Recall the president’s first term was closely shadowed by high-profile breakups from loyalists who disagreed with him on matters of substance. For example, the split with his first Defense secretary, James Mattis, began in 2017 when Mattis, a man who spent more than four decades in uniform, defended the importance of NATO. His successor, Mark Esper, found himself at odds with the president for refusing to use the military on citizens. On his way out the door, Esper told the country that if his replacement was “a real ‘yes man’ … then God help us.”

Some of the highlights from Trump’s second term include squabbles with his biggest donor, Elon Musk, who was upset the president wasn’t lowering the national debt enough; with former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene because millions of Americans faced losing health insurance; and with Rep. Thomas Massie for having the audacity to seek justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking operation.

Now it appears it’s Carlson’s turn. He, like Pope Leo XIV and many of our allies and nearly 70% of Americans, disapproves of the president’s handling of the war in Iran. On a recent episode of the Carlson podcast, the former Fox News host invited his brother Buckley, himself a former Trump speechwriter, on the show to discuss their buyer’s remorse.

Everyone has that line they won’t cross for the president.

Omarosa Manigault Newman left reality TV to advise Trump. She followed him to the White House, found out there was a lot of racism over in MAGA land, and ended up back on reality TV. For Mattis, it was abandoning our allies. For Esper, it was shooting protesters.

For Carlson, it’s Iran. Candidate Trump campaigned on ending endless wars. This week, Trump said there’s no timeline for when the war he started with Iran will end.

“I do think it’s like a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,” Carlson told his brother. “We’ll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”

Now before Tucker’s apology, Buckley defended his initial support of Trump’s candidacy in 2015 — despite “all of his obvious foibles and his disgusting elements of his personality” — in part because “he built things.” Buckley also said that after the election of President Obama, white Americans in Washington were subjugated by a version of Jim Crow in education and society, and that progressives “would look blank or angry” whenever he asked what Obama was doing to strengthen the nation.

In other words, being red in the face over Trump did not turn the Tucker boys blue. In fact, the episode ended with the two calling the left a bunch of “lunatics,” even after listing the ways the Trump administration was holding back release of the Epstein files and hurting the country.

“Demonic influences concentrate on those who have power. Beware of power,” Tucker warned listeners halfway through the show before his brother chimed in: “And those who seek power.”

Of course, Trump’s ascension to the White House wasn’t solely based on the contributions of media folks. The president entered 2015 having been a public figure for more than 30 years. He’s had the luxury of criticizing elected officials and legislation on camera without the burden of governing for much of that time. When he entered the political arena, he didn’t have a record to defend. He likes being quotable, not being held accountable. That’s why it’s doubtful he would have been elected a second time if not for the support from unscrupulous podcasters masquerading as political journalists such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Andrew Schulz, who less than a year ago said everything Trump “campaigned on, I believed he wanted to do. And now he’s doing the exact opposite thing.… I voted for none of this.”

As if “this” had not been clearly spelled out in the pages of Project 2025 for all to see before deciding whether to vote for Trump and that agenda.

Schulz, the comedian and podcaster, might not have read that outline, but Tucker Carlson probably did. That’s why his apology to listeners — like the mea culpas from the discarded loyalists of the past — ultimately won’t mean anything to mainstream Republicans or MAGA. Those who identify with the latter listen only to Trump. As for the former — they have always known that people like Carlson don’t regret supporting Trump. They regret falling out of favor.

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Trump is a fighter. He fights hard, and he fights dirty. Some people may think he fights like a lunatic, but if one is fully committed, then the style of fighting is not important. Winning is important. Trump likes to win, even though he hasn’t won much in the last few years, but he does like to win. He keeps trying. He is tenacious. He is like the cobra—he strikes fast. His mouth is poisonous. But he is majestic in his snake-like qualities.

