The Dictatorship

Trump draws Marie Antoinette comparisons as he leans into gilded trappings of presidency…

Published

3 months ago

April 18, 2026

Trump draws Marie Antoinette comparisons as he leans into gilded trappings of presidency…

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump had something urgent to address while flying back to Washington from his Mar-a-Lago estate on a recent Sunday.

It wasn’t the Iran wasnor the partial government shutdown over Department of Homeland Security funding. He was focused on a monumental issue of a different kind, hoisting artist renderings of the $400 million White House ballroom he’s building, complete with hand-carved “top-of-the-line” Corinthian columns.

“I’m so busy that I don’t have time to do this. I’m fighting wars and other things,” Trump said before extensively detailing plans for “the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world.”

His divided attention has become a Democratic point of attack and a concern for some Republicans who worry he’s not spending enough time on issues that voters care most about ahead of November’s midterm races.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt holds up an artist rendering of the new triumphal arch as she speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Wednesday, April 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The contrast was on full display Thursday, when, as Trump flew to Las Vegas to discuss tax cuts for Americans earning tips, his administration was pushing ahead with another of his splashy projects: Plans to build a 250-foot Triumphal Arch near the Lincoln Memorial replete with a Lady Liberty-like statue and a pair of golden eagles.

The president’s ability to speak to the concerns of working people has always seemed incongruous with his biography as a billionaire real estate developer. Yet his populist policies and emphasis on the economy during his 2024 campaign helped catapult him back to the White House.

Republican strategist Rick Tyler noted that, when Trump first ran for president in 2016, his wealth was a selling point.

“While other people, like Mitt Romney, played down how rich he was, Trump was giving free helicopter rides at the Iowa State Fair,” Tyler said. “People loved it.”

ADDS NAME SHARON SIMMONS - President Donald Trump speaks to Sharon Simmons, a Dasher from Arkansas, who delivered him two bags of McDonald's food outside the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, April 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) — ADDS NAME SHARON SIMMONS – President Donald Trump speaks to Sharon Simmons, a Dasher from Arkansas, who delivered him two bags of McDonald’s food outside the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, April 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Still, Trump’s preoccupation with some of the gilded trappings of the presidency, as more Americans worry about bills, has drawn accusations that he’s a modern-day Marie Antoinette.

“‘Fighting wars’ and surging gas prices, yet Trump has time to brag about his billionaire backed ballroom,” Sen. Andy Kim, a New Jersey Democrat, responded on X to Trump’s Air Force One presentation.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsoma potential 2028 presidential hopeful, has been more direct in comparing Trump to the last queen before the French Revolution, who has come to embody extravagant opulence — even posting an AI-generated image of Trump’s face on her body on social media.

“TRUMP ‘MARIE ANTOINETTE’ SAYS, ‘NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU PEASANTS, BUT A BALLROOM FOR THE QUEEN!’” Newsom wrote in October 2025, at the start of last fall’s 43-day government shutdown.

President Donald Trump holds a rendering of the proposed new East Wing of the White House as he speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One en route from West Palm Beach, Fla., to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, March 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

White House says Trump’s success benefits all Americans

Asked about opponents invoking Marie Antoinette, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said Trump “is going to go down in history as the most successful and consequential president in our lifetime.”

“His successes on behalf of the American people will be imprinted upon the fabric of America and will be felt by every other White House that comes after him,” Ingle said in a statement.

The president faced similar critiques during his first term. But lately he’s been unabashed about accusations he’s disconnected from Americans’ worries about high costswhich could leave Republicans with an uphill battle to retain control of Congress.

Republicans have been loath to question Trump, though notably there has been little criticism of a federal judge’s ruling that work on the project must stop until it has congressional approval. The GOP-controlled House and Senate also haven’t prioritized legislation to move the ballroom project forward.

“I’m not much into architecture,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said last fall.

About two-thirds of Americans said Trump is “out of touch” with the concerns of most people in the United States today, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll from February, though the same percentage said the same about the Democratic Party.

