After surrendering to Iran, Donald Trump and his battered ego are looking for a boost wherever he can get it. Since Trump is both perpetually failing and needy, he returned to doing what he always does in these situations.

Donald Trump tried to make himself look more powerful and desired than he is, but this time he messed with the wrong person.

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While speaking to Italian media, Trump made a claim that will be familiar to any American who follows politics.

Trump claimed that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni begged him for a photo at the G7.

Politico reported:

During a phone call with Italian media on Thursday night, Trump said Meloni was “probably happy I spoke to her. I didn’t have to,” adding that “she wanted a picture with me so badly. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her.” The remarks appeared to contradict the prime minister’s recent insistence that her relationship with the president was as good as ever.

Since Donald Trump has stumbled through life living in a delusional world of his own creation while failing upward, he has probably convinced himself that this is reality, but PM Meloni was putting up with Trump’s lies.

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Donald Trump has always suffered from Obama Derangement Syndrome because Donald Trump has always felt inferior to Obama, which must bring up quite a conflict in a mind that seems to have been poisoned with racism and hate early on in life.

It was fitting that Trump made an inferior deal with Iran right around the same time as the ceremony was held for the opening of the Obama Presidential Center.

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Trump has been living in Obama’s shadow since his first administration began in 2017, and he was outshadowed by the former president again on Thursday.

Donald Trump is considered to be the political reaction to Barack Obama’s presidency. Obama was hope and change. Trump is division and a return to the past. Obama inspired hope, and Trump has seemed to be on a personal mission to destroy it.

Trump’s notions of what government is and who it should benefit have always been in direct contrast to Barack Obama. It isn’t a coincidence that Obama gave the nation the biggest expansion of healthcare since Medicare, and Trump has provided the country with the biggest cut to healthcare and services in American history.

Obama spoke of America’s better angels. Trump was convicted of nearly three dozen felonies.

Barack Obama isn’t an active politician, but he is still advocating for his view of what America could be, and in the process he is criticizing Trump without ever saying the current president’s name.

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When Trump has done something that is unpopular, he sends JD Vance out to take the heat and defend it. Since Vance has deluded himself into thinking that he is being elevated and that this is his path to the White House, he continues to become the face of a lot of things that the American people don’t like.

It happened again on Thursday, as Vance stood before White House reporters and took questions about an Iran deal that even members of his own party are trashing.

If Vance is auditioning to be president, his press briefing felt like a bombed audition.

The vice president was asked, “ Many of the colleagues that you served with in the US Senate and Republican Conference have criticized this deal over the last 24 hours. What is your message, Mr. Vice President, back to them?”

VP Vance answered:

So I guess I would say to anybody, any of the critics is number one, have a little bit of faith in the President of the United States. The idea that he is gonna strike a deal that's been bad for the American people, it's preposterous.

He is the person who has had the courage to fundamentally transform our relationship with Iran and with a lot of other countries over the last year and a half. He, he believes in this deal. He is going to see it to completion, and if the Iranians don't comply, we still have every single tool and point of leverage that we have today. That'd be message number one, is have a little faith in the president's ability, given that he's got us this far, to take us the final step.

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Every deal that Trump has made has been bad for America. All of Trump’s deals have been bad. The president has had nearly one and a half terms in office, and has yet to make a single good deal, so the message that Congress and the American people should trust Trump isn’t a great one.

Things went downhill when Vance was asked about the deal's lopsidedness.

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The SAVE America Act is never going to pass. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has said it over and over again. Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to abolish the filibuster, and even if they did, at least 4 Republicans are opposed to the SAVE America Act, so it doesn’t have enough votes to pass with a simple majority.

The votes just aren’t there.

Trump’s latest stunt to force Senate Republicans to pass his midterm election rigging bill is to cancel the confirmation for his popular choice to be the new Director of National Intelligence, to keep his unpopular and unqualified interim in the post as a way to force Senate Republicans to do what he wants.

The SAVE America Act is Trump’s last-ditch gambit to prevent a Democratic victory in November. The president is desperate to avoid lame duck status, and his panic is causing a world of problems for Majority Leader Thune.

The fighting between Republicans has gotten so bad that Trump is being accused of trying to cost his party the Senate majority.

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Even Donald Trump seems to know that his Iran deal is a piece of garbage. How else can you explain the sad sight of the feeble 80-year-old president trying to elevate a bad deal by inventing a story about Barack Obama at the G7?

Trump tried to claim that the Iranians laughed at Obama.

The president said:

 He tried to bribe his way out. I didn't do that. Nobody mentions that. 1.7 billion and hundreds of millions of dollars, they tried to bribe their way out of it. And you know what the Iranians did? They laughed at Obama and they said he's a stupid son of a bitch.