He likes to belittle his rivals. I wanted to say that he is like Muhammad Ali, in that he likes to taunt his opponents, but then, Ali was Black, and Trump would never like me to make that comparison. At the same time, I don’t think Muhammad Ali would be too happy either. Trump calls his opponents names, gives them derogatory titles, and insults their families. By the standards of civility, that may be wrong. But Trump has to be Trump. Civility is not his thing. It is actually beneath him to be civil, to show respect, or to be nice—especially if his opponent is a woman, even worse, a woman of color, who may be doing well in the polls and drawing larger crowds than him.

You see, crowd size does matter. Trump can’t have someone running against him who can claim to have a bigger crowd. That hits his masculinity where it hurts the most. He has to do what every man has done since the beginning of time. He has to inflate, enhance, and enlarge his crowd size via artificial means. He has to claim that it is much bigger than it really is because his followers are not going to question it, and those who are questioning it are not going to ask him to whip out his proof. Even then, he will just keep insisting that it is 10, 20, even 30 times bigger than, say, Martin Luther King’s. He just has to say it. Even if it is wrong, and even if it is not physically possible to stretch his crowd to such lengths, the news will make it to all corners of the world. If he repeats his claim enough times, it will echo throughout God’s kingdom, and people would only hear how big it is and believe it. Religion is all about blind faith, and he is our Messiah, the patron saint of imaginary crowd sizes.

He has to call her stupid. He has to say that she has a low I.Q. I can bet my bottom dollar that Trump does not even know what the acronym I.Q. stands for, but he is smart enough to know that saying someone has a low I.Q. is probably some sort of insult. He has no qualms about calling her dumb because he knows very well that his followers are dumb enough to just follow along. Even though she has two degrees, is a lawyer, a prosecutor, a senator, and the Vice President, it is okay to call her dumb just because she is running against him. Only a dumb person would run against Trump, knowing full well that Trump is going to say stupid, crazy, unhinged, irrational, outrageous, baseless, racist, sexist, and even borderline lunatic things about her. His followers would put all of her credentials aside and believe his rhetoric because that is what they want to believe.

It is not just his rivals that he likes to insult and belittle. He likes to extend that courtesy to our troops as well. He likes to say really obnoxious and insulting things about our bravest soldiers. Recently, he said that the civilian “Medal of Freedom” is better than the military “Medal of Honor,” our nation’s highest military award for bravery in combat. According to him, the “Medal of Honor” recipients are “… soldiers who’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they are dead,” while “Medal of Freedom” recipients are “beautiful and healthy.”

There are Marine veterans of almost 40 years who whine endlessly about Governor Walz and what they call his “stolen valor,” but they won’t say a thing about Trump’s complete lack of valor. Our soldiers literally put their lives on the line for our freedom, and the recipients of the “Medal of Honor” have actually given their lives for this nation, but that means nothing to Trump. He can’t really sell their lives and make money from them. Instead, those who give money to his party are better because they enrich Trump, and in return, Trump bestows upon them a “Medal of Freedom” to make them feel special and to thank them for their donations. An empty but profitable gesture from Trump. All in all, a vanity project that fits well with Trump’s personality.

Trump has every right to [S-word] on the bravery of our wounded and fallen soldiers because he was their Commander-in-Chief at one time, which gives him every right to disparage their sacrifices. If Trump were in their place, he would have never been hit by a bullet or been killed in combat. If it wasn’t for those darn bone spurs in his heels, he would have shown the world how to stay “beautiful and healthy” while fighting in a battle or trying to save your fellow soldiers. Oh, wait! As a matter of fact, he did show us exactly that when a young kid tried to take him out. The bullets didn’t even graze him.

If Trump were in Vietnam, he would not have been captured like that pesky naval aviator John McCain. He would have single-handedly won the war for us, and our military history would have been so much different, so much better. If Trump had ever been a soldier during the Civil War, as some of our “Medal of Honor” recipients were, he would have ended that war quickly and decisively. Even though it would have been the Confederacy that prevailed, Trump would have played an outsized role, as he is doing nowadays.

