‘I don't believe it for a minute': O'Reilly on Qatar funding Hamas
Bill O'Reilly joins 'On Balance' to discuss the possibility of President Trump accepting a Qatar-donated Boeing 747 as a new Air Force One aircraft and his trip to the Middle East.
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New York Times
21 minutes ago
- New York Times
Live Updates: Democrats Running for N.Y.C. Mayor Are Set to Debate
Nine Democrats will take the stage Wednesday night for the first debate of the primary. A mayoral indictment. A Cuomo comeback attempt. And the rise of a socialist upstart. The race for mayor of New York City has already been anything but tranquil. On Wednesday night, it will enter an even more combative phase, as nine of the candidates competing for the Democratic nomination meet for the first of two televised debates before the June 24 primary. The stakes are high for candidates hoping to shake up the race and for the city they want to lead as it confronts a growing affordability crisis, persistent concerns about crime and threats from President Trump. The attention will be on Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor who has dominated polls since he entered the race in March. Mr. Cuomo has run a low-show campaign, cruising on millions of dollars from wealthy donors, his family name and his successes as governor rebuilding LaGuardia Airport and raising the minimum wage. But four years after he resigned as governor amid sexual harassment allegations he denies, Mr. Cuomo, 67, is trying to reintroduce himself to voters on favorable terms, and his rivals have prepared to team up to re-litigate his decades-long record. Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old from Queens, has been the race's unexpected standout, surging into second place in the polls with viral social media videos and an ambitious platform to freeze rents and make buses free. He is hoping to expand his appeal to more moderate voters, but his outspoken socialist views, sharp criticism of Israel and relative inexperience could be an impediment. Brad Lander, the city comptroller, Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker, and Scott Stringer, the former comptroller, are all more conventional liberals who argue they have the potential to put together a broader coalition. Despite much more experience in city government, they have struggled to generate the kind of enthusiasm Mr. Mamdani has, and have hesitated to attack him. The debate may offer an indication of whether this group's loose alliance against Mr. Cuomo will hold in the final weeks. A few lesser-known candidates — State Senators Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos, former Assemblyman Michael Blake and the financier Whitney Tilson — are still introducing themselves to voters and would need a breakout moment to shake up the race. Mayor Eric Adams is running for a second term, but as an independent, so he will not be on the debate stage.
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump's sons deny involvement in ‘official' Trump memecoin wallet
A version of this story appeared in CNN Business' Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. The Trump family is quickly learning what happens when you get into business with one of the internet's most bizarre sideshows. As a quick catch-up: On Tuesday, crypto researcher Molly White dropped a scoop that said the president was about to launch a Trump-branded cryptocurrency wallet to encourage people to trade his $TRUMP memecoin — yet another product expanding the Trump family's reach in digital assets. (For the uninitiated, a crypto wallet is a kind of personal online vault for storing digital assets like cryptocurrencies.) The project, White wrote, was being developed by the two Trump-family-run entities behind the memecoin in partnership with a crypto marketplace called Magic Eden. A few hours later, Magic Eden confirmed White's reporting and pushed out its own announcement of the 'Official $TRUMP Wallet by President Trump.' The official Trump memecoin website also confirmed the launch in a post on X. So far, just another day in crypto-land under Trump 2.0. The Trumps have raked in nearly $1 billion in paper gains (according to a Bloomberg estimate) through various ventures since the president's re-election in November, and the wallet seemed like just the latest project in an ever-expanding crypto empire. But then, the story took a turn. Trump's sons came out saying the family had 'zero involvement with this wallet product.' Donald Trump Jr. posted that he and his brother Eric knew 'nothing about it,' but that separately one of their other crypto ventures, World Liberty Financial, would be launching an official wallet 'soon.' Even Barron Trump, who rarely posts on social media, chimed in to say the family 'has zero involvement with this wallet.' It appears to be more than just a slight miscommunication. As