V.P. Wannabe Tom Cotton Ducks Key Question on Trump Trial

Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday, Republican Senator and Trump V.P.-hopeful Tom Cotton intently avoided answering whether he’d support the verdict if Trump loses the appeal in his hush-money trial—and weaseled away from his stance on other topics that went against Trump’s position too.

“Republicans are attacking the judge, the jury, the legal system here instead of letting the process play out,” Meet the Press anchor Peter Alexander asked. “If Donald Trump wins on appeal, is that valid?”

Cotton quickly answered the softball question, responding, “I think there’s no question Donald Trump should win on appeal.” On follow-up, Cotton was asked if he would find the verdict valid if Trump loses on appeal. Cotton blew off the question entirely, instead opting to speak straight through it to falsely assert, “He’s an innocent man who did nothing wrong.”

“This judge, again, violated New York rules by giving money to Joe Biden in 2020, specifically to stop Donald Trump,” Cotton continued. “I hope that the Court of Appeals in New York actually applies the law in an even-handed way as opposed to do what this judge did, what Joe Biden’s Department of Justice has done, which is bending the rules in return solely to stop Donald Trump. The only thing Donald Trump is guilty of is being a threat to Joe Biden’s reelection.”

Alexander noted to Cotton that “Joe Biden’s Department of Justice” is in the midst of prosecuting Robert Menendez, Henry Cuellar, and Hunter Biden. Alexander also noted to Cotton that the case against Trump began in 2018—well before Biden was the presidential nominee, and before he’d ever announced he was running for president.

In the same interview, Cotton revealed he would do Trump’s bidding elsewhere, adding a condition to whether he would accept the 2024 election results. Cotton was further grilled on his previous statements about the January 6 Capitol riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Notably, Trump has promised to pardon everyone convicted for the Capitol riot—including those who assaulted police—while Cotton has only gone so far as to call for pardoning people who did not assault anyone or vandalize anything. Cotton was also asked if he’d condemn extreme threats made against jurors, the judge, and prosecution in Trump’s hush-money trial that MSNBC pulled from Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social. Cotton initially dodged by deriding the comments as coming from an “obscure platform” and insinuating they must have come from “some obscure account” before admitting “I will always say that violence has no place in our politics.”

On Monday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene screamed at and berated Dr. Anthony Fauci in a petty fight that earned her a reprimand from the Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Greene called Fauci’s medical credentials into question during a hearing on the U.S. response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“That is completely unacceptable to deny Dr. Fauci, who is here as a respected member of the medical community, his title, and that’s actually a personal attack on his character,” Representative Robert Garcia, a Democrat, said.

“He’s not respected,” Greene shot back. Others on the committee quickly moved to correct Greene and have her words stricken from the record when she refused to comply.

Representative Brad Wenstrup, the Republican chair of the subcommittee, eventually reprimanded Greene and ordered, “The gentlelady will suspend.”

Garcia later tore into Greene and other Republicans for their conduct in the hearing.

“I am so sorry that you are subjected to those level of attacks and insanity,” Garcia said, addressing Fauci. “Your quote-unquote ‘so-called science’ that the gentlewoman is referring to has saved millions of lives in this country and around the world.”

Garcia went on to praise Fauci and other medical officials for saving lives during and outside of the pandemic, pointing out that Greene introduced the Fire Fauci Act and that she accused the infectious diseases specialist of creating the Covid-19 virus. Garcia noted that he lost both of his parents to Covid-19.

It’s pretty clear that Greene’s attack is part of her and other far-right Republicans’ culture-war posturing on vaccination and the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than achieve anything, their attacks on Fauci and other medical professionals, both on Monday and throughout the pandemic, only achieve attention for themselves and dangerous health outcomes for their supporters.

Greene hasn’t had a good spring. Last month, her attempt to insult Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett backfired and turned her into a bankable meme for Crockett, and she’s lost a lot of goodwill from her fellow Republicans over her failed effort to oust Speaker Mike Johnson.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is setting out on a new MAGA crusade: defunding the state of New York to avenge Donald Trump.

Greene* has proposed cutting the Empire State off from federal funding in a bid to punish residents after 12 jurors convicted Trump on Thursday. The extremely unlikely initiative would cut off access to federal resources for education, housing, law enforcement, veterans’ benefits, and other social needs.

But that’s not Greene’s only Trump-saving effort. The Georgia Republican also wants Congress to step in to prevent special counsel Jack Smith from prosecuting Trump in the federal election interference case and the classified documents trial.

The first step: pressure House Speaker Mike Johnson—whom Greene tried and failed to force out of Congress just last month—to lead the charge.

“The speaker of the House is one of the most powerful people in the country,” Greene said last week. “We control the budget, we control the power of the purse. If Speaker Johnson supports Trump like he claims, he should stop the special counsel, Jack Smith, and he should be using the power of the purse to hold New York accountable for the sham convictions against President Trump. The entire thing is political, it’s outrageous, and our country has completely turned a corner.”