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Donald Trump is pushing for his federal election interference trial in Washington to be televised, joining media outlets that say the American public should be able to watch the historic case unfold.

Federal court rules prohibit broadcasting proceedings, but The Associated Press and other news organizations say the unprecedented case of a former president standing trial on accusations that he tried to subvert the will of voters warrants making an exception.

The Justice Department is opposing the effort, arguing that the judge overseeing the case does not have the authority to ignore the long-standing nationwide policy against cameras in federal courtrooms. The trial is scheduled to begin on March 4.

“I want this trial to be seen by everybody in the world,” Trump said Saturday during a presidential campaign event in New Hampshire. “The prosecution wishes to continue this travesty in darkness and I want sunlight.”

Lawyers for Trump wrote in court papers filed late Friday that all Americans should be able to observe what they characterize as a politically motivated prosecution of the Republican front-runner for his party’s 2024 nomination. The defense also suggested Trump will try to use the trial as a platform to repeat his unfounded claims that the 2020 election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden was stolen from him. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

“President Trump absolutely agrees, and in fact demands, that these proceedings should be fully televised so that the American public can see firsthand that this case, just like others, is nothing more than a dreamt-up unconstitutional charade that should never be allowed to happen again,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.

The request for a televised trial comes as the Washington case has emerged as the most potent and direct legal threat to Trump’s political fortunes. Trump is accused of illegally scheming to overturn the election results in the run-up to the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by his supporters.

Trump has repeatedly sought to delay the Washington trial date until after the 2024 election. But U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who was nominated for the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama, appears determined to keep it as scheduled.

On Friday in Florida, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is handling the separate classified documents prosecution of Trump, pushed back multiple deadlines in a way that makes it highly unlikely that case can proceed to trial in May, as had been planned. Trump is facing dozens of felony counts under the Espionage Act. He has pleaded not guilty.

The news outlets wrote in their request to Chutkan last month that a lack of transparency can sow distrust in the legal system. They said that is particularly dangerous in a case where “a polarized electorate includes tens of millions of people who, according to opinion polls, still believe that the 2020 election was decided by fraud.”

“It would be a great loss if future generations of Americans were forever deprived of being able to access and view the events of this trial even years after the verdict, which would immeasurably improve the ability of future journalists and historians to retell accurately and meaningfully analyze this unique chapter of American history,” Rebecca Blumenstein, president of editorial for NBC News, wrote in a court filing.

Some state courts allow cameras in the courtroom. The public has been able to watch proceedings held by the judge overseeing the Georgia election case against Trump and 18 co-defendants.

Photographers have been permitted to take photos of Trump inside the courtroom during his civil fraud trial in New York, but the trial has not been broadcast.

The Justice Department has said that knowledge that cameras are in the courtroom can affect lawyers and witnesses in “subtle ways” and lead to grandstanding. Noting the “ever-increasing acrimony in public discourse,” prosecutors said witnesses who testify on camera may also be harassed or threatened.

“When a witness’s image is captured on video, it is not just a fleeting image, but it exists indefinitely,” the government said. “Were there an appeal and retrial, witnesses who were subjected to scrutiny and harassment on social media may be unwilling to testify again.”

The coronavirus pandemic led the federal courts to temporarily relax its rules, allowing the public to listen to many proceedings over the telephone or videoconference. The U.S. Supreme Court has continued to provide a live audio feed of its arguments since the pandemic began.

The policymaking body of the federal courts adopted a new policy in September that allows judges to provide live audio access to nontrial proceedings in civil and bankruptcy cases. It does not apply in criminal cases.

News outlets had previously asked the federal courts policymakers to revise the rules to allow broadcasting, at least in cases where there is an extraordinary public interest. The chair of the advisory committee last month agreed to establish a subcommittee to study the issue, though it’s highly unlikely any rules changes would come before Trump’s trial.

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