Video:

There is so much projection in this comment. Obama didn’t need to bribe his way out of anything with Iran, because he wasn’t dumb enough to believe Netanyahu and start a war. Obama didn’t bribe Iran. Obama didn’t give the Iranians billions of dollars. Former President Obama did give Iran access to some of their assets that had been frozen by the United States, but that access was limited and conditional. The money could only be used for food and medicine.

Trump put no such conditions on his agreement with Iran, where he agreed to unfreeze assets, lift all sanctions, and give Iran access to a $300 billion reconstruction fund.

Trump went on to lay bare how bad a deal this is for the United States at his G7 press conference.

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Trump wants to go down in history as one of the great US presidents, but what is unfolding is one of the biggest presidential trainwrecks in American history. Through a series of bad policy decisions, Donald J. Trump has wrecked the economy. Corruption in this administration is approaching levels that haven’t been seen in the country since the 19th Century.

The president started a war with Iran, which he lost, and negotiated a ceasefire extension that he will not let Congress or the American people view.

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A leaked version of the ceasefire extension (memorandum of understanding) was published by Saudi Arabian media, and if this is what the Trump administration agreed to, it is a total defeat for the United States.

Let’s begin with money. The Iranian regime, which Trump failed to change, is about to get a lot of it.

Here are points 6 and 7 of the memorandum of understanding:

6. The United States undertakes, together with its regional partners, to create a comprehensive plan agreed upon by both parties for the rehabilitation and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran, While ensuring financing of at least $300 billion. The implementation mechanism of this plan, as part of the final agreement, will be formulated within 60 days.

7. The United States commits to ending, on a schedule to be agreed upon as part of the final agreement, all types of sanctions currently facing the Islamic Republic of Iran, including resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, both primary and secondary.

Iran gets $300 billion, and the lifting of sanctions. That’s really bad, but Trump wasn’t done giving away cash.

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When people think about corruption in the federal government, the focus always goes to Donald Trump. There has long been an idea among Trump critics that once Trump is gone, the corruption will go away with him, but the corruption within the second Trump administration appears to be much deeper and more systemic.

One of the most important functions of the federal government is national security and law enforcement. Trump has made it a priority in his second administration to politicize and the federal government’s law enforcement functions.

Trump has accomplished this by getting loyalists who share his contempt for good government into federal law enforcement positions

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An example of the sort of person that Trump wanted overseeing federal law enforcement is Kash Patel. The current FBI Director has been accused of excessive drinking, abuse of government travel, and he was seen partying with the men’s hockey team at the Winter Olympics on the taxpayers’ dime.

According to House Judiciary Democrats, Patel has also been operating a slush fund with taxpayer money that rewarded MAGA loyalists within the FBI.

House Judiciary Democrats posted on X:

Judiciary Democrats have uncovered that FBI Director Kash Patel directed over $1 MILLION in unlawful taxpayer-funded bonuses to a small group of MAGA agents and members of Patel’s personal security detail.

As the House Judiciary Democrats pointed out, Patel appears to be breaking the law.

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Donald Trump would never have been president without rural America. One of the greatest contradictions, or some would say con jobs, in American history was pulled off as a New York City creature passed himself off as relatable and sharing the concerns of rural America.

To anyone with a discerning eye, it was clear that Trump didn’t understand or care about rural America. Even rural Americans would admit this fact on occasion, but they liked Trump because he talked about them, and he played on their mistrust of elites by selling himself as an outsider who had been inside enough to confirm their suspicions about “the swamp.”

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The myths that Trump created caused his support to grow even more with rural America by 2024, to the point that he was able to expand his margin of victory with these voters to 40 points over then-VP Kamala Harris.

Many of these people didn’t seem to know what they were voting for. Trump kept talking about tariffs and mass deportations during the campaign. Republicans even held up mass deportation signs and Republican National Convention, so these folks can’t say they weren’t warned.

There were plenty of signals about what was coming. It is their fault if they chose not to see.

With the economic pressure growing on an economically depressed population, it was only a matter of time until the dam broke, and it finally has.

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Donald Trump has always inflated tentative agreements to deal status only for the American people to find out later that the deal doesn’t exist.

What has been negotiated with the Iranians is a memorandum of understanding that sets the terms for future negotiations.

There is no final deal.

The Trump administration will not release the text of the memorandum of understanding because, from initial reports, the Trump administration is giving Iran billions of dollars in exchange for the Iranians allowing Trump to surrender in a war that he started.

