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CNN
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNN
Fact check: Trump calls to prosecute Beyoncé based on a nonexistent $11 million payment
President Donald Trump called Saturday for the prosecution of music superstar Beyoncé – based on something that did not actually happen. Trump claimed in a social media post that Beyoncé broke the law by supposedly getting paid $11 million for her endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris during an October 2024 event in Houston. But there is simply no basis for Trump's claim that Beyoncé received an $11 million payment related to the Harris campaign, let alone for the endorsement in particular. Federal campaign spending records show a $165,000 payment from the Harris campaign to Beyoncé's production company, which the campaign listed as a 'campaign event production' expense. A Harris campaign spokesperson told Deadline last year that they didn't pay celebrity endorsers, but were required by law to cover the costs connected to their appearances. Regardless of the merits of this particular $165,000 expenditure, it's far from an $11 million one. Nobody has ever produced any evidence for the claim of an eight-figure endorsement payment to Beyoncé since the claim that it was '$10 million' began spreading last year among Trump supporters on social media. Fact-check websites and PolitiFact looked into the '$10 million' claim during the campaign and did not find any basis for it. The White House did not immediately respond to a CNN request late Saturday for any evidence of Trump's $11 million figure. When Trump previously invoked the baseless figure, during an interview in February, he described his source in the vaguest of terms: 'Somebody just showed me something. They gave her $11 million.' A Harris spokesperson referred CNN on Saturday to a November social media post by Beyoncé's mother Tina Knowles, who called the claim of a $10 million payment a 'lie' and noted it was taken down by Instagram as 'False Information.' 'When In Fact: Beyonce did not receive a penny for speaking at a Presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harrris's (sic) Rally in Houston,' Knowles wrote. A spokesperson for Beyoncé told PolitiFact in November that the claim about a $10 million payment is 'beyond ridiculous.' Trump revived the false claim in a social media post published after midnight early Sunday morning in Scotland, where he is visiting. He wrote that he is looking at 'the fact' that Democrats 'admit to paying, probably illegally, Eleven Million Dollars to singer Beyoncé for an ENDORSEMENT.' Democratic officials actually reject the claim of an $11 million payment. The White House did not immediately respond to CNN's request for any evidence of a Democratic admission of such a payment. Trump went on to criticize other payments from the Harris campaign to organizations connected to prominent endorsers. He asserted without evidence that these payments were inaccurately described in spending records. And he wrongly asserted that it is 'TOTALLY ILLEGAL' to pay for political endorsements, though no federal law forbids endorsement payments. Trump concluded: 'Kamala, and all of those that received Endorsement money, BROKE THE LAW. They should all be prosecuted! Thank you for your attention to this matter.' Trump has repeatedly called for the prosecution of political opponents. His Saturday post about Harris and celebrity endorsements was an escalation from a post in May, when he said he would call for a 'major investigation' on the subject but did not explicitly mention prosecutions.
Fox News
22-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
White House flips script on Hunter Biden's explosive rant against Trump and more top headlines
Print Close Published July 22, 2025 Good morning and welcome to Fox News' morning newsletter, Fox News First. And here's what you need to know to start your day ... TOP 3 1. White House flips script on Hunter Biden's explosive rant against Trump 2. Iran will not give up nuclear enrichment, top official confirms in exclusive FOX News interview 3. Harris celebrates one-year anniversary of her failed campaign in wildly mocked post MAJOR HEADLINES LAW AND DISORDER – Recall effort against blue city DA takes off after alleged sex offender's case dismissed. Continue reading … MISSED SIGNS – Friend recalls last text from dentist's wife as murder trial enters second week. Continue reading … DEADLY ACCIDENT – Family reveals shocking details of what really happened in MRI incident. Continue reading … 'YOU WILL BE MISSED' – 'Cosby Show' actor dead at 54 as Hollywood shares emotional farewells. Continue reading … MOVING FORWARD – Astronomer interim CEO finds silver lining after viral Kiss Cam scandal. Continue reading … -- POLITICS POWER SHIFT – Mark Green resigns from Congress, further shrinking House GOP majority. Continue reading … HISTORIC TURN – NATO enters brave new era under pressure from US, Russia. Continue reading … SUNSHINE STATE SWIPE – DeSantis has five-word