White noted in an update to her story, Magic Eden is a relatively big player in crypto, 'so this is not a case of some nobody creating a fake project pretending to be an official Trump-affiliated app.' But it's far from clear how a run-of-the-mill wallet announcement turned into a public feud. A Trump Organization spokeswoman wrote in an email to CNN that 'Eric and Don had no prior knowledge on this project and there is no agreement with The Trump Organization.' Representatives for the Trump memecoin and Magic Eden didn't respond to CNN's request for comment Wednesday. Just to underscore the point: Eric Trump appeared to threaten Magic Eden with a lawsuit in a post Tuesday night, telling the company 'I would be extremely careful using our name in a project that has not been approved and is unknown to anyone in our organization.' (Eric also told the New York Times that the Trump family would legally challenge the creation of the 'Official $TRUMP Wallet.' This rift is surprising because of how closely connected the two sides are. On one side we've got the Trump boys, on the other the folks at Magic Eden and the official $TRUMP memecoin. Those two sides are hardly isolated strangers. The Trump boys run the Trump Organization, which has an affiliate called CIC Digital, which shares the majority of $TRUMP memecoins with another company called Fight Fight Fight . *Deep breath* Fight Fight Fight is led by a longtime Trump business associate named Bill Zanker, who co-wrote a book with the president in 2008 and has worked on several Trump-related crypto projects, and it runs the $TRUMP website. So, Zanker is not officially part of the Trump Org, but he is deeply connected to the president and the family's various crypto money-making operations. Zanker was the brains behind last month's memecoin dinner at Trump's DC-area golf club, Bloomberg's Olga Kharif wrote recently. 'Zanker's name is not on the website for the memecoin and he has avoided any comment on it,' Kharif writes. 'But on a Delaware corporate filing, Zanker is listed as the 'authorized person' for Fight Fight Fight LLC.' The $3 trillion crypto industry has been thrilled to get a cheerleader in the White House who's promised to push friendly legislation and defang the regulators that have historically held crypto at arm's length. But at the same time, many crypto executives and investors are holding their nose and looking the other way whenever Trump embraces some of the silly (at times scammy) elements of crypto-land. Like the memecoin, a joke-based subcategory of crypto that has no utility and is closely associated with 'rug-pull' scams. See also: the bitcoin strategic reserve and the pardoning of a notorious crypto criminal who was serving a life sentence for selling and distributing narcotics. Or the Trump $TRUMP dinner, widely criticized as selling access to the president. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back heavily on those criticisms during a press briefing hours before the May 22 dinner, telling reporters it was 'absurd for anyone to insinuate that this president is profiting off of the presidency.' This confusion over the crypto wallet rollout isn't helping anyone trying to pitch crypto as a sophisticated market that's ready for prime time.
Politico
23 minutes ago
- Politico
Dems eye a villain-to-ally arc for Musk
Welcome to POLITICO's West Wing Playbook: Remaking Government, your guide to Donald Trump's unprecedented overhaul of the federal government — the key decisions, the critical characters and the power dynamics that are upending Washington and beyond. Send tips | Subscribe | Email Sophia | Email Irie | Email Ben | Email Holly ELON MUSK has been the Democratic Party's boogeyman since shortly after President DONALD TRUMP deputized him as a top adviser. But the billionaire's recent breaks with the GOP — Musk ripped Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' as a 'disgusting abomination' on X this week and threatened to 'fire all politicians' who backed it — are complicating the party's portrayal of him as a chainsaw-wielding, bureaucracy-breaking villain. A few Democrats are eager to welcome Musk, who said he voted for former President JOE BIDEN in 2020 and gave a tour of SpaceX to then-President BARACK OBAMA, back into the fold. Rep. RO KHANNA (D-Calif.), who represents Silicon Valley and has known Musk for over a decade, said Democrats should 'be in a dialogue' with Musk, given their shared opposition to the GOP's megabill. 'We should ultimately be trying to convince him that the Democratic Party has more of the values that he agrees with,' Khanna said. 'A commitment to science funding, a commitment to clean technology, a commitment to seeing international students like him.' Other Democrats are warming back up to Musk as he leaves the White House and starts to break with his former boss in ways that could benefit the opposition. 