MS NOW legal analyst Andrew Weissmann said President Donald Trump’s disregard for court orders has turned the nation’s justice system into a laughingstock.

“The Trump administration is making the courts look like fools,” he said.

With the midterm elections quickly approaching, Weissmann warned it is time for America’s judges to work “faster and smarter” before it’s too late.

“The administration, over and over again, is doing things unilaterally without permission and, at times, in violation of court orders,” the former Justice Department official explained.

According to an analysis from The Associated Press earlier this year, district court judges have found the second Trump administration violated or failed to follow federal court orders in at least 31 lawsuits and in more than 250 individual immigration cases.

When the court does intervene, sometimes it’s already too late, Weissmann said, pointing to the administration’s use of taxpayer dollars to run ads for the president. When a federal judge blocked that effort, it was only after nearly $22 million had already been spent.

“Tens of millions of people saw those ads, paid for by you and me,” he said.

Weissmann argued that Trump’s DOJ has effectively taken a “do now and ask questions later” approach to the law.

“The court only belatedly says, ‘Hey, don’t do that.’ But the damage is already done, and you can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” he said.

The former federal prosecutor said it was time for courts to be “faster and smarter” in responding to Trump’s blatantly illegal moves, and he cautioned against setting “a permission structure for this administration,” especially as the election approaches.

“What I am worried about is: The midterms are coming up, and is this going to be a government that goes ahead and seizes ballots with the idea that we can break the chain of custody, we can make it impossible to count votes? And maybe later a court will say, ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ but the damage will have been done,” he explained.

“There has to be a deterrent,” Weissmann warned. “And courts have to be faster and smarter to not get outplayed.”

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You can watch Weissmann’s full comments in the clip above.

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MS NOW’s Michael Steele said the American people “turned the hand” of Donald Trump after the president announced the government would not livestream the execution of the Fort Hood shooter. “I think we need to sometimes put a check on ourselves, and in this instance, we did,” he said.

Last week, Pentagon officials said the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people at a military medical building in 2009, would be livestreamed. But on Thursday, Trump reversed course in a Truth Social post, writing, “He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.”

Although the livestream has been called off, Steele said the fact that officials considered broadcasting the execution raises profound questions about the country’s leadership. “What does it say that our country would even consider doing something like this?” he asked.

“This level of barbarism, it doesn’t matter where you are on the death penalty and all of that; this is about who we are as a nation and whether or not we want to participate in this type of voyeurism, this type of dehumanizing behavior,” he continued.

As “The Weeknight” co-host pointed out, even some victims’ families expressed reservations about the plan. “It is painful for the families,” he said. “It is enough to have to live through the loss of their loved ones, but then to have this type of reality TV approach to something so serious, a matter so serious.”

Steele said the controversy underscored why those in power must be held accountable by the public. In this case, he said, Americans had to question whether the government’s plan reflected the country’s values. “I think we need to sometimes put a check on ourselves, and in this instance, we did,” he said, crediting public backlash for Trump’s reversal.

“I think the response of the American people is what turned the hand of the president on this,” he continued, adding that he was “grateful” the public chose to stand up for decency and sent Trump a clear message: “No, we’re not going to watch that.”

“We decided. You responded. That’s how this works,” Steele said.

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You can watch Steele’s full comments in the clip above.

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MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough criticized President Donald Trump for condemning Ukraine’s renewed strikes on Russian oil sites while saying little about Moscow’s continued violations of his energy ceasefire.

“These events are shocking — even by Trumpian standards,” Scarborough said.

In an interview with Newsmax on Thursday, Trump called Ukraine’s decision to resume drone strikes on Russian oil refineries “a disgrace” and said the attacks would drive up global oil prices. (Trump has repeatedly blamed the Russia-Ukraine war for surging energy costs, though experts say the U.S. war with Iran has had a greater impact.)

“I’m not a big fan of Zelensky,” Trump said of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, adding that he found him “more difficult to deal with” than Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Reacting to Trump’s comments, Scarborough said Friday on “Morning Joe” that he “just can’t get Ukraine off my mind and the absolute betrayal of Ukraine.”

The MS NOW host cast Trump’s criticism of Ukraine as the latest in a series of moves that he argued favor Moscow. Last week, Trump announced the United States would lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports. Scarborough said the agreement would help “pump billions of dollars into Vladimir Putin’s killing machines.”

He also cited Reuters’ report that an order to limit Ukraine’s access to SpaceX’s Starshield satellite service came from inside the White House. The temporary restriction disrupted Ukrainian drone operations, according to the report. A White House official denied that Trump ordered the Pentagon to limit the service.

“That’s all in Donald Trump’s hands,” Scarborough continued. “He’s the one in charge of this.” He said he believed Trump was “doing everything he can to help” Putin “win this war.”

According to the “Morning Joe” co-host, Trump has “been telling us who he is since 2015” when it comes to his feelings toward Putin.

“He’s always been with Russia,” he said. “Long before this war in 2015, while he was running for president, he was talking about his great admiration for Vladimir Putin.”

Scarborough also recalled what he called Trump’s “shameful, pathetic, weak performance” at his 2018 meeting with Putin in Helsinki, during which Trump publicly cast doubt on U.S. intelligence agency findings on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Since Trump returned to the White House, Scarborough said, “we’ve heard more of the same.” He said Trump’s advisers would share responsibility for the consequences of the administration’s approach to Ukraine.

“Everybody around him that has anything to do with this policy, this betrayal of the West, this betrayal of Western freedom, this betrayal of Ukraine, this will be marked upon their legacies for as long as they live,” he said.