response to Cuomo over relocation joke. Continue reading … Click here for more cartoons… MEDIA 'CLICK'-DRIVEN – Sen. Fetterman's wife blasts journalists for invading family privacy after husband's hospitalization. Continue reading … LOOKING AWAY – Legacy media outlets largely silent on Tulsi Gabbard's bombshell Obama administration claims. Continue reading … OVER THE OUTRAGE – Billy Joel tells Bill Maher he's done caring what woke critics think. Continue reading … 'CERTAINLY WORKING' – ABC reporter disputes LA mayor saying Trump's border policy is harmful. Continue reading … OPINION LIZ PEEK – Trump could secure his place in American history with this bold immigration reform strategy. Continue reading … DANIEL HANDEL – I worked for USAID for 11 years – this is how you build a foreign aid system that actually works. Continue reading … -- IN OTHER NEWS DEADLY HARVEST – Federal probe finds doctors attempted organ removal while donors still alive. Continue reading … JUICY BARTER – Tropical fruit now accepted as payment by restaurants in major city. Continue reading … AMERICAN CULTURE QUIZ – Test yourself on fruit frontiers and star-spangled symbols. Take the quiz here … ANCIENT ANTICS – Rare 1,300-year-old medieval doodles reveal humor and daily life. Continue reading … MEAT EATER – Woman credits diet decision for latest successes. See video … WATCH STEPHEN MILLER – Democrats' policies shield these monsters from deportation. See video … TOM HOMAN – The Left doesn't want to admit the truth. See video … LISTEN Tune in to the FOX NEWS RUNDOWN PODCAST for today's in-depth reporting on the news that impacts you. Check it out ... FOX WEATHER What's it looking like in your neighborhood? Continue reading… FOLLOW FOX NEWS ON SOCIAL MEDIA Facebook Instagram YouTube Twitter LinkedIn SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTERS Fox News First Fox News Opinion Fox News Lifestyle Fox News Entertainment (FOX411) Fox News Sports Huddle DOWNLOAD OUR APPS Fox News Fox Business Fox Weather Fox Sports Tubi WATCH FOX NEWS ONLINE Fox News Go Thank you for making us your first choice in the morning! We'll see you in your inbox first thing Wednesday. Print Close URL
Fox News
27-05-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Democratic strategists question influence of Obama-era campaign operatives in party's future
Some Democratic strategists are questioning the role campaign operatives — who are associated with former President Barack Obama's presidential campaigns — will play going forward as the Democratic Party scrambles to move forward after former Vice President Kamala Harris' loss. "I'm sorry — I don't want a surgeon who keeps killing patients," Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis told NBC News about the set of Obama-era campaign operatives who contributed to several modern Democratic campaigns. "It's pretty easy to win with a guy like Obama." Several of those who led Obama's campaigns also worked for Harris in 2024, as well as former President Joe Biden, until he dropped out and lost to President Donald Trump. Obama campaign alums Jen O'Malley Dillion and Stephanie Cutter worked on Harris' campaign. Other former Obama campaign aides, Mitch Stewart and Rufus Gifford, worked on Biden's campaign as well, NBC News reported. DNC Finance Chair Chris Korge called out David Plouffe, Obama's 2008 campaign manager and an advisor to Harris' campaign, in an interview with NBC News earlier this month. Plouffe placed blame for Harris' loss on Biden, telling authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that the former president "totally f----- us." "To blame Biden now is to shift the accountability from the people who lost the race: the consultants, the so-called gurus," Korge said during the interview. "It's time to re-evaluate the use of consultants and bring in new forward-looking people." "The old Obama playbook no longer works," Korge added. Another Democratic strategist, Mike Nellis, told NBC News that the Democratic Party had nostalgia for the Obama era, but noted that the politics have changed. "One of the challenges the Democratic Party does have is that there is nostalgia for the Obama era, both in terms of Barack Obama being in the White House and what that meant for the country and the style of leadership that we have, but also like the style of our politics," Nellis said. "There's been a de-evolution of our politics over the last 10 years, and it's just a very different era." CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF MEDIA AND CULTURENebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb detailed an anecdote about how she responded to Republican attacks with regard to transgender issues in a mayoral election in Omaha. The Democratic candidate, John Ewing, ended up beating the Republican candidate, Jean Stothert. "I didn't contact the Pod Save America guys or a New York press firm to say, 'how do I handle this?'" Kleeb said. "Our team literally got into the conference room at our state party office and said, 'Let's throw out ideas on how we can