Ocasio-Cortez posted a series of videos on Instagram Sunday after the Chinese Communist Party-linked social media app TikTok ended a 12-hour shutdown, citing comments by Trump, during which she claimed the company was “privately collaborating” with the Trump administration. Smith said that Democrats engaged in “bullying tactics,” citing “transgender issues” as one example.

“So the left has not engaged in bullying tactics, so ‘woke’ culture didn’t exist?” Smith said. “Where people had to make sure they echoed the right pronoun in order to keep their job security. Where you had to sit and, God forbid, you literally challenged somebody with regards to transgender issues you were considered to be transphobic.”

“Where one minute we were called upon to protect the young women in our society and then that got thrown out the window the second a male was transitioning to female and wanted to participate in female sports and then all of a sudden there wasn’t any consistency with the stuff that had been spewed beforehand and ultimately enforced,” Smith continued.

Trump’s campaign ran ads featuring Vice President Harris discussing how she pushed “behind the scenes” for transgender prisoners to receive sex changes while serving as California’s attorney general, while Trump said he supported banning biological men from competing in women’s sports during an Oct. 16 town hall moderated by Fox News host Harris Faulkner.

“So now it’s the Republicans we need to be worried about? But not y’all? Y’all would never do such a thing. Oh my goodness. It would never be you. That would never happen. Really?” Smith said. “This is exactly why Trump is in office. Racist, fascist and all these other names. That’s what you do when you’re on the left. Not paying attention to the fact that the vast majority of American people are tired of that.”

“When are you going to tell us a message we want to hear? Trump didn’t win the election. You all lost. You put him there and let me get real raw with this. It got so bad with Biden in office, racism was thrown aside,” Smith continued. “Transgender issues don’t make up one per cent of this population. Black people make up nearly 14% of this population and for the vast majority of the last few years that issue has been more important than issues pertaining to black people, it seemed. That is just the truth.”

The issue of biological males who identify as transgender competing in women’s sports became controversial following Lia Thomas’s participation in the 2022 NCAA championships, where the biological male won the 500-yard women’s final.

Multiple college teams elected to forfeit matches against San Jose State University’s women’s volleyball team due to the presence of a biological male on the San Jose State roster, according to the Los Angeles Times. The transgender player spiked a ball into the face of a San Diego State University player during an Oct. 10 match, the New York Post reported.

North Carolina high school volleyball player Payton McNabb suffered a career-ending concussion when a transgender player’s spike hit her in the face in a similar play during a September 2022 volleyball match, described ongoing medical symptoms in legislative testimony she gave in April 2023.

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) carried out a raid with dozens of armed agents on a mine near Chicken, Alaska, in August 2013, according to Fox News. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska asked Zeldin, who President-elect Donald Trump nominated to serve as EPA administrator, about the use of armed agents to conduct raids during a Thursday hearing, saying that the Biden administration was conducting armed raids similar to the 2013 raid on “small mechanic shops” in his state.

“The Biden administration has done these raids on small mechanic shops in Alaska. They bring up EPA agents from all over the country, 30 armed agents kicking in doors in mechanic shops in Alaska,” Sullivan said. “By the way, my state believes in the Second Amendment, most of my state is armed, this is very dangerous because some of these ages could get shot when they’re coming in.”

Sullivan did not immediately respond to a request from the Daily Caller News Foundation for more information on the raids.

Sullivan has clashed with the Biden administration over its environmental policies, including restrictions on a type of aviation fuel used by many Alaskans.

“Can I get your commitment to focus on compliance rather than jumping to armed enforcement? And, secondly, look, I believe that an armed citizenry, I believe in the second Amendment, I don’t believe in an armed bureaucracy,” Sullivan continued. “The EPA has a SWAT team. Do you believe the EPA should even have armed agents? When they go into places, they can just have the local police are local state troopers. You got these guys out of control in Alaska and it is dangerous and the current EPA administrator, I sent them letters on this, he didn’t answer me. Can I get your commitment to focus on compliance, civil compliance as opposed to kicking in doors with body armor, assault, rifles, helicopters, it’s crazy and it’s really outrageous and it happens under Democrats, not President Trump. Democrats.”

