North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Tells Trump to Screw Off

It seems that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un isn’t interested in reviving his relationship with Donald Trump this time.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Kim is unenthusiastic about reviving talks with the United States during Trump’s second term, expressing skepticism during a speech Thursday about what could actually be achieved.

“We have already explored every possible avenue in negotiating with the U.S.,” Kim reportedly said at a Pyongyang defense expo. He added that America’s “unchanging aggressive and hostile policy” toward North Korea is clear.

Kim also called the U.S. a superpower that prefers the use of force to coexistence, claiming that the previous negotiations during the Trump administration didn’t lead anywhere. Plus, the Journal reports that North Korea doesn’t have as big of a need for sanctions relief as it did during the Trump years, having expanded its nuclear arsenal and strengthened economic and military ties with Russia.

Today, Kim is just not that into Trump anymore. He doesn’t have much of a willingness to disarm and passed a law allowing the country to make preemptive nuclear strikes. Vladimir Putin is giving Kim things Trump cannot: military technology as well as diplomatic protection at the United Nations Security Council.

But Trump and Putin also have a disturbingly close relationship, meaning that there still may be a path open for the president-elect to pursue better relations with North Korea. Lest we forget, Trump’s talks with Kim during his first term started with “love letters” before falling apart and devolving into insults and threats. Trump still reminisces about those early days and, referring to Kim, said, “I think he misses me” at the July Republican National Convention.

It doesn’t seem that Kim has the same fond memories as Trump, though, making new talks unlikely unless the president-elect convinces Putin to facilitate things and Kim comes around on the idea. But that seems implausible when the effort last time resulted in North Korea calling Trump a “dotard” and a “heedless and erratic man.”

Even Newsmax is turning its back on Representative Nancy Mace’s transphobic bathroom stunt.

Speaking with Indiana Representative Erin Houchin about Mace’s recent efforts to keep Representative-elect Sarah McBride—the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress—out of the Capitol complex’s women’s restrooms, the far-right network’s hosts struggled to point to any statistics that actually warranted the conspiracy.

“Do you have any idea how often an attack happens involving a trans person in a restroom? I haven’t heard of any cases at all,” pressed Newsmax host Katie McCall.

“Just because there aren’t cases of attack doesn’t mean that having a man in a woman’s facility is not a violation of their privacy,” Houchin said, before referring to an instance in 2023 when police were called on a 50-year-old transgender swimmer in a women’s locker room—in Canada.

Statistically speaking, the threat that transgender people pose to the sanctity of public restrooms is zilch. A 2018 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that bathroom-related nondiscrimination laws pose practically no risk to women, and that claims to the contrary are little more than myths that are “not empirically grounded.”

Even Mace’s own ex-staffers have gone nuclear on her over the transphobic stunt on McBride. On Wednesday, the lawmaker’s former communications director Natalie Johnson said that Mace’s attacks on McBride were little more than a “ploy to get on Fox.”

“Tweeting 262 times about a bill that applies to like .00000001% of Congress in 36 hours is definitely about protecting women. It’s certainly not just a ploy for media attention,” Johnson tweeted.

Scandal-ridden former representative and failed attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz has pledged not to rejoin Congress. We can all only hope he keeps that promise.

In an appearance on The Charlie Kirk Show on Friday, Gaetz told the right-wing shill that he will be fighting for President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda “from a new perch.”

“I do not intend to join the 119th Congress,” Gaetz said. “There are a number of fantastic Floridians who’ve stepped up to run for my seat, people who have inspired with their heroism, with their public service. And I’m actually excited to see northwest Florida go to new heights and have great representation.”

Gaetz resigned from the 118th Congress days before a House Ethics Committee was set to wrap up its probe into allegations that he trafficked and had sex with a 17-year-old girl at a sex party. Gaetz fervently denied the allegations, even resigning from Congress last week as evidence piled up. While the probe has still yet to be released, the House Ethics Committee reportedly obtained documents that showed Gaetz’s payment to the 17-year-old girl on Venmo. Multiple Senate Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, said they had qualms with Gaetz’s nomination, and Gaetz finally announced he would not pursue the attorney general nomination after CNN reported the House Ethics Committee somehow had even more evidence against him.

Gaetz is still eligible to serve in the 119th Congress, even though he told Kirk he won’t. He could still run to be reelected to his own seat or hope that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appoints him to take Marco Rubio’s spot as senator after Trump nominated Rubio for secretary of state.