Vice President JD Vance was on CNBC’s Squawk Box, where he all but admitted that there is no final deal.

Vance said:

Well, I think the best outcome is a good deal for the American people, which we have. Fundamentally, we're dealing with everybody in the Iranian system. You know, there's the IRGC, the sort of regime hard liners, the military side, there's the political leadership, and within the political leadership you have people who are more hard line and less hard line. We expect to have a full spectrum of representatives at the negotiation on Friday. Again, we've been talking to these people, sometimes indirectly, but sometimes directly, and that's what's fundamentally changed under the President's leadership. We are now speaking directly to the Iranian system. We have some good relationships there. So, this is going to be a successful negotiation, because we're not passing messages through various back channels anymore.

Video:

We're actually talking to them. And when you talk to them, you figure out what's real, what's fake, what are they serious about, what are they not serious about. And the thing I would add to that is we fundamentally have all the cards here. We don't have to give the Iranians anything if they don't make the commitments that we want long term on the nuclear program, and even if we just stopped here, what would be true? Their military is destroyed, the Straits of Hormuz are open, their nuclear program has been destroyed, and we have incredible economic leverage over them that we didn't have a year and a half ago. So we've got a lot of leverage here, but we also have the President saying to them, we're extending an open hand.

If you cut through Vance’s propaganda and talking points, the most important thing he said was what he didn’t say. The vice president gave no details, because there is no deal, but Congress wants to see what Trump has agreed to.

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Holding a UFC card at the White House is wrong. The White House belongs to the American people, not any president. The current president has vandalized the White House many times over, but his destruction of the South Lawn to hold a birthday party for himself is especially twisted.

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No one asked for a UFC card to be held at the White House. The event is not free to the American people. The White House grounds are a national park. A commercial event is being held for profit in a taxpayer-funded space.

It is very fitting that a man who fails at everything is about to see his birthday party wiped out by what sounds like a biblical event.

Here is The Weather Channel’s forecast for Sunday night’s event:

UFC Freedom 250 is facing a chaotic weather setup on the White House South Lawn, with a 60% chance of thunderstorms, heavy downpours, and wind gusts up to 34 mph threatening to delay the outdoor fights.

On top of the storm risk, brutal D.C. humidity is driving a triple-digit heat index alongside massive swarms of mosquitoes and gnats that fighters will have to battle inside the cage.

While the venue’s massive 92-foot overhang will keep the octagon dry, a single lightning strike within eight miles will trigger an automatic 30-minute freeze on the entire event.

The White House responded by blaming The Weather Channel for the forecast.

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The name of the Department of Defense and the title of Secretary of Defense can only be changed by an act of Congress, so it doesn’t matter if Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump change his job title to Queen of England. Hegseth’s official and legal job title is Secretary of Defense, and that is how he will be referred to in this publication.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appeared on CBS’s Face The Nation to discuss the supposed deal that is coming any minute now to end the Iran war that Trump and Hegseth started and proceeded to lose.

Even though CBS is now owned by Trump ally David Ellison and CBS News is being run (into the ground) by Bari Weiss, the Face The Nation interview was not a Fox News-style fluff piece. The Iran war is so unpopular that some pushback was required on it.

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The issue was that Hegseth made so many absurd claims that were detached from reality that they could not be ignored.

Despite multiple reports from Pentagon sources, US weapons stocks are dangerously low, and Hegseth testified to Congress that the national weapons stockpile is low; the Secretary of Defense claimed that everything is fine.

Face The Nation host Margaret Brennan asked Hegseth, “ Ukraine's President Zelensky was on this program a few weeks ago. He made a plea, not just for more interceptors, but for the ability to produce them for friendly governments to be able to produce Patriots. Some Republican lawmakers support this idea. Do you?”

Hegseth answered, “ Ukraine's President Zelensky was on this program a few weeks ago. He made a plea, not just for more interceptors, but for the ability to produce them for friendly governments to be able to produce Patriots. Some Republican lawmakers support this idea. Do you? Nobody makes better and more munitions than the United States of America, and we are open to co-production wherever we can. And because of this administration, we're supercharging our arsenal of freedom, building more, building faster, opening up the Pentagon, ripping through the Pentagon bureaucracy to force industry to move faster.”

Brennan said, “ There is a crisis with those stockpiles right now..Is, there is a crisis with those stockpiles right now?”

Video:

Hegseth replied, “No, there is not ... that is a manufactured story that the media wants to peddle.”

So the stockpile crisis that Hegseth testified about in front of Congress was real, is now made up? Does this mean that Hegseth lied to Congress?

Hegseth ran into more trouble when he tried to defend the Trump deal with Iran that may or may not happen.

