Justin Baragona

Krista Kennell/GettyPolling data guru Nate Silver, often trashed for his worst predictions, on Wednesday declared Donald Trump to be the overwhelming favorite to beat President Joe Biden come November.“The presidential election isn’t a toss-up,” Silver declared on social media—despite the growing consensus of a close race.Meanwhile, the data site founded by Silver—which he recently exited—doesn’t seem to agree with his model at all: FiveThirtyEight forecasts the race as a “pure toss-up,” with Biden being slight favorite at 51 percent to Trump’s 49 percent, according to current polling. In fact, Biden is “favored to win in 509 out of 1,000 of our model’s simulations,” wrote the site’s editorial director, G. Elliott Morris.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jim Watson/Getty ImagesUnless Donald Trump decides to back out at the last minute because President Joe Biden didn’t agree to be tested for some mystery performance enhancers, CNN will host the first 2024 presidential debate on Thursday night.The event will be moderated by longtime CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. The debate is also extremely early, historically speaking, taking place before either candidate has been officially nominated by their respective parties.Tapper, who anchors the weekday news show The Lead and co-anchors the Sunday talk show State of the Union, joined CNN in 2012. Before his award-winning career at the cable news juggernaut, Tapper was a White House correspondent for ABC News and a frequent guest host of the network’s Sunday show This Week. He’s also a prolific novelist and cartoonist.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Justin Sullivan/GettyDonald Trump is once again very mad at Fox News—this time over the conservative cable giant’s latest poll that shows him down nationally against President Joe Biden in the race for the White House.The ex-president's latest temper tantrum over Fox News comes just a day after he fumed that “nobody can ever trust” the Murdoch-owned channel because former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who recently sounded off against Trump, sits on Fox’s board.“The latest Fox News poll is TRASH! They used a biased, Democrat-leaning sample of voters, polling more Biden 2020 voters than Trump 2020 voters to skew the results in favor of Crooked Joe,” Trump groused on his Truth Social platform on Thursday. “I am leading BIG in virtually every other poll, including in all of the key battleground states, like Wisconsin, where I just held a massive rally, and Pennsylvania, where I will be on Saturday.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsFox News fired back Tuesday after the White House accused the conservative cable giant and Trumpworld of peddling deceptively cut “cheap fake” videos to make President Joe Biden look decrepit and feeble.The right-wing network’s hosts and pundits also made the bizarre claim that it’s a “felony” to mislabel “deepfake” videos and that CNN could find itself in “litigious territory” during the upcoming presidential debate if they criticized Fox’s coverage.Over the past two weeks, the Republican National Committee and major conservative media outlets have amplified several short video clips supposedly showing the 81-year-old president freezing on stage, wandering off, or even pooping his pants.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Roy Rochlin/GettyEric Bolling, who parted ways with Fox News in 2017 amid sexual misconduct allegations, is now leaving the wannabe Fox News competitor he joined in 2021.Pro-Trump cable news channel Newsmax confirmed on Friday that Bolling had departed the network, noting that they had “mutually agreed” to end his primetime program The Balance. According to a network spokesperson, a temporary replacement show will take its place starting Monday with a rotating slate of hosts until a new show is announced this summer.“Newsmax wishes Eric Bolling well in his future endeavors,” the spokesperson added. “The network looks forward to an exciting period this election season which will include our nightly news coverage with Greta Van Susteren, Rob Schmitt, Greg Kelly and Chris Plante.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsOscar winner Robert De Niro on Tuesday delivered a pro-Biden speech outside the courthouse where former President Donald Trump is facing trial. A crowd of MAGA protesters looked on before shouting at the star that Capitol police officers ”lied under oath” about the Jan. 6 insurrection.De Niro did not take too kindly to the interruptions. With the Trump hush-money trial heading into closing arguments, De Niro held the press conference surrounded by several law enforcement officers, including Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, who were attacked by Jan. 6 rioters at the Capitol.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsAfter Donald Trump accused President Joe Biden of ordering federal law enforcement to use “deadly force” on him during 2022’s Mar-a-Lago raid, right-wing provocateurs and MAGA lawmakers have quickly seized on the opportunity to cook up a wild assassination plot.And though Fox News didn’t sink nearly to the depths of the Trumpiest edges of the conservative media universe, the network still wondered whether a standard FBI policy document meant Biden was saying it “would be okay to kill Donald Trump.”Trump set MAGA world ablaze on Tuesday afternoon when he took to his failing Truth Social platform to blare in all-caps that Biden’s Department of Justice had “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE. NOW WE KNOW, FOR SURE, THAT JOE BIDEN IS A SERIOUS THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Rey Del Rio/GettyThe steady drip, drip, drip of the justice system comes for us all. Especially in the case of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.Joined by ten co-defendants, the former Trump attorney entered a plea of not guilty on Tuesday at his arraignment. Giuliani faces nine felony charges for his alleged involvement in the attempt to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat in Arizona.During his remote appearance in the Phoenix courtroom via Zoom, Giuliani revealed that he did not currently have a lawyer representing him but that he should at a later date. Asked by the judge whether he’d need a court-appointed attorney, Giuliani responded: “No, I think I am capable of handling it myself.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/GETTYA cadre of MAGA loyalists who had gathered to show their support for Donald Trump during his hush-money trial was shouted down by a bevy of cowbell-clanging anti-Trump protesters on Monday when they tried to speak outside of a lower Manhattan courthouse.In what has become a familiar scene, several of the former president’s allies appeared in New York City on Monday to rail against Trump's prosecution and demonstrate to the 2024 White House hopeful their utter devotion to him. In recent days, a number of wannabe vice-presidential candidates and MAGA lawmakers have made the trek to curry favor with Trump and help him circumvent the judge’s gag order.The group that flanked the twice-impeached ex-president this time around included South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, former New York police commissioner Bernie Kerik, ex-Trump administration official Kash Patel, Trump senior advisor Jason Miller, and Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA). All but Patel, meanwhile, were customarily decked out in Trump’s standard red tie and navy suit combo.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsWith it almost certain that Fox News will not be hosting a presidential debate this year, the conservative cable giant surprisingly proposed a vice presidential debate on Friday that Donald Trump’s campaign has already accepted.Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier made the announcement during an appearance on Martha MacCallum’s afternoon news program, calling it the “Wild West of debate proposals.”Fox’s request to host a VP showdown comes two days after President Joe Biden and Trump agreed to debate in June and September, with CNN and ABC News moderating those events. Baier also noted on Friday that Fox News has so far been unsuccessful in getting both campaigns to agree to a standoff on the right-wing channel.Read more at The Daily Beast.