Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin were involved in a heated back and forth during a Senate hearing Tuesday that sparked immediate reactions across social media.

‘Everybody we bring up here, you guys chastised for trying to make changes,’ Mullin said during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing on Wednesday. The committee was discussing issues with Obamacare during a hearing on the nomination of Casey Means as U.S. Surgeon General.

‘God forbid we change and try to fix our broken system,’ Mullin continued. ‘Anyway, I ranted too long.’

As Mullin was attempting to return to the topic, he was cut off by Sanders, who said, ‘Yes, you did.’

Mullin responded, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your opinion on that and if I cared about your opinion I would ask you. But I don’t care about your opinion. You’re part of the system. You’re part of the problem. You’ve been sitting here longer than I’ve even been alive. This is your problem. You should have fixed this a long time ago. You’ve been railing on it for so long. What have you been doing?’

Sanders responded by sarcastically saying, ‘I decided not to run for surgeon general, you’re the nominee I’ve decided.’

‘That is definitely something we would never accept,’ Mullin said before moving on.

The exchange was quickly picked up by conservatives on social media, including from ‘Charlie Kirk Show’ executive producer Andrew Kolvet, who wrote in a post on X that ‘things did not end well for the octogenarian socialist’ after he took a ‘cheap shot’ at Mullin. 

‘That’s what his commie supporters can’t figure out,’ comedian Tim Young posted on X. ‘Bernie has been in office so long that he should have solved their problems by now.’

‘Finally,’ journalist Anna Matson posted on X. ‘Someone put Bernie Sanders in his place. He’s all talk and no action. He’s been in office longer than I’ve been alive and he has nothing to show for it.’

‘Swamp being DRAINED,’ political and sports commentator Dan Dakich posted on X.

‘HOLY SMOKES,’ conservative journalist Eric Daughterty posted on X. ‘Sen. Markwayne Mullin just PUMMELED Bernie Sanders to his FACE.’

Senate clashes involving Sanders and Mullin have been increasingly common in recent years, including a viral moment in 2023 when Mullin and Teamsters President Sean O’Brien almost came to blows during an exchange Sanders was in the middle of. 

This past December, the two clashed on the Senate floor, also over Obamacare, in an exchange that Mullin posted on X in which he referred to Sanders as ‘The Grinch’ and said the Vermont senator ‘blocked our bipartisan bill, the Mikaela Naylon Give Kids a Chance Act, to give kids fighting cancer more treatment options.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the offices of Mullin and Sanders for comment.

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The crackdown on fraud in Minnesota will serve as a blueprint for a new Department of Justice office focused on protecting taxpayer funds from scams, President Donald Trump’s pick to serve as the nation’s ‘fraud czar’ explained in his nomination hearing Wednesday. 

‘The work in Minnesota has been pivotal. The work of the U.S. Attorney’s office there, and the personnel there, has been pivotal to highlighting the problems of fraud that permeate our taxpayer funded programs,’ nominee to serve as assistant attorney general for a new Justice Department division tasked with rooting out fraud, Colin McDonald, said Wednesday. 

‘That sort of effort … is what the National Fraud Enforcement Division will be looking to do and scale to an extent that we’ve not seen before within the Department of Justice,’ he continued. 

Trump tapped McDonald as the nominee in January, just days after establishing the Department of Justice’s new division for national fraud enforcement that will ‘investigate, prosecute, and remedy fraud affecting the Federal government,’ according to the White House. The new office follows a sweeping Minnesota fraud scandal, where hundreds of millions of dollars was allegedly swindled from taxpayers through welfare and social services programs.

‘I will be working with the inspectors general community,’ McDonald continued. ‘With our federal agencies and federal partners, with our state and local partners to ensure that we find the fraud where it’s occurring and that we have the resources to prosecute it, to investigate it and prosecute it, and ultimately ensure that the fraud that we’re seeing annually, perpetrated against these programs comes to an end.’

McDonald appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday morning, where lawmakers grilled the nominee about the new office, how it will operate and if it will operate independently of the White House. 

Trump delivered his State of the Union address Tuesday evening and announced Vice President JD Vance will lead the administration’s ‘war on fraud.’ 

McDonald explained that his office will work to tackle all fraud bleeding taxpayers, citing Government Accountability Office data that estimates between $320 billion to $520 billion in taxpayer funds is lost to fraud on an annual basis. 

