Looks Like Trump Might Say Those Famous Old Apprentice Words to Alina Habba

Donald Trump doesn’t seem quite so keen on one of his star attorneys anymore.

Instead, the former president says he is scanning for new legal talent to appeal the verdict after losing the second defamation case brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, which cost him a whopping $83.3 million.

“I am in the process, along with my team, of interviewing various law firms to represent me in an Appeal of one of the most ridiculous and unfair Witch Hunts our Country has ever seen—The defamation Sham presided over by a Clinton appointed, highly partisan, Trump Hating Judge, Lewis Kaplan, who was, together with certain other Radical Left Democrat Judges, one of the most partisan and out of control activists that I have ever appeared before,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial late Tuesday evening.

That could mean that Alina Habba, the attorney who went above and beyond embarrassing herself while representing Trump, to the point of butting heads with Judge Lewis Kaplan over what he described as “evidence 101,” is finally on the outs.

Habba set herself apart not just by her pathetic, over-the-top courtroom displays for the GOP front-runner but by making unexpected appearances in places she had no business to be, including at Trump’s victory party following his New Hampshire primary win, just one day after Habba claimed she wasn’t feeling well and the trial was postponed due to Covid concerns.

On Truth Social, Trump then went on to baselessly accuse Kaplan of being a “bully” who “only allowed me to be on the witness stand for minutes,” decrying the trial he lost as a “hoax” and a “disgrace” to the American judicial system.

But Trump might have a harder time than he’s letting on finding someone to replace his already paltry legal team. Law firms are reportedly hesitant to represent the bombastic TV star for fear that they won’t be able to keep him from damaging his own defense—and that he won’t pay them.

“First, Trump has a reputation for not paying his lawyers. And he is so toxic to half the population, that lawyers risk losing other business when they accept him as a client,” Neama Rahmani, the president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told Newsweek.

Earlier this month, another of Trump’s key attorneys, Joseph Tacopina, announced that he and his firm would no longer represent Trump in the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit and the criminal case against Trump, in which the GOP front-runner is accused of making hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels via his fixer and another former personal attorney, Michael Cohen.

A Pennsylvania man was arrested on suspicion of killing his father early Wednesday, after he reportedly uploaded a far-right-conspiracy-laden YouTube video that featured the decapitated head.

Justin Mohn, 32, is charged with first-degree murder, abuse of a corpse, and possessing an instrument of crime with intent, according to local authorities.

“We got called to the home and officers went in and discovered the father upstairs deceased,” Middletown Township Police Chief Joe Bartorilla told reporters late Tuesday evening.

The father, Michael Mohn, was found beheaded in the bathroom of the home he shared with his son in Levittown. Police said his wife, Denice Mohn, discovered the body in the first-floor bathroom after arriving home about 7 p.m. on Tuesday, after which her screams led neighbors to summon police to the scene.

Local authorities found the head inside a plastic bag in a pot in the first-floor bedroom, according to a police affidavit. Mohn reportedly used a machete and a large kitchen knife to sever the body. Both weapons were found in a bathtub in the home, according to court documents.

The younger Mohn was arrested in his father’s car, hours later, in Fort Indiantown Gap, home of a large National Guard Training Center, more than 100 miles away from the home, according to police.

“We didn’t know where he was going and what his intentions were when he left here,” Middletown Township Police Captain Pete Feeney told NBC News. “Fortunately, we were able to get a location based on his cell phone.”

A YouTube video, titled “Call to Arms for American Patriots” and posted to the channel Mohn’s Militia, showed Mohn lifting his father’s decapitated head while claiming he now had control over America’s military.

“He is now in hell for eternity as a traitor to his country,” Mohn said in the clip.

The video has since been removed from YouTube for violating the site’s policy on graphic content but reportedly featured a scripted political rant about “far-left woke mobs” and the “traitorous Biden regime,” reported The Daily Beast.

Over the course of 14 minutes, Mohn raged against the LGBTQ community, the Black Lives Matters movement, and antifascist group antifa, which he referred to as a “terrorist organization.” He also called for the seizure of federal buildings and claimed that federal employees should be “publicly executed for betraying their country”—adding, however, that state employees should not be targeted in his fantasy uprising, reported local outlet PhillyBurbs.com.

“He talked about his dad a lot,” a former friend of Mohn’s told the Beast. “He believed in all these conspiracies. The government is putting stuff in the water, they’re bugging places to listen to our conversations, stuff like that. His dad was always tied up in them somehow.”

Mohn is being held without bail. His hearing is scheduled for February 8.

Senator Marsha Blackburn on Wednesday became the latest Republican to run scared from Taylor Swift.

Swift has not yet weighed in on the 2024 elections, nor has she given any indication that she intends to. Yet in recent days, Republicans have increasingly accused Swift of being a Democratic operative, including insisting that she will rig the NFL Super Bowl to get more attention ahead of endorsing President Joe Biden (as if one of the biggest musical performers in the world needs to attract more attention).

While Swift rarely weighs in on politics, instead tending to encourage her fans to act without telling them how to do so, she did endorse Biden in 2020. And in the past, she has taken particular aim at Blackburn, who represents Swift’s home state of Tennessee and is up for reelection this November.

When asked Wednesday morning if she thought Swift’s endorsement could affect the upcoming election, Blackburn quickly became tongue-tied. She started by complimenting Swift, in an obvious effort to not alienate the singer’s millions of fans, and then stumbled her way to complaining about the “border, the open border, the Biden border policy.”

