When CNN anchor Jake Tapper contrasted President Trump’s blunt remarks with those of past presidents, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy didn’t hesitate. He delivered a sharp counterpunch that instantly reframed the moment. Tapper glossed over the behavior of Democrats at Tuesday evening’s State of the Union address by suggesting that the real problem was the fact that President Donald Trump had noticed — and dared to say something about it. Speaking to Duffy after the speech, he complained that Trump effectively shattered the fourth wall when he spoke directly to the American people about the Democrats in the chamber who refused to stand for even the most basic of shared values. WATCH: JAKE TAPPER: “He said, ‘these people are crazy I’m telling you, they’re crazy.’ That’s not something we ever heard from Obama or Biden from that that stage.” SEAN DUFFY: “We’ve never had a Speaker rip up a speech either” This is why Trump likes TV guys in his cabinet. pic.twitter.com/4c2NrUvHGu — Thomas Hern (@ThomasMHern) February 25, 2026 “He said, quote, ‘These people are crazy, I’m telling you, they’re crazy,'” Tapper said, referencing Trump’s brief departure from his remarks to call out Democrats who would not stand in support of key policies. “I mean, but that’s not something we ever heard from Obama or Biden from that stage.” “Yeah. We’ve never had a Speaker rip up a speech either,” Duffy punched right back, referencing former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s performance during the 2020 State of the Union, when she dramatically ripped up her copy as Trump concluded his remarks. Duffy went on to argue that what Trump was saying at the time — addressing concerns about illegal aliens being given commercial driver’s licenses and putting American citizens at risk — should not have been a partisan issue. “You have states that are issuing driver’s licenses to illegals — illegals who haven’t been trained to drive an 80,000-pound truck on an American road,” Duffy continued. “We have a little girl that has been — had her life impacted for the rest of her life — and she’s five years old, it was an illegal who hit her. I think the question becomes, why doesn’t every Democrat stand up and go, ‘No, we want well-qualified drivers on American roads.'” “That’s not partisan,” he added. “We don’t want illegals who can’t speak the language, contrary to American law for decades, to be on American roads. I think these are easy issues, Jake, and I don’t think we saw Democrats stand up and support them.” Duffy noted that there was one truly bipartisan moment during the speech — when the U.S. Olympic hockey team entered the chamber after winning gold for the first time in 46 years — and said that was truly “too bad.” “If inflation is down, Democrats should applaud it. If real incomes are up, Democrats should applaud it. Those are good things that we should support as Americans,” he concluded. “Just because Donald Trump’s in office doesn’t mean you have to sit on your hands.”

An illegal immigrant whom the Biden administration did not deport after he served just three years in prison after killing an 8-year-old boy is now in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, The Daily Wire has learned. In 2019, Karmjit Singh was driving drunk in his BMW sports car when he hit another vehicle at more than 100 miles per hour, then tried to flee the scene. The crash killed Maverick Martzen, an 8-year-old star baseball player, and severely injured his parents, Scott and Brooke. “I thought it was 25 years to life, easy case. He killed an 8-year-old,” Scott Martzen said. But Singh — an Indian national who had overstayed his visa and already had a separate felony DUI conviction — served just three years in prison. The term didn’t teach him his lesson: After he was released, he got two more DUIs. In June 2023, he was arrested for driving drunk at 2 a.m. and giving police his brother Parminder’s driver’s license. Police ascertained his real identity and that his license was suspended for manslaughter, but released him anyway. In November 2023, the same thing happened. He went back to prison for another short term, and on January 30, he was released by California, Scott Martzen told The Daily Wire. “Despite an ICE hold, he has once again been released on parole,” he said. Martzen did not receive any notification from authorities, but noticed on the California prison system’s website that Singh had been released on parole, and believed he was free again. “Second chance. Third chance. Fourth chance. Fifth chance. Our son never got one more day,” he told The Daily Wire. ICE did not return a request for comment earlier this month, but a search of ICE’s detainee database using Singh’s name and birthday shows that he is now being held at the California City Corrections Center, a former jail that was reopened in 2026 as a massive ICE holding facility, part of the numerous warehouses that the agency is opening across the country. That center is the largest immigration facility in California and can hold up to 2,500 people. “Every birthday, every holiday, every baseball season, we live with the reality that Maverick is gone,” Scott Martzen told The Daily Wire. “Our younger son is growing up without his big brother because one man chose to drink and drive, and a system keeps giving him chance after chance.” The grieving father previously told The Daily Wire that Maverick would “100%” be alive today if the government had deported Singh after his first felony conviction in 2016. He said the country is “not at all” better for having Singh here, in contrast to the promise shown by Maverick, a gifted athlete, advanced student, and godly son, he said. “What does it take” to be deported, he asked in 2024. “He killed a kid, he’s got an expired visa, no drivers license, two DUIs, a third that should have been a DUI but was lowered, and he’s still able to live here … it’s beyond frustrating.” To honor the gifted athlete, who was the first draft pick for a baseball team of 12-year-olds when he was 8, the family started a nonprofit called M30 to help child athletes. While Major League Baseball played with no fans in the stands during COVID, a cardboard cutout of Maverick occupied a seat at the San Francisco Giants’ stadium.

