Former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer revealed he met ex-President Donald Trump once — very briefly and kind of weirdly — while playing golf.

Archer testified behind closed doors Monday, and on Thursday, the House Oversight Committee released a transcript of the testimony that largely backed up the Democratic side of the dueling narratives that emerged after the testimony.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy used the Hunter Biden news as a substitute for the thing everyone else was talking about Thursday — the arrest and arraignment of ex-President Donald Trump after being indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury for his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election before and on January 6, 2021.  Trump faces charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

But there was one odd intersection of those topics that came up during Archer’s testimony. It was an aside that Archer brought up while the Democratic side was trying to make a point about the “Trump brand.”

Archer revealed that he met Trump while playing golf, and while a stranger to Trump, Archer nonetheless found himself on the receiving end of a fashion critique:

Mr. Goldman. Just so I can understand what you mean by that, let’s take the Trump family.

Mr. Archer. Sure.

Mr. Goldman. Would you say that the Trump family has a brand?

Mr. Archer. Absolutely.

Mr. Goldman. And would you say that Donald Trump, Jr., gets access and —

Mr. Schwartz. This is so out of scope. He doesn’t know anything about the Trump family.

Mr. Goldman. Well, did you play golf with Donald Trump?

Mr. Archer. No, I haven’t played golf with him.

Mr. Goldman. You never did play golf with Donald Trump?

Mr. Archer. Oh, I did play behind him. Sorry. Scratch that. I played behind him. And then he came up to me at the clubhouse and talked — he didn’t know who I was, but he didn’t like my, like, athletic shorts.

Mr. Goldman. It is within the scope. If you’re going to bring up Jamie Dimon, then we get to clarify what he means by “the brand.”

Mr. Archer. That’s fine.

Mr. Schwartz. You can ask him that without getting into other people that are outside of scope.

Mr. Goldman. So — well, I think you can give a little leeway here, Mr. Schwartz. This is not going into his criminal case or anything that we had nothing to do with negotiating it. But I do think it’s important to provide proper context for, when you’re talking about the Biden brand, that there’s another brand that you just described, which is the Trump brand. And is it your —

Mr. Schwartz. You want to start drawing equivalencies between the Biden brand and the Trump brand?

Mr. Goldman. I would like for you to let me ask the question, which is: Would you say that Donald Trump’s children benefit from their last name being Trump?

Mr. Archer. I would speculate to say yes.

Mr. Goldman. I’ll leave it at that.

Read Archer’s full testimony here.

CNN’s Daniel Dale knocked down a staggering 21 false claims from ex-President Donald Trump’s indictment on four charges related to January 6 in an epic fact-check.

The arrest and arraignment of Trump after being indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury for his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election has blotted out the sun this week.  Trump faces charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

But there were many more than 4 false or misleading statements repeated throughout the indictment.

On an edition of CNN Tonight following the news, Dale took on the herculean task of ticking through most of the 25 or so lies he counted:

CAMEROTA: Special Counsel Jack Smith says the January 6th attack was caused by lies told by Donald Trump, and the indictment includes a litany of those election lies.

Here to take us through them, our fact-checker extraordinaire, Daniel Dale. Okay, so Daniel, you have counted up the lies that prosecutors say they’ve caught Trump in. What’s the tally?

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: I counted 21 listed in that 45-page indictment. I think if you counted slightly differently, there’s some subjectivity here. You could go as low as 18 or as high as maybe 25. But I made a list of 21. CAMEROTA: Okay, take us through them.

DALE: Okay, here we go. Lie number one is Trump’s overarching election lie that he was the real winner of a stolen election, that fraud changed the outcome. The indictment says numerous Trump officials, Trump himself appointed, had told him this narrative was baseless, groundless false, but that he kept deploying it anyway.

Lie number two is the lie that fake pro-Trump electors in states won by Biden were real electors. They obviously were not. Lies number three and four, I thought, were two remarkable lies related to Trump’s pressure on the Justice Department.

Number three, Trump allegedly tried to get DOJ to give a government stamp of approval to his lies by sending an official letter to key states saying DOJ had identified major concerns with the election, though, of course, it had not.

Number four, Trump allegedly urged top DOJ officials to falsely — quote — “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressman.” Line number five is that Vice President Pence had the power to reject Biden electoral votes.

On January 6, 2021. Pence and White House lawyers had repeatedly told Trump that Pence did not, that this would be illegal, unconstitutional, but Trump still kept declaring that Pence did have that power.

