A masked man shot and killed the CEO of UnitedHealth outside a hotel in midtown Manhattan, according to reports

Insurance executive Brian Thompson had arrived around 6:46 a.m. at the Hilton Hotel for a conference when a gunman who had allegedly been lying in wait for him opened fire and then fled, reported the New York Post.

The 50-year-old Thompson was rushed to Mt. Sinai Hospital in critical condition but was later pronounced dead, police said.

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The suspect was described as a white man wearing a cream-colored jacket, black face mask and black-and-white sneakers, and investigators said he was also carrying a grey backpack.

The shooter hadn't been a guest at the hotel, but it's not clear whether he had other business there.

The suspect fled though a nearby alley and then fled the scene on a bicycle, and he remains at large, according to multiple reports.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough explicitly called B.S. on Donald Trump's nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, and his revenge scheme over the 2020 election.

The MAGA loyalist has said he would prosecute or sue individuals whom he claims stole that election from Trump, and the "Morning Joe" host wondered whether he would target dozens of judges who rejected the former president's fraud claims in lawsuits he lost four years ago.

"I'm curious, is he going to go after the 63 federal judges who said the lie was bulls--t?" Scarborough said. "Is he going to go after them? is he going to go after the United States Supreme Court, who said it was bulls--t? Is he going to after Clarence Thomas and [Samuel] Alito, the two most conservative justices, who when they reviewed the Pennsylvania appeal said, 'Well, we need to look at this for legal reasons but it wouldn't have changed the outcome of the election.' Is he going to go after them as well? I mean, seriously – 63 federal decisions, the Supreme Court, you can go on and on and on.

"This is absolutely preposterous. I'll tell you what else is preposterous."

"You can use B.S.," co-host Mika Brzezinski gently chided him over his cursing.

"I did – did I not say that?" Scarborough replied, deadpan. "Yeah, I thought I said that. Anyway, I'll tell you what else is preposterous, and this next one really speaks to it."

Trump and his Republican allies are claiming a broad mandate from voters after winning the White House, Senate and House, which the president-elect has cited to justify his extremist plans, but Scarborough said his election win was historically narrow, and the GOP's legislative majorities were similarly thin.

ALSO READ: Will Trump back the FBI’s battle against domestic extremists? He won’t say.

"Like we said repeatedly going up the election, this race is tight," he said. "Now I can see if this was like an LBJ-style blowout like in '64 or a Nixon blowout in '72 or a Reagan blowout in '84, but this was one of the closest elections ever, especially if you look at the outcome of the House and the outcome of the Senate, and the only reason Democrats are not in charge of the United States House of Representatives and Hakeem Jeffries is not speaker of the House is because North Carolina legislators rigged the process so badly that they took away three Democratic seats there in a rigged redistricting attempt that actually held up."

"So, again, here we are, one month since the 2024 election, and only one House seat that remains uncalled this morning that is breaking Democratic makes it look like they are in a dead tie," he added. "You know they'd call this, like, in Europe? A unity government, because they are basically tied. So all these people who are saying that this is the end of the world for the Democratic Party, I think they may be overanalyzing this just a bit."

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MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Jonathan Lemire claimed Monday that some in Donald Trump's orbit aren't thrilled by his nomination of MAGA loyalist Kash Patel as FBI director.

The election conspiracist has already promised to prosecute Trump's political enemies and media figures from the start of a second administration, and the "Morning Joe" host warned that Patel faces an uphill battle to get the job leading the nation's top law enforcement agency.

And some of the opposition is coming from people standing right beside Trump.

"Kash Patel is not just controversial among media outlets or Democrats, he is not just controversial among Republican senators," Scarborough said. "He is controversial inside Trump's own orbit. You go inside Trump's own orbit and it is split down the middle with half the people thinking he is going to be a disaster for any Donald Trump administration and they never wanted this nomination to see the light of day because, again, that divide goes straight through MAGA world for those around Donald Trump."

Lemire said he's hearing the same from his sources.

"People I talked to say this pick was a nod to the extreme right-wing portions of Trump base, the Steve Bannon, ultra-MAGA sector here who had been disappointed by Trump's picks like treasury secretary and secretary of state," Lemire said.

ALSO READ: Will Trump back the FBI’s battle against domestic extremists? He won’t say.

"This is Trump throwing them red meat because he knows he needs to keep them happy, but other people in Trumpworld are deeply worried about this pick, that Patel is not only not qualified but dangerous, that he will not think twice or hesitate in carrying out whatever Trump wants, people say, even for people breaking the law."

There's speculation that Trump could sidestep a confirmation battle by firing current FBI director Christopher Wray and appointing Patel as an interim director for several months.

"That seemed trouble and this seems hardly a sure thing, but if he were to fire Wray, Patel could step in in an interim way for 200 or so days," Lemire said. "Even if he can't be confirmed it will be enough to carry out some of Trump's agenda."

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Some of Donald Trump's appointees have reported violent threats since the president-elect nominated them to high-level government positions, but an analyst said one of his unelected advisers was putting lower-level officials and employees at risk.

The former president has tapped foreign-born tech mogul Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to head the newly created quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency to drastically cut federal spending, and the X owner has revealed the names and titles of four relatively obscure government workers in a post revealed tens of millions of times and resulted in waves of harassment.

"He's essentially sort of a vice presidential sort of foil," said CNN's Juliette Kayyem. "We don't even see [vice president-elect J.D.] Vance much anymore. We see Elon Musk a lot more. He's very close with the president."