After years of failing to acknowledge the young California girl whose life was tragically altered by an illegal immigrant trucker who caused a multi-car pileup, Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom finally offered some words for the victim and her family. President Donald Trump brought Dalilah Coleman, 7, and her father, Marcus, as guests to his State of the Union speech Tuesday night. Dalilah was severely injured in a multi-car pileup in 2024, allegedly caused by Indian illegal immigrant Partap Singh, who was behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler with a California-issued commercial driver’s license. Dalilah suffered a traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, and developmental delay. She currently cannot eat orally and has to learn to walk again. Marcus has repeatedly stated that Newsom has failed to offer his sympathies. Dalilah’s father, who happens to be a truck driver himself, shared his frustrations with Newsom’s silence. “How do you not see Dalilah? How do you allow politics to blind you from a five-year-old girl at the time whose life is forever changed, and your only answer is it’s the federal government,” Marcus told The Daily Wire. Newsom finally broke his silence on Wednesday. “What happened to Dalilah is heartbreaking, and we commend her family for turning their grief into advocacy,” Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo told The Daily Wire. “While our Constituent Affairs team has no record of outreach from the Coleman family, we would welcome the opportunity to connect them to available state resources,” Crofts-Pelayo said. Newsom’s office failed to respond to a follow-up question asking if he regrets handing the illegal immigrant trucker a commercial driver’s license. Singh has since been taken into federal immigration custody. Trump recognized Dalilah and her father Tuesday night, highlighting a surge in illegal immigrant trucking crashes and vowing to address the issue. “We will take care of this problem,” Trump said Tuesday. “We’re going to take care of this problem. We are not playing games. Dalilah — Dalilah Coleman was only 5 years old in June 2024 when an 18-wheel tractor-trailer plowed into her stopped car, traveling at 60 miles an hour or more. The driver was an illegal alien let in by Joe Biden and given a commercial driver’s license by open borders, politicians, and California. Doctors said Dalilah would never be able to walk or talk, have a good life.” “She wouldn’t even be able to eat again. But against all odds, she is now in the first grade, learning to walk, and she is here this evening with her dad, Marcus, a fantastic man. Dalilah, please, you are a great inspiration. Please stand up. Thank you, Dalilah,” Trump said. The Department of Transportation has threatened to withhold federal funding from Democratic states issuing commercial driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. The Trump administration is currently holding up roughly $160 million from Newsom’s California “for failing to cancel over 17,000 illegally issued” commercial driver’s licenses “by the agreed-upon deadline of January 5, 2026.” Newsom has responded by blaming the federal government for issuing work permits to illegal immigrant truckers. Trump also vowed to enact legislation dubbed “The Dalilah Law” to ban states from “granting commercial licenses to illegal aliens.” “Many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to direction, speed, danger, or location,” Trump said. Republican Indiana Senator Jim Banks is expected to formally introduce the bill honoring Dalilah on Wednesday, The Daily Wire has learned.

