Comedian and HBO host Bill Maher said that despite being a longtime critic of former President George W. Bush, he wouldn’t mind sitting down and having a conversation with the Texas politician. Maher, on his “Club Random” podcast, told former “Access Hollywood” host Billy Bush that with President Donald Trump in the White House again, he had turned around on a few issues, changing his mind particularly about how important it was to talk to people even when they hold very different views. WATCH: ” I was hard [on Bush]— I’m not taking it back. I wasn’t for the invasion of Iraq, or just the basic Republican policies that he championed were not exactly my cup of tea. But I also have things more in perspective. He should know that, yes, I probably, looking back, could have been more reasonable,” Maher said. Maher did say that he was not totally opposed to Bush’s idea to privatize Social Security: “It wasn’t like the worst idea.” Join us now during our exclusive Deal of the Decade. Get everything for $7 a month. Not as fans. As fighters. Go to DailyWire.com/Subscribe to join now. Maher also praised Bush for encouraging former President Barack Obama after he won the 2008 presidential election. “We want you to succeed,” Bush said to his successor — and Maher couldn’t resist taking a swipe at Trump and saying that was something “you can’t imagine Donald Trump saying.” But according to multiple sources, President Trump did leave the traditional note for President Joe Biden despite a contentious 2020 campaign — and although the contents of the note were never publicly revealed, Biden described it as a “very generous letter.” Biographer Chris Whipple took the description a step further, saying that Biden had found the letter to be “shockingly gracious.” In a 2023 interview, Trump confirmed he’d left a “nice” letter for Biden and that he “took a lot of time in thinking about it” before he put pen to paper. He stopped short of revealing what he’d written, however, saying that it would be up to Biden to decide whether or not to do so.

What do you call seven million old white people gathering all over the country? Not a Barry Manilow reunion tour. It is, of course, the “No Kings” rallies, which happened over the course of Saturday with seven million protesters, nearly all of them members of the AARP, gathering around the nation in order to protest kings. You may have noticed we don’t have kings here in the United States. We have a constitutional republic. No matter what you think of Donald Trump, Donald Trump has been subject to the dictates of Congress. He has been subject to the dictates of courts. There are actual laws and regulations on the books that prevent the president of the United States from instituting tyrannical power over the rest of the country. One of the most amusing things about these “No Kings” rallies is the supposition by the Left that they stand in opposition to grand expansions of executive power. That is absolute bull. It is nonsense. I’m old enough to remember Barack Obama. I’m old enough to remember Joe Biden, who tried to use the Occupational Safety and Health Organization in order to cram down vaccine mandates on 80 million Americans, and our company had to sue to stop him. I remember President Biden telling the Supreme Court that while they were attempting to stop him from getting rid of student loans, he would circumvent them and find another way to do it. The idea that these people who are opposed to Donald Trump do so to oppose expanded executive power is ridiculous. It is the Democratic Party in the United States which has, writ large, expanded the power of the executive branch wholesale over the course of the last century. Since Woodrow Wilson, the expansion of the executive branch of government has been nonstop. It has sometimes been paused under some Republicans, but it is rarely reversed. When it comes to the modern Democratic Party, the idea that they want to delegate power back to the states or delegate power back to Congress is a lie. As soon as a Democrat is in power, they simply want to run roughshod over the Constitution of the United States. Thus the very premise of these “No Kings” rallies is false. Left-wing Axios reported:  “According to a statement from the ‘No Kings’ protest organizers, Saturday’s turnout was ‘one of the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history’ with over two million more people taking part than participated in similar protests in June of this year.” Of course, you remember how much of a difference it made when they protested in June. You don’t? You forgot already? You forgot already because it didn’t matter at all. It is now Monday and