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Trump’s Mar-a-Lago party came as Elon Musk feuded with Nigel Farage online
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President-elect Donald Trump held a party at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night during which he screened a documentary about John Eastman, a close ally who tried to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the 2020 election, MSNBC reports.
Trump spoke at the event, praising Eastman and insisting he was “right the whole time,” the outlet reports. MSNBC’s Symone Sanders Townsend slammed Trump’s speech, calling the celebration “sickening.”
The party was held without formal invitations or notifications to the media, The Daily Beast reports.
The president-elect also met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for a so-called informal visit at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday evening.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk is exporting the MAGA civil war to the United Kingdom as he claims Nigel Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” to lead the Reform Party.
Musk declared on X this weekend that the UK’s Reform Party “needs a new leader,” taking a shot at the right-wing leader. Farage was quick to respond: “Well, this is a surprise! Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree.”
The split appears to stem from Farage’s refusal to join Musk in calling for the release of jailed far-right political activist Tommy Robinson.
New York Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican, suggested Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election in part due to his hush-money conviction.
“Well, the great irony in all of this is that I don’t think anyone did more to help elect Donald Trump president of the United States than Alvin Bragg and Tish James,” Lawler told Fox News, referring to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who prosecuted the hush-money case.
In May, Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with a scheme to silence adult film stat Stormy Daniels, whose story about having sex with Trump threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign.
The judge overseeing the case ordered Trump to appear for sentencing on January 10. However, he has indicated the sentence will be an unconditional discharge. This means Trump will face no jail time, probation or fines.
A deal that would see Elon Musk’s SpaceX take over secure communications for the Italian government is reportedly back on track and nearing final approval after Italy’s prime minister met with Donald Trump this weekend.
Read more:
Ongoing talks ‘appeared to move forward’ after meeting, according to reports
House speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi discussed the ongoing threat of political violence and the dangers posed by Donald Trump’s 2020 misinformation campaign in an interview Sunday on Face the Nation.
The former top Democrat in the lower chamber said that her husband, Paul Pelosi, still faces medical issues resulting from a violent attack he suffered in 2022, when an intruder in their home attacked him with a hammer.
The suspect, David DePape, was convicted of the violent attack and found to have been consumed by far-right conspiracy theories promoted by various figures aligned with MAGA Republicanism, including the 2020 stolen election conspiracies promoted by Trump himself.
Keep reading:
Speaker emerita says ‘sick’ Trump needs to stop fixating on 2020 defeat
President-elect Donald Trump held a party at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night during which he screened a documentary about John Eastman, a close ally who tried to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the 2020 election, MSNBC and CBS News reports.
Trump spoke at the event, praising Eastman and insisting he was “right the whole time,” the outlet reports. MSNBC’s Symone Sanders Townsend slammed Trump’s speech, calling the celebration “sickening.”
The party was held without formal invitations or notifications to the media, The Daily Beast reports.
There is an old Asian proverb which goes along the lines of: “He who rides the tiger must beware lest he end up inside.” Nigel Farage might be reflecting on that after his spectacular fall-out with the world’s richest man on an otherwise quiet Sunday.
Making an ally of X (Twitter) owner Elon Musk with his vast wealth and enormous influence was always going to be too tempting to refuse for a man who, for the first time in his political career, feels like he has a sniff of actually winning power.
The power of a giant social media platform and the possibility of $100m in funds seemed to be a surefire way of getting a shortcut to turning British politics on its head again, after doing it once already with Brexit.
Read more:
News analysis: The Musk-Farage fallout has revealed the achilles heel of the populist right – it relies almost entirely on big egos and personalities and collapses like a house of cards when they turn on one another
Laura Loomer has chimed in on the feud between Elon Musk and Nigel Farage, after the billionaire called for him to step down as leader of the Reform Party.
The apparent feud comes after Farage did not back Musk in calling for the release of jailed far-right political activist Tommy Robinson.
“President Trump is friends with @Nigel_Farage, @elonmusk,” Loomer wrote on X. “Trump loves Nigel. You can support @Nigel_Farage and also support Tommy Robinson. I know both of them. Tommy is a close friend.”
With every passing day, the US government inches closer to doing something unprecedented: banning a social media app used by an estimated 170 million Americans each month.
But what would happen next?
Find out below:
TikTok wouldn’t simply vanish off your smartphone – but in the long term, banning the Chinese video app could rip the heart out of American youth culture, writes Io Dodds
As Germans headed into a year gripped by foreboding, I was reminded of an episode a decade ago that struck me then as absurd, and that now makes me marvel at its prescience.
I was chairing a conference about the internet in Berlin, sponsored by Google, when one of the participants suggested that the German government should establish a public internet company. Silicon Valley, she proffered earnestly, was the preserve of the American super-rich and could not be trusted to tell the truth or preserve democracy.
I scoffed at the idea, though I was too polite to say so. Half of her analysis was, and still is, impossibly quaint and ridiculous. The notion of the state being relied upon to provide an online platform for comment and information – in the very country of Goebbels and the Stasi – stretches credulity. But I must admit that the speaker foresaw the malignancy of the likes of Elon Musk far earlier than I, or anyone I know, ever did.
Keep reading:
The tech billionaire is meddling in elections across Europe, and his latest move to support the AfD is proof he is determined to undermine democracy in a country that knows better than any what far-right dictatorship can bring, writes John Kampfner
Incoming first lady Melania Trump will be the subject of a new documentary directed by Brett Ratner and distributed by Amazon Prime Video.
The streaming arm of the tech giant got exclusive licensing rights for a streaming and theatrical release later this year, the company said Sunday.
Read more:
Incoming first lady will be the subject of new film directed by Brett Ratner
Republican Senator Jim Banks revealed he believes Speaker Mike Johnson wouldn’t have won his leadership role without President-elect Donald Trump’s support.
“Donald Trump weighed in in support of Mike Johnson. I don’t think Mike Johnson would be Speaker of the House this morning if Donald Trump wouldn’t have weighed in last week, spent political capital helping him get elected on one vote,” Banks told CNN on Sunday.
“And to me, that’s a positive sign that House Republicans are unified behind Donald Trump, the Trump agenda,” he added.
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