William Vaillancourt

Christian Monterrosa/AFP via Getty ImagesCNN defended the moderators of Thursday’s upcoming presidential debate after a contentious exchange on the network Monday in which anchor Kasie Hunt abruptly ended her interview with Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt after Leavitt continually criticized Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.“Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are well respected veteran journalists who have covered politics for more than five decades combined,” the network said in a statement, per The Hill. “They have extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN’s Republican Presidential Primary Debate this cycle. There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion and we look forward to the debate on June 27 in Atlanta.”Tapper hosts CNN’s weekday afternoon show, The Lead, as well as State of the Union on Sundays. Bash is in the anchor’s chair for Inside Politics and frequently appears on a number of other shows. The pair previously hosted a Republican primary debate in Iowa back in January, which Trump skipped—as he did with every debate of the primary season.Read more at The Daily Beast.

CNNRep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said definitively Thursday that she has no confidence in the Supreme Court amid its dismal approval ratings, ethics controversies, and weighty forthcoming opinions.On the two year anniversary of the court overturning Roe v. Wade, the former House speaker told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Republicans’ restrictions on abortion will continue to be a key factor in the upcoming election, as was the case in the 2022 midterms. Cooper then asked how Pelosi felt about the court’s current docket.“Do you have confidence in the Supreme Court?” the AC360 anchor asked, noting the court’s still pending decision regarding Trump’s monarch-like claims of immunity from prosecution, the controversy over the Jan. 6-linked flags at the homes of Justice Samuel Alito, and lingering ethical questions about Alito’s and Justice Clarence Thomas’ lavish travel and gifts.Read more at The Daily Beast.

A LinkedIn co-founder and billionaire Democratic donor is concerned about Donald Trump retaliating against him should he be elected president in November.Reid Hoffman told CNN on Thursday that it’s possible that Trump “will persecute his political opponents with the instruments of state.”“Of course I’m concerned,” Hoffson explained. “When you feel fear is the precise time that you should think about stepping up.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Brendan McDermid/ReutersThe author of a new book about Donald Trump’s reality television background described the former president as “meandering and confusing” and exhibiting “some cognitive questions” during interviews for Apprentice in Wonderland.Variety Co-Editor in Chief Ramin Setoodeh appeared on CNN’s The Source on Tuesday, where anchor Kaitlan Collins asked him about the six interviews he conducted with Trump since May 2021.“What was he like? What did you observe from him when you sat down with him?” Collins asked.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsSen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), a Trump critic-turned-supporter, was confronted Tuesday on Fox News with a handful of his prior statements about the former president, including how Trump could be “America’s Hitler.”On Special Report, Fox anchor Bret Baier read Vance’s own words back to him. Besides Vance’s February 2016 musing about whether the then-candidate was the United States’ version of the Nazi dictator, Baier mentioned how Vance wrote a few months later that Trump was “cultural heroin.”Additional quotes from Vance that Baier cited were how he once called Trump “noxious” and “reprehensible.” Vance also once said he was a “never-Trump guy.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Will Dunham/ReutersSeveral right-wing accounts on X pushed a false narrative Monday that barricades had been installed around the Supreme Court ahead of its ruling regarding former President Donald Trump’s sweeping claims of immunity from criminal prosecution.In a since-deleted post, Turning Point USA contributor and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson shared a 22-second video clip of barricades surrounding the high court.The clip began to gain traction and the same video soon showed up on several other right-wing accounts. One widely circulated post by @dom_lucre received more than 1 million views as of publication.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Yara Nardi/ReutersA member of the White House communications team went after The New York Post on Thursday after it posted on social media a deceptively edited video of President Joe Biden at the G7 economic summit in Italy.White House Senior Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates responded to a post by the publication on X that had the caption, “President Biden appeared to wander off at the G7 summit in Italy, with officials needing to pull him back to focus.”“The Murdoch outlets are so desperate to distract from @POTUS’s record that they just lie,” Bates wrote.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsFox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday excitedly envisioned an “age of Trump” that could hold the reins of government for a half-century.In her opening monologue on the day that the former president received a hero’s welcome by the vast majority of Republicans on Capitol Hill—his first visit since the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection—Ingraham called on Republicans to admit that Trump “was right” about essentially everything.“He was right about the economy. He was right about the courts. He was right about the border, illegal aliens, China, and U.S. trade. And he has delivered tangible results all while being hilarious and entertaining,” she gushed, before showing a TikTok of Trump with professional wrestler Logan Paul, on whose podcast he appeared.Read more at The Daily Beast.

CNNFormer Fulton County prosecutor Nathan Wade, who had been leading the case against Donald Trump and his allies in Georgia until his resignation earlier this year after his relationship with District Attorney Fani Willis came to light, claimed Wednesday that even if the former president won re-election, he could still be tried and imprisoned if convicted—a belief that elicited skepticism from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.When Collins asked Wade if it would be constitutional for a sitting president to be put on trial and then potentially jailed, Wade at first suggested that it would be.“So let’s look at the question in reverse,” he replied. “Are you asking me if there’s anyone who’s above the law at any point in time in their life?”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Alex Wong/Getty ImagesSupreme Court Justice Samuel Alito accused news organization ProPublica of operating with political motivations because “they don’t like our decisions,” according to new audio published Tuesday by Rolling Stone.Alito was secretly recorded at the Supreme Court Historical Society annual dinner on June 3 by Ally Sammarco, a colleague of journalist Lauren Windsor, who herself recorded frank comments by Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann, which were reported on Monday.When asked why the Supreme Court “is being so attacked and being so targeted by the media these days,” Alito replied:Read more at The Daily Beast.