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ESPN’s Sage Steele Responds To White House Position Speculation

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Jeff Kern, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Who will be Donald Trump’s next Press Secretary?

Former ESPN host Sage Steele is firing back at rumors she may be in line for the coveted position.

Axios reported Wednesday that Steele along with CNN contributor and Bush White House official Scott Jennings, as well as Republican National Committee spokesperson Elizabeth Pipko are all “vying” for the much-coveted role. Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt and former Trump administration official Monica Crowley are also “in the mix,” according to Axios.

Trump attorney Alina Habba said Thursday that she is not considering the role of press secretary.

Steele, 51, has been a public supporter of the president-elect and stumped for him on the campaign trail, appearing at an event in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, last month. 

However, she took to X on Thursday to deny she was interested in the press secretary role. 

“Not sure how these rumors began about me ‘vying’ to be Press Secretary, but it’s definitely fake news! I haven’t had a single conversation with anyone about that job, and have no desire to do so!” Steele wrote.

“Honestly, it was the honor of a lifetime to be a small part of @TeamTrump during the campaign – something I NEVER imagined – but I wholeheartedly believe in @realDonaldTrump @JDVance & am excited to find ways to continue to serve. It took me years to not be afraid to speak up. That fear is gone forever, and I hope others are beginning to feel the same. LFG!”

In 2023, Steele left ESPN after 15 years at the network where she hosted its flagship program “SportsCenter as well as “NBA Countdown,” among other roles. 6p-[ m0

Report: Smartmatic Subpoenas Fox Board Members In Defamation Lawsuit

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Looking east towards 6th Avenue along north (48th Street) side of Fox News building on a snowy afternoon. [Photo Credit: Jim.henderson, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons]

Voting systems company Smartmatic is going after Fox board members.

Smartmatic subpoenaed four members of Fox Corp.’s board of directors in connection with its ongoing lawsuit against Fox News over the network’s coverage of the 2020 election.

In motions filed with the Supreme Court of New York, Smartmatic requested relevant documents from four members of Fox’s board of directors: Anne Dias, Charles Carey, Roland Hernandez and Jacques Nasser.

“Accountability and responsibility do not stop with Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch,” J. Erik Connolly, Smartmatic’s attorney on its case, said in a statement to The Washington Post, which first reported on the subpoenas. “Smartmatic plans to pursue Fox’s board members as well to determine why they allowed the company’s most valuable asset, Fox News, to spread disinformation about the 2020 election.”

Smartmatic sued Fox for $2.7 billion after the 2020 election, arguing the network maliciously aired false information about its software being promoted by allies of former President Trump after the election.

Last spring Fox paid Dominion Voting Systems $787 million to settle a separate defamation lawsuit. (RELATED: Report: Fox News Reaches Last-Minute Settlement With Dominion Voting Systems)

Smartmatic’s case against the network is not expected to go to trial until 2025.

In April, Smartmatic and One America News (OAN) reached a settlement in the company’s defamation lawsuit against the conservative outlet.

“Smartmatic has resolved its litigation against OANN through a confidential settlement,” its lead attorney, Erik Connolly, confirmed to Mediaite:

The company also sued Fox News and Newsmax for airing false claims about its role in the 2020 election. Those suits are ongoing.

Despite the ongoing lawsuit against Fox News, in January a judge ruled Fox News Channel can proceed with its counterclaim. In part, because the network has yet to be found liable for defamation.

Article Published With The Permission of American Liberty News.

DeSantis Reveals A Republican Under Consideration to Become His Running Mate

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Republican White House contender Ron DeSantis says he is eyeing Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds as his potential pick for vice president.

DeSantis made the remarks after he touted the popular Iowa governor on Friday at a forum with Tucker Carlson. (RELATED: Tucker Carlson to Host GOP Presidential Forum – Without Trump)

“Governor, you have spent a lot of time with Governor Reynolds, you defended her after President Trump’s recent statements,” a reporter said to DeSantis at an event on Saturday. “Would you consider her as a potential vice presidential pick in this campaign?”

“Of course,” DeSantis responded. “I mean, she’s one of the top public servants in America, I thought the attacks on her were totally, totally out of hand, and totally unnecessary.”

“We should be thanking good Republican office holders,” he continued. “You know, we kind of joke about the Iowa-Florida [competition], sometimes they do things before us, sometimes we do. But honestly, I want them to do better than us because it’s healthy. When Republicans are doing well, I like that, I don’t get jealous of that, I want to see them do well.”

