Republican Rep. Stumbles on Air as C-SPAN Caller Says Trump Is a Pedo

When Texas Representative Pete Sessions went on C-SPAN to take questions from everyday Americans on Wednesday morning, he was probably expecting something a bit more polite than what he got.

Instead, the Republican lawmaker received a call from “Jack, in Silver Spring, Maryland,” who chose not to mince words:

“Your party has given the power of the presidency to an insane, pedophilic serial killer. You’re evil, and this—”

Jack was then cut off by the C-SPAN moderator.

Amusingly, Sessions did not dispute the claim that Donald Trump is “an insane, pedophilic serial killer.” After nodding subtly as he listened to the caller, Sessions instead offered a wishy-washy statement about tolerating those with different opinions.

“I would just say that I am aware, across this country, that there are people who have varying views. I would tell him that I can control myself. And I try to work on a straightforward, honest basis, with a bipartisan mission that I have with Mr. [Democratic Representative Kweisi] Mfume and the duty and responsibility of my job on Oversight. I would like for him to at least offer some credibility to—there are people who are trying to move this nation away from anything that would be a fight to fix.”

Sessions is a boilerplate Republican who has served in Congress for 28 years. He’s perhaps best known for his love of magic—he introduced a bill that would recognize magic “as a rare and valuable art form and national treasure,” which has been stalled in committee for 10 years—and his passion for trading stocks while in office.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson was caught lying while trying to explain why President Trump rejected bipartisan plans to reopen the government and get TSA workers paid.

“Mr. Speaker, it seems as if the Republicans and Democrats are talking past one another right now. Is the only person who can solve this the President of the United States, and why isn’t he involved?” Fox News’s Chad Pergram asked Johnson during a Wednesday press conference.

“Well, I think he is involved,” Johnson replied. “I mean, I know he had a group of—”

“He shot down the plan yesterday,” Pergram said.

“Well, that’s what’s been reported, OK,” Johnson replied.

“He said that in the Oval Office that he was not pleased.”

“Well I actually have his exact quote somewhere … to paraphrase him, I think he said that he’s a little skeptical or cynical that a deal’s gonna come together,” Johnson said. “What we’re hearing in our chamber is that there’s discussions going on. Democrats are demanding to break off parts of Homeland [Security] and fund it separately.”

Johnson’s long answer was actually less accurate than the “reporting” he dismissed. Earlier this week, GOP Senator Joe Kennedy stated plainly that they were prepared to work with Democrats to reopen the government by the end of this week, but Trump “said no. No deals with the Democrats.” The president himself doubled down on that, stating that he would be unhappy with virtually “any deal they make.”

That sounds like the president is not involved, and does not want to be—regardless of what Johnson spews. Meanwhile, hundreds of TSA agents continue to go unpaid, and the lines at airports keep getting longer.

Nobody is safe from airport chaos as President Donald Trump refuses to fund the Transportation Security Administration.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr was one of thousands of travelers stuck in a three-hour security line at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston Wednesday morning.

The 75-year-old Republican, whom many describe as the worst attorney general in history, served under Trump from 2019 to 2020. Though he’s since turned on the president, Barr’s tenure was marked by his absurd manipulation of the Department of Justice in favor of Trump, including his bogus handling of the Mueller report, covering up evidence of the Trump campaign’s cooperation with Russia, and dropping the case against Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Some might consider his airport experience on Wednesday karma, if it wasn’t for the fact that most of the nation is also subject to the same horrid conditions.

As the partial government shutdown enters its sixth week and TSA workers continue to not be paid, airport lines have reached disastrous highs across the country. Nowhere has the mayhem been worse than at Houston’s George Bush Airport, where 36 percent of TSA officers have quit. On Tuesday, more than 40 percent of the airport’s security staff did not show up to work, The New York Times reported.

Though Trump has repeatedly blamed Democrats for the long lines at airports, the president rejected a deal from Senate Majority Leader John Thune last week that would fund the Transportation Security Administration.