Number six, another lie about Pence. Trump allegedly had his campaign issue a January 5th statement saying Pence totally agreed that the VP had the power to act, even though Pence told Trump just hours prior that he still actually totally disagreed.

And then number seven, Trump allegedly told Pence at a January 4th pressure meeting that they had won every state in question by hundreds of thousands of votes. Again, obviously false.

Number eight and nine are conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines. Number eight, the lie that swing state machines had switched votes from Trump to Biden. Trump repeated this claim even though his AG, William Barr, and others had explained to him it was wrong.

Number nine, Trump retweeted Lawyer Sidney Powell’s lie about supposed — quote — massive election fraud involving Dominion, even though the indictment said he had privately said that Powell sounded — quote — “crazy.”

Now lies number 10 through 13 are about Georgia, one of the swing states he lost. Number 10 was Trump’s lie that Georgia had tens of thousands of ballots from dead people. The Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had told Trump directly on that infamous phone call that they’d found two dead voter cases, later up the number to four such cases. Number 11 is Trump’s lie that Georgia had tens of thousands of ballots from people who lived out of state. Raffensperger’s officials explained to Trump directly on that call that these were actually legitimate voters who’d moved back to the state.

Number 12 was Trump’s lie that two Fulton County elections workers had been caught on video stuffing the ballot box. Raffensperger and top Trump DOJ official told him this was false and that workers were just doing their jobs. But Trump would not stop. He actually continues to repeat that lie this year, 2023, still going.

Number 13 is Trump’s tweeted lie that Raffensperger was — quote — “unwilling or unable to address his various fraud claims on that wild, infamous call.” In fact, Raffensperger debunked those claims at length and in detail on that call.

Lie number 14 is Trump’s false claim about a supposed nefarious vote dump in Detroit, Michigan. Trump repeated this dump nonsense in remarks the day after Barr directly explained to him that what had happened in Detroit was just normal standard vote counting.

Lines number 15 and 16 were that Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two more swing states. Each had more votes than actual voters. DOJ officials told Trump that this clearly untrue claim was indeed untrue. But he still used the Pennsylvania part in his pre-riot January 6 speech.

Lie number 17 is Trump’s lie in that same speech that Pennsylvania wanted to recertify its election results, showing a Biden victory. Some Republicans of the state did. But the Democratic governor in election sheet, the people who actually had the certification power, did not.

And lies number 18 through 21, finally, are assorted false claims about various states. Eighteen, that Nevada had tens of thousands of double votes. It didn’t. Nineteen, that a substantial number of dead people and nonresidents had voted in Arizona. Wrong again.

Twenty, that over 36,000 noncitizens had voted in Arizona. Trump’s own campaign manager told him this was wrong. And finally, 21, that Wisconsin had major fraud and tens of thousands of unlawful votes. Once again, all baseless.

CAMEROTA: Daniel —

UNKNOWN: The crowd goes wild.

CAMEROTA: The crowd here has gone wild. I really hope —

DALE: I’ve taken a breath.

CAMEROTA: — the Guinness Book of World Records was just watching that because —

DALE: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: I don’t believe you took a breath for all that time. DALE: I tried my best.

CAMEROTA: Your breath work is impressive, Daniel. That is so — so, is that everything?

DALE: Well, that — in all seriousness, that is not — that is not all of the election lying that Trump did. In my own fact checking, I counted dozens of additional lies about the election that the indictment did not mention. Of course, the indictments don’t mention everything. Maybe some of the others will come up at a potential trial.

CAMEROTA: Daniel, you’re remarkable. You are remarkable. That was —

DALE: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: I can’t believe you just fit that into one live shot and one breath, as far as I can tell. Thanks so much for doing that for us.

Watch above via CNN Tonight.

Former President Donald Trump said that communists and Marxists led by President Joe Biden are violating his civil rights with the cases against him on a host of charges.

Speaking to supporters at a Montgomery, Alabama rally on Friday, Trump went on at length about his most recent indictment and all the cases against him.

Trump faces three different indictments in three jurisdictions, including federal criminal charges for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified material after leaving the White House.

Trump has repeatedly raged at Special Counsel Jack Smith, and his remarks on Friday were no exception, saying Smith was engaging in “prosecutorial misconduct,” violating the Constitution and more.

Trump quoted several conservative opinions on the indictment before saying that it is communists and Marxists, led by Biden, who are coming after him.