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On Friday, as the clock ticked on a court order that Trump’s name had to be removed from the Kennedy Center, the administration appealed to the court that ordered Trump’s name removed from the building for a stay, but the judge denied the stay, writing:

Most notably, for the detailed reasons laid out in the Court’s ruling, Defendants have not “made a strong showing that [they] are likely to succeed on the merits” of any appeal. Nken v. Holder, 556 U.S. 418, 426 (2009) (quoting Hilton v. Braunskill, 481 U.S. 770, 776 (1987)). Nor have Defendants demonstrated that they “will be irreparably injured absent a stay,” id. (quoting Hilton, 481 U.S. at 776), given both the de minimis resources that would be required to restore the Center’s current name in the event of a successful appeal and the lack of record evidence linking increased donations to the current name.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans were watching online streams late into the night as crews covered the lettering on the building with tarps and began their work. At one point, the work was halted due to what the administration told the court was a risk of thunderstorms.

On Saturday, a Kennedy Center official told the court that Trump’s name was gone.

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Even though the Trump administration consistently attempts to gaslight the American people into believing prices and costs are falling, life experience reveals the truth.

When you go to the grocery store, fill up your tank, or open a utility bill, the evidence is before our collective eyes that America is getting less affordable.

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Each increase that is caused by Trump’s policies add up to an overwhelming total.

The Joint Economic Committee is the congressional counterpart to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.

Democrats on the committee released a new report on Friday detailing how much having Donald Trump in the White House has cost American households.

According to the Joint Economic Committee Minority, this is how much Trump is costing Americans.

As of May 2026, the average household in United States has had to spend $3,100+ more on goods and services under President Trump.

Despite President Trump’s repeated pledges on the campaign trail that his administration would “end inflation” and bring down costs for families, Trump has instead caused costs to continue to rise significantly, including through his reckless tariffs and war in Iran.

Housing Costs- American families have had to spend $622 more on housing costs such as rent and mortgage payments since President Trump took office.

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Donald Trump keeps saying that the US is close to a deal with Iran, but Trump has been making this same statement for months in what seems to be an effort to manipulate the stock market and oil prices.

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CNN’s Anderson Cooper recently played a slew of Trump’s claims going back months that a deal was close with Iran:

We have major points of agreement. They want to make a deal, and we are very willing to make a deal.

Well, I think we're going to end it. I can't tell you for sure.

But they want to make a deal so badly. You have no idea how badly they want to make a deal.

They want to make a deal so badly.

I can see a deal in Iran.

We were very close to a deal.

I think it's close to over. I mean, I view it as very close to over.

It's looking very good that we are going to make a deal with Iran, and it's going to be a good deal.

This process should go very quickly.

We're going to end that war very quickly. They want to make a deal so badly.

We think were close to a deal and that's okay.

We're in the final throes of what will be a very, very good deal.

At this point, the only thing that is a fact is that Trump is a pathological liar, and when it comes to his Iran war, he has repeated some version of the same lie over and over again that the war will end soon.

Trump also flipped out when Iran released a list of points that were supposedly in the memorandum of understanding.

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It is becoming more difficult for the White House to hide Donald Trump’s apparent decline. From doing most of his events sitting down to having difficulty when he does move, the president appears to be having some physical issues. Those issues could be associated with normal aging or with a chronic condition. The American people don’t know because the administration won’t provide any information.

Trump also appears to show signs of cognitive decline, which could be age-related, or it could be different issues. The American people have no idea, because according to the White House, Trump never sleeps and is sharp as a tack.

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We know that the administration’s favorite claim about Trump never sleeping isn’t true, because the president falls asleep during meetings in front of the cameras on a regular basis, but there has to be a middle ground between the president is perfect and he has one foot in the grave.

Trump has admitted to taking four dementia screenings in less than two years, so why is this president being examined so often by so many specialists?

It is a question the White House regularly dodges.

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In what feels like a sneak preview of January 2027, Democrats have found themselves in the House majority multiple times as many Republicans have stopped showing up for work.

Since Republicans only have a slim majority, when people blow off showing up on the floor, it means that Democrats have found themselves in the unprecedented position of being the minority party but having a majority of the votes.

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This circumstance doesn’t mean that Hakeem Jeffries becomes temporary Speaker; Mike Johnson still retains the gavel, but it has resulted in Johnson having to cancel votes, scramble, and get defeated on an Iran war powers resolution that would end Trump’s war in the Middle East.

NOTUS reported:

In recent weeks, because of resignations and deaths, Republicans have had 217 members, along with an independent, California Rep. Kevin Kiley, who caucuses with them, while Democrats have had 212 seats.