‘My commitment is to work tirelessly to build a division, a national fraud enforcement division, where no fraud is too big for the Department of Justice, and no fraud is too small for the Department of Justice,’ he continued. 

At the top of lawmakers’ minds were fraud concerns surrounding Obamacare and senior citizens. 

Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn cited that the Government Accountability Office could not reconcile over $21 billion in Obamacare marketplace subsidies in tax year 2023 during his questioning of McDonald. 

‘I commit to working tirelessly to root out the sort of fraud that you’ve identified there, and to make sure that every single dollar that’s supposed to go to these programs actually goes to the programs, to the beneficiaries, the intended beneficiaries of these programs, and not to fraudsters. That is my commitment,’ McDonald told Cornyn during the hearing regarding potential fraud surrounding Affordable Care Act subsidies. 

Scams targeting the elderly also took the spotlight throughout the hearing. Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, pressed McDonald on his efforts to protect seniors from scams, noting that America’s seniors lose $28 billion annually to financial schemes. 

The fraud czar nominee pledged that the DOJ would work to protect seniors from the increasingly high-tech scams, which often include using artificial intelligence to confuse and swindle people, noting that the fraud affects entire families. 

‘It’s not just the grandmothers and the grandfathers, it’s also their family members who bear the weight of these scams and the fraud that’s perpetrated against them,’ he said. ‘My grandmother, one of them, turns 89 years old in two days. And she has seen these … sorts of efforts toward her. And it’s a major issue that the Department of Justice is focused on, and we will be using all available tools to ensure that we combat that problem.’

The massive Minnesota fraud case has reverberated across the nation, with federal Republican lawmakers reinvigorating calls to tighten and monitor the release of taxpayer funds to various programs, most notably social and welfare offices. 

Trump spotlighted the fraud in his State of the Union address Tuesday, claiming the scams are even worse in states such as California, Massachusetts, Maine.’ 

‘When it comes to the corruption that is plundering — it really, it’s plundering America — there’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer. Oh, we have all the information,’ Trump said Tuesday. 

‘And in actuality, the number is much higher than that, and California, Massachusetts, Maine and many other states are even worse. This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn’t believe,’ he continued, before naming Vance as the administration leader taking on fraud. 

The White House referred Fox Digital to Trump’s State of the Union comments and McDonald’s testimony when approached for additional comment on the federal fraud crackdown efforts. 

Vance joined Fox News’ ‘America’s Newsroom’ Wednesday, and said his efforts will include a ‘full, whole government approach’ to investigating fraud concerns, and enlisting the Justice and Treasury Departments to lead probe on fiscal records. 

‘There’s a whole host of tools that we have that have never been used, and the president and I talked about this a couple of months ago and said, ‘What if we just did everything that we could to stop the fraud that’s being committed against the American taxpayer?’ The president said, ‘Great idea, let’s do it,’ and we’re going to work on that very aggressively over the next year,’ Vance said. 

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Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration is temporarily halting Medicaid funding to the state of Minnesota, giving Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz 60 days to clean up how the state doles out funding. 

‘We have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people’s tax money,’ Vance said Wednesday in a press event attended by Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Mehmet Oz. 

The announcement comes after President Donald Trump railed against fraud in the Gopher State Tuesday evening in his State of the Union address. 

The administration and Congress have zeroed in on rampant abuse of federal taxpayers’ funds since December 2025, when details of Minnesota’s fraud surrounding social programs and welfare programs stretching back to the COVID-19 pandemic first came under the national spotlight. Investigators have since estimated the Minnesota scheme could top $9 billion. 

Trump pointed to his vice president as leading the administration’s ‘war on fraud’ amid his State of the Union remarks. 

Vance explained Wednesday that ‘we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American taxpayer.’

The vice president continued that officials have verified that a program in Minnesota intended to provide after-school care to autistic children actually benefited fraudsters. 

‘A lot of people are getting rich off the generosity of American taxpayers,’ Vance said. ‘But more fundamentally, and more importantly than that, it means that there are kids in Minnesota who deserve these services, who need these services, and they’re not going to those kids. They’re going to fraudsters in Minneapolis. That is unacceptable. And that’s the sort of thing that we’re cutting off with this action today.’ 

Oz added that it is that the pause marks ‘the largest action against fraud that we’ve ever taken’ at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, before launching into how the administration is deferring funds to the state.

