The Dictatorship

Trump downplays importance of failing Iran deal that he previously celebrated

Published

59 minutes ago

July 14, 2026

Trump downplays importance of failing Iran deal that he previously celebrated

To the extent that the United States and Iran had a ceasefire deal in place to end the deadly, destabilizing war, that agreement has unraveled. Donald Trump has declared the ceasefire “over”; both countries have renewed their military strikes; and the American president is positioning the U.S. as a mercenary forcewith plans to charge tolls to pay for guarding the Strait of Hormuz.

As for the deal the Trump administration negotiated with Iran, formally known as a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, conservative host Hugh Hewitt asked the president whether the framework was “built to fall apart.” The Republican responded with an answer he hadn’t shared previously.

“It was built to test. It was a test,” Trump replied. “We didn’t know. It didn’t, look, memorandum of understanding, when you’re dealing with sleazebags, don’t mean much. And they don’t mean much when you’re dealing with honorable people, too, because it’s memorandum of understanding. It doesn’t mean much.”

The president went on to say that Iran “didn’t honor the test,” before suggesting that he had predicted from the outset that officials in Tehran would cause the agreement to collapse through noncompliance. “I said, ‘Watch, I guarantee. Watch.’ And they never, they never followed it.”

The apparent point of the on-air comments wasn’t merely to blame Iran for the unravelling deal, it was also to convey the suggestion that Trump knew all along Iran would cause the framework to collapse.

The trouble is, very recent history proves otherwise.

It was exactly one month ago when the president published a statement to his social media platform, announcing, “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!” About an hour later, seemingly eager to pat himself on the back, he added“This Great Deal will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region. Many presidents have tried to make Peace with Iran, and all have failed before me. The Leaders of the Region have, for the first time, found a President who can help them achieve real Peace.”

In the days that followed, not only did Trump continue to celebrate his alleged triumph, but the White House invested an enormous amount of time and effort in touting the deal, all while Vice President JD Vance went on a media tour, doing his best to defend the policy on the merits.

There was nothing about this being a “test.” Not a word was uttered about the idea that the deal “doesn’t mean much.”

If the president expects his post hoc rationalization of this failure to persuade anyone, he’s probably going to be disappointed.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

The Dictatorship

E. Jean Carroll finally gets Trump’s $5 million — plus interest

Published

59 minutes ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

E. Jean Carroll finally gets Trump’s $5 million — plus interest

Christmas. 14, 2026, 11:06 AM EDT

Writer E. Jean Carroll finally has the $5 million — plus interest — that a jury ordered President Donald Trump to pay her in damages in one of her two cases against him, after Trump fought the payout for years.

Court records posted Tuesday show a transfer of $5,625,005.48 to Carroll’s legal team took place the day before.

Carroll received the money more than three years after a jury found that the president was liable for sexually abusing her in a Manhattan department store in 1996, and then for defaming her on social media. Trump has repeatedly appealed the judgment to no avail — including petitioning the Supreme Court multiple times — and last week launched a last-ditch attempt to block her from getting the money.

Last Tuesday, his legal team filed a briefrequesting that the disbursement of the damages be halted, pointing to his pending request for the Supreme Court to reconsider its refusal to hear his appeal.

A federal judge nevertheless ordered Wednesday that Carroll be paid, prompting a swift appeal from Trump and a motion for an emergency administrative stay on the disbursement of the funds.

That request was denied.

“Three years ago, a unanimous nine-person jury found President Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll. Today, we are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment the jury awarded her as a result of that verdict,” said Carroll’s lead attorney, Roberta Kaplan.

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

Lisa Rubin is MS NOW’s senior legal reporter and a former litigator.

The Dictatorship

GOP’s Ron Johnson shares, then retracts, a conspiratorial ‘rumor’ about Mitch McConnell

Published

59 minutes ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

GOP’s Ron Johnson shares, then retracts, a conspiratorial ‘rumor’ about Mitch McConnell

We’ve known for a month that Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was hospitalized, but neither he nor anyone on his team has been willing to say why. Over the weekend, McConnell finally took steps to end the speculation, issuing a statement to explain that he’s been recovering from a fall, followed by what he described as “a mild case of pneumonia.”

The statement was accompanied by a photograph of the senator in a hospital bed alongside his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. For good measure, the image showed a newspaper — specifically, Sunday’s Washington Post sports section — in McConnell’s right hand.

It stood to reason that the statement and photo would revive the conversation about why the former Senate majority leader hadn’t disclosed any of these details earlier — the lack of transparency surrounding his personal health has long been a point of concern — but some in conservative politics went furtherfloating assorted conspiracy theories about the authenticity of the image of McConnell and his wife.