Blackburn is one of many Republican senators resisting a bipartisan deal on the border. The GOP has actually spent months working to tank the deal because Donald Trump, Biden’s likely 2024 opponent, has said that any compromise with Democrats will be too lenient on immigrants. He also doesn’t want a bill that could potentially benefit Biden to pass.

Swift broke her long-running apolitical approach to publicity in 2018, when she endorsed Blackburn’s Democratic opponents in the midterm elections. Swift said in a statement that Blackburn’s voting record “appalls and terrifies me.”

Swift’s 2020 documentary Miss Americana shows the singer crying as she explains to her father why she needs to speak out against Blackburn, over the latter’s opposition to LGBTQ rights and the Violence Against Women Act. Swift criticizes Blackburn’s policies and calls her “Trump in a wig.”

Blackburn isn’t the only one getting worked up over Swift. Trump himself is frustrated by all the attention on the singer, and has privately insisted that he is “more popular” than she and has more loyal fans, Rolling Stone reported Tuesday. Trump also said it “obviously” made no sense that Swift was named Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year instead of him.

Trump’s anti-Swift ire has some of his more powerful supporters plotting a “holy war” on the pop star, according to Rolling Stone.

The real danger that Swift poses to Republicans isn’t her politics, specifically. Instead, as Edith Olmstead wrote for The New Republic in September, “it’s because of her vast influence over a younger demographic that conservatives have famously struggled to attract or exert an influence upon themselves.”

Mike Johnson’s ties to Christian nationalism are well documented, but a new report reveals his long-standing connection to a particularly extremist strain of Christianity—and the House speaker’s refusal to disavow it should be a source of major concern.

An investigation published Wednesday by The Daily Beast reveals Johnson has particularly close relationships with leaders of Christian dominionism, a radical sect of Christian fundamentalism that supports establishing an entirely Christian nation, opposes LGBTQ rights, and even defends slavery.

The Beast asked Johnson’s office whether the speaker “thought biblically sanctioned violence conflicted with his duties as an officer of the constitution, whether he denounced the teachings of hardline fundamentalists who have endorsed biblical slavery and rejected constitutional provisions like liberty and justice, and whether he personally believed the Bible permitted slavery.” A spokesperson declined to explicitly disavow any of those beliefs.

“None of these actions or comments you are referencing were made by Speaker Johnson. The Speaker is not going to apologize to the Daily Beast for his Christian faith or judge the beliefs or statements of others,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

While Johnson has been open about his fervent faith, he has previously evaded other questions about just how deeply he believes in Christian fundamentalism. Keri Ladner, a religious studies scholar and author, told the Beast that Johnson is “too smart” to openly state he backs widely decried Christian sects.

But “when you dig into the people around Johnson, that’s what you find when you peel back the layers,” Ladner said. “It’s absolutely in that orbit.”

One of those people is David Barton, a Christian nationalist author and activist. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that Barton has repeatedly “demonized LGBTQ persons and communities, arguing that HIV and AIDS are god-given consequences for living out one’s LGBTQ life.” Barton has also argued against aspects of the Thirteenth Amendment, insisting there is a biblical defense for slavery.

Johnson has known Barton for at least a quarter-century, and said at a Christian lawmakers’ event two years ago that Barton has had “a profound influence on me, and my work, and my life, and everything I do.”

After Johnson was elected speaker, Barton said on a podcast in October that he and his organization had been advising the Louisiana Republican on who to hire for his staff. In another, more recent podcast, Barton said Johnson becoming speaker gave him and his group “some tools at our disposal” that “we haven’t had in a long time.”

Johnson has also touted close relationships with Tony Perkins, a vocal Christian nationalist, and Mat Staver, who has called for the criminalization of same-sex relationships.

It’s no secret that Johnson holds extreme beliefs. He blames the collapse of the Roman Empire on LGBTQ people and opposes abortion access. He compared himself to Moses, decried the separation of church and state, and has a Christian nationalist flag hanging outside his office. The growing evidence of the people and causes he allows to influence him are further proof that he will try to push Congress to the right.

At least one Republican has reached a breaking point over Donald Trump’s border security chicanery.

On Tuesday, North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer had swing voters at the front of his mind, lobbing his own mud at Trump for describing the bipartisan deal as a “betrayal.”

“Here’s what I worry about. If we don’t try to do something when we have the moment to do something, all of those swing voters in swing states for whom the border is the number one priority have every right to look at us and go: ‘You blew your opportunity. We were ready to give you a shot, and you blew it,’” Cramer told CNN’s Manu Raju.

“I don’t see that coming back as a reward to us,” Cramer added. “If we don’t try, then shame on us.”

Republicans have spent months tanking a potential border deal in an increasingly transparent attempt to help Trump get reelected to the White House.

“As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible open borders betrayal of America,” Trump told a crowd of supporters at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday. “I’ll fight it all the way. A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s OK. Please blame it on me. Please.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are on the offensive, claiming that Republicans—who have a measly two-seat majority in the House—chickened out of a “tough deal.”

“It’s clear that when it comes to border security, Democrats are for the fix, and Republicans are for the fiction,” Representative Eric Swalwell told CNN.

And President Joe Biden took a more aggressive stance on the issue over the weekend, following a Supreme Court decision that launched a standoff between Texas state officials and federal border patrol agents.

“Give me the power, I asked them the very day I got into office,” Biden said. “Give me the Border Patrol, give me the people, give me the judges, give me the people who can stop this and make it work,” he added.

During a campaign stop in South Carolina, Biden supported the emerging deal, and said that he would shut down the border if given the authority by Congress.

“It would also give me as president the emergency authority to shut down the border until it could get back under control. If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly,” he added.