In a Truth Social post Sunday, Trump wrote he wouldn’t make a deal with Democrats unless they vote with Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act, which would have catastrophic impacts on voting rights. “It is far more important than anything else we are doing in the Senate, and that includes giving these same terrible people, the Dems (who are to blame for this mess!), a Five Billion Dollar cut in ICE funding,” the president wrote.

Trump instead deployed ICE agents to airports across the country, including Houston, to help manage lines. But, as Barr, experienced Wednesday, sending untrained, armed federal agents to airports isn’t doing much.

U.S. fertilizer prices have skyrocketed ahead of a crucial spring growing season for farmers as Iran continues its retaliatory blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. But instead of admitting that Trump’s war has farmers at home suffering, White House officials are blaming former President Joe Biden and poaching fertilizer from other countries.

“What are you doing in your department to ensure that the farmers, in this very important spring growing season, are not getting impacted harshly by the spike in the price of fertilizer?” Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo asked Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Wednesday morning.

“Obviously the farm economy that we inherited, the farmers have struggled. They have only made money a few years out of every ten years. We’re working to bring the price of inputs down. The president has signed 18 new trade deals in the last year. Corn is up almost 30 percent, exporting dairy is up. The infrastructure’s being built, it is being put in place,” Rollins replied, avoiding the question initially. She then shared that the U.S. would be snatching fertilizer from Venezuela to make up the difference.

“But in this temporary time with the fertilizer.… The president has opened up lines from Venezuela, the Jones Act Waiver, we’re looking at other places for fertilizer to bring in. But again, it shouldn’t be too disruptive, it’s just a smaller segment of our farmers,” Rollins added.

Fertilizer—like oil—is expensive because President Trump bombed Iran and tried to tariff the entire world, not because of Biden. About one-third of the world’s shipping trade in fertilizer goes through the Strait of Hormuz. Rollins’s admission that they’ll be seizing fertilizer from Venezuela and begging it from others only makes it seem like the Iran war will continue indefinitely, no matter how often Trump signals that it will end soon.

President Donald Trump’s behemoth spending bill is forcing Republican lawmakers to consider dramatic budget cuts in many states.

Lost tax revenue from Trump’s tax cuts and added costs for new requirements for Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are costing Republican-led states as much as $450 million per year, Politico reported Wednesday.

Many Republican-led states were already working with budgets that were stretched thin. But H.R. 1, Trump’s signature “Big Beautiful Bill,” required states to pay a larger share of SNAP and expand resources to handle new Medicaid work requirements, costing states as much as $50 million per year, according to Politico.

In Idaho, Trump’s federal tax cuts will cost the state an estimated $155 million in 2026, and $175 million in 2027, according to the governor’s office.

“We’re stealing from Peter to pay Paul,” Idaho State Representative Jordan Redman said. “It’s put us in a predicament where now we’re trying to figure out, ‘Ok, what programs do we keep? What programs do we cut?’”

Idaho State Senator Jim Guthrie told Politico that his constituents weren’t convinced that the short-term benefits of Trump’s tax cuts outweighed the cost of services stripped by shrinking budgets.

“The feedback I’m hearing from citizens is that extra few bucks on their [return] at the end of the year, because of the taxes they didn’t have to pay, comes secondary to wanting us to take care of the things that government needs to be invested in,” Guthrie said. “Which is your infrastructure and your roads and bridges and schools and also your Medicaid population.”

In Iowa, Trump’s tax cuts have gutted an additional $350 million from a state that was already facing a $1 billion hole in its budget, the Iowa Legislative Services Agency told Politico.

In Indiana, federal tax cuts on tips and overtime will cost the state an estimated $251 million in tax revenue in 2026. In Arizona, taking on the full federal tax code could cost an estimated $381 million in 2026. In Missouri, Republican House Budget Committee Chair Dirk Deaton proposed an approximately $51.5 million reduction to childcare subsidies. “We’re faced with hard decisions,” he said during a hearing earlier this month. “It is what it is.”

Trump’s federal spending bill is sapping state services’ budgets at the same time as the president’s disastrous, and increasingly expensive, war in Iran has driven prices up where they will likely stay.