The chatter was not limited to the far-right fringe.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin appeared Monday on conservative media channel Real America’s Voice, where the senator told host Eric Bolling, in reference to the McConnell image, “I’ve just heard from some other sources that was an older photo. So I really don’t know.” (He did not identify his alleged “sources.”)

The Wisconsin Republican went on to say that he hadn’t spoken directly with McConnell, but that he hoped his colleague has a speedy recovery so he can return to Capitol Hill and help advance Donald Trump’s agenda.

Hours later, when pressed by reporters about his conspiratorial on-air comments, Johnson said, “It was a rumor, don’t — discount it, just discount it. … I just heard it, so assume it’s false.”

The bigger picture matters. Johnson isn’t just some guy; he’s a three-term member of the U.S. Senate who was speaking to a national television audience about an ailing colleague. It’s the opposite of his job to amplify baseless “rumors” and add fuel to fringe conspiracy theories. As the Wisconsin Republican really ought to know, those in his position have a responsibility to avoid conspiratorial nonsense.

What’s more, there’s the GOP senator’s track record to consider. Shortly after Trump grudgingly left the White House after his 2020 defeat, he was effectively banned from most major social media platforms and made few television appearances. Around this time, The New York Times described Johnson as Trump’s successor as the GOP’s “foremost amplifier of conspiracy theories and disinformation.”

In the years that followed, Johnson seemed a little too eager to prove his critics right, peddling bizarre and easily discredited nonsense about Covid-19. And the Jan. 6 attack. And vaccines. And climate change. And the 2020 presidential election. And the 2024 presidential election.

Last year, the Wisconsin Republican reached new depths, becoming the only senator from either party to embrace fringe ideas from the so-called 9/11 truther movement.

With this in mind, his on-air comments about McConnell and what he’s “heard from some other sources” are consistent with what we’ve come to expect from Johnson, though this only makes matters worse for his unfortunate reputation.

Finally, that the senator walked back his own rhetoric seemed like a step in the right direction, though I’m curious about his motivation: Did Johnson urge reporters to “discount” the “rumor” he spread because he recognized it as irresponsible, or was he scrambling to better position himself as the next chairman of the Senate Budget Committee in the wake of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s death?

The Dictatorship

Trump, despite his record, eyes prime-time address on foreign election interference

Published

59 minutes ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump, despite his record, eyes prime-time address on foreign election interference

As this week got underway, Donald Trump announced by way of his social media platform that he would deliver “a Speech to the Nation” on Thursday night, though the president initially didn’t say a word about why or what he intended to say. Hours later, however, he spoke via phone to Newsmax and shed some light on what the public can expect to hear.

“Our elections are crooked and we’ve got to straighten them out,” Trump said, peddling familiar, tiresome nonsense. “We’ve got to have voter ID; we’ve got to have proof of citizenship; and we have got to do something about the mail-in ballots, which are just corrupt, crooked and should not be allowed.”

In other words, the president remains focused on his voter suppression proposal, which the White House has labeled the Save America Act and which congressional Republicans have already conceded they can’t pass.

We’ll learn soon enough what makes its way onto the Republican’s teleprompter, but there’s one thing of particular interest that’s likely to make the cut.

MS NOW, citing comments from two White House officials granted anonymity to discuss internal plans, reported on Monday afternoon that Trump plans to address newly declassified intelligence reports that the White House asserts reveal plans by foreign nations to interfere in the 2020 election.

One obviously can’t fact-check claims that have yet to be made, but if the president and his team follow through on these plans, there are a few things the public should keep in mind.

First, there is some irony to the idea that Trump, of all people, would voice concerns along these lines: In 2016, Russia launched a military intelligence operation that targeted the American presidential election for the express purpose of putting Trump in power. Confronted with overwhelming evidence of that effort, Trump falsely dismissed the evidence as a “hoax” and ultimately said he trusted Russian President Vladimir Putin more than his own country’s intelligence agencies.

Second, if the president really wants to talk about foreign interference in the 2020 election, the White House should probably expect a few questions about that time Trump explicitly said he would welcome foreign election interference in the 2020 election.

Third, ahead of Election Day 2020, congressional Democrats pushed a variety of measures intended to discourage foreign election interference. Republicans rejected all of those proposals.

And finally, let’s not forget that when U.S. intelligence again showed that Russia was targeting the 2020 election to help Trump stay in power, the Trump administration responded by announcing that it would no longer provide briefings to Congress about foreign interference in the 2020 election.

In other words, if the president wants to renew a public conversation about foreign election interference six years ago, he might not like where the conversation ends up.