennedy is known for his extreme anti-vaccine positions which are widely derided by the mainstream medical community. Siri’s petition claimed the vaccine was not properly tested to ensure it was safe, despite its decade-long use protecting millions of children from contracting the disease.

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Barron Trump has been described as a “ladies’ man” around the New York University (NYU) campus, where he is so popular that even his liberal classmates like him.

An insider at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where Barron enrolled this fall, told People magazine that Donald Trump’s only son with third wife Melania Trump has proven to be “popular with the ladies.”

“He’s tall and handsome,” the source said of the 18-year-old, who stands an astonishing six feet nine inches tall.

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