Musk singled out retired Army Lt. Col Alexander Vindman in an X post Wednesday accusing the former Trump impeachment witness of "treason" and warned he "will pay," and Kayyem said the tech CEO was needlessly putting individuals at risk for violence.

"People are nervous to take this on, but it really does have to be taken on, so, I mean, Elon Musk just needs to honestly grow up – just grow up," Kayyem said. "I mean, this is silly behavior, and he may view it as funny. I mean, he sort of has an odd sense of humor, you know, there's you know, he's, you know, he's just very excitable."

"But what happens is people see that and they take it as a license to do something very unfunny," Kayyem added, "and so anyone who's an expert in these fields on whether online or incitement or have has seen the wave of incitement to violence over the last four, eight, 12 years, really understands that that kind of language, whether a joke, whether he just thinks he's powerful, that punching down that he does is not only scary for the recipient of it, the unnamed person, right, but is also just, it's so easy to punch down, right, and I think we have to just grow up at this stage."

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A former Donald Trump staffer said the Matt Gaetz flameout showed Republican senators were more willing to oppose the once and future president in his second term.

The Florida Republican withdrew his nomination Thursday after just eight days, three days short of Anthony Scaramucci's 11-day tenure as Trump's communications director – a measure of time he jokingly calls a "Mooch" – and he told CNN that episode shows the president-elect doesn't have control over the incoming GOP majority

"Obviously, a lot of the things that [former] Rep. Gaetz did was disqualifying, but I think the tide has changed a little bit," Scaramucci said. "I think there's been a shape shift by the Republicans in the Senate. You know, they see Trump as a lame duck. They know there's one more election that he can have lots of influence on, which is the congressional election in two years, and I think they are fortifying themselves to block some of the things that he's done in the past, and so the Trump season, you know, this is 'The Apprentice: White House Edition' season two. I think the cast members up on Capitol Hill are ready for Donald Trump this time. I don't think they were as prepared as they are now, and I think the messaging [to Gaetz] was, behind closed doors: 'You're not going to make it, don't embarrass the president and withdraw.'"

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Scaramucci suspects at least one of Trump's other nominees could be forced to bow out over rape allegations.

"Now, the other questions are, you know, about some of these other candidates," Scaramucci said. "Well, Pete Hegseth ended up having to do the same thing, and I will predict if there's more information about Pete that comes out, he'll be No. 2 to go that way. But I think Pam Bondi, by the way, will do well. Pam Bondi says the things that Donald Trump likes to hear, but she won't do the things that Donald Trump likes to do, and so I think that's someone that respects the system, and I think she'll get it. I think she'll get through."

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Business leaders are nervous about the economic impact of two of Donald Trump's signature campaign promises — and some of them are hoping they can talk him out of going through with them, according to an analyst.

The president-elect has vowed to impose stiff tariffs on imported goods and deport millions of migrants, which economists say would likely increase inflation. MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire told "Morning Joe" that Wall Street is worried.

" Trump prizes the economy most of all," Lemire said. "That's his favorite metric whether or not his presidency is a success, and for both on this idea of deportation and the tariffs idea, they're linked here. There is some belief that business leaders and others will talk him out of it and say, 'Look, you'll ruin the economy if you do these things, it will damage your presidency.' That's possible."

However, there's no indication that Trump or his advisers are backing off their plans, which the president-elect confirmed could include declaring a national emergency and ordering the military to assist in the deportations.

"Maybe it will narrow, but at least right now they're talking big," Lemire said. "They're acting like they're going to go through it, and these are, again, the signature promises of his campaign. Maybe, yes, maybe he'll cut a deal, maybe he'll make it smaller. Maybe he'll take the win and move on to something else, but maybe not. A lot of people in this country are afraid he'll do exactly what he says."

The president-elect has also authorized tech billionaire Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to make drastic cuts to federal spending, which would likely cast millions of government workers out of their jobs, and MSNBC's Claire McCaskill said that poses deep threats to the economy.

"Elon Musk is talking about cutting two-thirds of the federal workforce," McCaskill said. "Well, by the way, does he know that two of the largest employers in the federal workforce are the Pentagon and Homeland Security? If you take those agencies and set them aside and cut the workforce, then we're talking about people who deliver payments to the American citizens. We're talking about the Medicare system that delivers payments on behalf of Americans.

"We're talking about Social Security that delivers payments on behalf of America. So there really is this disconnect between how realistic a mass deportation is in light of other things they say they're going to do and how it will look to America if they erect these large holding facilities with the money they take from the military, which, by the way, they tried with the wall. He declared a national emergency and diverted Pentagon funds to do, what, 20 miles, 100 miles? He didn't build it, but he built some of it."

"It really is a head-scratcher," McCaskill added. "They will be very savvy about using, deporting people who have been convicted of crimes or charged with crimes. They'll do really smart photo-ops with those folks, and there's about a million of those people in the country. Most of it's low-level crime, some of it is not. That's what they will do first and the big splashes they'll use to try to convince Americans that he's doing some mass deportation. But I think [to be determined] on the idea he could do a mass deportation, and I don't think the American public will stand for it."

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Two advisers close to Donald Trump are engaged in a bitterly personal power struggle over some of the former president's Cabinet nominees, according to a new report.

Elon Musk quickly worked his way into the president-elect's inner circle after pouring about $200 million into his re-election campaign, but there are already signs of tension between the tech mogul and other Trump advisers — specifically longtime loyalist Boris Epshteyn, reported Axios.