“And so they’ve done a great job and I think she’s been a model public servant and anybody who’s a Republican that’s trying to denigrate her I think is way off base on that,” he concluded.

Trump Co-defendant Carlos de Oliveira Released on Bond

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Gavel via Wikimedia Commons Image

Former President Donald Trump’s newest co-defendant in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case was released on bond Monday.

Carlos de Oliveira was released on a $100,000 bond after an initial court appearance Monday, according to The Hill. He is facing obstruction of justice charges as well as charges for making false statements to investigators. 

De Oliveira was named as a co-conspirator in the case in a Thursday superseding indictment that accused the Mar-a-Lago property manager of coordinating with Trump to attempt to delete security camera footage that showed him and another defendant in the case, Walt Nauta, moving boxes in and out of a storage room. 

Trump accused the Justice Department of “prosecutorial misconduct” in a statement to Fox News. (RELATED: Special Counsel Charges Third Defendant, Adds Additional Charges in Document Case)

“It’s election interference at the highest level,” Trump told Fox News Digital just after he learned of the latest indictment. “They’re harassing my company, they’re harassing my family and by far, least importantly of all, they’re harassing me.” 

Trump told Fox News Digital that “the charges are ridiculous, and they know it better than anyone.”

“This is prosecutorial misconduct used at a level never seen before,” Trump said. “If I weren’t leading Biden by a lot in numerous polls, and wasn’t going to be the Republican nominee, it wouldn’t be happening. It wouldn’t be happening.” 

He added: “But I am way up as a Republican and way up in the general election and this is what you get.”

This is a breaking news story. Click refresh for the latest updates.

Trump Vows To Start Prosecuting Obama For ‘Treason’

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The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On Tuesday, President Trump called to prosecute former President Barack Obama as well as other officials over Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s claim of a “treasonous conspiracy” by the former administration.

President Donald Trump called for the prosecution of former President Barack Obama and others, saying from the White House that it’s “time to go after people.”

In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump called for “severe consequences” for Obama.

Trump said:

The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama. What they did to this country in 2016, starting in 2016 but going up to 2020 of the election, they tried to rig the election and they got caught. There should be very severe consequences for that. When we caught Hillary Clinton, I said, you know what, let’s not go too far here. It’s the ex-wife of a president and I thought it was sort of terrible. I let her off the hook and I’m very happy I did. But it’s time to start — after what they did to me and whether it’s the right or wrong — it’s time to go after people. Obama has been caught directly.

Gabbard released a declassified report last week, claiming that Obama and his administration officials pushed concerns about Russian interference in the election in public while privately knowing it was not a major concern in the 2016 election. Gabbard, who also called for officials to be prosecuted, accused officials of trying to “usurp” Trump and American voters.

“The intelligence community assessed — and this is what the documents detail — essentially Russia doesn’t have the tools, the capability, or the intent to try to change the outcome of the US presidential election,” she told Fox News on Saturday.

Gabbard said she referred her information to the Department of Justice.

CBN host David Brody asked House Speaker Mike Johnson about the matter, “I’ve heard Stephen Miller call this a ‘seditious conspiracy.’ I’ve heard Tulsi Gabbard call it a ‘treasonous conspiracy.’ You’re a constitutional guy; what do you see in this exactly? How do you term it?”

“Well, I don’t know how to summarize it in — by way of description — in a snappy phrase, but I will tell you it is deeply problematic,” Johnson replied. “Before I became Speaker of the House I served on the House Judiciary Committee, which had jurisdiction over a lot of this, and we knew what was happening. We knew intuitively and we were gathering the evidence as we were investigating all of this ourselves. We knew the Russia collusion thing was a hoax. They used it as a basis to attack the president mercilessly.”

Noting that he had served on Trump’s impeachment defense teams twice, Johnson recalled, “As we were preparing for those defenses, as we were investigating with our oversight responsibility in the Judiciary, we recognized that the people who are being called out now were involved in a scheme. We knew that it was a shameless, false, set of accusations, and yet, they perpetuated the lie on the American people. And they looked right under the camera and just lied, clearly. And they knew what they were up to the whole time so there must be accountability for that.”

“People want to see subpoenas; they want to see depositions,” Brody posited. “They want to see, whether it be Brennan, Clapper, potentially the former President of the United States. Are you willing to go down that route? Cause a lot of people want to see some of these folks questioned under oath.”

“Of course,” Johnson answered immediately. “I think we have a responsibility to follow the truth where it leads and to do it in an unbiased fashion, to do effectively the opposite of what that other team did.”