everyone already forgot. “More than 2,700 events were planned as part of the protests across 50 states as of Saturday, as well as several internationally, including in London, Paris, Rome and Lisbon, Portugal.” I get a kick out of places that actually have kings saying that they’re going to have “No Kings” rallies. These rallies are ridiculous. If you look at the pictures of people who are dressed up as lobsters in Massachusetts or Superman in New York City or inflatable chickens, you think to yourself, “I don’t think these are the folks who are going to change America in any real way.” JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images And that’s putting aside the people who arrived at these rallies in order to promote violence against the president of the United States, or against people on the right-wing. Those people were in plentiful supply. Politicians showed up. They spoke alongside radical agitators and organizers. We’re all supposed to pretend that that never happened, speaking alongside terrorist supporters, people who despise the country. If you’re a politician, like Bernie Sanders or Chris Murphy from Connecticut, and you speak alongside Qatari mouthpiece Mehdi Hasan, or you speak alongside people who have openly promoted terrorism, that’s kind of a big deal. My favorite moment of media coverage came when MSNBC interviewed a person dressed up as a unicorn. (A rally is truly serious when people dress up as inflatable unicorns.) Reporter: Angel, I’ve never interviewed a unicorn live on MSNBC. Unicorn: Always a first time for everything. Reporter: Angel. Talk as loud as you can. Because you got kind of a big snout here. … I’ll say that again. I said it’s hard to hear you, but tell me what brings you out and to be inside this high unicorn costume today? Unicorn: Well, we’re here to represent the loving, hardworking community of Los Angeles. We’re here peacefully protesting, looking as ridiculous as we can, just so maybe we appeal to the president because he is a ridiculous leader that is normalizing abuse of power, and we cannot stand and act like nothing is happening. Reporter: I’ve never heard a more serious message come out of a pink unicorn. I don’t think that’s true because I think that half of the MSNBC staff are pink unicorns. It was an impressive showing, with great intellects. People like actor John Cusack, who was last relevant when he was standing outside a bedroom window holding a boombox in a movie from 1989. But if you thought that Cusack was the only old actor who showed up to pay tribute to the “No Kings” rally, I present to you: (drum roll) Robert De Niro, who seems to have chosen poorly when he drank from his choice of Holy Grails. He is now aging extraordinarily rapidly and also apparently turning into a hobbit. He praised Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, for saying F.U. to Trump, (which she may be saying from jail soon, depending on how her mortgage falsification case goes). “I like what Letitia James is doing,” he declared “She’s fighting back. She’s saying F*** you. … I will not be taken down by this person. I am not afraid of him.” He also had comments about Stephen Miller, calling Miller, who happens to be Jewish, a Nazi. Bernie Sanders yelled, “We’re here because we’re going to do everything we can to honor the sacrifices of millions of men and women who, over the last 250 years, fought and sometimes died.” I can’t take him seriously. Nothing you do can make me take him seriously, because he’s not a serious person. The fact that the Democratic Party has elevated him as an ideological thought leader after spending his entire life being a useless pustule on the ass of American society is indeed a reflection of what their party stands for. Sanders spoke of how much these people loved America. Yet there were a shocking number of non-American flags over the Washington, DC rally. There was a giant Palestinian flag in solidarity with Hamas, of course. In Los Angeles there were tons of Mexican flags, so many that the CNN reporter noted it. Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts decided that he was going to give a speech while donning a trans flag. J.B. Pritzker, the would-be presidential candidate from Illinois (who typically has to be lowered into these things by crane) stood in front of a bunch of signs, including a F*** ICE sign. For the sake of his bodily health, I hope it was a very short march. A Barry Manilow reunion tour would have been a heck of a lot less screechy.

'Hamas was going to say no'

Schoonover allegedly demanded Gerber join him in a séance

'Doesn't believe officers should be policing toxic culture war debates.'