‘It’s going to be $259 million of deferred payments for Medicaid to Minnesota, which we’re announcing as I speak, to Governor Walz and his team,’ Oz said. ‘That’s based on an audit of the last three months of 2025. Restated: a quarter billion dollars is not going to be paid this month to Minnesota for its Medicaid claims.’ 

‘We have notified the state and said that we will give them the money, but we’re going to hold it and only release it after they propose and act on a comprehensive corrective action plan to solve the problem,’ Oz said. ‘If Minnesota fails to clean up the systems, the state will rack up $1 billion of deferred payments this year.’

Walz has 60 days to respond to a letter Oz and the administration sent to Walz on the matter, Oz said. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s office Wednesday afternoon for comment and has yet to receive a reply. 

Oz continued that he believes Walz will take the matter seriously, and noted fraud is not exclusive to Minnesota, but also other states. 

‘These schemes disproportionately involve immigrant communities,’ Oz continued. ‘They’re insulated, they’re able to … organize efforts, and sometimes they don’t understand what’s going on.’ 

Vance added that the administration does not want to make this move, but it is needed due to Minnesota being ‘careless with federal tax dollars.’

‘All we need the governor and the administration of Minnesota to do is something quite simple, which is to show that before you give Medicaid funds to somebody, you’re taking seriously whether they provided the services that they say that they’re providing,’ the vice president said, calling the fraud a ‘disgrace.’

Trump spotlighted the fraud in his State of the Union address Tuesday, underscoring that while Minnesota has taken the spotlight, schemes run deep in other states as well. 

‘When it comes to the corruption that is plundering — it really, it’s plundering America — there’s been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer,’ Trump said. ‘Oh, we have all the information.’ 

‘And in actuality, the number is much higher than that, and California, Massachusetts, Maine and many other states are even worse. This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn’t believe,’ he continued, before naming Vance as the administration leader taking on fraud. 

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The FBI subpoenaed Kash Patel and Susie Wiles’ phone records in 2022 and 2023, when both were private citizens, as part of a federal probe into Donald Trump, Fox News has confirmed.

Patel is the current FBI director, and Wiles is White House chief of staff.

At least a handful of FBI employees were fired Wednesday, Fox News has been told. Names were not given due to privacy reasons.

Reuters first disclosed the subpoenas, which were issued during the Biden administration, while special counsel Jack Smith was investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Smith ended up charging Trump in 2023 with multiple felony offenses related to alleged efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 election and Trump’s handling of the documents after he left office.

A federal judge later dismissed the election interference case after Smith moved to drop it following Trump’s re-election, citing a Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president. 

Smith also dropped the Justice Department’s appeal of a separate ruling that dismissed the classified documents case. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in both matters.

In a statement to Fox News Wednesday, Patel called the move to seize the phone records ‘outrageous and deeply alarming.’ 

‘It is outrageous and deeply alarming that the previous FBI leadership secretly subpoenaed my own phone records — along with those of now White House chief of staff Susie Wiles — using flimsy pretexts and burying the entire process in prohibited case files designed to evade all oversight,’ he said.

The FBI had found the phone records in files labeled as ‘Prohibited,’ Reuters reported.

Patel also said he recently ended the FBI’s ability to categorize files as ‘Prohibited.’

Smith testified last year that records of members’ calls helped investigators verify the timeline of events surrounding the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

He said prosecutors ‘followed all legal requirements in getting those records’ and told a House panel the records obtained from lawmakers did not include the content of conversations, Reuters reported.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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Democratic events protesting President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address prompted sharp pushback from conservatives on social media and from Arkansas’ Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said the events painted a sharp contrast between the two parties.

Democrats held several counterprogramming events to Trump’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday, including an event called ‘State of the Swamp,’ where far-left activists, including the Portland Frog Brigade, took to the stage dressed in animal costumes.

‘The difference today isn’t between right vs left,’ Sanders posted on X in response to a video of activists dressed up in frog costumes alongside Democratic Rep. Maxine Dexter. ‘It’s normal vs crazy.’

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Sanders added, ‘Last night, President Trump laid out a vision of a stronger, safer, more prosperous America — and the best counterargument the Democrats could provide were unhinged heckles, refusing to stand to celebrate the accomplishments of patriotic Americans, and a bizarre dress-up show.’

At another point in the event, an activist dressed in a giraffe costume took the stage criticizing ICE and calling Trump ‘pumpkin spice Satan.’ 