“Does it get tricky at all with the former president, President Obama, looking at what his role in this is and bringing him in for some sort of deposition, potential subpoena?” Brody asked.

“Well, listen, we have no concern about that,” Johnson said bluntly. “If it’s uncomfortable for him, he shouldn’t have been involved in overseeing this, which is what it appears to us has happened. There’s a lot of allegations on the table. Our job is to go and follow each of those trails and to find out the truth. And so those are very serious allegations with very serious implications, but we’re gonna have very serious people working on it and we will get the answers.”

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Former Obama Adviser Suggests Biden Drop Out Of 2024 Race

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Political strategist David Axelrod joined Friends of the LBJ Library members to speak about his memoir, "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics," at the LBJ Presidential Library on February 25, 2015. The discussion was moderated by director Mark Updegrove and introduced by Elizabeth Christian. Photo by Lauren Gerson.

Maybe it’s time for Joe Biden to turn his hearing aids up…

Former Obama adviser David Axelrod suggested it may be “wise” for President Biden to drop out of the 2024 race after a recent poll found Trump leading Biden in multiple battleground states. A New York Times and Siena College poll published Sunday found Trump leading Biden by 10 points in Nevada, six points in Georgia, five points in both Arizona and Michigan, and four points in Pennsylvania. In Wisconsin, Biden held a two point lead over Trump. The poll’s results are especially concerning for Democrats as Biden won all six states in the 2020 election.

Arguing Biden is “justly proud of his accomplishments,” Axelrod said Biden’s poll numbers will “send tremors of doubt” through the Democrat Party.

“Not ‘bed-wetting,’” but legitimate concern, Axelrod wrote.

“Trump is a dangerous, unhinged demagogue whose brazen disdain for the rules, [norms], laws and institutions or democracy should be disqualifying,” Axelrod wrote in a separate post. “But the stakes of miscalculation here are too dramatic to ignore.”

“Only @JoeBiden can make this decision,” he continued. “If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?”

Biden’s reelection campaign has faced concerns from voters within his own party over his age and policy actions on various issues, especially the economy.

Axelrod called Biden’s age “his biggest liability” and something he cannot change.

“Among all the unpredictables there is one thing that is sure: the age arrow only points in one direction,” Axelrod wrote.

The former Obama adviser is hardly the first to encourage Biden to pause his reelection campaign in hopes a younger candidate will take on Donald Trump, the current frontrunner for the Republican nomination.

Recently, Congressman Dean Phillips (D) officially kicked off his own presidential campaign, teeing up a primary challenge against the President.

Nate Silver Reveals The One Battleground State That Could Cost Kamala The White House

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Gage Skidmore Flickr

Polling and data guru Nate Silver said Thursday that Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to be a “slight underdog” in Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground state with 19 electoral college points.

Silver, a prominent elections analyst and statistician, wrote on Substack that while Harris is leading by 3.8 points in his national poll tracker and is slated to win the popular vote, his nuanced election forecast model predicts former President Trump is electorally favored to win the White House by a 52.4% chance, versus Harris, who now shows a 47.3% chance of pulling off an electoral victory.

“Kamala Harris had one of her worst days in some time in our forecast on Thursday despite gaining in our national polling average,” Silver wrote.

But, he continued, “There’s another, longer-term concern for Harris, though: it’s been a while since we’ve seen a poll showing her ahead in Pennsylvania, which is the tipping-point state more than a third of time in our model.”

The latest Emerson College swing state poll shows Trump and Harris tied at 48% each in Pennsylvania. 

“The model puts a lot of weight on this recent data because of all the changes in the race,” Silver explained. “And you can see why it thinks this is a problem for her: if she’s only tied in Pennsylvania now, during what should be one of her stronger polling periods, that implies being a slight underdog in November.”

At the current date, Silver said his model shows a 17% chance that Harris wins the popular vote but not the Electoral College, calling it “a big concern for her campaign all along. 

“If she won the popular vote nationally by between 1 and 2 points, for instance, the model estimates that she’d still be a 70/30 underdog in the Electoral College,” he wrote.

Still, Silver acknowledged that Harris’ unusually late entry into the race could skew his forecast results.

“While there’s a solid basis for this empirically, you could argue we’re under unusual circumstances because of her late entry into the race. So if you want to treat all of this as a little fuzzier than usual, I don’t really mind that,” he wrote.