"Their rocky relationship came to a head last Wednesday during a heated discussion at a dinner table in front of other guests at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, three people familiar with the episode told Axios," the website reported. "At one point during what the sources described as a 'massive blowup' and a 'huge explosion,' Musk accused Epshteyn of leaking details of Trump's transition — including personnel picks — to the media. Epshteyn responded by telling Musk that he didn't know what he was talking about."

Epshteyn pushed for former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) as attorney general, and Musk questioned whether the longtime adviser had too much influence over his top Justice department picks and the White House counsel pick of William McGinley, the sources said, while Epshteyn bristled at Musk's criticism.

Musk has been pushing for Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick as treasury secretary instead of Wall Street favorite Scott Bessent, a hedge fun manager who visited Mar-a-Lago last week.

"Bessent is a business-as-usual choice, whereas [Lutnick] will actually enact change," Musk posted on his X platform. "Business-as-usual is driving America bankrupt."

The tech billionaire is well-liked by Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson and Trump's two eldest sons, but his near-constant presence at Mar-a-Lago has irritated some longstanding members of Trump's inner circle.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet in person with Donald Trump for the first time in years.

The pair had previously been friends with the former star of NBC's "The Apprentice," but their relationship soured after they repeatedly criticized Trump during his first presidency and afterward. They said they visited his private resort in Palm Beach, Florida, in an attempt to bury the hatchet.

"Over the past week, Joe and I have heard from so many people from political leaders to regular citizens deeply dismayed by several of president-elect Trump's Cabinet selections and they are scared," Brzezinski said. "Last Thursday, we expressed our own concerns on this broadcast and even said we would appreciate the opportunity to speak with the president-elect himself.

"On Friday, we were given the opportunity to do just that. Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to meet personally with President-elect Trump. It was the first time we have seen him in seven years."

Since the last time they met, the former president accused Scarborough of murdering a congressional staffer decades ago, a conspiracy theory he heard from his attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz, and the "Morning Joe" host claims that Trump allies had threatened to arrest his producers if he was re-elected.

"We talked about a lot of issues, including abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets," Scarborough said. "We talked about that a good bit. It will come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues and we told him so."

"What we did agree on was to restart communications," Brzezinski said. "My father [former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski] often spoke with world leaders with whom he and the United States profoundly disagreed. That is a task shared by reporters and commentators alike. We had not spoken to Trump since March of 2020 other than a personal call that Joe made, a call after the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania. In this meeting, President Trump was cheerful and upbeat and he seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues. And for those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back, why wouldn't we? Five years of political warfare has deeply divided Washington and the country."

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"We have been as clear as we know how in expressing our deep concerns about President Trump's actions and words in the coarsening of public debate for nearly 80 million Americans," Brzezinski added. "Election denialism, public trials, Jan. 6 were not as important as the issues that moved them to send Donald Trump back to the White House with their vote. Joe and I realized it's time to do something different and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him."

A source close to the former president told Scarborough that Trump might approach his second term differently because he was prohibited from running again.

"Somebody close to Donald Trump told me this past weekend, this is a president who is not seeking re-election, so maybe, just maybe now could be time for both parties to get to work," Scarborough said. "I know, given the jarring headlines that we read every day, that may seem like a stretch but think about this. Of the 150 million votes cast, Donald Trump got 50 percent, Kamala Harris got about 49 percent, so I don't know. It seems to make sense for leaders of both parties to seek common ground, if it's possible at all. I will tell you a lot of Democratic leaders we have talked to this past week since the election have told Mika and me, it's time for a new approach. When I say top Democrats, I mean top Democrats. They said we are open — this is before we talked to Donald Trump — they said, listen. We are open to working with the incoming president if the incoming president is open to working with us."

Brzezinski acknowledged that seemed unlikely, give the current political climate, but she argued that both parties should at least try to co-exist peacefully.

"The question is, though, how do we get there?" she said. "Hyperbole and personal attacks will not work. My hair on fire doesn't work, we have all seen that! What also does not work is threatening political opponents with arrest, harassment and even jail. That is a failed path. Recent history has proven that impeachments and trials turn those on trial into political martyrs and only make them more popular with the American people. Just ask Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. We know this will be a consequential presidency, the question is whether it will be constructive. It will take a new approach from all sides, from both parties, and a leader who can bring them together and only time will tell if Donald Trump can be that leader. As for us, we also let him know that we will continue to speak truth to power and push back hard when called for, as we have with all presidents."

Scarborough seemed to anticipate criticism of their visit to Mar-a-Lago and insisted they would still cover him as a potential threat to democracy.

"Don't be mistaken, we are not here to defend or normalize Donald Trump," Scarborough said. "We are here to report on him and to hopefully provide you insights that are going to better equip all of us in understanding these deeply unsettling times, and I am reminded of what Marty Garron, legendary editor told his Washington Post editors back in the first term: 'We are not going to war, we are going to work.' So let's go to work now."

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Margaret Atwood may have accurately predicted some aspects of the present day in her dystopian novel "The Handmaid's Tale," but she had tried not to believe Donald Trump could win last week's election.

The 1985 novel — now a hit HULU show – described a world in which women are considered property that some saying foretold the recent rollback of reproductive rights.

But the Canadian author told a gathering Tuesday in Calgary that she had hoped Republicans would not win the U.S. election, reported the Campbell River Mirror.

“I searched, I invoked, ‘Oh God, let it be sun,' but it was darkness all around,” Atwood told a forum hosted by the Alberta Teachers’ Association, Calgary Catholic Local 55 and Calgary Public Local 38.