'Prosecuting a longtime critic'

In the midst of the governor’s race, the New Jersey Republican Party is asking the U.S. Justice Department to send federal monitors to watch the vote counting in a Democrat-run county that has blocked security cameras at ballot storage locations.   President Donald Trump was the first Republican to carry the Democrat-leaning Passaic County in a presidential race since 1992, though Democrat Kamala Harris carried the state in a surprisingly close contest in the blue state.  “Today the NJGOP formally demanded the Department of Justice’s Division of Civil Rights send monitors to oversee the vote-by-mail counting process conducted by the Passaic County Board of Elections,” the state Republican Party announced in a post on X. “When officials resist transparency, it raises serious questions about what they are trying to hide.” ?Free and fair elections are the foundation of our democracy, and in Passaic County, that principle is once again being put to the test. Today the NJGOP formally demanded the Department of Justice’s Division of Civil Rights send monitors to oversee the vote-by-mail counting… pic.twitter.com/bmgnaUF55j— New Jersey GOP (@NJGOP) October 20, 2025 The state made the complaint to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who has sued other states and jurisdictions regarding election integrity matters.  Passaic County Board of Elections Chairman John Currie is also the chairman of the Passaic County Democratic Party.  The Daily Signal contacted the Passaic County office of Board of Election Commissioners and the Passaic County Democratic Party. Neither replied to phone and email inquiries.  The state GOP weighed in on the matter in the county over the weekend.  “The decision by Democratic members of the Passaic County Board of Elections to block the use of security cameras in ballot storage areas and their refusal to require a sign-in/out log for anyone accessing mail-in ballots is alarming,” New Jersey Republican Party Chairman Glenn Paulsen said in a statement on Saturday. “The fact that the [Bureau of Election]’s Chairman also happens to be the County Democratic Chairman makes it even worse.” This doesn’t smell right, folks. pic.twitter.com/DixWB3qG6Q— New Jersey GOP (@NJGOP) October 18, 2025 Passaic County, as noted in my book, “The Myth of Voter Suppression,” has faced voter fraud prosecutions in recent years, primarily with state charges against members of the Paterson, New Jersey City Council.  “In recent years, Passaic County has been home to infamous voter fraud schemes and among the slowest counties to count ballots and certify elections in the entire state,” Paulsen added on Saturday. “Frankly, given that, the Passaic County Republican Party is justified in their suspicion about what happens outside of public view, and the NJGOP stands firmly behind their legal demands for election integrity and transparency.” Republican Jack Ciattarelli and Democrat Mikie Sherrill are facing off in the New Jersey governor’s race.  In May 2020, state investigators uncovered alleged mail-in ballot irregularities and charged two city council members and several associates with election fraud, unauthorized ballot possession, forgery, and tampering with public records. State prosecutors alleged unsealed ballots were collected and altered and 3,190 out of 16,747 ballots cast were disqualified, prompting a judge to order a new election in November 2020.  The Justice Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry for this story. But the department typically does not comment on investigations. The post New Jersey County With History of Voter Fraud Could Face DOJ Scrutiny appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As the federal government shutdown nears the end of a third full week, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., took time away from Washington and from his home district in New York to visit the blue bastion of California. In a visit to Los Angeles on Sunday, Jeffries advocated for California’s Proposition 50 ballot measure on congressional redistricting.  Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, criticized Jeffries’ past travel to his home state, telling The Daily Signal, “I mean, when you have Hakeem Jeffries show up in Austin, Texas, to try to lecture the Texas Legislature on how to draw district lines, the Democratic Party has become more radicalized. It’s become the party of Bernie Sanders and [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez].” During his California visit, Jeffries told First African Methodist Episcopal Church congregants that “Folks in the government … would rather shut the government down than give health care to everyday Americans,” referencing the fight over the expiring COVID-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies that were meant to be a temporary measure to respond to the national pandemic.  