The State of the Union turned into a Rorschach test for how people view leadership and ceremony, as two Democratic members of Congress maliciously mocked President Trump. On one side of the room — or rather, on the “State of the People” podcast — you had Democratic Representatives Robin Kelly and Yvette Clark, and they were not exactly feeling the vibe. Clark described the experience as “horrific,” cheerfully confessing she bailed on the speech early. Then you had Robin Kelly, who compared the whole thing to a Hollywood awards show. She mocked the President’s presentation of awards, saying, “It was like… You get a medal. You get a medal. You get a medal.” The implication there being that the gravity of these honors was somehow being diluted by the “showmanship” of the event. Democrat Rep. Robin Kelly laughs at and mocks American veterans who received the Medal of Honor during President Trump's SOTU speech. KELLY: “It was like an award show, you get a medal! You get a medal! You get a medal!” Absolutely despicable. pic.twitter.com/dIPgxZayJp — RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 25, 2026 But here’s the thing about those medals: the people receiving them weren’t exactly C-list celebrities getting a gift bag. We’re talking about E. Royce Williams, a 100-year-old Navy Captain who, back in 1952, took on seven Soviet MiGs by himself in a secret dogfight and lived to tell the tale. He finally received the Medal of Honor after seventy years of silence. Then there was the heavy stuff — the real-world consequences of the current moment. Trump honored Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and the family of the late Spc. Sarah Beckstrom. These were West Virginia National Guard members who were ambushed and shot right in D.C. near the White House just months ago. You had Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover, who took three bullets to the leg while piloting the mission to capture Nicolás Maduro. And finally, Scott Ruskan, a Coast Guard swimmer on his first mission, who pulled 164 people — including an 11-year-old girl — out of those catastrophic Texas floods. So you have this massive disconnect. On one hand, you have lawmakers like Kelly and Clark who see the ceremony as a mocked-up “Oprah-style” giveaway—a political performance they found so “horrific” they had to leave. On the other hand, you have these astonishing stories of human endurance and sacrifice that the Trump administration is compelled to honor. Most of us see heroes finally being recognized. But the mean-spirited among us just see a guy they don’t like handing out trophies.

Billionaire Microsoft co-founder and jet-setting philanthropist Bill Gates apologized to staffers at his foundation for his connection to pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and admitted to affairs with two Russian women, whom he assured were not victims of Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme. Gates fessed up to the affairs during a Gates Foundation town hall on Tuesday, and said that Epstein — whom he developed a relationship with beginning in 2011 — found out about the sexual encounters. Gates claimed, however, that his trysts with a Russian bridge player and a Russian nuclear physicist were not connected to Epstein’s trafficking scheme, The Wall Street Journal reported. “I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit,” Gates told his staff, adding, “To be clear I never spent any time with victims, the women around [Epstein].” “I did have affairs, one with a Russian bridge player who met me at bridge events, and one with a Russian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities,” he acknowledged. In 2010, Gates met a Russian bridge player who was in her 20s. The young Russian woman was introduced to Epstein in 2013, according to The Wall Street Journal. Epstein reportedly paid for the woman to attend school for a software coding course, and in a 2017 email, the financier asked Gates to reimburse him. The nuclear physicist with whom Gates admitted to having an affair previously worked at one of Gates’ companies, but Gates did not say if the sexual relationship began while the physicist was under his employment, the Journal reported. Gates told his staff during the town hall meeting that he traveled with Epstein multiple times, but “never stayed overnight” with the convicted pedophile and never visited Epstein’s infamous island. Gates’ apology comes after Epstein-related emails from 2013 released by the Justice Department hinted at Gates’ affairs with the Russian women and suggested the trysts were illegally facilitated. One of the emails released by the Justice Department was a message Epstein sent to himself that appears to be a draft of a resignation letter from Gates’ former science adviser, Boris Nikolic. In the message, the writer admits to “facilitating … illegal trysts, with married women” and helping Gates “get drugs, in order to deal with the consequences of sex with russian [sic] girls.” “In my role as his right hand I have been asked and wrongly acquiesced into participating in things that have ranged from the morally inappropriate, to the ethically unsound and have been repeatedly asked to do thing[s] that get near and potentially over the line into the illegal,” the message continues. Last month, a representative for Gates said the claims made in the 2013 email “are absolutely absurd and completely false” and come from a “proven, disgruntled liar.” “The only thing these documents demonstrate is Epstein’s frustration that he did not have an ongoing relationship with Gates and the lengths he would go to entrap and defame,” the Gates representative added. According to Gates, Epstein only found out about the affairs because Nikolic told him. Nikolic told the Journal that the emails found on Epstein’s server “were not written on my behalf or at my request.” Gates has not been accused of committing any crimes connected to Epstein or in relation to his sexual encounters with the Russian women. The 2013 email also references a “severe marital dispute” between Gates and his then-wife, Melinda French Gates. The couple divorced in 2021, a process that began shortly after reports of Bill’s close relationship with Epstein began circulating in 2019. Bill told his staff on Tuesday that he first met Epstein in 2011, three years after Epstein pled guilty to procuring a child for prostitution in 2008. Melinda first expressed concerns about his relationship with Epstein in 2013, but he continued to meet with the disgraced financier. “To give her credit, she was always kind of skeptical about the Epstein thing,” Gates said of his ex-wife. Gates claimed he was aware of an issue that limited Epstein’s ability to travel, but said that he didn’t bother to look into Epstein’s background. “It was a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein,” the Microsoft co-founder added. “I apologize to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake that I made.”