'I'm a believer in redemption, and he is telling the truth about the legislation,' said Rep. RITCHIE TORRES (D-N.Y.). But, he added, Musk has 'done an enormous amount of damage' and 'there are Democrats who see his decimation of the federal workforce and the federal government as an unforgivable sin.' LIAM KERR, co-founder of the group behind the centrist Democrats' WelcomeFest meeting today in Washington, said 'of course' Democrats should, ahem, welcome Musk back into the party. 'You don't want anyone wildly distorting your politics, which he has a unique capability to do. But it's a zero-sum game,' Kerr said. 'Anything that he does that moves more toward Democrats hurts Republicans.' Rep. BRAD SCHNEIDER (D-Ill.), the chair of the New Democrat Coalition who earlier this year supported the party's targeting of Musk as the Department of Government Efficiency slashed through federal agencies, said that with his departure from Washington, Democrats shouldn't make Musk their focus. 'We should be talking about what we're doing for the American people,' he said. It's hard to imagine an outright reunion taking place between Musk and Democrats in the near future. And Trump and Musk are said to still be friendly. (Watch Truth Social for updates!) Still, Musk recently threatened to cut off the money spigot for Republicans. And Democrats would have a lot to gain by merely keeping the world's richest man on the sidelines in the midterm elections and beyond. If Musk makes a mess of GOP primaries, that would work in their favor, too. But Musk's recent heel-turn also risks reopening a divide between progressives and moderates over how to approach him and other billionaires. 'Our caucus has done the right thing and gone toe-to-toe against Musk,' said Rep. GREG CASAR (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and one of the party's most vocal advocates for making Musk an antagonist on the campaign trail. Others are taking a wait-and-see approach. 'I don't think we should take one ketamine-fueled tweet as evidence of a change of heart,' said MATT BENNETT, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way. 'It's more complicated.' THE DOGE AFTERMATH: Empty beer bottles and leftover marijuana were strewn about. Cockroaches and rodents scurried around. The U.S. Institute of Peace looked like a frat house after an all-weekend rager when its employees were granted access to its Washington headquarters last month, according to USIP's head of security, COLIN O'BRIEN. USIP is an independent, congressionally funded organization that DOGE took over in March. When employees returned following a court order that blocked the Trump administration from dismantling the institute, they found the multimillion-dollar building on the National Mall in disarray. O'Brien said that based on accounts from people who were in the building during the two month-long DOGE takeover, 'they were smoking weed in the building' and leftover marijuana was scattered about. Numerous USIP flags throughout the building were missing when the institute's employees returned, he added. When USIP employees were removed from their positions following a dramatic standoff with DOGE staffers, they had to turn in their laptops, cell phones and chargers. But when they came back last week, the hundreds of laptops were haphazardly stacked on top of each other, with no documentation of their ownership. Hundreds of chargers were thrown in recycle and waste baskets, which employees had to dig out, O'Brien said. 'It was neglect,' he said. 'These folks don't know how to run a large, multi- building commercial office complex.' The White House did not respond to a request for comment. MESSAGE US — West Wing Playbook is obsessively covering the Trump administration's reshaping of the federal government. Are you a federal worker? A DOGE staffer? Have you picked up on any upcoming DOGE moves? We want to hear from you on how this is playing out. Email us at [email protected]. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe! POTUS PUZZLER Which president was considered 'The Dude'? (Answer at bottom.) Musk Radar ANGERED SOME FOLKS: The top two congressional leaders rebutted Musk's criticism of Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' today, as the Tesla CEO continued to attack the legislation and threatened to 'fire' the lawmakers who supported it next November, our MEREDITH LEE HILL and JORDAIN CARNEY report. Speaker MIKE JOHNSON spent time in a closed-door House GOP conference this morning pushing back on Musk's comments and reassuring Republicans. 'I think he's flat wrong, and I've told him as much,' Johnson said at a news conference. Senate Majority Leader JOHN THUNE downplayed the impact of Musk's criticism. 'Obviously he has some influence, got a big following on social media,' he told reporters. 