Trump to be named Time’s ‘Person of the Year;’ president-elect gloats about Christopher Wray’s resignation: Live

Only about 2 in 10 Americans approve of Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter after earlier promising he would do no such thing, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

That displeasure tracks with the bipartisan uproar in Washington that ignited over the president’s about-face. The survey found that a relatively small share of Americans “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of the pardon, which came after the younger Biden was convicted on gun and tax charges. About half said they “strongly” or “somewhat” disapprove, and about 2 in 10 neither approve nor disapprove.

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Trump is asking a judge to dismiss a defamation lawsuit from the now-exonerated Central Park Five, who accused Trump of repeating “false and defamatory” statements about them during his debate with Kamala Harris.

At the debate, Trump misstated facts of the case and falsely claimed that they had at one point “pled guilty” to having “killed a person, ultimately.”

In 1989, the men were falsely accused of raping and beating a jogger and were coerced into confessing to the crime. They later recanted, pled not guilty and were convicted. Those convictions were vacated in 2002 when another person confessed.

“They admitted, they said they pled guilty and I said, ’well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately,” Trump said at the debate. “And they pled guilty, then they pled not guilty.”

Trump had taken out a full-page ad in 1989 for the death penalty.

An attorney for Trump claims that the men are now trying to “recast political rhetoric and debate about criminal justice and public safety as ‘defamation.‘”

“This ignores well-settled First Amendment jurisprudence that protects the President-elect’s speech about matters of public concern,” wrote Karin M. Sweigar, an attorney with Dhillon Law Group, which is owned by Harmeet Dhillon, whom Trump has nominated to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

Trump’s statements, “taken in context, were protected opinions based on true disclosed fact, lacked any defamatory sting, and were substantially true,” according to Sweigar. “Plaintiffs’ remaining claims for false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress fail for the same reasons, and because Plaintiffs fail to meet the additional required elements of those claims.”

President Joe Biden said he was “stupid” for not doing what president-elect Donald Trump did during his first term — signing the checks sent to the public during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I signed the American Rescue Plan, the most significant economic recovery package in our history, and also learned something from Donald Trump,” Biden noted during his economic speech at the Brookings Institution Tuesday.

Biden said that Trump “signed checks for people for 7,400 bucks...and I didn’t,” adding that it was “stupid,” drawing laughter from the crowd.

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FBI Director Christopher Wray has signaled his intention to quit his post next month ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, creating a vacancy that Trump intends to fill with loyalist Kash Patel.

Wray reportedly told FBI employees at an agency town hall that he would step down in January, nearly two and a half years before the expiration of the ten-year term he was sworn in for in August 2017.

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Accusing CNN political commentator Scott Jennings of attempting to create a viral moment during a heated exchange on the Daniel Penny trial, correspondent Audie Cornish told the right-wing pundit that he wanted “a clip for the internet” while mockingly posing for a picture.

During Tuesday night’s broadcast of CNN NewsNight, the panel debated over Penny being acquitted in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man with mental health issues who acted threateningly towards subway passengers. The verdict was met with both applause and anger, with conservatives saying “justice has prevailed” and calling Penny a “hero.”

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Carolyn Fisher will never forget the moment her son told her he wanted to die.

It was November 3, two days before the presidential election. Fisher’s 16-year-old non-binary son, who uses he/they pronouns, was part of an online suicide pact with three other transgender and non-binary teens in Florida, Alabama and Tennessee. The friends who’d met on Discord had agreed to die by suicide if former president Donald Trump won the 2024 election.

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The president-elect’s nominee to oversee the federal government’s enforcement of civil rights has spent the last year leading a legal crusade against transgender Americans, signaling where Trump could start with his “day one” pledge to roll back discrimination protections.

Harmeet Dhillon, founder of the Center for American Liberty, has filed a barrage of attention-grabbing lawsuits on behalf of right-wing activists against gender-affirming healthcare and school policies and state and local laws designed to protect LGBT+ people across the country.

Dhillon also supported efforts to reverse election results in states Trump lost in 2020, and she steered the Trump campaign’s 2024 “election integrity” team in Arizona, a hotbed for bogus election conspiracy theories in the wake of Trump’s loss.

Here’s more from Alex Woodward.

The self-described MAGA “firebrand”, who dropped out last month as Trump’s choice for attorney general amid ongoing sexual misconduct allegations, has finally secured another full-time job now that he’s no longer in Congress.

After news leaked on Monday night that he had agreed to host a primetime show for the little-watched right-wing conspiracy channel One America News (OAN), the network made it official on Tuesday with a press release and promotional video.

Gaetz taking the plunge and becoming a conservative talking head is hardly a surprise but will anybody be watching?

Justin Baragona considers the question.

The Pennsylvania Democratic Senator has not only joined Trump’s social media platform but opens with a very MAGA-friendly dismissal of the hush money case against the president-elect as “bulls***”, perhaps thinking ahead about his own electoral future.

Will be fun watching her explain this one in Athens.