‘They always want to dress in animal costumes… WTF,’ Red State’s Jennifer Van Laar posted on X.

‘This is what Democrats are doing instead of attending President Trump’s State of the Union speech,’ a Republican National Committee account posted on X. ‘Democrats are literally hanging out with deranged Leftists dressed in giraffe costumes bragging about getting arrested by ICE.’

‘Who is advising the Democrats and how do we make sure they never quit?’ conservative commentator Riley Gaines posted on X.

‘These people are weird,’ Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, posted on X.

‘They don’t just hate America… they’re mentally ill,’ comedian Tim Young posted on X.

Dozens of Democrats boycotted Trump’s speech, with many attending events like State of the Swamp or the People’s State of the Union, which was held in the frigid temperatures outside the Capitol.

‘Not one more dime to the Department of Homeland Security until they start following the law in this country,’ Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., told a crowd of protesters gathered outside.

The event, organized by MoveOn and co-hosted by the Midas Touch Network, featured a number of House and Senate Democratic lawmakers who opted to skip Trump’s address, which they said would be filled with ‘lie after lie’ and ignore what they described as a country ‘in crisis.’

Fox News Digital’s Breanne Deppisch contributed to this report.

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Hillary Clinton is claiming that Republican voter legislation will make it harder for married women to vote — an assertion GOP lawmakers and officials already say they’ve debunked.

‘You didn’t have to listen to Trump’s rambling speech last night to know that Republicans are trying to make it harder for millions of Americans to vote—especially married women,’ Clinton posted on X Wednesday. ‘They’ve already made it clear. Time to fight back.’ 

Clinton was referring to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. 

The president called on Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would tighten election rules and require voters to present a photo ID at the polls and proof of U.S. citizenship.

The president said the legislation is critical in order to stop ‘illegal aliens and other unpermitted persons from voting.’

Congressional Democrats have panned the SAVE Act as a tool of voter suppression — saying it’s a bill that allows the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to monitor Americans’ voter information and create barriers for married women to vote, among several other claims.

The bill would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, mandate states to actively verify and remove noncitizens from voter rolls, expand information sharing with federal agencies, including DHS, to verify citizenship, and create new criminal penalties for registering noncitizens to vote.

But Clinton isn’t alone — other House Democrats earlier in February also similarly claimed that the legislation would leave married women unable to vote unless they changed their birth certificates to match other government-issued ID.

ButRepublicans say they’ve already addressed the claim and debunked it. 

‘This is absolute nonsense, and we specifically allow for a provision to make sure that no one can possibly be left behind,’ Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, who led both the SAVE Act and SAVE America Act in the House, said, while arguing Democrats were ‘really reaching’ for criticism.

‘If a woman tried to register to vote with different names on her birth certificate and driver’s license,’ Roy said, ‘we literally put in the statute that all you have to do is sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury that, ‘I am that person. This is my birth certificate… and this is my driver’s license that is reflecting my married name.’’

The bill does list a birth certificate as one way voters can confirm their identity. It does not specify a last-name match requirement.

Voters can use ‘a certified birth certificate issued by a state in which the applicant was born… (that) includes the full name, date of birth and place of birth of the applicant’ to supplement other forms of identification.

Among other forms of valid paperwork, voters can also display a passport, a REAL ID or a military identification card to prove their citizenship.

Conservative legal group The Federalist Society presented a breakdown of the bill, which explicitly says that Americans who have changed their names — because of marriage or otherwise — are ‘not prevented from voting.’ 

‘The bipartisan federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is commanded by the SAVE Act to establish guidelines for states to accept supplementary documents — for instance, a marriage license — to prove citizenship when a voter’s birth certificate and current name do not match,’ the group’s page reads. ‘Those on the Left who claim that the SAVE Act will disenfranchise millions of married women are simply wrong; they ought to read the bill’s text and see that it provides mechanisms to ensure that this does not happen.’

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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he can win the Republican Senate primary even without President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

‘He makes his own decisions,’ Paxton told Fox News Digital. ‘I’m perfectly fine right now. We’re going to win this election either way. And I’m happy with where we’re at, and you’re going to see next Tuesday that we’re going to come out in front.’

Paxton, who was invited by Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, to attend Trump’s State of the Union address, is one of seven challengers vying to unseat longtime Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who is running for a fifth term in the upper chamber.

Early voting has already begun in the Lone Star State, and primary election day is March 3.