A task force descended on Chicken, Alaska, which has a population of 17, in August 2013 to investigate allegations that the Clean Water Act was being violated, according to Fox News. Only one possible violation was uncovered by the task force, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

Over 90 agencies employ federal law enforcement agents, according to a September 2022 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

“Senator, it is outrageous that story that you told, and Senator Murkowski shared with me as well, with regards to Chicken, Alaska,” Zeldin said. “It led me, as somebody who is going through this transition, to be asking questions as to how did that even get authorized, who signs off on it, what is the standards that need to be met in order to even say yes to an operation like that.”

“With 30 agents from all over, EPA agents from all over America, who came up to rate a mechanic shop, a small business that I think there’s eight guys who owned it,” Sullivan said. “They were national guard guys, great Alaskans. Can I get your commitment on that and to work with me on? Do you think the EPA should be armed? I don’t.”

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The area around Los Angeles has been impacted by multiple wildfires that rapidly spread through Pasadena and other localities, destroying thousands of buildings and leaving at least 24 people dead, prompting criticism of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California from President-elect Donald Trump over the state’s forest management policies. Phillip noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson favored introducing certain conditions for California to receive federal aid to rebuild.

“I said it the night that this started, I said on your show, there ought to be conditions on aid because obviously —” Jennings said, before Phillip interrupted to ask, “So the next time Florida or Louisiana is dealing with a hurricane, you want that aid to be conditional upon Washington dictating policy decisions in those states?”

“I want it to be conditional on knowing whether or not the state of California, in this case, is going to enact local policy decisions on forest management, on water resources management,” Jennings said. “So it doesn’t happen again.”

Trump previously clashed with California officials over forest management during his first term in office after multiple wildfires in the state, accusing the state of failing to engage in “proper Forest Management.”

“Okay, if the Democratic-controlled House decided, ‘You know what, in Florida, they really should not be building those houses on the water, climate change is happening. That aid that we give you is going to be conditional upon you preventing the building of anything along — in all those areas that are prone to hurricanes,’ you would be okay with that?” Phillip asked, with Jennings responding, “If you could pass that through the United States Congress, more power to you.”

Defense attorney Arthur Aidala then cut in as Phillip was asking a follow-up question.

“Hold on, hold on, hold on. I’m the lawyer here. We have rules like that all the time,” Aidala informed Phillip. “You have to build around Coney Island in Brooklyn. If you’re going to build something, it’s got to be built in a certain way so you’re going to get the money.”

“Thank you. So, Arthur is pointing out that is very much something that Congress could do. Would you be okay with that?” Phillip asked Jennings, who responded, “I am not for a blank check to a state that has clearly failed and doesn’t know how to manage fires.”

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President Joe Biden awarded former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming the Presidential Citizens’ Medal for her role in a House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol building. Walsh urged Biden to pardon Cheney in order to “protect” her from the incoming Trump administration, prompting Aidala to point out how the Biden administration targeted Trump.

“Joe Biden should try to pardon as many people as possible to protect from a guy who said, ‘I want to be an authoritarian,’” Walsh said, prompting Aidala to respond, “I know, but, congressman, his — the Democratic administration just went after Trump and his whole family. His whole family.”

“Wait, wait,” Walsh said, with CNN host Abby Phillip asking, “Hang on. What do you mean, the Democratic administration? What are you talking about?”

When panelist Cari Champion asked who had “gone after” Trump, the panel laughed.

“Last I looked, Joe Biden is a Democrat. Last I looked, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, is a Democrat,” Aidala responded. “They hired a special prosecutor who went after him in several jurisdictions. The Democratic Manhattan D.A. went after him. The Democratic attorney general of the state of New York went after him.”