push back on this, because we're not going to let them take down John Ewing on this bulls--- again.'" Kleeb added that she wanted all the operatives at the table, and spoke out against "intraparty fighting." Another ex-Obama campaign aide, Steve Schale, defended Plouffe and called him "one of the sharpest guys around." Chuck Rocha, a former Bernie Sanders campaign advisor, pointed out that the campaign consultants are usually locked-in with candidates before they even announce their campaigns. "Most of these same consultants have locked in these candidates before they ever announce, and so there's never any opportunity for any new blood to be a part of these campaigns," Rocha said. "They're all connected." David Hogg, a DNC vice chair, told NBC that the party's political operatives hold on to power for too long, comparing them to several Democratic lawmakers in power. He also said young voters don't really have a memory of Obama's presidency. "I don't think they have one to be honest with you. That's part of the challenge," Hogg said. "For many of these younger people who are under the age of 20, right now… they don't remember much of what Obama talked about. They grew up in the political context of Donald Trump and him being normalized, because that was what politics was to them growing up." After Harris lost, Plouffe, Dillion, Cutter and Quentin Fulks, all part of her campaign operation, joined the co-hosts of Pod Save America, a podcast hosted by all ex-Obama aides, to discuss what went wrong in the election. Liberal critics accused them of gaslighting and taking no accountability for the loss.
Daily Mail
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Trump team taunts Democratic 'big lie' that Kamala Harris could have won if Biden got out sooner
Senior aides for President Donald Trump taunted Democrats as they reflected on the 2024 election, blaming President Joe Biden for not getting out of the race sooner. Democrats and journalists argued that Biden was at fault for Vice President Kamala Harris ' loss and that if she only had more time, she could have beaten Trump. 'One of the big lies we've seen spreading around from the Democrat campaign pros, eg David Plouffe, is that Kamala was somehow disadvantaged by having a shorter campaign,' Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller wrote on X early Wednesday morning. Plouffe, a former Obama advisor who joined the Harris campaign to boost it across the Finnish line went on the record in an interview with CNN 's Jake Tapper and journalist Alex Thompson to condemn Biden. 'We got so screwed by Biden, as a party,' Plouffe said, who described the Harris campaign as 'a fu**ing nightmare' as they only had 107 days to campaign. 'He totally fucked us,' Plouffe added, blaming him for choosing to run for reelection and waiting three weeks until after his disastrous debate performance before dropping out the race. But Miller argued that the shortened campaign helped Harris avoid scrutiny of her record. 'This was actually her single biggest advantage — as if planned from the beginning — it's what allowed the media to build a completely fictitious Kamala while sheltering her from all scrutiny,' Miller wrote. Miller argued the media was 'delusional' with their 'fawning coverage' of her at the Democratic convention when they nominated her to replace Biden. 'Remember the nonstop pro-Harris media psy op and reinvention?' He asked. 'Had she been forced to run a long campaign against Trump she would have topped out at 100 electoral votes.' Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair agreed, recalling that Plouffe and the Harris campaign were confident in the campaign. 'They were professing that she was ahead and winning all the way to the end,' he wrote. 'Remember their supposedly better ground game being worth 1-2 points? Remember 'undecideds' supposedly breaking for her 3-to-1 in the last week?' Blair asked. 'Her campaign advisers were the ones saying all this!' Both Blair and Miller with traveling with President Trump in Qatar at the time of their posts, indicating they were following the new details of the 2024 election revealed by Tapper and Thompson's new book Orignal Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. The book detailed discussions in Biden's orbit about the president possibly using a wheelchair if he won reelection. Former Biden aides joined the chorus of Democrats who blamed the former president for Trump's second term. '[I]t was a disservice to the country and to the party for his family and advisers to allow him to run again,' one aide told the authors for the book. 'It was an abomination. He stole an election from the Democratic party; he stole it from the American people,' another Democratic strategist said. Other revelations from the book include Hollywood star George Clooney who was 'shaken to his core' after he met with Biden at a star-studded June 2024 Democratic fundraiser in Los Angeles. 'It was obvious to many standing there that the president did not know who George Clooney was,' the authors write.
