Tag: 2024 elections

CBS scores Emmy nomination for ‘60 Minutes’ Kamala Harris interview at center of $20B Trump suit

The controversial “60 Minutes” interview at the center of President Trump’s high-stakes lawsuit against CBS News is now an Emmy-nominated program. 

The nominations for the 46th News & Documentary Emmy Awards were announced Thursday.

“60 Minutes” landed several nods, most notably in the Outstanding Edited Interview category for its primetime special featuring then-Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. 

Other nominees in that category include CBS’ interviews with Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and the late Pope Francis, as well as NBC’s interview with Celine Dion and ABC’s interview with Brittney Griner.  

“Of course it’s nominated for best editing because it takes some serious talent to edit Kamala’s answer into something that’s coherent and understandable, which in the end they still failed to do,” White House communications director Steven Cheung told Fox News Digital.

Neither CBS News nor representatives for Trump’s legal team responded to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.

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Dem Rep. Eric Swalwell Vows Use of ‘Subpoena Power’ to Investigate Whether Elon Musk’s Starlink Rigged Election For Trump

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell has stoked a conspiracy theory Elon Musk used his Starlink satellite network to rig the 2024 presidential election for Trump.

During an appearance with a left-wing podcaster, Swalwell was asked about the integrity of the previous election and the role that Starlink may have played.

The host remarked:

The enemies allegedly stole U.S. data. The leak came through Elon Musk’s Starlink. I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard people, based on all of this information that’s happened since then, wonder if 2024 was secure. But more importantly, Representative, about 2026 and 2028, can you talk about that a little bit? Do you have concerns?

Swalwell, who is best known for being honey-trapped by a Chinese spy named Fang Fang, responded:

Elon Musk has done nothing in the last five months to make me think that we shouldn’t ask questions about what the hell he was doing in 2024.

Maybe we gave him too much of the benefit of the doubt, you know, after the election, but the way that he’s conducted himself with DOGE, and the way that, you know, he’s exposed us to so many hackers outside.

The way that he’s taken data, you know, from Americans, from our records — whether it’s Social Security or health care records, the only way that we can understand, you know, what the hell Elon Musk has been doing is to be in the majority.

Swalwell added that being in the majority would give Democrats “subpoena power,” which he would use to investigate the spurious allegations.

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CBS News owner Paramount ready to settle Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit over ’60 Minutes’: report

CBS News owner Paramount Global is reportedly ready to settle President Trump’s $20 billion lawsuit over the “60 Minutes” interview last year with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

Paramount’s board has drafted acceptable financial terms for a potential settlement with Trump, The New York Times reported Tuesday, citing anonymous sources. However, the exact dollar amount is unclear.

Trump’s lawsuit alleges the TV news network deceptively edited a “60 Minutes” interview with Harris, who at the time of the interview was also the Democratic nominee in the presidential race.

In January, The Times reported that Paramount was having conversations with Trump to settle the lawsuit, which at the time was for $10 billion, before Trump increased it to $20 billion in February.

Last week, the executive producer for “60 Minutes” said he was stepping down from his role because he could no longer objectively oversee the show as it faces backlash over Trump’s lawsuit.

Earlier this month, Trump posted on Truth Social that he is “so honored to be suing 60 Minutes, CBS Fake News, and Paramount, over their fraudulent, beyond recognition, reporting,” adding that the network did everything possible to “illegally elect” Harris and that it “must be responsible for what they have done and are doing.”

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GOP leaders mull 4-year sunset provisions for Trump tax benefits in reconciliation bill

House Republican leaders are considering making some of the key tax benefits that President Donald Trump promised on the 2024 campaign trail only temporary policies in the reconciliation bill that’s currently being crafted. A “sunset” period of four years is under consideration for policies such as eliminating taxes on tips, Social Security benefits and overtime pay, Just the News has learned.

The move has drawn criticism from a budget watchdog group, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which has described the possibility of scoring certain tax benefits as temporary rather than permanent to estimate the full cost of the package as “manipulation” that wouldn’t show the true cost.

Hiding the true cost of Trump’s tax benefits

“This ad-hoc, inconsistent, manipulative, and disingenuous approach to budgeting is enough to make your head explode, and it is going to make the debt explode,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the CRFB.  

“Congress isn’t even pretending to do honest budgeting at this point. The whole argument behind the current policy baseline was that temporary policies should be counted as permanent – and yet here they are trying to count some of them as temporary,” she added.