Trump has pegged his loyalist former impeachment hearing attorney Pam Bondi as Gaetz’s replacement for attorney general. And in Florida, a woman equally strange and bigoted as Gaetz—Michelle Salzman—is set to run for his open seat.

Tucker Carlson says he tried to get House Speaker Mike Johnson to speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin before approving more aid to help Ukraine.

In Wednesday’s episode of The Tucker Carlson Show podcast, the titular host and his guest Glenn Greenwald lamented a lack of communication between the United States and Russia post–2020 presidential election. In general, they blamed the Democrats, who chilled relations after it became apparent that Russia had meddled on Donald Trump’s behalf.

“But it’s the leadership of the Republican Party too,” Carlson said.

“I had a conversation with the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and he was about to appropriate tens of billions more for Ukraine, and I said, ‘Well, why don’t you check with Putin? You’re the speaker of the House, you’re number three in line for the presidency—well what, I’ll see if I can facilitate that? I’ll call the press office, kind of set you up, why don’t you talk to Putin?’”

Much to Carlson’s surprise, Johnson refused.

“I mean I’m not attacking Mike Johnson—I guess I am attacking Mike Johnson—I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m just reporting what actually happened,” Carlson ranted. “Don’t you have a moral duty to get as much information about this war before you fund its continuation and the killing of all these people? Like, shouldn’t you know more?”

It’s unclear exactly when this exchange occurred, though Johnson helped secure bipartisan House support in April to pass $6.1 billion in military aid to Ukraine.

Carlson seems to think Johnson ought to run his governing decisions past a foreign autocrat before making decisions for the American people—and should speak to the leader carrying out the deadly incursion into another state before deciding to send aid there.

Greenwald piped up to say that it would’ve been bad press for Johnson if it had gotten out, but that he “should want to understand the Russian perspective” on its own invasion.

Carlson, a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, has long pushed his distinctly pro-Russian views. He’s downplayed the country’s conflict with Ukraine and promoted a Russian-based conspiracy theory that the U.S. was plotting to supply Ukraine with bioweapons.

(It’s worth noting that Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee to head up national intelligence, said something similar.)

Carlson appears regularly on Russian state television and once conducted his own televised interview with Putin, during which the Russian president openly mocked him for just what a propaganda tool he had become. Soon he’ll have the ear of the acting president of the United States, who seems more than willing to seek Putin’s approval too.

Representative Nancy Mace’s latest attention grab has gifted the world something it never asked for: bathroom-themed merch.

The South Carolina Republican has spent the majority of her week advancing a bill with the aim of banning one person from using toilets on Capitol Hill: Representative-elect Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress.

“The Left wants to NORMALIZE balls in women’s stalls. Hell no. I’m NOT backing down,” Mace—who said she supported LGBTQ rights as recently as 2021—wrote on X Thursday night. “Every purchase will help FUEL MY FIGHT to protect women and girls across America. HOLD THE LINE!”

But it’s hard to imagine who would be attracted to Mace’s debut clothing line, which brazenly feature the women’s bathroom logo alongside the text “Come and take it”—a tag line that sounds more akin to an invitation for sexual assault than an alleged mission to thwart it.

Statistically speaking, the threat that transgender people pose to the sanctity of public restrooms is zilch. A 2018 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that bathroom-related nondiscrimination laws pose practically no risk to women, and that claims to the contrary are little more than myths that are “not empirically grounded.”

Even Mace’s own ex-staffers have gone nuclear on her over the transphobic stunt on McBride. On Wednesday, the lawmaker’s former communications director Natalie Johnson said that Mace’s attacks on McBride were little more than a “ploy to get on Fox.”

“Tweeting 262 times about a bill that applies to like .00000001% of Congress in 36 hours is definitely about protecting women. It’s certainly not just a ploy for media attention,” Johnson tweeted.

The attention-seeking congresswoman has openly acknowledged that the stunt is a direct attack on McBride, telling reporters on Monday that it was “that and more.”

“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say. I mean, this is a biological man,” Mace said, adding that the newly elected Delaware congresswoman “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, period, full stop.”

In another interview, Mace claimed that the mere thought of a trans woman walking into a women’s locker room “feels like assault.”

But the whole charade appears especially hollow in light of the fact that Mace and McBride both have private bathrooms in their offices. The only people that the bill will actually hurt will be the nonelected trans employees of the U.S. Capitol complex, who apparently have—until now—been using the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity with no issue.