The Guardian
12-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Biden destroyed Harris bid by staying in race too long, top adviser says in book
Joe Biden 'totally fucked us' by leaving it too late to drop out of the 2024 US presidential election, a former top campaign aide to Kamala Harris has told the authors of a new book. David Plouffe, who was manager of Barack Obama's winning 2008 campaign and a senior adviser in his White House, was drafted in to help Harris's bid for president after the declining Biden withdrew from the race last summer. Harris's 107-day sprint against Donald Trump was 'a fucking nightmare', Plouffe is quoted as saying by authors Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson in Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. A copy was obtained by the Guardian. 'And it's all Biden,' Plouffe adds, reflecting on the former US president's decisions to run for re-election and then to cling on for more than three weeks after a catastrophic debate performance against Trump raise questions about his mental acuity and age. 'He totally fucked us.' Plouffe, along with some other former Obama staffers, has previously been critical of Biden and his role in the Democratic defeat. In the wake of Harris' loss he posted a message on X – formerly known as Twitter – that the Harris campaign had begun in a 'deep hole'. He later deleted his account. The book describes how Plouffe had received calls from donors worried about Biden's diminishing energy, cognitive skills and ability to deliver a speech. He in turn pressed the White House and Democratic party if they felt sure that the then president could win another election and was repeatedly told he could. But Tapper, chief Washington correspondent for CNN, and Thompson, a national political correspondent for Axios, spoke to around 200 people for the book, including members of Congress and White House and campaign insiders. Some had been sounding the alarm about Biden's mental acuity and about desperate efforts by his close staff and allies to hide the extent of his deterioration. One senior aide, who quit the White House because they did not think Biden should run, admits to the authors that 'we attempted to shield him from his own staff so many people didn't realize the extent of the decline beginning in 2023'. 'I love Joe Biden. When it comes to decency, there are few in politics like him. Still, it was a disservice to the country and to the party for his family and advisers to allow him to run again.' A prominent Democratic strategist says of Biden's determination to seek re-election: 'It was an abomination. He stole an election from the Democratic party; he stole it from the American people.' Original Sin is one of several eagerly awaited books about the 2024 election and an alleged White House conspiracy. Biden, 82, seemingly tried to preempt its revelations last week with media appearances on BBC Radio 4's Today program and ABC's talkshow The View. Biden has signed with Creative Artists Agency for representation and hired communications strategist Chris Meagher to help burnish his public reputation. But the 27 June 2024 debate in Atlanta was no anomaly, the book argues. Since at least 2022 Biden has been increasingly prone to lose his train of thought and struggle to remember the names of top aides. His speeches can be incoherent and difficult to hear. When he proved incapable of delivering a two-minute video address without stumbling, aides filmed him with two cameras so the edit would be less obvious. Original Sin tells how prominent figures tried to intervene in various ways. Obama visited the White House in 2023 and warned Biden: 'Just make sure you can win the race.' Ari Emanuel, a Hollywood powerbroker and significant Democratic donor, yelled at longtime Biden ally Ron Klain: 'Joe Biden cannot run for re-election! He needs to drop out! He can't win! What's the plan B?' Klain admitted there was no plan B. And Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, confronted the president after the debate last July at his home in Rehoboth, Delaware, and appealed to his desire to preserve his legacy. He warned Biden that, he if stayed in the race and lost to Trump then 50 years of 'amazing, beautiful work goes out the window. But it's worse than that – you will go down in American history as one of the darkest figures.' On their way out, the book reports, Biden put his hands on Schumer's shoulders and told him: 'You have bigger balls than anyone I've ever met.' Biden stepped aside on 21 July and quickly endorsed Harris but it was too late, the authors contend. He had already helped usher in the fate that he most wanted to avoid: the return of Trump to the White House.