“The only civil rights that have been violated in this matter are my civil rights and those of the countless people that Biden and the communists have been persecuting,” Trump declared to his supporters in Alabama.

He added, “And they are communists. They’re Marxists. And they’re they’re people that don’t get it. They don’t get it. You know, they’re vicious and they’re smart. But we’re smarter and we’re tougher than they are. And we’re going to take it back. And we have no choice because otherwise we’re not going to have a country left.”

The former president’s Truth Social posts have been even more direct about fighting back or retribution, resulting in Smith filing a motion for a protective order to shield witnesses from intimidation or wrath.

Trump also attacked the party he’s running for the nomination with at his rally, saying they look “like a bunch of weak jerks” for “allowing” the prosecutions.

Watch the full clip above via CSPAN.

CNN’s Dana Bash introduced a new poll on Friday’s Inside Politics that asked Republicans if they would vote for Donald Trump as a convicted felon, saying, “I can’t believe this is actually a thing we have to ask.”

“I want to go to a new poll by Reuters/Ipsos,” Bash said. “I’m looking at these numbers and thinking, I can’t believe this is actually a thing that we have to ask, but it is. ‘Would you vote for Trump in 2024 if he is convicted of a felony?'”

“What a country,” exclaimed panelist Jackie Kucinich as Bash repeated, “What a country.”

Bash continued, “Yes is 35%. ‘Not sure’ or ‘No’ adds up to 65%. But then look at another question about ‘would you vote for Trump if he is serving time in prison.’ ‘Yes,’ 28. ‘No,’ 52. ‘Not sure,’ 20.”

“Yeah, I mean, the ‘No’s’ are still significant here,” said Mary Ann Sotomayor with The Washington Post, adding:

Obviously, you see the difference is in jail versus if he is just charged. But people aren’t excited in the general election to be talking about this. I mean, yes, the ’22 midterms actually showed, and showed a lot of vulnerable Republicans who literally do not want to be talking about this, do not want to take votes on expungement, do not, just, want to be close at all to what [Kevin] McCarthy is trying to tell a number of these House Republicans to do, because they saw in their own elections, we saw these vulnerable Republicans win in states where economy was the bigger issue.

Where, you know, we didn’t have candidates that were talking about, ‘let’s relitigate the 2020 election.’ If that becomes the mantra of the party in the general election, if Trump doesn’t stay away from that if he’s the nominee, it is going to be very tough for Republicans.

Axios’ Margaret Talev concluded, “Parental rights and the economy…those are strong issues for Republicans, maybe Pride. Abortion and Donald Trump, not a winning recipe.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

Joe Rogan could be reversing course on his decision to not have former President Donald Trump on his podcast.

In years prior, Rogan has been vocal about not wanting to interview Trump and has even admitted to turning down several opportunities to do so.

But as the 2024 presidential race and Trump’s legal fiascos heat up, it appears Rogan may have had a change of heart.

On the Thursday edition of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan sat down with political commentator Patrick Bet-David to discuss entrepreneurship and politics.

“When are you having Trump on,” Bet-David asked.

“I don’t know,” Rogan said sheepishly.

“The look — looks like you got something,” Bet-David replied.

“I don’t know – maybe,” Rogan said.

“At a certain point in time, it’s just like. It would be interesting to hear his perspective on a lot of things,” Rogan said.

He explained that more than anything, he just wants to know how it all works.

“I would like to know what is it like when you actually get into office? I would like to know things like what is it like versus perception? What is it actually like when you get in that building? What are you greeted with? When do you know that people are fucking with you?” Rogan said.

“When do you know the intelligence agencies are lying to you? Like when you decided to fire Comey? What was the thought? How much did you know? What’s the machine like? What is the deep state really like? Really like, because we have all these, you know, smoky room perceptions, like from the Bill Hicks joke or they show you the Kennedy assassination from an angle you’ve never seen before. You know, what is the machine that runs this country? Because it’s very clear that it’s not as simple as elected representatives that are doing the will of the people,” he added.

Bet-David continued to push the idea of Rogan having Trump on, which made the host visibly weary of where the conversation was going.

“Just so you know, he and I don’t speak. You know, it’s not something that is like, hey, his camp is saying go in there and do this and do that. Now, I’ve never interviewed the guy, so it’s not like I’m lobbying for it,” Bet-David awkwardly explained.

Watch above via The Joe Rogan Experience.

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