Good evening. I’m British Chris, and you’re watching Raw America.
Trump is ranting about nuclear weapons to children in the Oval Office. Marco Rubio is defending Trump’s attacks on the pope right before his trip to Rome. Louisiana Republicans are throwing out tens of thousands of votes that have already been cast. And Congress is in the middle of its biggest sexual misconduct reckoning since the #MeToo movement. Let’s dive in.
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Trump Rants About Nuclear War to a Room Full of Kids
Let’s start with something that would have been a five-alarm scandal in any other era of American politics.
Trump was supposed to be signing a proclamation about youth sports and fitness. Instead, he spent roughly an hour ranting about Iran, nuclear weapons, immigration, Barack Obama, election fraud, and transgender people, all while children stood around him.
He called the ongoing war with Iran a “skirmish.” Then he turned to the kids in the room and said, and this is a real quote, “We can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon. You might be too young for this.” Then he kept going anyway.
He claimed Iran would’ve had a nuclear weapon “within two weeks” if the U.S. hadn’t acted. He said the Middle East would’ve been “gone.” He said Israel would’ve been “gone.” And he suggested the U.S. might not even be around today if Iran had gotten the bomb. Of course, this is less than a year after he claimed to have “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump went on to describe protesters being shot “right between the eyes.” He repeated his long-debunked claim about winning the 2020 election. He complained about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize. He told a room full of kids that Democrats support “transgender mutilization of your children,” then added, “Don’t listen to this, kids.”
At no point did any adult in the room stop it.
Rubio Defends Trump’s Attacks on Pope Leo Ahead of Vatican Trip
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is heading to Rome this week, officially to discuss the Middle East and “mutual interests in the Western Hemisphere.” But the timing is impossible to ignore.
Trump has spent weeks publicly attacking Pope Leo XIV, accusing the pontiff of wanting Iran to have a nuclear weapon. That’s not even close to what the Pope said. The Pope has called for peace and spoken against all nuclear weapons, as the Catholic Church has done for decades.
But Trump told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt that the Pope “would rather talk about the fact that it’s OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” and said the Pope is “endangering a lot of Catholics.”
Rubio, asked directly whether he agrees with that characterization, said it’s “not an accurate description” of what Trump said, and then immediately echoed the framing anyway.
The Pope responded directly. He said the Church’s mission is to “preach the Gospel, to preach peace,” and that the Church “has spoken for years against all nuclear weapons.”
Rubio insists his Vatican trip “is really not tied to anything.” Sure.
Louisiana Just Threw Out 42,000 Votes
Louisiana’s secretary of state had already received more than 42,000 absentee ballots for state primary elections when Governor Jeff Landry suddenly suspended those elections entirely.
Why? Because the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling, threw out Louisiana’s congressional map and eliminated its only majority-Black congressional district. Landry didn’t waste any time. He pushed the primary from May 16 to July 15 so Republicans could draw a new map favorable to them.
In the process, he invalidated tens of thousands of votes that had already been cast by real Louisiana citizens who followed the rules and voted legally.
This happened at the direct urging of Donald Trump, who’s been pressuring red states to redraw their congressional maps to his liking ahead of the midterms.
Democratic candidates and civil rights advocates are urging voters to keep participating, and there are multiple legal challenges underway. But that doesn’t change what happened. A sitting governor just threw out 42,000 votes because he didn’t like where the map was heading.
That’s not democracy. That’s what democracy looks like when it’s being quietly dismantled.
House Republican Under Increased Scrutiny for Alleged Sexual Misconduct
And finally, Capitol Hill is in the middle of its most significant reckoning over sexual misconduct since the #MeToo era.
Two House Republicans, Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, were central to forcing out two members of Congress last month over sexual misconduct allegations. One was a Democrat, one was a Republican. Both are gone.
Now they’ve got their eyes on Chuck Edwards of North Carolina, a two-term Republican under investigation by the Ethics Committee for allegedly having an improper sexual relationship with a staffer and sexually harassing staff.
Edwards is calling the allegations “baseless” and “designed to settle old political scores.” But Mace isn’t backing down. She said, “The corruption and misconduct in Congress goes far deeper than anyone outside Washington knows.”
She’s also released a list of government-paid sexual harassment settlements involving congressional offices. Most were previously known. Some were not.
The House voted to effectively kill a measure that would’ve forced more transparency around these investigations. The bipartisan Ethics Committee leadership lobbied against it. Accountability, it turns out, is rarely popular with the people being held accountable. Keep an eye on this story.
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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris. We’ll see you tomorrow.
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