Presidents are usually removed from voters, separated by layers of security and surrounded by adoring subordinates. In her book “Why Presidents Fail And How They Can Succeed Again,” Elaine Kamarck argues that presidents get too focused on their own political narratives rather than the public’s concerns. Yet, when it comes to Trump, “All of this stuff is frankly unique to him.”

She pointed to the ballroom as well as Trump’s other White House renovationssoon adding his signature to paper currency and renaming the Kennedy Center after himself.

“It’s a reflection, I think, of his own background as a businessman and somebody who made his fortune selling his name,” said Kamarck, who worked in Bill Clinton’s White House.

President Donald Trump gestures after a roundtable event about no tax on tips, Thursday, April 16, 2026, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

While Trump focuses on the ballroom and other Washington projectssome public work projects in other parts of the country have languished.

Joe Meyer, the former mayor of Covington, Kentucky, spent years pushing for critical improvements to the Brent Spence Bridge connecting his town with Cincinnati, a project listed as a top federal priority dating back to Trump’s first administration.

Federal funds for improvements were approved under President Joe Biden but held up by a Trump-ordered review. Work is now finally set to begin later this year, though delays will likely limit design options and slow the project, Meyer said.

“The ballroom is Washington inside-baseball,” Meyer said. “The bridge is just a wreck. It’s frustration that we’ve been dealing with forever.”

A $100 tip and a golden tractor

Trumpeting new tax deductions for tips, Trump staged ordering McDonald’s to the Oval Office — which he has adorned with gold flourishes — and tipped the grandmother making the delivery $100. When she described large medical bills from her husband’s cancer treatments, Trump said she should bring him to an upcoming UFC fight on the White House lawn.

When hundreds of farmers were invited to the White House for an agricultural policy speech, they stood on the South Lawn beside a tractor that had been painted gold. It drizzled, but Trump stayed dry, addressing them from a covered second-floor balcony.

“You don’t mind rain,” the president told the farmers below.

He then flew to Miami for a conference of Saudi investors who, the president noted, were too rich to be impressed by U.S. families scrounging to save up $5,000.

“I know they’re looking like, ‘What the hell is $5,000?’” Trump joked. “Their shoes cost them more than $5,000.”

When asked in February, meanwhile, for his message to young people wanting to buy a home, Trump replied: “Save a little longer. Wait a little longer.”

Members of the Cabinet have also fed the perception that Trump’s promised “ Golden Age ” may not be arriving for everyone. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. advised Americans to buy liver instead of beef.

“If you go and buy a steak, it’s still pretty expensive. But if you buy the cheaper cuts, it’s great meat. And it is very, very affordable. Or liver, or, you know, all these alternatives,” he told podcast host Joe Rogan.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said people could still afford meals consisting of “a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla and one other thing.”

Texas-based Republican consultant Brendan Steinhauser said he thinks that Trump “can kind of get away with” building a ballroom because voters have come to expect that from him as a brash dealmaker and businessman.

But Steinhauser said he worries that dramatic increases in gas prices and a potentially weakening economy could resonate with voters. Ahead of the midterms, Steinhauser said, Democrats could score points “trying to make it more about Trump and his oligarch friends.”

___

Associated Press writers Linley Sanders in Washington and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

The Dictatorship

Coalition of states sue to stop Paramount-Warner megamerger

Published

2 hours ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Coalition of states sue to stop Paramount-Warner megamerger

Christmas. 13, 2026, 1:52 PM EDT

A dozen state attorneys general sued Monday to block Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, citing the harm the megamerger could pose to competition in Hollywood.

The deal would consolidate two powerhouse movie studios, several popular streaming services and the national news networks CBS and BLN into a single company under the purview of the billionaire Trump-aligned Ellison family.

That consolidation, greenlit by the Justice Department’s antitrust division last month, would negatively reshape the production landscape in Hollywood by depriving studios of the blockbuster series they rely on to generate revenue, the state law enforcement officials maintain.

