July 28, 2025.

Today's theme seems to be Republican leadership digging into positions that are directly contradicted by facts.

On Sunday, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmidt of the New York Times reported that the price tag for renovating the free Boeing 747-8, President Donald J. Trump, accepted from Qatar, appears to be close to a billion dollars of taxpayer money. The reporters explored a mysterious $934 million transfer of funds from a program to

modernize the country's ground-based nuclear missiles to an unnamed classified project.

Air Force officials told them privately that the transfer is for upgrading the

plane for use as Air Force One. Yale historian Joanne Freeman posted, he's using our money to

buy himself a gift, a billion dollar gift. Over the weekend, Trump called for musician Beyonce to be prosecuted for breaking the law by taking $11 million for endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris in October 24, and for Harris to be prosecuted for paying that sum. But this simply never happened. CNN fact checker Daniel Dale explained

yesterday that this is a made-up story Trump apparently got from social media. The Harris campaign

covered $165,000 of the costs connected to Beyonce's appearance as required by law, but a spokesperson said

they did not pay celebrity endorsers,

although there is no federal law prohibiting such payments.

Dale says there is no evidence

for Trump's $11 million claim.

And then there is the case of convicted sex offender,

Jeffrey Epstein. On Sunday,

Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, a Republican of Oklahoma, appeared on CNN's State of the Union and repeatedly

insisted that it was the Obama administration in 2009 that allowed sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to avoid serious federal charges by agreeing

to a sweetheart plea deal. But it wasn't. As CNN's Jake Tapper reminded him, the agreement was

drafted in 2007 and signed in 2008 under President George W. Bush.

Mullen continued to try to rope the Democrats

into the story of the deal,

but Tapper reiterated.

...