Atwood now predicts that the president-elect will be locked in a power struggle with Elon Musk and other billionaire backers once he re-enters the White House.

“Watch what goes on inside the White House," she said. "We have several people with quite large egos backed by two billionaires who also have large egos and who don’t like each other. I think bookies are going to start making book on how long Donald Trump is going to last because is he really necessary for these billionaires anymore?

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"On the other hand, are they necessary for him? Who shall win?”

Atwood said she based "The Handmaid's Tale," which depicts a society governed by religious fundamentalists who force some to bear children for wealthy, infertile couples, on discussions the religious right had been having for decades.

But she urged her audience not to surrender to fear that more of her predictions would come true.

“I don’t think we should be afraid at all, by which I don’t mean that there isn’t something horrible happening,” Atwood said. “I mean that fear makes you feeble.”

Donald Trump's decision to nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon could set up a "rare fight" with Senate Republicans, according to the Washington Post's congressional correspondent.

The president-elect tapped the conservative broadcaster and National Guard veteran as his nominee for defense secretary, and Post reporter Jacqueline Alemany told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that GOP senators could push back on that surprising choice – if they don't yield to his demand to let him choose whoever he wants to fill out his Cabinet.

"Historically, we have seen Congress give a lot of deference to presidents when it comes to confirming their Cabinet," Alemany said. "There have been some blowout and dramatic fights, though. I think Pete Hegseth could be that rare fight for Senate Republicans, but as we have talked about, the past few months, the lack of dissenters in the Senate is perhaps troubling for any sort of pushback to someone like Hegseth, who, as you noted has 20 years of service in the military, two Bronze Stars, but has zero experience when it comes to actually navigating a bureaucracy or serving in the Defense Department and overseeing the world's most powerful and largest military."

"I think that this is going to be the first test of who ultimately stands up to Trump," Alemany added. "You know, we were just talking about how Trump has gotten involved in all of these battles that traditionally president-elects have not gotten involved in, such as picking the Senate majority leader, weighing in and essentially ushering and facilitating this media campaign and 'Make America Great' campaign to try to tap someone like [Sen.] Rick Scott, who then would be expected to implement something like recess appointments, which would allow Trump to take this expansive approach to executive authority and presidential power and allow him to usurp the Senate in order to make someone, what they call a recess appointee and serve in the job for a year without formal confirmation, where it only takes a simple majority to push someone through like Pete Hegseth."

Alemany identified a pair of moderate Republicans who may resist falling into line behind Trump's bid to expand his executive powers.

"You have people like [Sen.] Susan Collins and [Sen.] Lisa Murkowski, people are left who will put up a fight and people are not isolationist and I don't know if you could necessarily call them interventionists, and certainly people who wouldn't support comments Pete Hegseth said in the past and positions he's taken, such as being one of the leading forces, we shouldn't forget this, who lobbied Trump to pardon war criminals."

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Russia made an audacious public attempt to blackmail the incoming U.S. president, according to a military expert.

Vladimir Putin and his ministers are already trying to mess with Donald Trump's head when Kremlin intelligence chief Nikolai Patrushev claimed in an interview that Trump had "relied on certain forces" to win a second term in the White House and warned that he had "corresponding obligations" that he was "obliged to fulfill," wrote Slate columnist Fred Kaplan.

"This is a mind-blowing bit of psychological warfare!" Kaplan wrote. "The Russians are basically telling Trump: We put you in office. Now it’s time for you to pay us back. Did this make Trump wonder: WTF?"

The FBI, the director of national intelligence and the top cybersecurity agency all confirmed that Russia was sowing disinformation against Kamala Harris during the election campaign, and law enforcement blamed the foreign adversary for bomb threats called into polling stations in Black neighborhoods.

"However, there is no evidence — nor has anyone claimed — that Trump or his campaign staffers colluded in, or knew anything about, these videos or the bomb threats," Kaplan wrote. "If Trump did have some involvement, or if Russia possesses some other form of kompromat (compromising material) on Trump, Patrushev’s message constitutes an extraordinarily bodacious threat of blackmail, delivered in public, against an American president-elect."

"If Trump did not have any involvement in this escapade, Patrushev’s gambit shows — some would say, confirms — that Russia’s main goal, in all these misinformation ventures, is to sow chaos, breed mistrust, and weaken the sinews of democracy in Western countries, especially in the U.S., regardless of who is the president," Kaplan added.

Trump and the MAGA movement have long sought to improve relations with Russia, but Kaplan said the Kremlin's reaction to his re-election should serve as a warning.

"One can only wonder what Trump will do — whether he’ll change his position, whether he’s capable of changing his stance — when he realizes, if he realizes, that Putin is not his friend," Kaplan wrote. "Trump certainly should not act as if he is."

A federal judge chastised Rudy Giuliani in a court hearing on why he has not surrendered his valuable assets as part of a $148 million defamation judgment.

U.S. district judge Lewis Liman told the former New York City mayor's attorney that the idea that his client does not have any information about where those assets are located is “farcical" after attorneys for Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss visited his Manhattan apartment last week and discovered it had been cleared out weeks earlier, which the former mayor disputed.

"My apartment was filled with belongings and they just lied," Giuliani said outside the courthouse before the hearing. "All the things that were appropriate were there, and the apartment was pretty full with things, so they're lying completely. Every room had furniture in it. The Mercedes has never been in New York, it's always been in Florida, and it's there right now. Every bit of property that they want is available if they want it. The law says they're not entitled to a lot of it. For example, they want my grandfather's watch, it's 150 years old. That's a bit of an heirloom. Usually you don't get those unless you're involved in a political persecution."