The concerns in the lawsuit echo the “unequivocal opposition” to the merger voiced by thousands of industry professionals in an open letter in April.

In the lawsuit, the states argue the merger would “extinguish competition between Paramount and Warner Bros. and inflict substantial harm on movie theatres, basic cable distributors, and, ultimately, audiences nationwide,” and that it “combines two
of the nation’s five major film distributors, leaving only four to control over 85 percent of all wide-release theatrical films in the United States.”

The state-led challenge poses the most significant legal barrier in the country to that new media landscape becoming reality. The United Kingdom’s antitrust regulator is also considering action.

Consolidation in markets “leads to increased unaffordability, a loss of good paying job opportunities and fewer choices for consumers. It gives too few too much power,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a press conference shortly after the lawsuit was filed. “Antitrust enforcement is democracy’s check on oligarchy.”

Paramount said the lawsuit “distorts settled antitrust law and is based on misrepresentation of competition in the entertainment industry today.”

The media giant characterized the merger as a means to create a “stronger competitor against dominant streaming and technology platforms who have harmed the market for theatrical exhibition and jobs in the entertainment industry.”

Movie producer David Ellison’s Skydance Media bought Paramount last year after receiving financial backing from his father Larry Ellison, the billionaire Oracle co-founder and personal friend of President Donald Trump. He then launched a bidding war with Netflix for Warner Bros., which had been put up for auction last year as part of a strategy to manage its $35 billion debt load.

The Ellisons ultimately prevailed over Netflix in February after Warner’s board announced that Paramount Skydance’s offer, which involved $40 billion worth of personal financing from the elder Ellison, was superior to an agreement it had previously struck with Netflix.

The Trump administration’s swift approval of the merger reignited speculation over his personal relationship with Larry Ellison. The deal would put the Ellison family in control of BLN, a news organization the president frequently decries without evidence as “fake news.”

Trump publicly involved himself in the competing Warner Bros. bids last year, saying that it was “imperative” BLN be sold and that its current ownership should not be in charge of the company. The president has since downplayed his personal role in the mergerbut concerns about what the deal could mean for the future of BLN still loom large.

The Trump administration approved the Ellison family’s acquisition of Paramount Globalthe parent company of CBS News, last year after the network agreed to shell out $16 millionto settle a lawsuit Trump brought over a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. Trump sought $20 billion in damages over claims that the Harris interview, which aired during the 2024 presidential race, had been deceptively edited, a legal claim that experts said almost certainly would have failed.

With Ellison at the helm, Paramount Skydance also acquired Bari Weiss’ media company, The Free Press, and installed Weiss as editor-in-chief at CBS News. Weiss’ control over programming has since raised questions of objectivity and spurred an exodus of many of the network’s most prominent career journalists.

Erum Salam contributed to this report.

Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.

The Dictatorship

Judge slams Trump-IRS ‘settlement,’ refers attorneys for possible disciplinary actions

Published

2 hours ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Judge slams Trump-IRS ‘settlement,’ refers attorneys for possible disciplinary actions

By now, Donald Trump has probably grown accustomed to legal setbacks in court, though his case against the IRS has started to backfire in ways the president didn’t see coming. The Associated Press reported:

A federal judge said Monday that President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over his leaked tax returns was filed for an “improper purpose” as she referred attorneys for disciplinary actions.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams amounts to a stinging rebuke of the Republican president’s lawsuit, characterizing it as an exercise in self-dealing in which he sued an entity that is effectively under his control.

The basic details of Trump’s IRS lawsuit are likely familiar: During his first term, a contractor leaked his tax returns, and six years later, the president has filed suit against the tax agency, saying he’s entitled to $10 billion in taxpayer funds.

In May, he voluntarily withdrew his own litigationand soon afterward, the administration unveiled his reward for having done so: a compensation fund worth $1.766 billionwhich was quickly condemned by members of both parties as a “slush fund” that would be used to benefit the White House’s political allies.