Trump faced multiple legal battles, including efforts to throw him off the ballot for the presidential election, a criminal trial in Manhattan during which a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30.

Trump was also indicted by special counsel Jack Smith on charges based on allegations involving classified documents and efforts to contest the 2020 presidential election. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also secured an indictment on state charges over Trump’s efforts to contest the results in Georgia in 2020.

“The Democrats went after Donald Trump and his entire family,” Aidala said, prompting former Hillary Clinton campaign aide Amanda Litman to say, “It was not President Joe Biden saying, ‘I’m going to put Donald Trump…’”

“It’s his administration. It’s his administration. And it’s his entire family,” Aidala responded. “Ivanka had to testify. Donald Jr. had to testify. Eric had to testify.”

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President Joe Biden awarded former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming the Presidential Citizens’ Medal for her role in a House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol building. Walsh urged Biden to pardon Cheney in order to “protect” her from the incoming Trump administration, prompting Aidala to point out how the Biden administration targeted Trump.

“Joe Biden should try to pardon as many people as possible to protect from a guy who said, ‘I want to be an authoritarian,’” Walsh said, prompting Aidala to respond, “I know, but, congressman, his — the Democratic administration just went after Trump and his whole family. His whole family.”

“Wait, wait,” Walsh said, with CNN host Abby Phillip asking, “Hang on. What do you mean, the Democratic administration? What are you talking about?”

When panelist Cari Champion asked who had “gone after” Trump, the panel laughed.

“Last I looked, Joe Biden is a Democrat. Last I looked, the attorney general, Merrick Garland, is a Democrat,” Aidala responded. “They hired a special prosecutor who went after him in several jurisdictions. The Democratic Manhattan D.A. went after him. The Democratic attorney general of the state of New York went after him.”

Trump faced multiple legal battles, including efforts to throw him off the ballot for the presidential election, a criminal trial in Manhattan during which a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on May 30.

Trump was also indicted by special counsel Jack Smith on charges based on allegations involving classified documents and efforts to contest the 2020 presidential election. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis also secured an indictment on state charges over Trump’s efforts to contest the results in Georgia in 2020.

“The Democrats went after Donald Trump and his entire family,” Aidala said, prompting former Hillary Clinton campaign aide Amanda Litman to say, “It was not President Joe Biden saying, ‘I’m going to put Donald Trump…’”

“It’s his administration. It’s his administration. And it’s his entire family,” Aidala responded. “Ivanka had to testify. Donald Jr. had to testify. Eric had to testify.”

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Harris, who became the Democratic nominee in 2024 after President Joe Biden abruptly dropped out of the race, lost the Nov. 5 presidential election when former President Donald Trump secured the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency. Bruce said that Harris became “a star” due to the lack of alternatives for Democrats.

“Some people are professional candidates. Now, she has won office, right? I mean, she has done well, inexplicably. She did — it continues to concern me that she received as many votes as she did, but that is something that the legacy media contributes to, and party loyalty contributes to, but all Americans across the board are waking up,” Bruce told “Varney and Company” guest host Ashley Webster. “But this is a woman who, because of the weakness of the Democratic bench, she becomes a star. And if the Democratic bench expands, if Democrats vote people in who know what they’re doing and can explain a vision, then the value of someone like Kamala Harris or the appeal of her will wane.”

“But, you know, in California you can — I suppose she might have a shot at something, if she wants to run for governor, but she’s not going to go and do something new,” Bruce continued. “Many people forget to think about that, you know, maybe you should try something else. There are other things in life. But, you know, for politicians at her level, there’s really nothing else in their minds that they can do, so it’s going to be up to the Democrats. But if they had a bigger bench and a stronger bench, she would not, I think, be in the position she’s in.”

Despite losing to Trump, Harris is the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2028 based on polls curated by 538.com, leading Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.