"In fact, having me here today is like a political persecution," Giuliani added. "The judge knew I couldn't come today. He's also scheduled a trial for right at the time of Donald Trump's inauguration. Gee, I wonder why he did that."

The judge had set an Oct. 29 deadline for Giuliani to surrender many of his possessions to the mother-daughter duo's lawyers, and Liman scheduled the hearing after learning the apartment had been cleared out.

"Leaving aside the car, the wrist watches and the like, where do you want it delivered and when?" Liman said, and their attorneys said the could give a location within 24 hours. "How about now?"

Giuliani was found liable for defamation after falsely accusing the pair of ballot fraud as he pushed Trump’s baseless election fraud election fraud conspiracy theories after the 2020 campaign.

The women say they were deluged with death threats after Giuliani accused them, with no evidence, of manipulating the vote count to ensure Joe Biden won that election.

"He is under an unqualified obligation to deliver all of the receivership property to the receiver," Liman said. "If he doesn't comply, I'm sure I'm going to get a motion for contempt."

Donald Trump complained that presidential election results might not be known on Election Night, but CNN's Anderson Cooper said his suggested reform was already in place.

The former president called for using paper ballots and one-day voting to prevent the delays expected in Pennsylvania and some other key states, which he blamed on electronic and mail-in voting.

"If they used paper ballots it would be over by 10:00," Trump said at his polling place in West Palm Beach, Florida. "Paper ballots would only cost 8 percent of the cost. If they would use paper ballots, voter ID, proof of citizenship and one-day voting it would all be over by 10:00. It's crazy. They use very expensive computers and I am hearing in Pennsylvania they will not have an answer until two or three days from now. I think that is an absolute outrage."

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Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) appeared on CNN a short time after Trump's news conference, and she criticized his closing message to voters and debunked his claims about paper ballots.

"Donald Trump to me has been spiraling down," Klobuchar said. "I know he claims the end to be appealing to women and he calls the woman leader the B-word. Somehow yesterday he decided to get into fluoride after the man he claimed he wanted to put in as [Health and Human Services] secretary said he wanted to limit fluoride or get rid of fluoride in drinking water, so I guess he is ending with more cavities. He has continued to deny the election results and, what you just said in your report, 97 percent of jurisdictions in America have backup paper ballots, and the only ones that don't are some counties in Texas and Louisiana. I can see the campaign spiraling."

Cooper agreed, saying doesn't know why Trump lied about paper ballots.

"It's nuts, this controversy of not having paper ballots," Cooper said. "Even voting machines have paper ballots, there are backup paper ballots. It's just not the case, it is a very strange thing that he continues to lie about."

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Georgia's former lieutenant governor predicted that "herds of Republicans" would back Kamala Harris over Donald Trump.

Geoff Duncan, a lifelong Republican who attended this year's Democratic National Convention and has endorsed Harris, told CNN that the election offered GOP voters a chance to resuscitate their party by handing the former president another defeat.

"I didn't get into politics and expect to be doing this," Duncan said. "This is where I believe is the best place for us to be able to hit the reset button and create a GOP 2.0, a party that focuses and defends on policies and uses empathy to grow the size of the tent and use a tone that invites and encourages. I think all Republicans, for the most part, including the ones voting for Donald Trump, would agree he's not the future of the party. I think we're in this awkward spot where regardless of whether Donald Trump wins or loses, this party's got this short window of time to get it right, to start taking our own medicine.

"If Donald Trump wins there's no doubt he'll wreck the car and continue to soil the brand of being a Republican, and so I think you're going to watch entire herds of Republicans look for somewhere else that's more respectable," Duncan added. "That could mean we could start hemorrhaging to Democrats by droves. If Kamala Harris wins and does govern towards the middle, she has a chance to grow the net total of the party if she does govern towards the middle. Not in the middle, she's a Democrat, but if she governs towards the middle like on the campaign trail and ask our opinion on certain policies she has a chance to grow the party."

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MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were stunned by Donald Trump's closing message in the final weekend of the campaign.

"Morning Joe" producers rolled a supercut video of the former president hoarsely complaining that he shouldn't have left the White House after losing in 2020, rhapsodizing about his "beautiful white skin," claiming he was "more Greek" than NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo, justifying the shooting of journalists and simulating oral sex on a microphone.

"There's so much to go over," Scarborough said after watching the clip Monday.

"First of all, Kamala Harris, she delivers the message that I think Americans want, which is, let's come together — I'm going to be president for all Americans. She's done this for quite some time. Donald Trump, I couldn't write down the notes quickly enough.

"First of all, he was asleep on his feet in one of those events, but he talked about America being horrible. He lied about, once again, spreading a big lie. He must be concerned about Pennsylvania, he keeps lying about Pennsylvania. Says he is the father of fertilization — I'm not exactly sure what that means — and then he did a graphic scene, like he was having oral sex with the microphone."

"Oh, my God!" Brzezinski interjected, covering her eyes.

"Some social media platforms actually would not play it because they said it was so obscene," Scarborough continued. "You look at that moment, again, you hear these people going, running on the radio, saying, 'Oh, you know, he is going to save Christians, he's sent by Jesus, he's a protector of women,' all this stuff. But all the lies were just stunning.

"He's — I don't know that I've ever seen as much contrast in a closing message. Not just on energy and on vitality and on vigor, but also just the overall message of hope, optimism, versus pessimism, grimness and, again, a calling two days after he called to have Liz Cheney shot by a firing squad, talking about how he wouldn't mind if the press got shot."