Senate Democrats have pushed to extend the subsidies despite the fact that the federal government has likely lost tens of billions of dollars in fraudulent spending for the benefits, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told The Daily Signal that there was likely “tens of billions of dollars flowing into insurance companies taking off commissions to unscrupulous brokers and agents who are signing up people without their knowledge because they don’t have to pay any premiums for plans that they don’t use.” Jeffries’ visit to California came after Senate Democrats faced bipartisan criticism for planning a political conference at Hotel Yountville, a ritzy California resort that featured a wine tour even as federal workers were furloughed or are being forced to work without pay for the duration of the shutdown.  Proposition 50, the proposed California constitutional amendment, would change how the Golden State draws its congressional districts. Currently, districts for the U.S. House of Representatives are drawn by the bipartisan California Citizens Redistricting Commission. Preempting the commission would put the power of congressional redistricting into the hands of California state lawmakers. Democrats currently hold supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature, so Prop 50 would enable Democrat state lawmakers to further gerrymander California’s congressional districts in response to Republican measures to redistrict in red states, such as Texas.  Republicans have defended their redistricting measures, pointing out President Donald Trump’s increasing support among groups that are not traditionally supporters of the GOP. “President Trump has done very well among minority groups like Hispanics and places like Texas, which is a large part of our population, and so it’s only fair that their voting strength and their Republican strength and across the state can be reflected in these lines,” Cornyn told The Daily Signal. The post Amid Shutdown, Jeffries Visits California to Support Gerrymandering Ballot Measure appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Here in California—which might be a model for other states as well—Gov. Gavin Newsom has now approved a formal commission to administer reparations to black Californians. And they’re trying not to use the word reparations since it has such a bad connotation. But it’s a bad idea in so many ways. Remember, when California was admitted to the Union, it came in as a free state. It had no prior record of being a slave state. It has never been a slave state. It has no historical baggage as, perhaps, the former Confederacies. So, there’s no argument that people who happen to be in California are owed anything from it, by the state, of any race. The second thing is we don’t know how many black Americans that are residents of California could trace their lineage back to California. In other words, do we really believe that most of the African Americans in California, who came after World War I and during World War II, have descendants that were suffering the fallout from slavery in California? It’s really absurd. The third thing to remember is the black population of California is about 5.4% of the 41 million people. Who are going to be paying the reparations? The so-called white oppressor, victimizer class is only 42%. It is a minority. And many of them can trace their lineage back to the Oklahoma diaspora of the 1930s and ’40s, when they arrived here completely destitute. And then, in addition, we have about 15% to 16% Asian. Some of them came from horrendous conditions in Vietnam. Some of them have families that were Japanese, have received money from the government as direct compensation for property they lost during World War II during the relocations. Some of them can argue that they were oppressed from the 19th century. Leland Stanford Jr., the president of the Southern Union Pacific Railroad, used Chinese labors in a very exploitive manner. The point is that each particular minority group will then argue that they have claims on—whom? Who is going to be the victimizer class when the so-called white population is the minority? Latinos are the majority population. They’re 45%. Are we going to ask people who migrated from Mexico, for the most part, to pay their tax dollars to African Americans who were not living here during slavery? Who is black in a multiracial, intermarried culture? Are we going to go back to the Elizabeth Warren rule? Do we need DNA badges? Are we gonna use the old Confederate measure of one-sixteenth? Sixteen percent to 17% of the California population identify as multiracial. How do we know who is white, who is Hispanic, who is black? It’s very hard to adjudicate that. More importantly, we have had repertory programs. And remember, we are 157 years from the 14th Amendment that guaranteed citizenship for former slaves. We’re 60 years from the EOP, affirmative action and sort of reparations program, of the Great Society that cost, in some computations, about $20 trillion of transfers. And that can include everything from special preferences on the basis of race for hiring, disproportionate impact in admissions to college, equal opportunity programs for small business, etc., etc. So, there has been reparations, and many of them were race-based. The