Marc Goldwein, senior vice president at CRFB, told Just the News that scoring those policies as temporary would hide the true costs of such tax benefits.

“It’s completely hypocritical,” he said. “You should still score it on a permanent basis if you believe in current policy, but they don’t. They just believe in doing whatever is going to help them get their number. They don’t care about current policy or current law.”

Both parties have used budget reconciliation in past years, and they have included sunset provisions in legislation. What makes this situation unique, Goldwein explained, is that the GOP is considering making some policies permanent and others temporary within the same reconciliation bill and not scoring the cost of each over a 10-year period.

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FBI memo examined activities of far-right radical Catholics ahead of 2024 election

In January of last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued an 11-page memo outlining details of an investigation into what it called “radical traditionalist Catholic,” or RTC, elements within U.S. society.

Then the memo leaked. Republicans in Congress used the leak to accuse the Biden administration of persecuting Catholics and conservatives solely because of their beliefs.

The memo was quickly “withdrawn from FBI systems,” said an April 18 statement from the FBI. But a redacted copy of the document continues to linger online within the Justice Department, under whose jurisdiction the FBI falls.

So what does it say?

The FBI’s office in Richmond, Virginia, conducted the assessment. The memo’s executive summary said the presence of “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” – known in FBI parlance as RMVE – “in radical-traditionalist Catholic (RTC) ideology almost certainly presents opportunities for threat mitigation.”

It added, “FBI Richmond makes this assessment with high confidence based on FBI investigations, local law enforcement agency reporting, and liaison reporting, with varying degrees of corroboration and access.”

The memo said, “According to an FBI Richmond contact with direct access reporting for the first time, prior to RMVE actor [redacted]’s [redacted] 2022 arrest he had been attending the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX)-affiliated [redacted] Virginia, for approximately seven months and was participating in catechism classes as part of the process to become baptized. Prior to attending [redacted] stated he wanted to find a church that was ‘anti-Zionist’ and ‘anti-progressive’ because ‘that’s where God lives.’”

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Newsom Says Democrats Lack Self-Reflection After 2024 Defeat

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is urging his own party to confront its 2024 election losses with honest self-examination, warning that without serious introspection, Democrats are destined to fail again.

In an exclusive interview with The Hill published on April 22, Newsom said Democratic leaders have yet to engage in a deep exploration of why they lost the White House, failed to reclaim the House, and saw their Senate majority evaporate in November.

“We have not done a forensic of what just went wrong, period, full stop,” Newsom said during the sit-down interview. “I don’t think it, I know it.”

The two-term governor, who is widely viewed as a possible 2028 presidential contender, said his party’s silence in the face of defeat reflects a broader crisis of identity and leadership.

“I don’t know what the party is,” he added. “I’m still struggling with that.”

As Democrats look toward the 2026 midterms and the long lead-up to the 2028 presidential election, Newsom is concerned that without an honest audit of recent failures, the party may find itself locked out of power once again.

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FEC Opens Probe of Rep. Jasmine Crockett Donations

The Federal Election Commission opened an investigation into firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, regarding donations to her 2024 campaign made through ActBlue, a Democrat fundraising powerhouse organization.

The Coolidge-Reagan Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, made the FEC complaint on March 26, as first reported by The Daily Signal. 

On April 2, the FEC notified the Coolidge-Reagan Foundation it would review the matter and notify Crockett. 

“The respondents will be notified of this complaint within five business days,” Wanda D. Brown, the FEC assistant general counsel for complaints examination and legal administration, said in the letter. 

“You will be notified as soon as the Federal Election Commission (FEC) takes final action on your client’s complaint. Should you receive any additional information in this matter, please forward it to the Office of the General Counsel.”

Brown wrote the letter to Dan Backer, a Washington lawyer representing the Coolidge-Reagan Foundation. 

“The FEC opened an investigation. There is a process, but they are investigating,” Backer told The Daily Signal. 

The complaints reference a specific suspect donor reported to have given 53 separate donations totaling $595 to Crockett’s campaign through the ActBlue portal.

The suspect donor was a 73-year-old Texas resident named Randy Best, according to the FEC complaint.  

However, Best’s wife—in a video promoted by one of Crockett’s opponents for 2026, Sholdon Daniels—denied knowing anything about the donations. The complaint contends this possibly means Best—and potentially other donors through ActBlue—did not make the donations listed under their names. 

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REPORT: George Clooney Exploded on MSNBC Producer After Being Exposed as Useful Idiot for Getting Biden Out of 2024 Race

Actor George Clooney was reportedly furious with MSNBC last year after Morning Joe connected the dots between Obama and his op-ed calling for Joe Biden to get out of the 2024 race.

