President Donald Trump claimed in a CNBC interview Tuesday that he had “nothing to do with” Attorney General Pam Bondi’s grand jury probe into Obama officials—but he’s certainly not mad about it.

Anchor Joe Kernan asked the president, who called in to the program, “You’ve talked about how you want success, not retribution. The Justice Department is now tapping a grand jury to look into the intelligence community’s assessment of what was happening with Russia [in the 2016 U.S. election]. You have nothing to do with directing the Justice Department in that?”

“Nope, I have nothing to do with it. Pam is doing a great job,” Trump responded. “I will tell you this: They deserve it. I was happy to hear it,” he continued.

Years after a bipartisan Senate panel and the CIA confirmed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassified documents that she claimed proved otherwise. Now Bondi plans to subpoena Obama-era officials for their purported role in what Trump has deemed the Russia “hoax.”

Whether or not Trump directed Bondi to relitigate an already-closed chapter of his history—conveniently launched at the same time he’s being walloped by his base for his mishandling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and documented proximity to the dead pedophile—we can’t say for sure. But it’s certainly in line with the years of disinformation he’s spread about the matter, and his appetite for revenge.

Speaking of relitigating, Trump continued in his response to Kernan, claiming that multiple elections have been “rigged”: “What they did with the election—what they did with the last election too, but it was too big to rig—what they did in the 2020 election is grotesque, I mean that was a rigged election 100 percent.”

Kernan laughed, responding, “We can’t relitigate that. We can’t relitigate that.”

Hearing his interviewer’s casual comeback, Trump observed, “You know, a year ago you would’ve been upset if I said that. Today it’s different. Now I say it all the time: It was a rigged election.”

He’s not wrong. Trump’s relentless lies have browbeaten the American people into submission, and his administration’s claims that there was no Russian interference in the 2016 election are just another example, whether Trump’s behind the probe or not.

Now that Congress is in summer recess, homebound Republican lawmakers are learning just how much their constituents hate the president’s policies.

In his first town hall since voting in favor of Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” Nebraska Representative Mike Flood had no remedy for the fire and fury of his base, who practically roasted him alive Monday night for Flood’s ongoing support for Trump.

Flood faced a barrage of excoriating questions during the jam-packed town hall, in which voters demanded to understand why their local lawmaker would vote in favor of the president’s tax bill and his immigration policies, accusing him of supporting a “fascist machine.” At one point, the crowd broke into a furious chant: “Tax the rich.”

“My question is fiscal. With 450 million FEMA dollars being reallocated to open Alligator Alcatraz, and 600 million taxpayer FEMA dollars being used to now open more concentration camps, and ICE burning through 8.4 million dollars a day to illegally detain people—how much does it cost for fascism?” one woman pressed Flood as the crowd behind her cheered. “How much do the taxpayers have to pay for a fascist country?”

But Flood’s response was no different from the party line, effectively echoing Trump’s “mandate from the people” ideology to advance undemocratic ideals.

“Americans went to the polls in November, and they had a choice between a Democratic candidate that had an open border, no enforcement, fentanyl, drugs, human trafficking, and they had a choice between that and a candidate that said close the border, get illegal immigrants out of our country, stop the fentanyl, stop the human trafficking, stop the drugs, stop the crime, stop the violence,” Flood said. “That’s what Americans voted for.

“Americans voted for a border that is secure, and I support the president enforcing our immigration laws, which, by the way, were written by Congress,” he added.

Flood’s constituents also harangued him for failing to protect SNAP benefits, veterans’ programs, and health care access, and for supporting Trump as the president circumnavigates and avoids his own home-brewed Epstein scandal.

“Let’s be very clear—at the next pro forma session of the Congress, you will find my name as a sponsor on a resolution from the House Rules Committee to release the Epstein files to protect the victims and not re-victimize them again,” Flood said, stating that he was for the release of the records despite the fact that he—along with every other Republican in the House—voted against a Democrat-led effort last month to make the files public.

The crowd, which at 750 people was the largest at one of Flood’s town halls yet, repeatedly booed the lawmaker almost from the very start. At one point, unsatisfied with his answers, constituents broke out into chants of, “Vote him out!”

Flood is unlikely to be the only conservative facing enormous backlash at home. Republicans have been instructed by the National Republican Congressional Committee to focus their time at home in August on selling Trump’s agenda to voters.

Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows plans to sign warrants to track down and arrest more than 50 Democrats who left the state over the........

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