July 23, 2025. This morning, President Donald J. Trump told Republican members of Congress that his popularity is rising and that talk about the Epstein files is a distraction from what he insists is the real story,

that former President Barack Obama cheated in the 2016 election.

Trump insisted the cameramen cut their cameras when he made that accusation, although there was no break in the recording.

He told the Congress members,

you should mention that every time they give you a question that's not appropriate,

just say, oh, by the way, Obama cheated on the election.

At a press briefing today, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt pushed this story,

insisting that Democrats, led by Obama,

had tried to sabotage Trump's first administration and had done grave material harm to our

republic. She called it one of the greatest political scandals in American history.

Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, followed Leavitt to talk about today's release of a report drafted in 2020 by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee

to push back on the idea that Russia preferred for Trump rather than Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 election.

Despite her claims that it is a damning bombshell, the material in the newly released report, in fact,

does not challenge the conclusion of the U.S. intelligence agencies, the Mueller report, and the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russia preferred a Trump presidency to a Clinton presidency and worked to get Trump elected in part by attacking Clinton and spreading lies about her health.

What the report did do was deliver red meat to the MAGA base by spreading the same sorts of rumors about Clinton

the Russians spread in 2016. Gabbard compounded that effort at the White House press conference

by reading material in the report as if it were fact, saying that Russia had high-level Democratic National Committee emails that

detailed evidence of Hillary's psycho-emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression,

and cheerfulness, and that then Secretary Clinton was allegedly on a daily regimen of heavy tranquilizers,

along with a number of other charges that Clinton had broken the law.

Gabbard did not mention that these allegations were in fact identified in the report as material

prepared by Russia's foreign intelligence services.

...