While Johnson is unlikely to be on board with defunding an entire state, he has made clear he disagrees with the ruling. Johnson called on the Supreme Court to intervene, indicating that he thought some of the justices were “deeply concerned” about the trial outcome.

“I think that the justices on the court—I know many of them personally—I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are,” Johnson told Fox & Friends on Friday. “So I think they’ll set this straight.”

Trump has 30 days to appeal the conviction, according to New York penal law. Appealing the case would most likely turn into a referendum on the judge that oversaw it, Judge Juan Merchan, who endured Trump’s mud-slinging throughout the seven-week trial primarily over a gag order, which prevented Trump from attacking witnesses, jurors, and courtroom staff’s family—but did not prevent him from hurling vitriol at Merchan.

Trump could potentially push the state case to federal courts if he were reelected as president, but doing so would be incredibly unlikely unless he had already exhausted all other avenues via the appeals process, which could take years.

*This article originally misstated that Representative Mike Lawler supported Greene’s plan.

If you want an honest opinion, ask a kid. That lesson was on wide display Monday as the young son of Republican Representative John Rose stole the spotlight from his MAGA dad and made a bunch of silly faces to CSPAN’s camera—which even the normally buttoned-up CSPAN couldn’t resist highlighting.

Rose spoke from prepared remarks to the House decrying the conviction of Donald Trump, calling it a “terrible precedent set by our country” and a “politically driven prosecution” before becoming background noise for his 6-year-old son’s devious performance.

“The charges brought against Donald Trump should gravely concern every member of this body as well as every American across our country,” said Rose as his 6-year-old son’s body became gravely concerned with the need to make silly faces.

The goof heard ’round the world quickly gained popularity, with gifs and jokes about getting lost rewatching the clip, feeling kinship to the youngster’s informality amid continued conservative outrage at Trump’s felony conviction, and cheeky jokes that the rambunctious sprog was flagging the Illuminati.

Guy’s performance even earned him a job offer from The Onion CEO Ben Collins.

“This is what I get for telling my son Guy to smile at the camera for his little brother,” said Rose with a shrug emoji on X (formerly Twitter), apparently also forgetting why he spoke on the House floor and reminding us all that no amount of performative outrage can outmatch a kid goofing off.

Dr. Anthony Fauci visited Capitol Hill on Monday to testify on the origins of Covid-19, but some Republican members on the House Oversight Committee had no intention of asking anything even remotely relevant to scientific inquiry.

The former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was repeatedly grilled by GOP lawmakers who clearly had not done their homework before they tried to pin baseless allegations against him, in an apparent attempt to undermine his credibility as the medical leader of America’s pandemic response.

The hearing opened with committee Chair James Comer refusing to let Fauci actually answer any of his questions. The Kentucky Republican said it was because he had so many questions to get through.

In another embarrassing instance, New York Representative Nicole Malliotakis tried—and failed—to implicate the infectious diseases expert in a popular conspiracy theory, including that he had received royalties from pharmaceutical companies for coronavirus-related medications and vaccines.

“How much have you earned in royalties from pharmaceutical companies since the pandemic began in 2021?” asked Malliotakis.

“Zero,” replied Fauci.

The New York Republican then proceeded to read a headline in front of her, citing that an “NIH scientist had made $710 million from drugmakers.” “You’re saying that you did not receive any of the $710 million?” she pressed.

Fauci knew exactly how much he had made: just $122 for a somewhat unrelated monoclonal antibody that he had patented decades prior. But Malliotakis wasn’t satisfied with that. Instead, she attempted to corner Fauci on any royalties—not necessarily related to Covid—that he had received over the course of the pandemic, and whether any of the $710 million had gone to him.

“I think none,” Fauci said before fending off bubbling interruptions from the Trump ally. “No—I’m on the record, and I want to make sure that this is clear: that I developed a monoclonal antibody about 25 years ago that’s used as a diagnostic that has nothing to do with Covid, and I receive about $120 a year from that patent.”

Later, Arizona Representative Debbie Lesko attempted to frame Fauci for allegedly participating in a series of emails that discussed suppressing the “lab leak theory” for Covid without realizing that the emails don’t actually exist.

“You said about four or five things, Congressman, that were just not true,” Fauci responded after Lesko laid out her theory.

“Well, we have emails to prove it,” Lesko said.

“But you don’t,” he said, before Maryland Representative Kweisi Mfume interjected to correct Lesko that “no, we don’t have it.”

“I get tired of hearing ‘We got it,’ and then when we ask for it, it’s not there. We do not have it,” Mfume said. “That’s just incorrect.”

And another mind-boggling line of questioning by Ohio Representative Jim Jordan prompted the medical expert to ask, “What does that have to do with me?”