President Donald Trump is suggesting he wants to make his acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, permanent.

Critics have charged that Trump has repeatedly pressed for a Justice Department loyal to him rather than independent, and warned he has wanted the attorney general to act as his personal attorney. Now, in Todd Blanche, he may have the attorney general he always wanted.

Two months ago Blanche, who once served as Trump’s personal attorney, became the acting United States attorney general, after Trump terminated Pam Bondi.

On Wednesday, Trump was asked if Blanche would become the permanent attorney general.

“I think he will,” Trump told Pod Force One, according to The Guardian.

“Todd’s doing a very good job at DOJ,” Trump also said, according to video of the interview.

Asked if he had anyone else in mind for the role, Trump replied, “No, no.”

“I wanted to see how he’s received, you know, we put him as acting, and he’s done a very good job, but I’ve known him a long time,” Trump said.

When pressed if Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis might be among candidates for attorney general, Trump said no.

“No, Ron’s very good,” the president remarked.

“There are some good names, though. I had never thought, Ron never talked about it. He’s a governor, doing a good job. But Ron’s good. He is a friend of mine. Just named an airport after me, you know?”

“They named Palm Beach International Airport, The President Donald J. Trump International Airport,” he said, calling it “a great honor.”

Asked if he was “happy with the pace of what the Department of Justice is doing?” Trump replied, “Well, much more so now than at the beginning,” suggesting he was dissatisfied with Bondi.

Critics had charged that Bondi would become too loyal to the president.

During her confirmation hearing, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), said that Trump “has made it clear that he values one thing above all else in an Attorney General: loyalty.”

In April, The Guardian reported that “Blanche has aggressively moved to deploy the department’s resources to please Donald Trump, leaving little doubt about how the president’s former personal attorney would further politicize the department if his status atop US law enforcement becomes permanent.”

Blanche recently came under fire for signing an order stating that Trump and his family could never be investigated by the IRS.

“The memo prohibits the IRS from pursuing claims against Trump, his family or his businesses, saying the agency ‘releases, waives, acquits’ its pending action and is ‘forever barred and precluded’ from pursuing claims against the president,” The Hill reported. “The New York Times and ProPublica previously found a years-long audit of his tax bill could cost Trump as much as $100 million.”

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President Donald Trump has earned a new moniker: “commander in thief,” writes New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who chastises the president for his efforts to engage in a “brazen, in-your-face attempted heist of the U.S. Treasury to benefit himself, his family and his political allies.” Those allies could include Trump’s supporters who were present at the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — whom Friedman labels “phony defenders of freedom’s frontier.”

Friedman also accuses Trump of having “conspired with his own Justice Department, headed by his former personal lawyer, to use taxpayer money to create a $1.776 billion political slush fund.”

Having a president who “behaves like a commander in thief — not a commander in chief — is costing us dearly at home and abroad,” he writes. “This perversion of the American presidency is undermining the very alliance structure that won two world wars and the Cold War and generated one of history’s longest ages of peace and prosperity. Every day we tolerate such behavior we endanger our children’s future.”

Friedman argues those are just a few of several reasons why Trump has failed as commander in chief.

Trump has not even tried to get Democrats to support his war against Iran.

“Generally, when our nation has been at war, the commander in chief’s top domestic priority is to keep the country united,” says Friedman. “Because there is nothing more demoralizing for U.S. troops fighting abroad than to look back and see our country ripping itself apart at home.” And he warns that “seeing America at war with itself” just encourages the enemy.

Friedman also expresses alarm at how Trump’s actions toward America’s allies have forced them to engage in deterrence — not just against Russia, but against America.

“Our allies have watched Trump threaten to make Canada the 51st state and to seize Greenland from Denmark,” writes Friedman. “They have watched him start a war with Iran without consulting NATO and then demand that NATO help rescue us from what has turned into a mess. They have watched him slash U.S. financial assistance to Ukraine, put the Russian aggressor on the same moral footing as that country and then top it all off with reckless, ill-conceived tariffs on all our allies.”

Friedman also points to the early days of Trump’s second term, when the president “forced Ukraine to give the United States access to critical minerals in return for U.S. help against a Russian Army trying to overrun it. This is the real ‘Trump Doctrine’: Oppose America, and I will tariff you; depend on America, and I will extort you.”

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Graham Platner has survived a string of scandals in his run for Maine’s Democratic U.S. Senate nomination. But his latest one “looks different,” says CNN analyst Harry Enten.

Platner seemed to have survived his Nazi-linked tattoo scandal, his “angry and offensive” Reddit comments scandal, and the scandal surrounding him “amplifying a post by a notorious anti-semite on social media and appearing on a podcast with a different antisemitic conspiracy theorist,” as TIME reported last month.

Platner’s latest scandal involved his alleged sexually explicit texts to women who were not his wife, texts his wife reportedly told his campaign about last year.

Campaign aides “ultimately decided the texts were a private matter that was being handled by the couple in marriage counseling, a campaign official said,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

But now, Enten says, Google searches for “Graham Platner” and “Maine” have been up “significantly” over the past few days.

“We’re talking about up 275 percent over the last three days versus the three-month average, and more than that, more people searched for him on Sunday in Maine than at any point that I could find, even given the past revelations, about the tattoos, as well,” says Enten. “So it seems to me that this time may, in fact, be different where Mainers’ focus on Graham Platner is higher.”

Enten found that “one of our first glimpses into how this might affect Platner’s electoral fortunes is from the prediction market, so you can see that’s right here in the Kalshi prediction market, chance to win the Maine Senate race.”

“About 10 days ago, Democrats had a 70% chance — that’s essentially Platner — had a 70 percent chance of winning the general election. Now, that number has fallen. It’s fallen rather significantly.”

Platner has dropped from 70 percent to 59 percent against incumbent GOP Senator Susan Collins. Enten says that is now “well within the margin of error.”

“I dare say too close to call, although Platner is still favored, but his chances have gone down significantly and Collins’ have gone up significantly.”

Polls have consistently underestimated Collins, Enten noted.

Meanwhile, Puck News reports that Democrats are “fretting that their best chance in decades to unseat” Collins is being “jeopardized” by the latest Platner scandal.

Puck notes that “multiple Democrats have described a sense of resignation” that Platner “is the only candidate they’ve got.”

But Maine’s Democratic incumbent Governor Janet Mills, “who suspended her state’s Senate primary, has reminded voters her name is still on the ballot.”

Why this time could be different for Platner.

-Google searches for him are way up in Maine & hit all-time high on Sunday
-Market odds have moved ~10 pt in Collins’ direction
-Collins has long history of beating her polls by 8+ pt

Hard for Dems to win the Senate without Maine. pic.twitter.com/HcwtwDfyAX

— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) June 2, 2026

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