The Michael Fanone Show

Trump has spent years telling everybody how much he respects women, and last year he bragged about having more women in his Cabinet than any Republican president. Now look at the count. Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and Tulsi Gabbard are gone, and men replaced all four. Then on November 6, Trump announced that Susie Wiles, the first woman ever to serve as White House chief of staff,...

Dana Bash asked Todd Blanche what crime he was talking about. That’s a fair question for the man running the Justice Department. His answer was basically that it depends. On CNN, Blanche didn’t rule out DOJ investigations into Democratic lawmakers after Trump called for criminal probes, and he never named a specific offense by any of them. He also said he welcomes oversight. Then he warned, “I wou...

Trump endorsed Amir Hassan for Congress in Michigan’s 8th District, a seat Republicans were targeting. Hassan is a Flint native and Navy veteran who worked in federal law enforcement. In the August primary he lost to Tom Smith by about 17 points, 50 percent to 33. Smith had suspended his campaign weeks earlier and endorsed somebody else. I worked narcotics. You can listen to somebody tell you what...

John Fetterman taped a video for the Republican convention, according to the script. A sitting Democratic senator handed Republicans a clip of him taking a shot at his own party. He wasn’t even on the ballot. After the votes came in, former Rep. Dan Kildee said, “Last night’s big loser was John Fetterman,” and “Chuck doesn’t need John Fetterman anymore.” My reaction was: finally. I endorsed Fetter...

Six people went to a protest outside an immigration facility in Broadview, Illinois. The Trump administration charged them with conspiring to impede a federal agent. Then the case fell apart after Judge April Perry found apparent misconduct in how prosecutors handled the grand jury. Now she’s asking whether the prosecutors should face consequences, and two government lawyers have asked to get off...

Brandon Herrera, the MAGA gun YouTuber running for Congress in West Texas, saved one last surprise for Election Day. He posted a photo of his opponent, Katy Padilla Stout, and claimed the guy standing next to her was somebody he’d had inside her campaign. Another gun YouTuber, King Trout, jumped in with a “teehee.” Then the voters spoke. Padilla Stout, an attorney and former teacher, flipped the s...

“Lawyer up.” Two words. That’s what Rep. Robert Garcia posted to Trump’s administration on election night after Democrats won the House. Now Democrats hold both chambers. They don’t get committee gavels or subpoena power until January. The White House is already calling it a witch hunt. I spent 20 years as a cop. People with money, titles, and the president’s phone number don’t get their own ruleb...

Trump spent a month telling Republicans to treat this election like his name was on the ballot. Democrats won both the House and the Senate. So who is he blaming? Not himself. He’s blaming Fox fucking News, then he called into Fox for a 22-minute interview. He congratulated Democrats, which is what a president should do. But he said the results weren’t about him and put the blame on candidates who...

Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s first campaign manager and Kristi Noem’s gatekeeper at DHS, is reportedly under criminal investigation. One of the guys selling that “drain the swamp” bullshit. NBC reported he sought payments from GEO Group, a private prison company seeking DHS contracts. One source called it a “success fee.” Oversight Democrats allege that when the deal went nowhere, he told a DHS offi...

Imagine you vote for somebody, they win, and Washington decides your district doesn’t get to seat them. According to reporting, that’s being openly entertained in a circle of MAGA influencers heading into the midterms. Retired Air Force colonel Rob Maness floated a hypothetical about Ilhan Omar being charged and said he wouldn’t seat her as speaker, election or not. I spent twenty years as a cop....

Haley Stevens lost Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary to Abdul El-Sayed by less than a point. Then she walked into a Detroit church and endorsed the Trump-backed Republican, Mike Rogers. Her explanation is that she’s standing for her country. Are you fucking kidding me? You don’t have to like the guy who beat you. You don’t even have to campaign for him. But staying home and actively helping the...

Bill Maher sat down with Karoline Leavitt, and the conversation turned into how nice Trump is when you get invited over. He listens. He lets Bill talk. He’s doing wonderful things with the decorating. Maher said, “America does need a ballroom.” Thank fucking God somebody’s standing up for Americans who need somewhere more elegant to have dinner with the president. To be fair, Maher did criticize T...

