Hey everyone. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend.
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Okay, our top story today: President Trump sat down for an interview with NBC, and let’s just say he lost his cool. After a tense back-and-forth, he abruptly ended the interview and walked off the set. Lot’s to talk about there.
We’ll also get into Israel striking Iran overnight, after Trump told it to stand down. A federal prosecutor sent to watch Los Angeles count its ballots, because the President’s candidate is losing. Trump dragging his feet on a Ukraine drone deal his own Pentagon says we need. And his acting attorney general openly admitting he’s building roadblocks so this administration can never be held accountable.
1. Trump Walks Off His NBC Interview Over a Question He Couldn't Answer
The president sat down with host Kristen Welker this weekend, and the interview started out pretty normal. Welker walked him through the war with Iran. She asked about interest rates, about the economy. For the most part it was a regular interview, with Trump mostly doing the thing presidents are supposed to do, which is sit there and answer the questions.
But then the topic of election fraud came up, and the energy shifted. Welker asked the president for evidence to back up his claims, and of course he didn’t have any. So he turned on her. Here’s the clip:
She asked the President of the United States to back up something he says in public, all the time, to millions of people. That is the most basic thing a reporter can do. And he treated it like an ambush.
I’ve sat through plenty of interviews where somebody asked me a hard question I didn’t love. You know what you do? You answer it. You wanted the office, and the office comes with people asking you to prove what you say.
And honestly, if you believe the thing you’re claiming, this is the easy part. You put your proof on the table and you let the reporter look silly for ever doubting you. The only reason to get up and walk out is if you have no proof. So he walked out.
To her credit, Welker never lost it. She kept her cool while the most powerful man on the planet came apart three feet away from her.
Just last week he took an ordinary press question in the Oval Office and turned it into a personal attack on CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. And Collins didn’t take the bait either. She answered him, moved on, and got right back to the actual story.
That’s the pattern with Trump. He goes after the reporters, especially the women, calls them names, asks why they aren’t smiling at him, and they just take it and keep doing their jobs while he’s the one losing his composure.
The reporter stayed calm. The president threw the fit. And we’ve all kind of decided that’s just normal now. But we can do better, and we must demand better from our leaders.
2. Israel Hit Iran Hours After Trump Asked Netanyahu to Hold Off
The war between Israel and Iran has come back to life, yet again. It started with Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut over the weekend, which killed at least two people. Iran answered by firing missiles at Israel, its first major attack since the April ceasefire. Then Israel hit back, striking air defenses and a petrochemical site inside Iran. Iran then struck a petrochemical plant in Haifa. The Houthis in Yemen also joined in.
Before Israel retaliated, Trump called Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and told him to resist retaliating, because the President has been saying a peace deal is close. According to a U.S. official, Netanyahu pushed back, half agreed to hold fire, and then ordered the strikes a few hours later anyway.
Over the weekend, Trump insisted he is the one in charge, telling the Financial Times: “I call the shots. I call all the shots.”
Except he clearly doesn’t. He told Israel not to respond, and they did it anyway. By this morning the two sides have eased into a shaky pause, with Trump online demanding both sides stop shooting. But we’ve seen how little these pauses hold, and at this point neither side seems to care much what he asks.
The president keeps promising a deal is one day away, and he just watched two countries ignore him to his face and risk pulling America deeper into this conflict.
3. Trump Cries Fraud in California the Moment His Guy Falls Behind
As more of California’s votes came in, the Trump-backed candidate for L.A. mayor, former reality star Spencer Pratt, started slipping. Another Democratic candidate has now edged ahead of him for the second and final spot in November’s runoff against Mayor Karen Bass. It’s not official yet, they’re still counting, but the clear path Pratt had on election night has turned into a steep climb.
And right on cue, the president has decided this can only mean one thing. Cheating.
Spoiler alert. He doesn’t have a shred of evidence. But his candidate is losing. Sound familiar?
So now he’s sending a federal prosecutor to California to go find the fraud he’s certain is there. His hand-picked top prosecutor in Los Angeles announced on Friday that his office has “multiple election fraud investigations“ underway. Meanwhile, the L.A. County District Attorney’s office says it hasn’t received a single complaint from the federal government about any actual misconduct. Not one.
