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Donald Trump’s social media team took a dig at Republican presidential rival Ron DeSantis after the Florida governor ― perhaps accidentally ― made a reference to one of the strangest accusations he’s faced.
For most people, that would be a pretty standard use of the cliché.
Trump’s team shared the clip with an eyes emoji:
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Granny, get your gun. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) told a rapt Kayleigh McEnany Tuesday on Fox News that grandparents could join a force of armed military vets and retired police officers to protect schools from shootings. (Watch the video below.)
McEnany, Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary, was rapt as Blackburn promoted her SAFE Schools Act, which would supply $900 million to “harden schools” with more security. The proposal, which she introduced after a Nashville school shooting in March, does nothing to address the root of the problem: easy access to powerful guns.
“To have this grant pool and to allow local school systems and local law enforcement to work together to bring in veterans and retired law enforcement to serve as a security officer at a school — they know how to use weapons,” Blackburn said. “They know to de-escalate situations. I’ve talked to a lot of them. They like this idea. They are grandparents like we are — my husband and I are grandparents — and they want to be there to help protect children.”
Blackburn said she proposed something similar after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 students and two teachers. In that case, hundreds of law enforcement personnel were slow to act while the shooter carried out the massacre.
Blackburn said Tuesday it was “unseemly” that Democrats would reject her idea. She claimed on Fox News that her measure would provide fortress-like protection, including “bulletproof doors and the film on windows … so that parents can have the confidence that their children are going to be safe.”
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CNN
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A newly released transcript of Kayleigh McEnany’s interview with the January 6 committee revealed how the Trump White House press secretary learned, while eating lunch in her office, that the situation at the US Capitol had become violent.
“I initially went back to my office to eat lunch, but I eventually turned up the volume on Fox News,” McEnany told the committee.
The House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol on Friday released its latest batch of transcripts from interviews conducted during the probe. The new transcripts include interviews with the former press secretary and former President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka.
According to the latest tranche of documents, McEnany returned to the White House from Trump’s rally at the Ellipse, and eventually went to her office to eat lunch – a turkey sandwich.
Soon, a CBS News producer “stormed” into her office and asked for her “thoughts about the Capitol.” McEnany said she was “totally blindsided by what (the reporter) was referring to.”
She then alerted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about the reporter’s inquiry and about the reports of minor injuries at the Capitol, McEnany said.
At some point during the riot, McEnany said she received a text from deputy press secretary Judd Deere, who relayed that he was “getting asked if we have any reaction to people storming Hill office buildings.”
When interviewed by the House panel, Rep. Liz Cheney, the GOP vice chair of the committee, pressed McEnany on her apparent inaction upon hearing reports of violence, implying a lack of urgency.
“[Deere] sends you a text message saying that people are storming, this says, Hill office buildings,” Cheney said. “And you were just eating a turkey sandwich and just didn’t – didn’t register?”
McEnany then rebuffed Cheney’s depiction, according to transcripts.
“I definitely reject the characterization that I was just eating a turkey sandwich and would ignore a text about Capitol Hill office buildings being stormed. I likely wouldn’t have seen it at the time,” McEnany replied, saying the text was likely sent to her personal phone, which would have been on her desk.
“I in no way, shape, or form would eat a turkey sandwich if I thought Capitol Hill was being sieged,” she added.
McEnany met virtually with the committee in January after being initially subpoenaed last year.
The public release of transcripts comes in conjunction with the committee’s final report, a comprehensive overview of the bipartisan panel’s findings on how Trump and his allies sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election, released late Thursday evening.
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Washington
CNN
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Shortly after the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told his aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, that President Donald Trump knew he lost but wanted to keep fighting to overturn the results, according to a newly released transcript from the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.
The transcript of Hutchinson’s September 14, 2022, interview with the committee, which took place after she testified publicly, was released Thursday by the panel. It details post-election conversations that Hutchinson described, where multiple people said Trump acknowledged he had lost but was unwilling to concede.
Hutchinson testified that Meadows told her on November 18, 2020, that Trump “has pretty much acknowledged that he’s lost,” the transcript says.
“A lot of times he’ll tell me that he lost, but he wants to keep fighting it, and he thinks that there might be enough to overturn the election,” Meadows told Hutchinson that day about Trump, according to her retelling of the conversation.