Even without a coveted nod from the president, Paxton acknowledged that cutting through the densely packed field would be difficult without the race going to a runoff, but not impossible.

‘It’s hard to win outright, but you know anything’s possible,’ Paxton said. ‘If anybody’s going to do it, it is going to be me.’

Much of the attention has been paid to the three-way fight between Paxton, Cornyn and Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Texas — a brawl that Trump has chosen to keep at arm’s length. He told reporters last week that he supports all three.

Cornyn is Paxton’s primary target in the crowded field. The two have engaged in a mudslinging back-and-forth on the road and in ads, dumping millions into toppling one another.

When asked about Cornyn’s attacks against him, Paxton said, ‘He’s not a polite man.’

Paxton accused the lawmaker of being ineffective during his 24-year run in the Senate and dubbed him ‘Fake John Cornyn,’ accusing him of selling voters one thing on the trail and doing another in office.

‘He’s been in office since I was in college, and I’m 63,’ Paxton said. ‘And he’s been up here for 24 years. And I don’t care what he says. He’s a deceptive guy, a misleading guy. You know why? Because he doesn’t have a single thing to run on.’

Cornyn wondered if Paxton had ‘been sleeping under a rock somewhere’ when asked about his opponent’s challenges to his record.

‘My Senate office is generally recognized as the most effective office in the Senate, and that’s because we produced important legislation to the state, for the state and for the nation,’ Cornyn told Fox News Digital. ‘And the fact he’s unaware of it just does not speak well to his intelligence or his knowledge.’

Despite Paxton’s confidence that the race would be decided next week, Cornyn believed there would be a runoff between the two.

‘We’ll be rid of him after May 26,’ Cornyn said.

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Virginia’s Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger was widely panned by conservatives on social media over her rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union, with many calling out the governor for labeling herself as a ‘moderate’ during the campaign but changing her tune.

Spanberger’s speech contained several examples of supporting far-left causes that drew criticism online, including school walkouts over ICE, touting ‘affordability’ despite pushing to raise taxes and slamming Trump.

Her overall speech quickly drew heat from conservatives online over her policies and her tone. 

‘This Spanberger speech can basically be summed up as ‘I AM A DEMOCRAT WHO IS MODERATE AND NORMAL. PLEASE BELIEVE I AM MODERATE AND NORMAL,’’ Mark Hemingway, senior writer for Real Clear Investigations, posted on X.

‘Abigail Spanberger comes off like the radical psychopath she is,’ Matthew Boyle, Washington Bureau Chief for Breitbart News, posted on X. ‘Anyone who claims she is a ‘moderate’ is a liar. Plain and simple.’

‘Abigail Spanberger campaigned as a moderate but governs as a left-wing activist,’ GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn posted on X. ‘There is no room for moderates in today’s Democrat party.’

‘It’s despicable to hear Abigail Spanberger speak so plainly like a supposed moderate when she’s governing with a legislature that’s more akin to Gavin Newsom in California or, say, Maura Healy in Massachusetts,’ Newsbusters managing editor Curtis Houck posted on X.

‘Spanberger passed exactly one test,’ Ruthless podcast co-host Josh Holmes posted on X. ‘A year from now you’ll have absolutely no idea who gave the Democrat response.’

‘Abigail Spanberger tanks,’ Trump-Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell posted on X. ‘She’s so nervous. It’s like she didn’t practice the actual speech.’

‘The focus of Abigail Spanberger’s rebuttal is ‘affordability’ as her party proposes sweeping tax hikes on nearly every sector of the Virginia economy,’ Daily Caller senior editor Amber Duke posted on X.

Fox News Digital reached out to Spanberger’s office for comment.

A top Republican told Fox News Digital earlier this week that Spanberger would never have been given airtime in the Democrats’ official response to Trump’s State of the Union if it weren’t for her support of the commonwealth’s controversial redistricting and adherence to the party line.

‘Our president has sent poorly trained federal agents into our cities, where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans,’ Spanberger said during her speech. ‘They have done it without a warrant. They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies. They have sent children — a little boy in a blue bunny hat — to far-off detention centers, and they have killed American citizens in our streets.

‘And they have done it all with their faces masked from accountability,’ she continued. ‘Every minute spent sowing fear is a minute not spent investigating murders, crimes against children or the criminals defrauding seniors of their life savings.’