Harris and her running mate, Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, largely avoided interviews and press conferences after Biden announced he would not seek reelection July 21 before they began a media blitz campaign in October. One liberal pundit said the strategy may have been a factor in a poor performance by Walz during the Oct. 1 vice-presidential debate.

Harris also declined an invitation to attend the Al Smith Dinner in person, instead creating a video with former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Molly Shannon that was played at the charity event in her absence. She notably did not sit for an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, reportedly due to fears of a backlash among her campaign staff, which apparently cost her votes.

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Trump proposed admitting Canada to the United States as the 51st state in a Christmas Day post on Truth Social, saying Canadians would see their taxes cut by 60%. Theissen told “The Story” guest host Rich Edson that a better idea would be take to take certain portions of America’s northern neighbor instead.

“Canada is a lot like America with bigger government, higher taxes and less freedom and less prosperity, so I don’t know that we necessarily want Canada as the 51st state,” Theissen said. “Because they have got a lot of problems. They’ve got a healthcare system where you have to wait two years for brain surgery. They’ve got, you know, a massive immigration problem, where they brought in a lot of people who certainly don’t love Canada and don’t love America, and are marching in the streets for Hamas. They’ve got problems.”

“I think we might take Alberta, they have got a lot of oil and they’re conservative. We might want the Northwest Territories and maybe Nunavut, maybe Newfoundland and Labrador,” Thiessen continued. “If we attach Greenland, we have the Northwest Passage and the Arctic Passage under U.S. control.”

President Joe Biden halted construction on the Keystone XL pipeline in January 2021, angering Alberta officials, who called the decision a “gut punch” to the province.

“Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary suggested an economic union between the United States and Canada to help counter China, but said many Canadians didn’t want Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to negotiate the deal.

“If Canada was to become our 51st State, their Taxes would be cut by more than 60%, their businesses would immediately double in size, and they would be militarily protected like no other Country anywhere in the World,” Trump said.

Trump floated buying Greenland from Denmark during his first term in office, but the Danish government rejected the idea. He again raised the possibility in a Dec. 23 post on Truth Social, while also musing about retaking control of the Panama Canal.

Trump announced plans to impose a 25% tariff on goods from Mexico and Canada in a Nov. 25 post on Truth Social, insisting the two countries do more to halt the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs across their borders with the United States.

Shortly after Trump posted the threat to impose tariffs, Trudeau flew down to Palm Beach, Florida, to meet with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence.

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A Government Accountability Office report released July 13, 2023 found that 75% of office space in federal buildings was not being utilized, prompting President-elect Donald Trump and Department of Government Efficiency co-chairs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to state their intention to get workers back in office. Van Duyne shared her experience with remote workers from her time in Trump’s previous administration, noting that the lenient in-office requirements posed a serious problem.

“I worked at HUD and they had three-day-a-week telework, this was way before Covid ever hit,” Van Duyne told “The Faulkner Focus” guest host Julie Banderas. “There were people in the office I never met because they figured out how to either take their two days off that they were supposed to be in the office either on vacation or an event or something like that. But literally, how do you build a team when you don’t have people coming to work, not to mention the fact — the waste that we spend on leases?”

“You could shoot a cannon through many of these federal buildings and never touch a single soul because they are empty, and yet, we have to spend all that money on leases every year,” Van Duyne continued. “There is a lot of waste, fraud and abuse. You start looking at the COVID dollars and how they were fraudulently accepted and taken. There is a lot of waste and I can’t imagine anybody defending the waste.”

Multiple lawmakers have called for restricting or ending remote work for federal employees, such as Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, who sent letters to 24 government agencies in August 2023 requesting a review of the issues involved with telecommuting. In the letters, Ernst cited a media account of a VA employee who attended a staff meeting while taking a bubble bath. She later shared a 60-page report on Dec. 5 that covered the findings from her investigation into government employee telework.