That bipartisan pushback appears to have forced the president to back off his plans for the fund. And at that point, the case appeared to have run its course: Trump filed a rather preposterous $10 billion lawsuit against his own administration; he then abandoned that case before it could be fully adjudicated; and that was that.

Except, it wasn’t quite that simple, and one of the underlying legal problems persisted: The federal judge in the case, responding to a request filed by 35 former federal judges calling on her to reopen the case, raised serious concerns in late May, ordering Trump and his lawyers to address allegations that he committed fraud on the court.

In a four-page orderWilliams said she intended to investigate “grievous allegations” that the hasty deal to resolve the dubious case was “premised on deception.” (This same judge, as recently as late April, expressed skepticism about the propriety of the casesince it appeared the president was, for all intents and purposes, both the plaintiff and the defendant.)

More than a month later, she apparently did not like what she discoveredconcluding that Trump and his lawyers acted “in bad faith” and filed a civil suit “for an improper purpose.”

“The nature of the suit itself and the conduct of the Parties and counsel from its filing make plain that this was an attempt to use the Court to provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law,” Williams wrote.

The judge also prohibited the parties from even referring to it as a “settlement.”

Just as notably, as CNBC reportedWilliams “referred Trump’s lawyer in the lawsuit, Alejandro Brito, to the Florida bar for consideration on whether Brito should be disciplined in light of the findings in the new order.” The judge also “ordered that a copy of her ruling be mailed to the State Bar of New York, of which Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is a member, as well as to the District of Columbia Bar, of which Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward is a member.”

The developments come just two days before Blanche, Trump’s choice to serve as attorney general, is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a confirmation hearing.

A spokesperson for the Republican’s legal team said in a written statement, “The IRS wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information about President Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization to the New York Times, ProPublica and other left-wing news outlets, which was then illegally released to millions of people. President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable.”

The statement made no effort to address allegations of professional misconduct or the fact that Trump’s lawyers just received a brutal smackdown in court.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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

Trump and Tim Scott back Lindsey Graham’s sister as his temporary replacement

Published

2 hours ago

July 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump and Tim Scott back Lindsey Graham’s sister as his temporary replacement

Christmas. 13, 2026, 4:19 PM EDT

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster appointed Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sister, Darline, as his temporary replacement in the Senate on Monday, two days after the lawmaker’s sudden passing.

With Darline Graham alongside him, McMaster said she “agreed to serve through tears” in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Graham is nine years her brother’s junior and has never held public office. Her parents died before she reached the age of 14, and her brother later became her legal guardian. She is the Commissioner of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, where she has worked for nearly seven years; serves on the state’s Workforce Development Board; and is the president-elect of the National Council of State Agencies for the Blind.

“Lindsey has always been there for me, and now, I will be there for him,” Graham said in her first public remarks after the senator’s death, calling it a “privilege” to temporarily fill his seat.

President Donald Trump wrote on social media earlier Monday that he recommended the Republican governor appoint Graham to serve the remainder of his term, which expires in January.

“This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!” Trump wrote.

Tim Scott, South Carolina’s senior senator, appeared to agreesaying that she would be “a fantastic pick” to serve out the remainder of the senate term.

“After speaking with Darline, there is no one better who understands Lindsey’s love for family, our state, and our country,” Scott wrote in an X post Monday morning.

Appointing the senator’s sister as a neutral placeholder avoids the appearance of favoritism in the special primary later this summer to decide the new Republican nominee for the seat he held for more than two decades.

Trump, who said he spoke with Graham just hours before his death, called him “one of the greatest people and Senators” he has ever known and “a true American Patriot.”

Graham was elected in 2002 and was seeking a fifth term in November. A special primary election will be held Aug. 11 to decide the new Republican nominee, who will likely go on to succeed him in the reliably red state.

Erum Salam reported from New York.

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.

Nnamdi Egwuonwu is a reporter for MS NOW.