Trump flips his lid in "60 Minutes" debacle

Top Stories for April 27:

Trump tanks “60 Minutes” interview with jaw-dropping answer
America’s wannabe dictator excoriated 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O’Donnell for simply doing her job and reading a snippet of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooter’s manifesto on air, which she rightly characterized as a “stunning thing to read.”

“In it, he writes this: quote, ‘Administrative officials, they are targets.’ He also wrote this: ‘I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.’ What’s your reaction to that?” O’Donnell asked.

Donald responded in true Trumpian fashion: “Well, I was waiting for you to read that, because I knew you would. Because you’re horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I am not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody,” adding a moment later, “Excuse me. Excuse me. I am not a pedophile.”

Look, if you’re the president of the United States and you have to go on national television less than a day after another attempt on your life and insist you’ve never raped children, perhaps you’ve made some…problematic choices along the way.

Take Action: Demand Congress pay for healthcare, not war!

Trump blames “very dangerous hate speech of the Democrats” for political violence
The guy who has spent more than a decade labeling Democrats “the enemy of the people,” “the enemy within,” “scum,” “vermin,” “animals,” “evil,” “the party of hate,” and “the party of Satan” wants everyone to know that incendiary rhetoric on the left is to blame for political violence in America.

Take Action: Stop Trump’s plan to dump coal ash in our drinking water!

Spring nursery season brings a flood of vulnerable kittens, puppies, and wildlife that need help!
The Houston SPCA helps tens of thousands of animals each year through rescue, medical care, cruelty investigations, and adoption programs, and now that spring is here, they’re going to have their hands full! In 2025 alone, 62,587 animals were helped by the Houston SPCA, and they’re looking to beat that number this year, but they need your help to do it. Until the end of the month, ALL donations will be double-matched to help with the influx of newly born, four-legged friends that need round-the-clock care. Will you chip in and help rescue kittens and puppies in need?

Franklin Graham says “hand of God” has spared Trump from threats on his life
Franklin Graham, the most recognizable and influential evangelical Christian in the country, apparently believes God is actively and repeatedly intervening to thwart attempts on Donald Trump’s life while also apparently standing by while malaria, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, dengue fever, HIV/AIDs, and other neglected tropical diseases kill roughly 2.5 million innocent, poverty-stricken people every year, including hundreds of thousands of children. Anyone agreeing with Franklin should really take a good, long look in the mirror and ask themselves why.

Trump’s purge of National Science Board condemned as a “real bozo the clown move”
The Trump regime’s ongoing war against established science and the people who practice it claimed nearly two dozen more victims on Friday, a move that was understandably lost in the weekend shuffle. Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren called the Trump regime’s decision to fire all 22 current members of the National Science Board, the body that steers the nonpartisan National Science Foundation and advises Congress and the president on top scientific issues, a “real bozo the clown move” in a statement over the weekend.

As The Independent notes, “the advisory body, whose members serve six-year terms, helps guide the overall direction of the NSF’s more than $9 billion budget. It helps approve major expenses and sets long-term priorities for the agency, the engine of basic non-medical science and engineering funding in the US, which has had a hand in the creation of major technologies like GPS and the internet.”

Keivan Stassun, a professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University who was among those fired, explained the ramifications: “What it means is that there won’t be any practical impediments to the administration essentially enacting their own budget and priorities and ignoring Congress’ directives or congressional law.”

Fascism doesn’t happen overnight, folks. It’s an incremental process, where guardrails, precedents, norms, institutions, and freedoms are systematically whittled away. Our democratic republic is the frog in the pot slowly being boiled alive.

Take Action: Investigate Trump’s firing of the National Science Board members!

Former MAGA influencer says MAGA response to WHCD shooting is “fake” and “staged”
Ashley St. Clair, the former MAGA influencer and mother to one of Elon Musk’s many children, claimed on Sunday that the messaging coming from MAGA world following the White House Correspondence Dinner is both “paid” and heavily coordinated. Screenshots of pro-MAGA accounts curiously sharing nearly identical messaging quickly circulated on nüTwitter, bolstering St. Clair’s claims.

In her TikTok post, St. Clair explained, “I think it’s also important to note that one of the main group chats in which they coordinate this messaging is literally called “Fight Fight Fight,” after the attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, okay, and this has the official Trump War Room members of the administration, including James Blair, and all your favorite MAGA influencers. And I would log on and show you more of these messages, but I can’t log on to Twitter because they’re suing me for $75,000.”

As our colleague and partner Brian Tyler Cohen noted in his most recent piece on Substack, “Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok are all awash with accusations that the shooting was staged as a pretext for Trump to gin up support for his ballroom… Now, I don’t know the truth, nor am I in a position to opine. But I found this notable because Trump has been on a decade-long mission to obliterate the very concept of truth. And he did it.”

And that’s the kicker, isn’t it? MAGA’s reaction to Saturday was quite clearly coordinated, or “staged,” as St. Clair claims. But was the shooting staged? Probably not. Why “probably not” instead of a flat “no?” Because Trump has unfortunately succeeded in annihilating any notion of a shared collective reality. No one knows where we go from here, because “here” is no longer a singular agreed upon space.

Trump backs ridiculous name change for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Our fearless leader was back on his late-night doom scroll regimen last night, boosting an 11pm post by a self-described “MAGA journalist” calling for the federal government to rename ICE “NICE” — as in National Immigration and Customs Enforcement” — so the media “has to say NICE agents all day every day.” Neat!

If we call it “NICE,” we won’t have to think about Donald’s brute squad disappearing people right off the streets or how our tax dollars are being used to indefinitely lock up hundreds of thousands of innocent people — including lots of children! — in filthy, disease-stricken concentration camps!

But, why stop there? A few other suggestions, if we may be so bold: how about the Bureau of Labor Statistics that Help Trump (BLSHT), or the Federal Election Theft Commission Headquarters (FETCH)? Ooh, the Federal Investigation Bureau (FIB)! And the Education Nullifying Department (END)! The possibilities are as endless as they are dystopian!

GOP senator uses WHCD shooting as excuse to nuke filibuster, fund DHS
Republicans have never met a national tragedy or near-tragedy they haven’t been willing to immediately politicize for naked, partisan gain. Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson now believes the Senate must finally kill off the filibuster, which has existed since the inception of the upper chamber in 1789, to fund the Dept. of Homeland Security without any say from Democrats. His reasoning? If Republicans don’t kill off the filibuster first, those bastard Democrats will when they reclaim the majority in the future. Kinda sounds like Trump’s logic for pre-emptively attacking Iran, eh? How’s that working out?

John Fetterman calls for Dems to “drop the TDS” and build Trump’s ballroom following shooting
Respectfully, John, please shut the fuck up. Contrary to popular belief, the only folks suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” are the unhinged sycophants treating him like some sort of modern-day messiah.

Democrats aren’t opposing Donald’s ballroom because they’re “deranged.” It’s the “rules don’t apply to me” approach the MAGA cult leader adopts in literally every thing he does. You want to demolish an entire wing of the White House and build a silly ballroom? Fine. Go through the proper channels. Otherwise, expect bureaucratic pushback and legal roadblocks galore.

Lastly, can a real Pennsylvania Democrat please primary this charlatan in 2028?