Hutchinson also testified that in late December 2020, Meadows lamented to her that Trump would get upset any time he mentioned the transition, telling the committee that Meadows said something to the effect of: “he’s just so angry at me all the time I can’t talk to him about anything post-White House without him getting mad that we didn’t win.”
“Later in the interview, Hutchinson told the committee she spoke with Meadows immediately after a call with Georgia officials on January 2, 2021, where Trump pushed officials to help overturn the election results there.”
“He said something to the effect of, ‘he knows it’s over. He knows he lost. But we are going to keep trying. There’s a chance he didn’t lose. I want to pull this off for him,’” Hutchinson said, recounting what Meadows told her about Trump.
In a September 15 deposition, Hutchinson echoed her testimony that she heard about Trump fighting with his security detail on January 6, according to another deposition transcript.
Hutchinson, who faced an onslaught of public criticism and pushback from Trump allies after she revealed the story she was told about Trump supposedly lunging at the driver of his presidential SUV on January 6, 2021, because he was angry that they wouldn’t take him to the US Capitol. During that public hearing, she said she heard the story from Tony Ornato, who was serving as deputy White House chief of staff at the time.
But after her public hearing and the avalanche of pushback, Hutchinson said she had “no doubts” about her previous testimony.
“I have no doubts in the conversation that I had with Mr. Ornato on January 6th. I have no doubts in how I’ve relayed that story privately and publicly” Hutchinson said, according to the transcript, which was released Thursday.
She also shared that Ornato made “sarcastic offhand remarks” to her about the story at least two times after he initially mentioned it – on January 19 and April 16 – according to the transcript.
“I have no doubts about the two instances on January 19th and April 16th about the conversation,” Hutchinson added.
In the April 16 call, Hutchinson described a phone conversation to committee investigators where Ornato made a comment like “it could be worse. The president could have tried to kill – he didn’t say kill – the president could have tried to strangle you on January 6.”
Hutchinson acknowledged that Ornato did not specify he was referring to the incident on January 6 but she said, “I assumed from the context of our phone call and from the conversations that we had had while still at the White House that he was referencing that incident. I have no reason to believe that he was referencing any other incident.”
In June, Hutchinson publicly testified that Ornato told her about an altercation between the former president and the head of his Secret Service detail when he was told he could not go to the Capitol on January 6.
The committee wrote in its report summary, which was released Monday, that they were unable to get Ornato to corroborate Hutchinson’s testimony about the alleged altercation in the presidential SUV.
The committee summary said both Hutchinson and a White House employee testified to the committee about the Ornato conversation. But “Ornato professed that he did not recall either communication, and that he had no knowledge at all about the president’s anger.”
The committee also released six more interview transcripts Thursday night, shedding new light on their closed-door sessions with key witnesses.
In one transcript, Sarah Matthews, a former White House deputy press secretary, told the committee that Trump tried to get then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to hold briefings about supposed fraud tied to Dominion voting machines – but McEnany refused.
“She felt uncomfortable promoting the Dominion conspiracy theory, and that the president had asked her to talk about that during interviews” Matthews told committee investigators. “He did request her to do briefings on it as well, but we did not.”
Matthews added that Trump encouraged McEnany to also put forward these conspiracy theories on cable news hits, which she said made McEnany uncomfortable and led to her attempting to avoid Trump after the election.
Matthews testified publicly over the summer about how Trump’s conduct on January 6 led her to resign by the end of that day.
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In the process, she made a prediction about abortion that many Twitter users found very, very dubious.
Although she conceded that abortion “certainly did motivate the left” this election cycle, she dubiously claimed it wouldn’t be a big issue in the future.
“Roe v. Wade, and overturning it, was profoundly more important than any short-term politics,” McEnany said. “The victory that happened over the summer was a victory for the rule of law, and it is far more enormous than any slight margin in the House could have been. So we’ve got to look at the long game: Abortion’s going to go away.”
You can see the segment below:
Considering that Republicans spent 50 years trying to overturn Roe vs. Wade, even the most neutral observer can probably guess that Democrats will likely focus a lot of energy toward ensuring abortion rights throughout the U.S.
As a result, many Twitter users were skeptical about McEnany’s claim. Very skeptical.
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