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Trump appeared to be trudging toward the finish line in the last weekend of the race, Scarborough said, and he noticed one topic was noticeably absent from his closing message.

"There was one rally where he said, 'Oh, all the seats are here,' right?" he said. "The cameraman panned around, and you saw all these empty seats. But I saw something else as he was talking about himself and his grievance. I saw people up in the stands with their arms, like, around empty seats, kind of looking around. It's crazy, he never talks about them. He never talks about the people, he talks about himself."

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Kamala Harris made a not-so-surprise appearance on "Saturday Night Live" three days before Election Day, appearing on the other side of a false mirror from her on-air alter ego Maya Rudolph.

The vice president had been rumored to appear on the show, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary on air, and showed up toward the end of the episode's cold open when Rudolph briefly paused to take in the enormity of the moment.

"Wow, this is it, the last campaign stop in Pennsylvania," Rudolph said. "I wish I could talk to someone who's been in my shoes. You know, a Black South Asian woman running for president, preferably from the Bay Area."

She then sat down at her makeup table and peered into what should have been a mirror, but instead Harris herself sat on the other side smiling as the audience began cheering and Rudolph briefly seemed to fight back tears.

"You and me both, sista," Harris said, nearly 30 seconds after the cheers began. "I'm just here to remind you, you've got this, because you can do something your opponent cannot do – you can open doors."

"I see what you did there," Rudolph replied. "Like to a garbage truck."

Harris cracked up and then caught herself.

"I don't really laugh like that, do I?" Harris said, and Rudolph reluctantly conceded that she did.

The two then riffed on rhymes on Harris' first name.

"Kamala, take my palm-ala," Rudolph said. "The American people want to stop the chaos."

"And end the drama-la," Harris chimed in.

"With a cool new stepmom-ala," Rudolph added. "Get back in our pajama-las and watch a rom-com-ala."

"Like 'Legally Blonde-ala,'" Harris said

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An ad buyer who said she was fired by the Donald Trump campaign after trying to expose alleged "grift and greed" by top campaign officials and deep distrust at the operation's highest levels has spoken out to the Daily Beast.

The fired worker told the Beast under the condition of anonymity that she wrote an email after she was terminated that laid out her concerns that the campaign's most senior leaders — Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles — appeared to be directing millions of dollars toward companies that may be overcharging the former president. One of them, she said, is run by a major Kamala Harris donor.

“The grift and greed I‘ve witnessed makes me sick and I think leadership has been bad stewards of generous donors money,” the campaign employee wrote to a former colleague after her Oct. 18 firing. “I‘m 100% on Team Trump — I want the very best for this campaign, but what I’ve witnessed is greedy and wrong.”

The woman also alleged that campaign employees had become convinced that leadership had installed a "listening device" in a conference room at the West Palm Beach campaign headquarters, and she said chief financial officer Sean Dollman was so concerned that he and others rummaged through the conference room to find the device.

“[Dollman] has alluded to the fact that he can’t say things for fear of retaliation,” the woman said. “There are napkins stuffed in all the gaps in the conference room now. It seems like they’re willing to go to extremes.”

Sources told The Daily Beast that the woman became so concerned over the summer that Wiles and LaCivita were sending large digital ad purchases to outside firms Strategic Media Services and Zeta Global instead of using the campaign's in-house Launchpad firm — for which she worked — and she concluded the outside firms were charging far more for the same work.

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The woman doesn't specify in her email what she meant by "grift and greed," but sources said she had raised concerns for months with Dollman about ad money spending by LaCivita and Wiles, and she was fired three days after The Daily Beast revealed last week that LaCivita's consulting firm had already raked in $22 million from the campaign and two Trump super PACs, although she was not the source of that report.

“Launchpad made the decision to terminate her for spreading rumors about clients, and repeatedly showing poor judgment," Dollman told The Daily Beast, but declined to comment further on her firing.

The whistleblower alleges that Zeta Global, a company run by Democratic donor David Steinberg that was chosen by LaCivita and Wiles, had charged the campaign $20 million for placing media ads, which she said was significantly more than the $13.9 million that Launchpad would have charged.

She does not directly accuse LaCivita or Wiles of receiving a cut from the higher commissions from outside firms, and a senior campaign officials tersely responded to questions about them receiving undisclosed payments.

Donald Trump took off-color and occasionally profane shots at Kamala Harris and her husband at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, where political leaders have traded jabs for decades, but a former Republican lawmaker said his speech felt different.

The Republican presidential nominee made several transphobic jokes about Chuck Schumer and Tim Walz, insulted the intelligence of Harris and president Joe Biden, and passed on the opportunity to make self-deprecating jokes and instead wallowed in self-pity.

“Nope, I’ve got nothing – I’ve got nothing," he said. “I guess I just do not see the point in taking shots at myself when other people have been shooting at me for a long time.”

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ALSO READ: The menstrual police are coming: Inside the GOP's plan for total control over women

Trump also used profanity in his speech at the white-tie dinner that raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities.

“I don’t give a s--- if this is comedy or not,” he said at one point.

Barbara Comstock, a former Republican representative for Virginia, appeared Friday morning on CNN to discuss Trump's speech and a short video skit recorded by Harris with comedian Molly Shannon, who reprised her Catholic schoolgirl character from "Saturday Night Live."

