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‘Someone Who Says Tap Water Turns Kids Gay’: House Dem Slams ‘Insane’ Trump Cabinet Picks
A top House Democrat is leveling strong criticism against Donald Trump for what he mockingly referred to as the president-elect’s “dream team” of cabinet nominees.
Democratic Rules Committee Vice Chair Jim McGovern of Massachusetts told his colleagues Tuesday afternoon (videos below) that the incoming Trump administration “is leaking plans to court martial military officers who are not sufficiently loyal.”
“Isn’t that usually how things go in authoritarian dictatorships? Purge the military of anyone who might have a spine and refused to obey an unlawful order? I mean, what the hell is going on here?” he asked.
“And their cabinet picks so far? I mean, these are like beyond insane,” McGovern declared. “Someone who is credibly accused of having sex with an underage girl. Someone who sucks up to foreign dictators and has attracted major concern that they can’t be trusted to protect America’s secrets from our adversaries. Someone who paid hush money to cover up a sexual assault accusation, you know, to lead our military, he’s picked because Donald Trump likes him on Fox News? Someone who says that tap water turns kids gay? I mean, this is the dream team? This is the dream team? Really?”
McGovern appeared to be referring to Attorney General presumptive nominee Matt Gaetz, Director of National Intelligence presumptive nominee Tulsi Gabbard, Defense Secretary presumptive nominee Pete Hegseth, and HHS Secretary presumptive nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
READ MORE: ‘Damaging’: Unredacted Sealed Sworn Testimony in Gaetz Case Accessed by Alleged Hacker
“I mean, seriously, it would be funny if it weren’t so sad. And hopefully, you United States Senate has a backbone and insists on a thorough confirmation process. Look, the truth is this. The truth is that this is not what people voted for. They voted for their pocketbooks, and frankly, I don’t blame them.”
Congressman McGovern also declared, “every decision that has been made by this incoming administration so far has not been about the American people. It has been about them.”
“I’m reading the newspaper again this morning that they want to issue blank pardons to those who committed crimes on January 6th,” he said, referring to the 2021 insurrection. “Republicans call them ‘political prisoners.’ I mean, these are people who were arrested, indicted, tried, and convicted by juries and judges and courtrooms across this country for violently attacking our brave law enforcement officers people who smashed cops in the heads with metal barricades, who jammed them indoors until blood was coming out of their mouths. And the incoming administration is thinking about pardoning them.”
According to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, as of August 5, over 1,488 defendants have been charged, including approximately 547 defendants who “have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees,” and, “including approximately 163 individuals who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.”
McGovern continued, adding, “I do not believe any of what my Republican friends are talking about on the floor today is in line with what the American people voted for. They voted for cheaper groceries, not whatever the hell this stuff is. They are asking us to vote for a bill, my Republican friends, that we give the incoming administration the ability to revoke the nonprofit status of any advocacy group they want, just by labeling them as a ‘terrorist sympathizer.’ A bill that would give President-elect Trump a new power to just unilaterally accuse an American group of terrorism and then shut them down.”
READ MORE: Nancy Mace Slammed for Trying to Ban First Trans Member of Congress From Restrooms
The Massachusetts Democrat also went on to say that he blames, “the billionaires who have rigged our country against working people and spent the last four decades squeezing every penny they could out of people. I blame the politicians, including the incoming administration, who have abandoned workers and who have and who have done nothing while the rich get richer and everyone else gets screwed.”
“My friends on the other side, they want to blame trans people. Guess what? Trans people aren’t the ones raising people’s grocery prices. Big corporations are. They wanna blame immigrants. And here’s the deal. Immigrants aren’t the ones denying health insurance claims, Mr. Speaker. It’s the billion dollar insurance companies that do that on a daily basis. And they want to blame woke this and woke that, what’s woke about thinking special interests should not be able to buy tax breaks?”
Watch the short clips below or at this link.
McGovern: What the hell is going on here? And their cabinet picks so far? These are like beyond insane. Someone who paid hush money to cover up a sexual assault accusation, you know, to lead our military? Someone who says that tap water turns kids gay. pic.twitter.com/KZDdlAuDEc
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 19, 2024
McGovern: My friends on the other side, they want to blame trans people. Trans people aren’t the ones raising people’s grocery prices. Big corporations are. pic.twitter.com/OuHhdmhjsP
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 19, 2024
READ MORE: Trump’s Plan to Defy 14th Amendment: No Passports for Children of Undocumented Parents
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