You can watch Scarborough’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.

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MS NOW’s Luke Russert and Symone Sanders Townsend urged advisers close to Donald Trump to intervene after the president once again went on a bizarre late-night Truth Social posting spree.

“Take the phone away from our president,” Russert said.

The spree began Tuesday night and continued into Wednesday morning. One post included a clip of a man being attacked by a tiger at a wildlife park in England along with the caption, “Don’t ever mess with nature! President DJT.” (The 23-year-old victim involved in that attack later died.) Trump also posted an artificial intelligence-generated video of him chasing and taming a tiger before hugging it as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” played.

On Wednesday’s “The Weeknight,” Russert called the president’s posts “sick,” “weird” and “demented,” saying Trump’s behavior has “gotten to be very troubling.” He said it may be time for those close to Trump, like top aide Natalie Harp, to step in.

“If you are there, Natalie, take the phone away,” he said.

Russert contrasted the reaction to Trump’s behavior with the intense scrutiny of former President Joe Biden’s physical and mental fitness prior to his decision to leave the 2024 presidential race.

“[Biden] went and got ice cream. He had a little limp in his gait. He went to Sunday Mass. He rode his bike. And everybody said, ‘Joe Biden was unwell, Joe Biden couldn’t go on to be president. Joe Biden was not healthy enough’ — Joe Biden was never putting up videos of people getting mauled by tigers at three in the morning,” Russert said.

“I think that one’s mental state of doing that is much more troubling than if you have a little limp in your walk going to Sunday Mass,” he added.

Sanders Townsend, who previously served in the Biden administration, agreed with her co-host and said Trump’s behavior is “not even in the same realm” as his predecessor’s. In addition to his social media behavior, the MS NOW host said she was concerned about repeated instances of the president appearing to fall asleep during meetings or other public events.

“And we’re just supposed to keep on going on like everything is regular?” she asked.

“This man is very unwell,” Sanders Townsend said of Trump. “I don’t know if it’s age or if it’s something else, but clearly something is going on.”

She questioned why concerns about the president’s mental fitness were not “front-page news every single day,” calling some members of the press “disingenuous,” “given all the things they said about Joe Biden.”

“All the people that were, like, up in arms about Joe Biden, please come to the front and tell me what you want the public to do about Donald Trump,” Sanders Townsend said.

You can watch Russert and Sanders Townsend’s full comments here.

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Ted Boutrous, the attorney representing the three media outlets that were banned from the White House by President Donald Trump, said his team is ready to go to the Supreme Court after the administration announced it would appeal an order blocking the government from enforcing that ban.

“We’re going to keep fighting,” he told Nicolle Wallace on Wednesday’s “Deadline: White House.”

On Tuesday, Judge Timothy Kelly sided with MS NOW, CNN and Politico and barred the White House from banning journalists from those organizations while the lawsuit plays out. The preliminary injunction replaces a temporary restraining order Kelly granted last month. It is not a final ruling on the merits of the case.

In his written opinion, Kelly, who was appointed by Trump, found that the president’s ban, first enacted on Sept. 19, likely violated both the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause and the First Amendment.

When Wallace asked Boutrous if it was “more satisfying” that such a decisive order came from a judge appointed by the president, he said he tries not to “think about Trump and Obama and Biden judges” but admitted it “does make you have faith in the rule of law that it shouldn’t matter.

“Judge Kelly just applied the law,” he said. “He said the law is clear in the D.C. Circuit. The First Amendment law is clear … So I think it adds to the faith that people can have in the system when you have a judge rule against someone who appointed them.”

Following Kelly’s decision late Tuesday, the White House said it intended to appeal the ruling. In a statement to MS NOW, a spokesperson said, “The Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office. The lies they smear are a disservice to the American public and tear at the very fabric of our Democracy. They’re completely capable of reporting from directly outside.”

The Justice Department declined to comment on the ruling.

Trump announced the ban on journalists from MS NOW, CNN and Politico on social media on Sept. 18 and said the action was a “result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” However, after the outlets filed a lawsuit on Sept. 21, the White House said the ban was due to national security concerns.

Kelly rejected that argument, writing in his order there was “no evidence in the record that President Trump made the decision to revoke Plaintiffs’ hard passes on national security grounds from the get-go, nor at any time has he directly stated that national security was the reason for his decision.”

Boutrous said the administration has repeatedly tried to excuse its crackdown on free speech by invoking national security concerns, citing a similar argument from the Pentagon when it tried to limit reporters from accessing that building.

“They seem to have a button, a ‘national security’ button, and they just think if they press it, courts are going to say, ‘We can’t go there,’” Boutrous told Wallace. “And the courts are saying, ‘No, we will defer to the president and the executive branch, but we’re not naive.’”

Boutrous predicted the case will end up in front of the Supreme Court, noting that the administration has frequently relied on the Republican-appointed majority and its “shadow docket” to bypass lower courts and secure rapid victories.

“I’m hoping the Supreme Court will, at some point, lose patience and say we’re not going to hear every one of your complaints about our Constitution and just say enough,” Boutrous said. “But I don’t put it past them to try in any case. So we’re ready, we’re going to keep fighting.”

“I think the beauty of our system is the fight itself serves a valuable purpose,” he told Wallace, “not only getting reporters back in there to report the news, but also to say, ‘We’re going to fight for these rights for the American people.’”

The post ‘We’re going to keep fighting’: Lawyer for outlets banned by White House braces for Trump’s next move appeared first on MS NOW.