"My husband teaches at a Catholic girls school, so way to go vice president for the Mary Katherine Gallagher video that she sent in last night to the Catholic dinner," Comstock said. "He is very much for the vice president, and not only is my daughter, but he is talking to our sons, saying, 'Listen, on behalf of your daughters, you need to be supporting the vice president and opposing this man who's such a misogynist and daily attacking women, and he called me at the middle of that dinner last night about what a buffoon and what an ungodly, profanity-laced hot mess that dinner was, because he knows what that Catholic dinner is supposed to be."

"This was somebody who was just being horrendous at that dinner, swearing in front of priests – who does that?" Comstock added. "That is just a hot, horrible mess. We need to turn the page."

Donald Trump's campaign has set up a fundraising page for hurricane relief, but it's not clear where the money is actually going.

The Republican nominee's campaign created the fundraising campaign billed “as an official response for MAGA supporters to offer their financial assistance to their fellow Americans impacted by Hurricane Helene,” reported The New Republic. The page lists charities it says would receive the MAGA funds.

Three of the four charities listed are Christian or Evangelical nongovernmental organizations — Samaritan’s Purse, Water Mission, and Mtn2Sea Ministries — while the fourth is listed as the “Clinch Foundation,” which appears to be the Clinch Memorial Hospital’s Foundation in Valdosta, Georgia.

However, the campaign has not said how it would disburse those funds, which stood at about $7.7 million as of Monday, although Mtn2Sea Ministries says it has received $25,000.

“This is the only funds we expect to [receive] from this GoFundMe account and are very grateful for it to help us serve,” a post on the charity's Facebook page read.

The crowdfunding page doesn't violate any campaign finance laws, but political candidates typically donate campaign money to IRS-approved nonprofits.

“It’s pretty unusual and actually quite odd,” said campaign finance attorney Brett Kappel.

Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump campaign, said the former president wanted to “help find a way for his supporters to give as much direct support as they can.”

Donald Trump's ghostwriter for his myth-making memoir "The Art of the Deal" explained how the new film "The Apprentice" reveals how the former president's childhood trauma warped him into a "psychopath" intent on inflicting pain on the nation he seeks to lead.

The film depicts Trump's relationship with the two men who most influenced him – his father, Fred Trump, and his mentor and lawyer Roy Cohn – and author Tony Schwartz published a new op-ed for the New York Times describing how its depiction of the Republican nominee squared with his own observations.

"Since my time collaborating with Mr. Trump, I’ve spent my adult life studying, writing about and working with leaders and other high achievers," Schwartz wrote. "I’ve focused especially on how their early childhood experiences have influenced their adult lives — mostly unconsciously — and on exploring the often vast gulf between how they present themselves on the outside and how they feel on the inside. Mr. Trump, for me, has always been Exhibit A."

Schwartz, who has frequently expressed remorse for helping to build Trump's brand, said that his experience in writing the book he now views as "an unintended work of fiction" demonstrated two lessons he has seen play out in the reality TV star-turned-politician's life.

"The first lesson is that a lack of conscience can be a huge advantage when it comes to accruing power, attention and wealth in a society where most other human beings abide by a social contract," Schwartz wrote. "The second lesson is that nothing we get for ourselves from the outside world can ever adequately substitute for what we’re missing on the inside."

Trump has long demonstrated an "unquenchable thirst to be the center of attention," Schwartz wrote, which he attributes in large part to his admittedly "transactional" relationship with his father, who was "openly disdainful of any acknowledgment or expression of weakness or vulnerability."

"I still remember the chill I felt when Mr. Trump said those words, as if it was fine to have an almost completely transactional relationship with his father," Schwartz wrote.

Trump learned early on that bravado and boldness could substitute for actual accomplishments, Schwartz said, and Cohn taught him three principles that have been key to his success: "Attack, attack, attack; admit nothing and deny everything; and claim victory and never admit defeat. Mr. Trump took those principles to heart."

"It’s long been deeply unsettling to me how many behaviors associated with psychopathy Mr. Trump exemplifies," Schwartz wrote. "There are seven characteristics associated with 'antisocial personality disorder,' according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: deceitfulness, impulsivity, failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, irritability and aggressiveness, reckless disregard for the safety of self or others, consistent irresponsibility and lack of remorse."

"I’ve observed all seven in Mr. Trump over the years, and watched them get progressively worse," he then added. "It’s the last one — lack of remorse — that gives him license to freely exercise the other six."

Melania Trump claims she watched an ISIS raid involving a canine from the Situation Room.

The former first lady wrote in her self-titled memoir that her husband summoned her to the White House's top-secret sanctum in autumn 2019 to witness video coverage of a raid in Syria that resulted in the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, reported The Daily Beast.

“I was caught off guard when I received a call informing me that the president wanted to see me in the Oval Office," Melania Trump wrote. “I was directed to join him in the Situation Room — a first and unique experience for me. ‘Watch this incredible action at work,’ Donald whispered to me.”

The Beast reported that the first lady lacked the security clearance to be watching the classified action.

Conan, a Belgian Malinois military service dog, was later honored in the Rose Garden by Donald Trump, who called the animal –which helped special forces track the terrorist leader in a tunnel – "incredible" and "brilliant" in a ceremony attended by the former first lady and former Vice President Mike Pence.

“After his recovery, we were honored to welcome him to the White House to present him with a medal for his exceptional courage,” she wrote.

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Former acting defense secretary Christopher Miller also wrote about her appearance in the Situation Room in his own memoir, saying he wondered "how it would play in the press if word got out that the first lady had popped in to watch a major military operation," and then-secretary of defense Mark Esper and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley were also present.