At one point in her speech, Spanberger appeared to briefly lose her place on the teleprompter:

‘But as the President spoke of his perceived successes tonight, he continues to cede economic power and technological strength to Russia … bow down to … China …to bow down to a Russian dictator, and make plans for war with Iran,’ she said, as her prepared remarks cited China as the technological rival.

Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this report.

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President Donald Trump warned in his State of the Union address that Iran has ‘sinister ambitions’ with its nuclear program and that the U.S. has not yet heard from Tehran that it will ‘never have a nuclear weapon.’ 

The remarks come as the U.S. and Iran are gearing up for another round of negotiations on Thursday.  

‘After Midnight Hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program and, in particular, nuclear weapons. Yet they continue starting it all over. We wiped it out, and they want to start all over again and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions,’ Trump said Tuesday, referencing the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last summer. 

‘We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words, ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,’’ Trump added. ‘My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can’t let that happen.’ 

‘For decades it had been the policy of the United States never to allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Many decades. Since they seized control of that proud nation 47 years ago, the regime and its murderous proxies have spread nothing but terrorism and death and hate,’ Trump also said during his speech. ‘They’ve killed and maimed thousands of American service members and hundreds of thousands and even millions of people with what’s called roadside bombs. They were the kings of the roadside bomb. And we took out [Iranian Gen. Qassim] Soleimani. I did that during my first term. Had a huge impact. He was the father of the roadside bomb.’ 

‘And just over the last couple of months with the protests, they’ve killed, at least, it looks like 32,000 protesters in their own country. They shot them and hung them. We stopped them from hanging a lot of them, with the threat of serious violence. But this is some terrible people. They’ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America,’ Trump said.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said following Trump’s address that, ‘No one should be fooled by these prominent untruths.’ 

‘Whatever they’re alleging in regards to Iran’s nuclear program, Iran’s ballistic missiles, and the number of casualties during January’s unrest is simply the repetition of ‘big lies,’’ Baghaei claimed on X. 

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President Donald Trump tore into Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Wednesday as ‘lunatics’ after they interrupted his State of the Union address with shouting.

‘When you watch Low IQ Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, as they screamed uncontrollably last night at the very elegant State of the Union, such an important and beautiful event, they had the bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday. ‘LUNATICS, mentally deranged and sick who, frankly, look like they should be institutionalized.’

‘We should send them back from where they came,’ he added.

The president then took a shot at actor Robert De Niro, who appeared on MS NOW Tuesday and told Americans to ‘resist’ Trump.

‘They should actually get on a boat with Trump Deranged Robert De Niro, another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely Low IQ, who has absolutely no idea what he is doing or saying — some of which is seriously CRIMINAL!’ Trump wrote. 

‘When I watched him break down in tears last night, much like a child would do, I realized that he may be even sicker than Crazy Rosie O’Donnell, who is right now in Ireland trying to figure out how to come back into our beautiful United States,’ the president said. ‘The only difference between De Niro and Rosie is that she is probably somewhat smarter than him, which isn’t saying much.’

The blistering post followed a highly contentious State of the Union address in which Omar repeatedly interrupted Trump’s remarks on border security and homeland funding. 

At several points during the speech, she shouted, ‘You are a murderer’ and ‘You’re a liar,’ as the president discussed immigration enforcement and accused Democrats of cutting funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

Tlaib, seated next to Omar, wore a round button reading ‘F— ICE,’ referencing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and also shouted objections during the address. She additionally wore a message that read, ‘STAND WITH SURVIVORS RELEASE THE FILES,’ an apparent reference to materials related to the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 

Both lawmakers were seen scowling and vocalizing opposition throughout portions of the speech before departing the chamber early.

Trump’s post revives rhetoric that has previously drawn sharp backlash. In 2019, he told progressive Democratic lawmakers, including Omar and Tlaib, to ‘go back’ to the countries they came from — remarks that were widely condemned by Democrats and some Republicans at the time. Omar immigrated to the United States from Somalia as a child refugee and became a U.S. citizen in 2000. Tlaib was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Palestinian immigrant parents.

At one point during their outbursts, Tlaib shouted that ‘Alex wasn’t a criminal,’ in apparent reference to Alex Pretti — an armed man shot and killed by federal agents amid immigration protest chaos in Minneapolis.

Later in the evening, Omar and Tlaib prematurely left the chamber while Trump was recounting the raid on Caracas that captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

Fox News Digital reached out to Omar, Tlaib and De Niro for comment and has yet to receive replies. 

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