Clooney’s op-ed kicked off a revolt by major Democrat donors who decided to withhold donations to the party unless Biden stepped aside, so in the end, Clooney’s strategy worked as intended.

What was he so angry about? Being exposed as a useful idiot, maybe?

FOX News reports:

George Clooney exploded on MSNBC producer after Mika Brzezinski linked Obama to dramatic Biden op-ed: report

Actor George Clooney reportedly lost his temper on an MSNBC producer working on “Morning Joe” after host Mika Brzezinski suggested that former President Barack Obama may have influenced Clooney to write his New York Times op-ed on former President Joe Biden…

The explosive confrontation between an unnamed MSNBC producer and Clooney was revealed by Biden biographer Chris Whipple in his forthcoming book, “Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History.”

The “Morning Joe” segment that led to Clooney losing his cool featured Brzezinski suggesting that Obama may have been behind the actor’s NYT op-ed calling for Biden to bow out of the 2024 presidential race.

“This wasn’t George Clooney,” Brzezinski claimed, later adding: “I think that Barack Obama has a lot of influence.”

These claims led to Clooney calling a producer for the show in a rage, according to Whipple’s account.

“How the f— could you let her link me with Barack Obama saying he made me write the op-ed?” Clooney allegedly shouted at the “Morning Joe” producer.

Touchy! Touchy!

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Kamala Harris was ‘completely shocked’ by election night loss to Trump after she ‘bought the hype’

Former Vice President Kamala Harris was floored by her loss to President Trump this past November, having “bought the hype” that her campaign was in good shape in the run-up to Election Day, according to the author of a new book on the 2024 presidential election. 

“She was completely shocked, and Tim Walz was shocked,” The Hill correspondent Amie Parnes, co-author of “FIGHT: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” told the podcast “Somebody’s Gotta Win with Tara Palmeri” Thursday.

Walz was so “stunned” by Harris’ crushing defeat that he was unable to speak, according to Parnes. 

“He has no words,” the reporter told Palmeri, describing the Minnesota governor sitting in his hotel room silently on election night as staffers tried to explain the situation. 

“And people are kind of explaining to him, same thing with [Harris]. And she’s like, ‘Are you sure? Have we done a recount? Should we do a recount?’” Parnes continued. 

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Revealed: Pro-Kamala Social-Media Millions That Couldn’t Sync ‘Brat’ With ‘Democrat’

The abrupt withdrawal last year of President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, followed rapidly by his replacement with Vice President Kamala Harris, irked many voters left out by the process. Yet social media seemed to ooze with enthusiasm and Gen Z-friendly hipster appeal.

Influencers flooded the web with neon-matcha green pro-Harris videos synced to beats from singer Charli XCX’s album “Brat” released last year. The poppy rave videos, gushed journalists, showed that Harris embodied the confidently independent “brat” vibe conveyed by the music. Social media pages bubbled with memes celebrating Harris as the voice of queer and black youth, in contrast with the Republican agenda of white supremacy. Digital creator Amelia Montooth, in one viral TikTok video, kissed a woman and tried searching for pornography, actions her sketch suggested would be banned if Harris lost the election.

Harris, a career politician favored by the Democratic Party’s establishment, never quite fit the bill as an icon of activist movements. But the sudden influencer buzz seemed to transform the stodgy former prosecutor into an icon of the cultural zeitgeist. 

As it turns out, the tidal wave of enthusiasm was not entirely genuine. Much of the content, including Montooth’s videos, was quietly funded by an elusive group of Democratic billionaires and major donors in an arrangement designed to conceal the payments from voters. 

RealClearInvestigations obtained internal documents and WhatsApp messages from Democratic strategists behind the influencer campaign. Way to Win, one of the major donor groups behind the effort, spent more than $9.1 million on social media influencers during the 2024 presidential election – payments revealed here for the first time. The amount was touted in a document circulated after the election detailing the organization’s accomplishments. 

The effort supported over 550 content creators who published 6,644 posts across platforms, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and X. Way to Win coached creators on phrases, issue areas, and key themes to “disseminate pro-Kamala content throughout the cycle,” a post-election memo from the group noted.

The look behind the curtain reveals that at least some of the image-making around the Harris candidacy was carefully orchestrated by the same types of covert social media marketing often used by corporate brands and special interest groups. Such campaigns provide the illusion of organic support through the authentic appeal of trusted social media voices.

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