SINCERETALK

A prosecutor who worked with special counsel Robert Mueller when he investigated President Donald Trump's ties to Russia has a theory about why the president did not attend his son's wedding — namely, that he may have known it was being bankrolled by Umar Kremlev , a Russian oligarch tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Speaking with Nicolle Wallace on MS NOW, lawyer Andrew Weissman responded to Wallace's question about why the same Republicans who blasted President Joe Biden's son Hunter for serving on the board of a Ukrainian company are conspicuously silent about the younger Trump's glaring conflict of interest. Weissman responded with his own opinion about why Trump refused to go to the wedding, a decision that raised eyebrows at the time. "The father, the President of the United States, did not go to his son's wedding," Weissman began, and later added "are people looking at the connection here, which is one of the reasons he may not ha...

The threats came in a steady stream last year from Fox News, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and Gristedes grocery chain CEO John Catsimatidis, who insisted that wealthy New York City residents were “panicking” at the possibility that then-state Rep. Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, could become the mayor and ensure rich locals pay more in taxes to help fund crucial services. “It only takes a handful of successful people to leave to decimate the city’s tax base,” cautioned Ackman, while Catsimatidis suggested many rich New Yorkers would likely join him in fleeing to “the promised land”: Florida, which has no state income tax. But the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative said Thursday that new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data should be “the final nail in the coffin” of the evidence-free, perennial claim that higher taxes cause wealthy residents to leave their cities and states. The agency released its 2023 Statistics of Income (SOI) data, covering the period be...

By now we’ve almost taken for granted that federal district court judges will probably stop — or at least pause — the worst of Trump’s authoritarian moves. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude. Case in point: U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, who on August 27 effectively stopped Trump’s plan to use the U.S. Postal Service to restrict mail-in voting. In issuing a temporary restraining order blocking its enforcement, Judge Talwani used the standard two criteria for such a judicial pause: that (1) the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claims when the case goes to trial, and (2) they face irreparable harm in the meantime if the order is implemented. Judge Talwani found that plaintiffs — a group of blue states and voting rights groups — were likely to succeed in their claims that Trump’s and the U.S. Postal Service’s plan is unconstitutional because it interferes with states’ authority to administer their own elections and risks disenfranchising eligible voters, and that the Pos...

A leading Republican recently made a major claim about Sen. Mitch McConnell's return to the Senate, but in response to being grilled with questions from CNN , he admitted the truth about who he has actually been speaking to about the situation. Rep. James Comer is a Kentucky Republican and currently one of the more powerful members of Congress, given his role as head of the Oversight Committee. Earlier this month, he made the eyebrow-raising claim that McConnell, a fellow Kentuckian who has been absent from the Senate for months due to health issues, would be returning when the chamber reconvenes from its recess on September 14. McConnell was first rushed to the hospital in mid-June when he was found unresponsive at his home, with reports suggesting that he may have suffered cardiac arrest. In a statement some time later, McConnell claimed to have been unresponsive due to a fall, and that he was kept in the hospital due to a case of pneumonia. His office now claims that he is u...

On Trump’s social media posts , he keeps depicting himself in fantasy roles: Superman , Jesus , the Pope , Sci-Fi leader of dystopian death machines & a larger than life military commander . His fantasies are sometimes “official,” communicated to the American public directly under White House insignia, and they frequently come in waves of multiple fantasies at one time. Over Labor Day he indulged and made it public 37 times . Fantasizing during times of stress instead of working to resolve crises wrought by his own incompetence suggests Trump detaches from reality as a defense mechanism . I’m no psychoanalyst but someone needs to drive a serious conversation about the dangers of what we’re seeing. A sudden shift into immersive fantasy worlds is regarded as classic form of dissociative absorption , where the brain rapidly checks out of the physical world and floods consciousness with an imagined reality to cope with overwhelming real-world stress. The power fantasies also look ...

A prominent anti-Trump conservative admitted to still being surprised at the Republican Party, saying in a recent podcast that the recent midterm convention showed a shocking willingness to "degrade and debase and humiliate themselves" for the president. The GOP this past week held an unprecedented party convention for the upcoming midterm elections, which are widely predicted to see it take bruising losses from Democrats. As the two-night event played out, the worst predictions from many critics appeared to come true, as the proceedings devolved into an unabashed celebration of President Donald Trump, even as it becomes clear that voters are steaming mad at him and ready to vent their frustrations at the ballot box. One particularly galling portion of Trump's speech as he closed out the event, in which he asked attendees to raise their hands and repeat a pledge for the midterms. "I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell like the...