A review of the roughly 40 House votes held since May 20 shows an alarming number of instances when GOP absences left the House in unusual circumstances:

• At least four times on recorded roll call votes, more Democrats were present than Republicans, effectively giving the minority party the majority status briefly;

It is one thing to have a small majority, but quite another to have no majority.

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A new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan (two Trump-friendly authors) who withheld all of this reporting to make money off a book detailed the extensive cover-up by the Trump administration to bury the Epstein files.

The New York Times Magazine published an excerpt of the book that laid out how all of the top members of the administration colluded together to try to get out in front of the story while also giving Trump what he wanted, which was to bury the Epstein files.

According to the book excerpt:

Vice President JD Vance took a seat at the head of the table in the John F. Kennedy Conference Room of the Situation Room complex. “This is a huge problem,” he told the group. Arrayed around him were the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles; the White House counsel, David Warrington; the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt; the deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich; the communications director, Steven Cheung; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; the associate attorney general, Stanley Woodward Jr.; and the deputy chief of staff James Blair. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, joined on speakerphone.

…

But there was one major obstacle in the path of a solution: The president himself still had no interest in transparency. He wanted the whole Epstein issue buried, and he was snapping at anyone who mentioned it. His staff largely avoided the subject in their conversations with him, forced to worry among themselves.

House Democrats responded to the details in the story by making it clear that if they win the majority, the Trump cover-up will be investigated.

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Inflation has jumped to 4.2% under Trump. During Joe Biden’s last month in office, inflation was 2.9%. Trump is solely responsible for inflation, as most of the increase is caused by his Iran war.

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NPR reported:

A report from the Labor Department on Wednesday showed consumer prices in May were up 4.2% from a year ago. That’s the biggest annual increase since April of 2023. By contrast, the Labor Department says average wages have risen only 3.4% over the last year, so workers’ real spending power has declined.

Prices rose 0.5% between April and May, with higher energy costs accounting for more than 60% of that monthly increase.

These are horrible numbers that would have any president scrambling to figure out a solution, but not Donald Trump.

Instead of holding a press conference to assure the American people that he is working on the problem and that, on a more basic level, he understands the problem, Trump did the opposite.

Trump tried to downplay inflation and sell the economic struggles of the American people as a good thing.

It was an insane answer to a question that should have been a moment where any other president would have expressed concern and empathy.

The president was asked, “ Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning? Could that be a detriment-”

Trump interrupted, “No, I love it.”

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Congressional Republicans returned to the Capitol on Monday, and CNN’s Manu Raju has been tracking them down to ask if they have any proof to support Trump’s claim that the primary election in California was rigged.

When Raju asked the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson said:

I, look, I don’t... Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream, it is impossible to prove, but I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here, and that’s a concern. We need people to believe in the integrity of our election system. It is critical to maintain a constitutional republic. We’re gonna keep working to pass the Save America Act because it requires, as you know, proof of citizenship and a photo ID to vote.

That, those are also 90%-plus issues in public opinion, and 70% of Democrats understand that’s, that’s necessary. We have to have free and fair elections-

Johnson seemed to be claiming that there is no proof that the California primary election was rigged because Democrats in the state are “diabolical.”

It sounds like Republicans are saying that they don’t need proof to claim that an election was rigged.

In case you weren’t clear, House Majority Leader Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) wasn’t as subtle as Johnson.

CNN’s Manu Raju asked Scalise during his weekly press conference, “ The president keeps saying that the California election was rigged. What evidence have you seen to show that there has been widespread fraud that has caused this election to be stolen, according to the president?”

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The White House wants questions about Trump’s health to go away. Trump wants the country to believe that his health is perfect, but this president keep showing in public that his health is clearly not perfect and there are legitimate questions that need to be asked about the soon to be 80 year old’s fitness to do the job of president.

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After Trump tried to make a dramatic exit and walk off an interview on Meet The Press, but he struggled to maintain his balance and seemed to limp, the president followed up that concerning display by appearing to fall asleep in the middle of a loud and rowdy Madison Square Garden where the New York Knicks were facing the San Antonio Spurs.

Clip of Trump catching some nappy time, like all presidents do when they are out in public:

By his own admission, Trump has been screened for dementia four times in less than two years, and he is taking annual physicals twice as often as any previous president.

There is something, or many things, clearly wrong with this president, and it wasn’t for the White House and the president insisting on telling the American people nothing, this might not be such a big story, but members of Congress are increasingly asking questions and demanding answers from the White House.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) posed questions about Trump’s health to reporters on Tuesday.

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