“The mission to eliminate the leader of ISIS was a significant objective, and the successful completion of this operation would be a major accomplishment,” Melania Trump wrote. “This pivotal moment was one that Donald wanted to share with me.”

The opposition research dossier compiled by Donald Trump's campaign on J.D. Vance was published online after hackers – allegedly from Iran – apparently stole data and shared it with media outlets, but a veteran journalist is curious why it took so long.

The 271-page oppo file was published online by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, who was suspended from X shortly afterward, and The Bulwark's Marc Caputo examined the contents and commented on some of the noteworthy items he found.

"Vance’s infamous 'childless cat ladies' comment was not listed among the liabilities that the Trump campaign assessed about the then-prospective running mate," Caputo wrote.

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"As to why the Trump campaign’s researchers didn’t include that the cat lady remarks, aides aren’t saying," he added. "The campaign has inveighed against news outlets publishing material that was allegedly obtained by a foreign adversary while declining to confirm the validity of the content. Two other people who independently obtained the Vance dossier, however, both told The Bulwark that the cat lady comments were not in it."

The exclusion suggests that Trump's team either missed the remarks that have come to define the Republican vice presidential candidate or simply didn't think they merited attention, although the document includes dozens of other references to Vance's appearances on Tucker Carlson's show.

"Vance comes across as a right-leaning classical liberal who became a Trump era conservative populist," Caputo wrote. "There was nothing obviously disqualifying in it, which explains, in part, how he got selected for the post."

Caputo said he had not independently verified the document, which could potentially include disinformation planted by the hackers, and he said the material he viewed was not the final version of the oppo file.

"It’s also unclear why the mainstream media outlets that were first given the document two months ago didn’t report on its omission of the cat lady comment — or on the dossier in general," Caputo wrote. "The disparity in treatment between this dossier and the hacked Democratic materials in 2016 is striking, as I noted last month. When a story doesn’t get covered, it needlessly looks like a coverup."

A conservative commentator got fact-checked on CNN for claiming that Democrats were to blame for a second apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump.

The U.S. Secret Service rousted an armed gunman from a hiding place Sunday near a West Palm Beach, Florida, golf course where the former president was playing, and panelists on "CNN This Morning" debated whether political rhetoric encouraged that incident or the wave of threats against schools and government offices in Springfield, Ohio, after Trump and running mate J.D. Vance have spread false claims about migrants there.

"I've been struck by in the wake of this attack, there's just been no reflection from Democrats," said GOP strategist Brad Todd. "After the first attempt [in Butler, Pennsylvania] Democrats immediately reacted and sort of checked the campaign. This time none at all."

Host Kasie Hunt stepped in to point out that both president Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris had condemned political violence, and she said Trump himself had spoken graciously about calls from each of them to discuss this weekend's scare.

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"That's not my point!" Todd said. "My point is that, yes, since Donald Trump came on the scene, Democrats have basically said that democracy will end if he's elected, which eventually some people with a screw loose, you're going to hear that and go, 'Wow, maybe it's justified if I do anything.' [House minority leader] Hakeem Jeffries' favorite phrase on him is 'clear and present danger,' which, that's the Supreme Court's code for when it can, government can suppress speech, and so I think we have to pull way back."

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Todd argued that Democrats should focus more on Trump's policy proposals instead of highlighting the things he does and says to suggest he will not accept an election loss.

"This election is going to happen and someone's going to be sworn in and government will be go on, and it would be a little bit better if Democrats, I think, pulled way back with their apocalyptic rhetoric about Donald Trump being the absolute end of the republic," Todd said. "Criticize him on his policies, but don't act like the country ends."

Meghan Hays, a former director of message planning for Biden's White House, pushed back, saying that Trump himself had targeted individuals who had criticized him in the immediate wake of Sunday's arrest of the would-be assassin.

"Trump didn't reflect either here, instantly blamed the Democrats for their rhetoric, and he is putting out a press release with people's names saying what they have said about him," Hays said. "You don't think that people that targets people who – we don't know everyone's mental state. Those names being out there, that also makes people a target. What's going on in Springfield? I disagree that it's only Democrats. I think everyone needs to take a look at this and everyone needs to be reflective because something is going to happen. It's going to get worse if we don't control the narrative."

Todd concedes that Trump can be undisciplined, but he urged Democrats to campaign against him like a normal candidate instead of one who has been indicted in federal court and Georgia for attempting to subvert the 2020 election and had called for the "termination" of the Constitution because he lost.

"I've said on this network plenty of times, Donald Trump needs to rein it is his rhetoric, but I think we have to back off," Todd said. "Democrats have to back off the whole consequences and let everybody know, 'Look, guess what happens – we'll lower tax rates if he wins, we disagree with that.' Let's run the campaign on that."

Former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams pushed back, saying that simply reminding voters of Trump's statements and actions should not be considered as an incitement to violence.

"What I'm struck by on the defensive, or I guess on the attack on Democrats on this threat to democracy stuff, is that, for instance, Trump has not committed to accepting the results of the election, right?" Williams said. "That sounds to me like a threat to democracy, and I don't think it's that unfair to question and someone's commitment to democracy if they're saying that they can't commit to the results of election. Another one is, a lot of defenders of the former president have latched on this dictator concept, that Kamala Harris said that Trump might be a dictator – he said those words himself. He might have been joking, but he said, 'I will be a dictator on Day One,' and I guess I'm struggling with this idea that echoing those points is somehow putting chum in the water to drive up violence against the former president."

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