'But at the end of the day, this is a 51-vote exercise here in the Senate, and I think [the] question for our members is going to be: Would you prefer the alternative? And the alternative isn't a good one.' BEEN A LONG TIME COMING: Musk's issues with the White House existed long before his criticism of Trump's megabill, ABC News' RACHEL SCOTT and WILL STEAKIN report. Multiple people described a widening rift between the two men on a number of issues. Musk has particularly taken issue with the spending bill's electric vehicle tax credit cut. He has also become increasingly frustrated with the administration striking AI deals with his competitor, SAM ALTMAN. He was also frustrated by the administration's decision last week to pull the nomination of JARED ISAACMAN, a longtime ally of Musk, to lead NASA. Agenda Setting NOT HOW THAT WORKS: Trump administration officials delayed and redacted a government forecast report because it predicted an increase in the country's trade deficit in farm goods later this year, our MARCIA BROWN reports. The numbers run contrary to the president's messaging that his economic policies, including steep tariffs, will reduce U.S. trade imbalances. The data prompted officials to block the publication of the written analysis normally attached to the report because they disliked what it said about the deficit. The report, released Monday, includes numbers unchanged from how they would've read in the unredacted report. ASTERISK NEXT TO THIS ONE: Economists are questioning the accuracy of recent U.S. inflation data following significant government cuts, WSJ's MATT GROSSMAN reports. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the office that publishes the inflation rate, told outside economists this week that a hiring freeze at the agency forced the survey to cut back on the number of businesses that participate in price checks. Government statisticians had to use a less precise method for guessing price changes in last month's report than in previous ones. WHO'S IN, WHO'S OUT HERE TO STAY: At least three of Musk's early DOGE operatives and key lieutenants are staying in the government as full-time employees, WIRED's MAKENA KELLY reports. EDWARD CORISTINE, LUKE FARRITOR and ETHAN SHAOTRAN's employment designations at the GSA have officially been converted to full-time from the restricted classification that limited their time in government to 130 days. Coristine, otherwise known as 'Big Balls,' previously worked for a telecommunications firm known for hiring former blackhat hackers. KYLE SCHUTT, another early DOGE operative, has also appeared to change employment classification at least twice but is still listed as a special government employee. HUH? During his testimony in front of a House appropriations committee on the president's budget request this afternoon, OMB Director RUSS VOUGHT said former Boring CEO STEVE DAVIS is currently leading DOGE but that they're in the middle of 'establishing leadership on an ongoing basis.' But with Davis reportedly also out the door, Rep. MARK POCAN (D-Wis.) had a question: 'Who's in charge of DOGE?' 'The Cabinet agencies that are in charge of the DOGE consultants that work for them are fundamentally in charge of DOGE,' Vought said. Knives Out MORE ON THE DRUGS … Rep. STEPHEN LYNCH (D-Mass.), ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, today asked Trump for information about Musk's alleged drug use during the 2024 campaign and whether he was consuming illicit substances during his time as an adviser at the White House, CBS News' MELISSA QUINN reports. Lynch wrote in a letter to the president that he is beginning an investigation into the extent of Musk's alleged drug use and asked Trump to turn over information about what he or other officials knew about it. 'The drastic and erratic nature of Mr. Musk's decisions and actions as a government employee, coupled with the reports of his drug use, begs the question of whether Mr. Musk was under the influence of illicit substances while working in your White House,' Lynch wrote. What We're Reading A Gross and Brazen 'DOGE Check' Scam (The Bulwark's Andrew Egger, Cathy Young and Jim Swift) How DOGE's push to amass data could hurt the reliability of future U.S. statistics (NPR's Hansi Lo Wang) A Student at Brown Channeled Elon Musk. Then He Got in Trouble (NYT's Jeremy W. Peters) Karine Jean-Pierre is leaving the Democratic Party. Her former White House colleagues have some thoughts. (POLITICO's Eli Stokols) POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER No, not JEFF BRIDGES. It was CHESTER A. ARTHUR, of course. In the late 1800s, a 'dude' was considered 'a term of mockery for young men who were overly concerned with keeping up with the latest fashions.' And Arthur lived up to the nickname, as he had a love for fashion. After he became president following JAMES GARFIELD's assassination, Arthur spent $30,000 (almost $1 million today) on renovating the White House to better handle his extravagant parties.
