Trump Adds New Billionaire Conspiracy Theorist to His Cabinet

Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Republican billionaire Howard Lutnick to be secretary of commerce.

Trump announced in a statement posted on Truth Social that Lutnick, the CEO of financial services company Cantor Fitzgerald, would “lead our Tariff and Trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of United States Trade Representative.”

Lutnick has been the co-chair of Trump’s transition team since August, and has expressed support for Trump’s ill-defined plan to impose broad tariffs on foreign producers, a scheme experts say would shock the U.S. economy and cause increases in consumer prices across the board. Even Lutnick himself has admitted Americans would bear the brunt of tariffs, but he still wants to impose them anyway.

In September, Lutnick told CNBC that “tariffs are an amazing tool for the president to use—we need to protect the American worker.” Lutnick also gushed about tariffs at Trump’s fascistic rally in Madison Square Garden last month, claiming that America was better off 100 years ago, when it had “no income tax and all we had was tariffs.”

He made several other disturbing remarks during his appearance in New York City, suggesting that Trump’s critics ought to be charged with treason, and taking a bigoted swipe at Muslim voters. Lutnick has also claimed that vaccines have “not been proven,” making him the second openly anti-vaccine in Trump’s Cabinet after proposed DHS head Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

This story has been updated.

South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace is still trying desperately to get on television, and this time she’s resorted to transphobic attacks against another lawmaker.

Mace introduced a resolution Tuesday which would ban transgender women from using the women’s restrooms in the U.S. Capitol, just weeks after Sarah McBride became the first transgender woman to be elected to Congress.

Rather than actually govern, Mace spends most of her time launching pathetic attempts to get as much media attention as possible by trying to “trigger” people, and her latest stunt is the most pathetic one yet.

“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace told reporters on Monday. She added that her new colleague “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop.”

When asked if the resolution was a direct response to the people of Delaware democratically electing McBride into office, Mace replied, “That and more.”

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said that by electing Donald Trump to the White House, Americans had voiced their support for anti-trans bills, adding that she would support the resolution, and a similar bathroom ban in “all tax-payer funded facilities.” She said she normally uses the private bathroom in her office.

When asked specifically how lawmakers planned to monitor the biological sex of all women trying to enter restrooms in the U.S. Capitol, both Greene and Mace looked uncomfortable and didn’t answer the question.

McBride responded Tuesday to her colleagues’ hateful remarks.

“Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness,” McBride wrote in a post on X.

“This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing,” McBride wrote. “We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.”

Mace took to X on Wednesday to fire off a slate of posts cheering herself on. “The radical Left is calling me a ‘threat.’ You’re damn right I am. I am a threat to anyone who wants to strip women and girls of their rights,” she wrote.

It’s clear that Fox News is not into Donald Trump’s pick of Matt Gaetz for attorney general—at all.

A segment of the show on Tuesday morning turned to why the former Florida representative  would be a disaster if he were to lead the Justice Department.

Fox News host Trey Gowdy, a former Republican representative, urged the president-elect to rethink his relationship to “lawfare” and the Justice Department.

“Do not use the justice system as a weapon. The message for Republicans is don’t do it on the other side, either, with this absurd A.G. pick that you just made,” Gowdy said, referring to Gaetz. “Justice is different. It is a combination of policy, law, and also morality. You do not use our justice system as a political weapon. Voters rejected it in November and will reject it if Republicans try to do it. Some things rise above the din. The justice system is one of those things.”

Gaetz has been a massive thorn in the side of his more traditional Republican colleagues since his boycott of Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year. More importantly, he has massive, troubling allegations of paying to have sex with an underage girl hanging over his head. The House Ethics Committee is still deliberating on whether to release the content of its investigation into these allegations, and the outcome could be potentially damning for Gaetz.

This is not the first time Trump’s actions have left his own media base baffled. Former Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson also criticized Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth, writing on X, “From silly diner interviews on Weekend Fox and Friends to Secretary of Defense? I never thought I’d say I’m stunned about any pick after the election but nominating Pete Hegseth for this incredibly important role? Yes he’s a veteran … and?”

These controversial picks promise to make even more controversial Cabinet hearings. We can all only wait and see.

Donald Trump is now receiving intelligence briefings as president-elect of the United States. 

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Trump began receiving briefings provided by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence shortly after the election, citing anonymous sources. During his presidential campaign, Trump didn’t want to receive classified briefings, saying that he didn’t want to be accused of leaking them.

“[Intelligence briefers] come in, they give you a briefing, and then two days later, they leak it, and then they say you leaked it,” Trump said in August. “So the only way to solve that problem is not to take it.… I’ll have plenty of them when I get in.”  

After he lost the 2020 election, Trump took numerous classified documents, including photos and charts relating to national security, with him to his Mar-a-Lago estate, resulting in a federal indictment charging him with 42 felony counts related to willful retention of national security information, corruptly concealing documents, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. 

The case against Trump would later be dismissed by a judge he appointed, Aileen Cannon, on the weak grounds that special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment to the case was unconstitutional, ensuring that Trump would face no consequences for his actions, despite extensive evidence against him.  

This evidence includes telling Mar-a-Lago staff to avoid cameras when moving boxes, retaining documents even after the FBI searched the property, and the sensitive national security contents of the documents themselves. Now that Trump is receiving classified briefings again, he’ll know about information vital to national security—and can handle that however he sees fit, safely or not.  

Donald Trump repeatedly told America he had “nothing to do” with Project 2025. But now, he’s welcoming its architect into his Cabinet with open arms.

Russ Vought, who was deeply involved in the creation of Project 2025 and wrote an entire chapter in the right-wing playbook, is being strongly considered for an upcoming Cabinet position, according to several sources who spoke with ABC News. Vought has already begun the vetting process and has been seen at Mar-a-Lago meeting with Trump’s team.

Vought—a former lobbyist, self-described Christian nationalist, and director of the Office of Management and Budget in Trump’s first term—authored a chapter in the 922-page MAGA extremist master plan titled “Executive Office of the President” for Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” section. The chapter serves as “a comprehensive policy guide for the next conservative U.S. president.”

Vought isn’t the only Project 2025 alum being floated for a crucial role in the Trump Cabinet. Gene Hamilton, who wrote a chapter about how the Justice Department needed a “top to bottom overhaul” because it is “captured by an unaccountable bureaucratic managerial class and radical Left ideologues who have embedded themselves throughout its offices and components,” has been seriously floated for an important legal team position. Trump has also nominated Project 2025 contributor and free-speech “warrior” Brendan Carr to serve as Federal Communications Commission chair.

On the campaign trail, Trump had tried to distance himself from Project 2025, particularly after it became a focus point for Democrats. “This was a group of people that got together, they came up with some ideas, I guess some good, some bad, but it makes no difference. I have nothing to do [with it],” Trump stated during his nationally televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. His loyal transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick described the project as an “absolute zero” and “radioactive.”

And yet here we are, with Vought, Carr, and Hamilton cozying back up to the president-elect, who was surely lying to America throughout his campaign. The skeleton plan for the far-right takeover is coming alive.