Previous investigations by Ernst into telecommuting by federal employees detailed issues telework created involving locality pay, an adjustment to the basic pay of civilian employees in the federal government intended to make sure that federal employees have comparable compensation to private-sector counterparts in a given area of the country.

“Why would you spend billions of dollars on lease money for buildings that are empty? Who does that help?” Van Duyne asked. “It doesn’t help the American citizens. It just continues to take tax dollars and divert them away from programs we actually do need, to programs that are a waste.”

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An unidentified shooter killed two people at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis. before committing suicide. Dr. Kavita Patel told MSNBC host Chris Jansing that guns are a “public health crisis” before she attacked Kennedy’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Patel served in the Obama White House as the director of policy for the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement.

“First responders know this better than anybody. They are not just the first to the scene, but I’ve been in the emergency room when we have had these shootings and we’re waiting for people, and we don’t get them,” Patel said. “Because… there are no people that can be saved, and then when you look at the aftermath of the violence, Chris, as we’ve seen, an escalation in the ability to print guns, the ease in which you can gain ammunition, the uneven pattern of laws, depending on the state you’re in and what the laws are, and, let’s just be honest, the culture of violence. I see it with my 10-year-old son, the video games his friends play. They normalize so much of this violence.”

“And I want to go back to American health policy. This is awful, but it’s a reminder that I need to keep at the screening that I do with patients on whether they have guns in the household, how they keep the guns safe, whether they have children in the household, what they do when other children visit their household,” Patel said. “I have had parents even say, ‘Should I ask other parents about guns in the household?’ I said you should. It should be a checklist, not even to think about it, but that’s part of what we’re talking about.”

President-elect Donald Trump announced Kennedy as his nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services in November. Kennedy in the past has questioned whether vaccines cause autism, a view popularized by a discredited study retracted by the Lancet in 2010.

“These are not just policies that we have to enact at our local level. They need to be implemented at the federal level,” Patel said. “And as we’re talking about a secretary of HHS potentially, we’re talking about people who are going to be in leadership position. They don’t even support science when we talk about vaccines. How are we going to depend on them to support the science around gun violence, as it’s literally unfolding in front of our eyes, and it’s tragic.”

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Trump sued ABC on March 19 for defamation over comments made by “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos, who claimed during an episode of the Sunday morning talk show that Trump was found liable for rape. Stelter called the settlement, in which ABC paid Trump $15 million, a “major victory” for the president-elect.

“These cases oftentimes do not work out for Trump. But this ABC case is a major victory. I talked to renowned First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams last night. He said, look, there’s no way to say other than this is a big win for Trump,” Stelter told “CNN Newsroom” host Jim Acosta. “It’s going to embolden him to file more of these suits. But as Abrams said, he called it disturbing that this could turn, $15 million could be paid around the use of the word rape versus sexual abuse in that interview on ABC’s ‘This Week.’”

“Look, Stephanopoulos has been a Trump target for a long time. He was very aggressive in this interview that aired in March,” Stelter continued. “So Trump decided to file suit about a week later, and a judge did not throw it out. A judge let it go forward through the discovery process.”

While hounding Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina over her support for Trump during the contentious interview, Stephanopoulos brought up her history as a rape survivor while bringing up the $83 million judgement against Trump in a civil defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll, who Mace criticized for joking about going on a shopping spree with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Mace discussed her rape during a 2019 debate in the South Carolina state legislature over a “heartbeat” bill that limited access to abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, according to the Post and Courier.

“It’s possible that ABC decided to settle this, Jim, because there might have been embarrassing emails or text messages on ABC’s servers that were going to become public,” Stelter told Acosta. “Everybody remembers that’s what happened to Fox News when Dominion sued Fox.”

“So this might have been a case where ABC is avoiding public embarrassment by paying $15 million,” Stelter continued. “But look, there’s a lot of people that say that payment is embarrassing as well. So this is not the end of the story.”

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