Trump Sat Down for Dinner With Fox News Execs Right After Third Indictment

Soon after Donald Trump learned he was being indicted for a third time, he sat down for a private dinner with top Fox executives, who begged him to attend the Republican debate.

The New York Times reported that Trump had dinner Tuesday night with Fox News president Jay Wallace and chief executive Suzanne Scott, at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

During the two-hour dinner, the Fox executives tried to convince Trump to attend the first Republican presidential primary debate, scheduled for August 23.

Last week, Trump declared on Truth Social that he had no intention of attending the debate and would instead let the other candidates duke it out. “Let them debate so I can see who I MIGHT consider for Vice President!” he announced.

He has also repeatedly attacked Fox News, which will host the debate, on Truth Social. He has also criticized the network for lenient coverage of Ron DeSantis, Trump’s main 2024 rival.

But during the dinner Tuesday, the Times reported:

The Fox executives made a soft appeal for Mr. Trump to attend the debate, two of the people familiar with the dinner said, telling the former president that he excels on the center stage and that it presents an opportunity for him to show off his debate skills.

Trump told the executives that he hasn’t made up his mind yet on whether he’ll attend.

If he does attend, it’s sure to be a wild affair. Other Republican candidates who have qualified for the first Republican presidential debate are: Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Chris Christie. Christie has been the most vocal Trump critic in the Republican field, rightfully calling him a “coward,” “liar,” and “loser.”

Donald Trump was indicted for a record-breaking third time  on Tuesday and now faces four felony counts for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. But his Republican challengers for president are brushing away the damning 45-page indictment like crumbs from the table.

“A D.C. jury would indict a ham sandwich and convict a ham sandwich if it was a Republican ham sandwich,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Fox News Wednesday, without noting any of the substantial allegations in the Trump indictment. He also blasted the indictment on Tuesday evening, before noting he hasn’t actually read it.

“We’re watching Biden’s DOJ continue to hunt Republicans, while protecting Democrats,” said Senator Tim Scott.

Vivek Ramaswamy went even further and announced a lawsuit against the Justice Department to “deliver accountability and transparency.” He also said he would file a Freedom of Information Act records request for more details on Trump’s third indictment. He also pledged once again to pardon Trump if elected. (In 2021, just six days after the insurrection, Ramaswamy declared, “What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple.”)

Other Republicans similarly bent over backward to defend Trump.

Representative Jim Banks may have had the wildest defense of Trump in Congress, claiming that the indictment “makes him an even stronger candidate to defeat Joe Biden next November.”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy dismissed the indictment as an attempt to distract from the Hunter Biden probe (which to date, has uncovered very little evidence).

“Just yesterday a new poll showed President Trump is without a doubt Biden’s leading political opponent,” McCarthy said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Everyone in America could see what was going to come next: DOJ’s attempt to distract from the news and attack the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, President Trump.”

In 2021, McCarthy said Trump “bears responsibility” for the riot at the Capitol.

“We’ve entered banana republic territory,” said Senator Ted Cruz, repeating one of his favorite talking points. In 2021, Cruz called the January 6 insurrection a “terrorist attack.”

Very few Republicans have publicly criticized Trump following the indictment, despite the gravity of the charges.

Republicans have repeatedly insisted that Donald Trump has done nothing wrong, even in the face of his record third indictment for trying to overturn the 2020 election. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski has a message for them: Just read the indictment.

Murkowski is one of Trump’s few Republican critics in Congress and one of just seven GOP senators who voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial. After the third indictment was unsealed Tuesday, Murkowski took to Twitter to explain that the charges just reinforce her conviction that she did the right thing in 2021.

“I encourage everyone to read the indictment, to understand the very serious allegations being made in this case,” she said.

An alarming number of Republican lawmakers have not read the indictment yet (or pretended they haven’t), often making illogical excuses as to why not. It’s a sign that the GOP continues to bend its knee to Trump, no matter what.

New documents in a sexual abuse lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani reveal that the former New York mayor frequently made misogynistic, antisemitic, and homophobic comments—meaning that he’s an even more disgusting creep than previously thought.

Giuliani’s former associate Noelle Dunphy sued him in May, accusing him of promising to pay her a $1 million annual salary but instead raping and sexually abusing her over the course of two years. Her lawsuit alleges that Giuliani was constantly drunk, talked openly about trying to overturn the 2020 election, and even plotted to sell pardons with Donald Trump at the low, low price of $2 million each.

Giuliani has denied all of the accusations, but Dunphy reportedly has a wealth of recorded conversations to back herself up. Her lawyer filed transcripts of some of those recordings from 2019 late Tuesday, and they are truly horrifying.

In multiple different conversations, Giuliani made aggressively lewd and possessive comments to Dunphy, at one point saying, “I want to own you, officially.”

“Legally, with a document,” he added.

He also said he gets “hard” when he thinks about her and how smart she is, even though normally, “I’d never think about a girl being smart. If you told me a girl was smart, I would often think she’s not attractive.”

Giuliani also admitted to having a two-year affair with his now-girlfriend, Maria Ryan, despite previously denying an illicit relationship.

He claimed that former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and actor Matt Damon were both gay, despite there being no evidence of that. Both Bloomberg and Damon have been in relationships with women for the past 20 years.

Giuliani said that Jewish men have smaller penises than Italian men (Giuliani is Italian) and complained about Jewish holidays. He was particularly steamed about Passover and said that Jewish people should “get over the Passover.”

In a weird stroke of irony, the U.S. government’s credit rating was downgraded the same day that Donald Trump was indicted for a historic third time. A top official confirmed Wednesday that part of the reason for the downgrade was increased political divisions, as evidenced by the January 6 insurrection.

Credit ratings agency Fitch downgraded the United States to AA+ from AAA on Tuesday, a move that surprised investors but was nearly lost in the flurry of Trump getting indicted for attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Fitch predicted the U.S. would see fiscal deterioration over the next three years and cited “the erosion of governance … over the last two decades that has manifested in repeated debt limit standoffs and last-minute resolutions.”

But another major reason for the downgrade was the dramatic increase in political polarization, seen in the January 6 attack, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing Fitch senior director Richard Francis. The ratings agency met with Treasury officials ahead of the downgrade and highlighted the implications of the riot for America’s credit rating.

“It was something that we highlighted because it just is a reflection of the deterioration in governance, it’s one of many,” Francis told Reuters. “You have the debt ceiling, you have Jan. 6. Clearly, if you look at the polarization with both parties … the Democrats have gone further left and Republicans further right, so the middle is kind of falling apart.”

The fact that the downgrade was announced the same day Trump was indicted is likely a coincidence, but the connection between the two events is still significant. Trump faces four counts that include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote.

Hundreds of people who descended on Washington to try to stop the certification of votes have said they were responding to a call from Trump. Nearly 200 people who were charged in the January 6 insurrection said they were answering a Trump tweet urging people to attend a “big protest” in the nation’s capital. Almost 100 more specifically said Trump’s speech to the crowd that day prompted them to storm the Capitol.

So it turns out that Trump, who promised a strong economy, has actually cost the U.S. standing in the global market.