Report: Trump Wants This candidate To Hit The Campaign Trail

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Marine One lifts-off after returning President Donald J. Trump to Mar-a-Lago Friday, March 29, 2019, following his visit to the 143-mile Herbert Hoover Dike near Canal Point, Fla., that surrounds Lake Okeechobee. The visit was part of an infrastructure inspection of the dike, which is part of the Kissimmee-Okeechobee Everglades system, and reduces impacts of flooding for areas of south Florida. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian) [Photo Credit: The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

Presumed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has reportedly gotten tired of Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake spending so much time at Mar-a-lago.

According to a recent Washington Post report, Trump is concerned Lake has focused too much on networking with the Republican elite and not enough on campaigning for a crucial win in the contentious state.

“At one point last year, after grumbling for months that she was at his Mar-a-Lago Club too often, Trump gently suggested to Lake that she should leave the club and hit the campaign trail in Arizona, according to a person with direct knowledge of his comments,” the Post reporters wrote. “Trump has also asked others if she can really win in Arizona and if she might drag down his own poll numbers as he seeks the presidency again in 2024, advisers said.”

Trump also privately thinks Lake’s 2022 election fraud claims are full of hot air, according to the report.

“She didn’t win,” Trump bluntly told a political ally at a Mar-a-Lago dinner earlier this year, according to the Post.

One other notable Lake moment got the attention of Trump and his inner circle: the incident in which a Lake ally released a tape of former Arizona GOP chair Jeff DeWit appearing to show Lake being offered a bribe to not run for Senate in 2024. The Post reporters described Trump’s reaction to the incident as “more surprised than angry” when he learned about it on the night of the New Hampshire primary in January.

“She tapes everything?” Trump reportedly asked. “That’s good to know.”

In a statement sent to the Post defended the MAGA Republican “Kari Lake is a Smart and Fearless Leader who will WIN in Arizona, and help us flip the Senate to Republican control. Kari’s Opponent, Ruben Gallego, is an Open Borders RADICAL, who is BAD on Inflation and SOFT on Terrorists and Crime.”

Trump Files Another Defamation Suit Against The New York Times

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Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

President Donald Trump filed a new $15 billion defamation suit against The New York Times on Thursday, following the dismissal of a similar lawsuit last month.

In the suit, Trump accuses the Times of printing false and defamatory statements about his business career that damaged his professional reputation. The suit also names multiple reporters for the Times and Penguin Random House, which published a book on Trump’s business career. 

Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

“The statements in question wrongly defame and disparage President Trump’s hard-earned professional reputation, which he painstakingly built for decades as a private citizen before becoming President of the United States, including as a successful businessman and as star of the most successful reality television show of all-time— The Apprentice,” the suit said. 

It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Two articles published by the Times in September 2024, and the book “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success,” are the subject of the suit. The reporters named as defendants include Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, and Peter Baker. 

The suit listed several claims it said were defamatory, including an allegation that Trump received millions of dollars from his father through “fraudulent tax evasion schemes.” Another claim was that Trump’s father gave him “taxable gifts masquerading as loans, a likely tax fraud that went unnoticed.” 

The suit said that these kinds of statements hurt Trump’s business ventures, including his social media company, Truth Social. 

“Statements falsely casting aspersions on President Trump’s reputation as a businessman or the Trump Organization’s legitimacy therefore cause direct and easily foreseeable harm to these businesses’ value, revenue, and profitability,” the suit said. 

Last month, Trump filed a similar lawsuit targeting the Times and multiple reporters he said made defamatory statements to maliciously interfere in the outcome of the 2024 election. That suit was tossed out by Judge Steven Merryday, who said it was improper. 

Trump Tells Lawmakers He Plans To Fire Jerome Powell ‘Soon’

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By Federalreserve - https://www.flickr.com/photos/federalreserve/54004811346/, Public Domain,

President Trump reportedly indicated to Republican lawmakers that he plans to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

According to Fox News reporter Chad Pergram, Trump asked a group of Republican lawmakers if they think he should fire Powell, and they all agreed he should.

“Fox has confirmed that President Trump asked a group of House Republicans if he should fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell,” Pergram wrote on X. “Fox is told that that lawmakers agreed he should be fired.”

Pergram added that a source said Powell’s firing will be coming “soon.”

Trump has been vocal on not being pleased with Powell. While speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, he said the chairman is doing a “terrible job.” When asked if he’d appoint him to another term, the president answered, “You must be kidding!”

However, President Trump later refuted claims that Powell is on the chopping block during a Wednesday White House meeting, saying it’s “highly unlikely.”

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This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.