We’ve seen this over and over again. Every time somebody actually goes looking for this fraud, they come up with nothing. His own attorney general, Bill Barr, looked into 2020 and said there was no fraud on a scale that would have changed the results. Republicans ran their own audit out in Arizona, spent months on it, and ended up confirming the result they were trying to throw out. The proof never shows up, because there’s nothing to find.
Nobody at the Justice Department was worried about California while the votes were being counted and Pratt was out front. The investigations appeared the moment his guy started losing. And right as Pratt was slipping out of that second spot, Trump went online and posted, “No way this could have happened. Rigged Election!”
So the candidate the President prefers is losing, and suddenly there is a federal prosecutor at the counting table. That is not enforcing the law. That is a president using his own Justice Department to fight an election result he doesn’t like and, once again, casting a shadow over the democratic process.
4. Trump's Defense Lawyer Is Now His Attorney General, and Acting Like It
Todd Blanche defended Donald Trump in all four of his criminal cases. Now he is the acting Attorney General, and Trump is pushing the Senate to install him permanently. On Friday, Blanche was asked what he can do about a future administration trying to prosecute Trump or his allies for their crimes:
The Attorney General’s job is to enforce the law for the entire country. Blanche is describing the opposite: a Justice Department whose mission is to make sure his old client and the people around him can never be held accountable, no matter what they did, no matter who wins the next election.
None of this should surprise you. Last week, after two months of watching Blanche hunt Trump’s enemies and sell the slush fund, the President rewarded him with the nomination to run the Justice Department for good, and we said the real question was what Blanche would do to keep the job. Well, he answered that question before the Senate has even voted on him.
So here is what to watch now. Blanche still needs the Senate to confirm him, and that means a vote is coming. Every Republican who casts a yes is voting to turn the Justice Department into a shield for Donald Trump. So watch that roll call closely, and remember who signs on.
5. White House Stalls Drone Partnership With Ukraine
For months, Ukraine has been asking the United States to sign a drone deal. Not a handout. A partnership. After four years of fighting Russia, Ukraine is the best in the world at drone warfare, and it has offered to let us test, train, and learn how it builds them.
Trump’s own people, like US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, agree it’s a smart move:
And still, no deal. Defense experts from the left and right are baffled, though former officials are no stranger to “a certain amount of hostility towards Ukraine coming from the very top.” Keep in mind, Trump has cut off most military aid to Ukraine, and he still compliments Vladimir Putin any chance he gets.
The consequences of the stalled deal are real: In March, six American troops were killed in Kuwait by an Iranian attack drone. Ukraine knows how to stop those drones, and we still haven’t signed the paper. Who does that delay help? Not our troops. Not Ukraine. The only winner is the one leader Trump won’t cross, and that is Vladimir Putin.
Thank you so much for being with us. Again, if you’re able to go find The Kinzinger Report on any major podcast platform like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, I would be super grateful for 5 stars and a follow.
See you tomorrow.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Pete Hegseth uses D-Day commemoration to push domestic agenda. On Saturday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used the 82nd D-Day commemoration in Normandy to warn European leaders about what he called an ongoing “invasion” by foreigners arriving by boat on Mediterranean beaches. Hegseth stopped short of using the word “immigration,” but at the Normandy American Cemetery he asked when European capital cities would act to stop the arrivals, questioning whether it was already too late. Hegseth also skipped the main international ceremony and some local residents made clear he was not welcome. D-Day commemorations have historically been reserved as solemn, unifying events, with American secretaries of defense using the occasion to reaffirm those alliances with the European partners, not call into question their own policies.
Police escorted five diabetes researchers out of the American Diabetes Association’s annual meeting for handing out copies of an editorial criticizing the Trump administration’s attacks on scientific research. Friday morning, minutes before NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was scheduled to deliver the keynote, an appearance he canceled at the last moment. One of the doctors removed, Steven Kahn, edits the ADA’s own flagship journal, the one that published that editorial back in April. The ADA says the group violated the conference code of conduct and had been given the chance to stop before security escorted them out. The editorial pointed to at least $450 million in frozen NIH research grants, including $66 million cut from diabetes funding alone. Some of the doctors had their lanyards taken and were warned they would be arrested if they tried to come back.