final two considerations, very quickly, is California really had a $20 billion deficit. Gavin Newsom moved the money around and got by the mandatory requirement that California cannot borrow. But it basically cooked the books. It is in a perennial $20-$30 billion deficit crisis each year. This is a state that has the highest income taxes, the highest gas taxes, and among the highest property, not rates, but actual taxes, given valuations of homes, as well as high sales taxes. So, what would be the answer? If you really do want to address inordinate crime rates among the black communities—72% of children are born to one family, a one-parent family; there’s an all-time high illegitimacy rate—then why not work with the black community leaders and suggest that the disintegration of the black family, the two-parent household, is primarily the cause, statistically, why blacks are not achieving the same economic status as, let’s say, Indian Americans or other Asian Americans, Arab Americans, or white Americans? And that can be addressed. If you’re on the left, you can talk about structural racism. And if you’re on the right, you can say the Great Society programs incentivized the destruction of the black family. Whatever the exegesis is, it’s a much better conversation to have than just, as in the past, to hand out billions of dollars to a group, who we don’t know, exactly, who composes it, we don’t know how one qualifies, we don’t know how long they can trace residency in California or if it even matters. And we know that California has had no history of slavery. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post California Was Never a Slave State—So Why Reparations? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Declaring “He has no respect for the law,” Victor Davis Hanson described embattled Virginia attorney general nominee Jay Jones as a representation of the “new Democratic Party.” Hanson, a Daily Signal senior contributor and host of the new podcast “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Words,” appeared Friday on “The Megyn Kelly Show.” Hanson and Kelly discussed Jones’ background of reckless driving, misleading the courts, and threatening his political adversary; revelations that have led to his opponent, incumbent Republican Jason Miyares, taking the lead in the polls. Hanson remarked on Jones’ reckless driving record from February 2022 when he was caught speeding 116 miles per hour—almost double the speed limit—on a Virginia interstate. “That is deliberately saying to people, ‘I’m going to drive this fast and if anyone is in my way, they’re going to be dead, and I don’t care.’ Anyone else who did this would be in jail.” According to Cardinal News seven defendants were tried in the same courthouse, on the same day, with the same crime as Jones. Four out of the seven defendants were driving slower than Jones and yet their punishments were suspended jail time and suspended drivers licenses.  “But Jay Jones is a politician,” said Miyares during the attorney general debate Thursday night. “And he asked the court not to give him any of that, to give him community service. And instead, we now know he misled the court.”  Jones had submitted documents to the court claiming he completed community service hours when the 500 hours reported was time spent working for his own political action committee.  “He has no respect for the rule of law. He’s made that clear,” Hanson told Kelly.  Mamdani vs. Cuomo, Michelle Obama's New Whining, and Bombshell UFO Reporting, with @VDHansonWATCH: pic.twitter.com/bPiT3TT5Om— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) October 17, 2025 Jones has also been under heavy scrutiny for text messages sent in 2022 where he fantasized and threatened to kill Virginia Republican Todd Gilbert, his wife Jennifer and their children. During the debate Miyares noted that these messages were personal. “You know Todd Gilbert,” Miyares said, addressing Jones. “You served with him. Jennifer would come to the General Assembly. She would bring her children. We would see them run in the hallways. They were two and five years old at the time. This wasn’t hypothetical. You actually know Todd. This is a flesh and blood husband. Jennifer is a real mom. These are real kids.”  During the debate Jones claimed he has been held accountable for his actions by the Democrats. Kelly pointed out that he hasn’t been held accountable at all, “No one’s called for him to step down. No one has withdrawn their endorsement, most notably not the woman running for governor, Abigail Spanberger.” Democrat nominee for governor Abigail Spanberger and Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears debated the week prior in Norfolk, Virginia. Spanberger was asked four times if she still endorsed Jones but not once did she give a straight answer. “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” premieres Tuesday at The Daily Signal and on your favorite streaming platforms. The post The Daily Signal’s Victor Davis Hanson Talks Virginia Elections on ‘The Megyn Kelly Show’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.