A police officer shot and killed one-year-old Kohen Wiley during a shoplifting call at a Walmart in Senatobia, Mississippi. The AG’s office says the force was justified. The family still hasn’t seen the body-camera footage. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation says the driver drove toward officers and nearly struck one. Kohen’s mother disputes that and denies they stole anything. AP reports nei...

California voters already have their ballots. Now Trump’s Justice Department wants thousands of them set aside, and Trump is threatening election officials with prison. According to DOJ’s October 15 filing, federal agencies identified roughly 20,000 “likely” noncitizens who were sent mail ballots. Likely is doing a lot of work. California’s Secretary of State Shirley Weber says the government hasn...

French high schoolers walked out because they didn’t have enough teachers. Then workers, parents, and even a mayor who put himself between cops and kids showed up. Nobody told those kids to wait their turn. So what the fuck, America? We’ve got citizens shot dead by federal immigration agents and masked men hauling people off our streets. And by tonight we’re figuring out dinner and getting the kid...

Saturday on the National Mall. Turnstile playing a free show to about 60,000 people, raising money for humanitarian relief. I was there with my daughter Piper. Then Park Police moved horses into the crowd. I heard officers say they were responding to moshing and crowd-surfing. I saw no fight where we were. What I saw was a horse backing into people, a father with his little girl on his shoulders,...

Charlotte cops allegedly had a competition to see who could pull over the most Black drivers, according to WBTV’s sources. What the fuck are you doing wearing a badge if that’s how you see the people you swore to protect? I did this job for twenty years. Treating a stop like a game makes me sick. The chief confirmed the messages showed racial, sexual and religious bias going back years. Four offic...

You’re an American citizen. You tell the agents you’re American. You ask them to check. And somehow you’re the one who has to prove this shouldn’t be happening. DHS has issued flat denials about mistakenly arresting citizens and racial profiling. Then ProPublica compiled more than 500 citizens detained during this administration’s enforcement operations, including at least 63 who were recording. A...

ICE’s own death reviews found care outside practice limits in 27 cases, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Then the reports vanished from its website. I’ve taken people into custody. You don’t get to lock somebody up, control whether they can get help, and shrug when they don’t make it. Custody isn’t a fucking waiver of responsibility. Who pulled the reports? What changed after? We need out...

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin went on a friendly podcast and said “something’s going to happen” in the Omar investigation. Then agents showed up at her door. I worked investigations for years. You build the case first. You don’t tease the target in public. And I’d want to see that affidavit. A judge signed off on the warrant, and that belongs in this story. She hasn’t been charged,...

I’ve spent a lot of time on ICE. The shootings. The bodycam footage that’s conveniently missing. The official stories that fall apart the second somebody checks them. Every time, I ask the same question: how does this keep happening without anyone being held to account? New reporting gives us the answer, and it’s bigger than any single incident. It’s a system built to protect the agency. Aggressiv...

I’m not interested in speeches about “restoring norms.” Here’s what I want to see from Democrats. Investigate this administration’s unlawful conduct. All of it. Prosecute the crimes you can actually prove, across the board, no exceptions and no favorites. Remove corrupt officials through lawful processes, not stunts. And then rebuild the system that let all of this happen in the first place. Becau...

The Associated Press looked at 102 felony-assault cases the Trump DOJ brought against protesters in LA, Chicago, Portland, and DC. Twelve had reached trial when AP published. None ended in a felony-assault conviction. Acquittals, mistrials, dismissals. Across the group, 41 percent were dismissed and 34 percent ended in misdemeanor pleas. I need to be careful here. A mistrial isn’t an acquittal. A...

Kash Patel’s FBI has commissioned a classified report examining the Bureau’s past institutional failures. I spent years working alongside federal agents, and I’ll say this: self-examination is a good thing. Every serious law enforcement agency needs to look hard at where it went wrong. But how you do it matters. An honest review starts with independence. Who’s doing the work, and do they answer to...

A new Reuters investigation lays out how Trump’s obsession with voting machines spread across federal agencies. Not one office. Multiple agencies, pulled into the same project. I spent years as a police officer, and here’s the question I’d ask any investigator: what’s the predicate? Is there evidence of a crime, a credible allegation, an actual vulnerability? Then you investigate, follow the facts...