In the full, unedited version of Donald Trump’s recent Meet the Press interview with Kristen Welker—released online by NBC but not aired in full during the broadcast—Trump made several striking remarks that were omitted from the televised segment.
Trump on Meet the Press
Meet the Press
One such moment came when Trump claimed credit for getting Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to remove tariff impact notices from the platform. “I asked him about it and he said I don’t want to do that and he took it off immediately,” Trump said, calling Bezos “a very nice guy” and suggesting a friendly relationship between the two.
Welker: What did you say to Jeff Bezos?
Trump: He’s just a very nice guy. We have a relationship. I asked him about it and he said I don’t want to do that and he took it off immediately. pic.twitter.com/lE4xtTC4lo
The removal of such notices undermines public transparency by severing the direct link between rising consumer prices and Trump’s tariff policies.
Other remarks that were cut from the interview that aired included Trump’s insistence that prices for eggs “were down 87%” under his administration, citing White House Easter egg hunts as anecdotal proof, despite Welker reminding him the price spike was caused by a bird flu outbreak.
Trump: Eggs.. you were the one who asked me. It was the first week. I didn’t even know what you were talking about. Egg prices were so high you couldn’t buy eggs. They didn’t have any eggs.. We had Easter at the WH and we had thousands of eggs and they were down 87%.
Trump also returned to debunked claims about the 2020 election, asserting the results were “rigged” and insisting he “won a lot of court cases” despite losing the vast majority.
Trump: The election was rigged…
Welker: I don’t want to look back. You took your case to court about your allegations..
Trump: There’s no question. The election was rigged. The facts are in and it’s still being litigated.
He went further to suggest that “China is eating the tariffs” rather than U.S. consumers or businesses. That is not the reality.
Trump: What people don’t understand is.. the country eats the tariff, the company eats the tariff and it’s not passed along at all… China is eating the tariffs pic.twitter.com/oC30AQokR0
These unaired statements raise questions about editorial choices in broadcast journalism, especially as Trump continues to air grievances about 60 Minutes for what he claims was an unfairly edited interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. While time constraints are common in televised interviews, withholding full conversations—especially those containing controversial or revealing statements—can fuel partisan claims of media bias.
Releasing full interviews, as MSNBC ultimately did, could help restore public trust and offer a more complete view of political figures’ positions.
May 6, 1916 Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman started the No Conscription League in the U.S. to discourage young men from registering for the draft which had passed Congress the previous month. This was prior to American troops’ being sent to Europe in what is known as World War I. Read the No-Conscription League Manifesto
May 6, 1944 Mohandas Gandhi, due to declining health, was released from his last imprisonment in India, having spent 2,338 days in jail during his lifetime.
May 6, 1954 Two American pilots and most of their crew died flying ammunition supply missions to French colonial troops under siege by Vietnamese insurgent troops under General Vo Nguyen Giap. James “Earthquake McGoon” McGovern and Wallace Buford became the first U.S. aviators to die in Vietnam. Pres. Dwight Eisenhower had not wanted to commit the U.S. military to Vietnam so shortly after the end of the war in Korea, so McGovern and Buford were working for an organization contracted by the CIA.
May 6, 1970 U.S. Senate hearings began on ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Similar amendments had been introduced in every Congress since 1923. Writer and editor Gloria Steinem testified: “During twelve years of working for a living, I’ve experienced much of the legal and social discrimination reserved for women in this country. I have been refused service in public restaurants, ordered out of public gathering places, and turned away from apartment rentals, all for the clearly stated, sole reason that I am a woman.” Gloria Steinem in 1970 Steinem’s full testimony more ERA history
May 6, 1973 14 cities across France saw demonstrations against their country’s nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific Ocean.
May 6, 1979 125,000 rallied in Washington, D.C. to oppose nuclear power.
To be clear, nothing – NOTHING – Joe Biden said 4 years, including his debate meltdown, comes anywhere close to the insanity, unreality, unhingeness, of Trump repeatedly insisting – even when the interviewer is letting his crazy lie pass – that it was a real image of his knuckles
This reporter’s front yard was ripped apart for having a Black Lives Matter sign. Then he started investigating. On this week's More To The Story, NBC News reporter @mikehixenbaugh.com talks to our friends at @revealnews.org about how that incident led him directly to America’s public schools.
every gender transition is a statement in favor of human possibility and freedom and i’m tired of hearing it talked about like it’s some kind of disease
The Attorney General of the United States gushing on camera that the President has saved two-thirds of the entire population of America from dying of a fentanyl overdose was a gut-churning lurch towards the absurd flattery lavished on personality-cult dictators by fawning subordinates.
“'They were shouting at me, threatening to rape me, chanting ‘death to Arabs.’ I thought the police would protect me from the mob, but they did nothing to intervene,' she said."
I think the tide is turning and the superexpressive attacks on the LGBTQ+ people, both adults and kids is not working well for republicans. I think they will see at local levels people are not buying it and are working to stop efforts to wipe all mention of LGBTQ+ people from society. Hugs
‘This is more than a policy victory,’ Equality Florida said.
LGBTQ advocates are celebrating several bills — including one that could have banned Pride flags flown at government buildings — stalling out this Session.
“Once again, we’ve done what many thought was impossible: not one anti-LGBTQ bill passed this session,” Equality Florida’s Executive Director Nadine Smith said in a statement Saturday.
The Legislative Session ended Friday although lawmakers failed to pass a balanced budget.
Some of the dead bills including HB 75/SB 100 that would have banned government buildings, schools and universities, from flying flags that represented a “political viewpoint.”
The proposal was sponsored by outgoing state Sen. Randy Fine before he left for Washington, D.C.
“How would we feel if the city of Palm Bay or the city of Ormond Beach flew the Make America Great Again flag from City Hall? How would we feel if a teacher hung that in their classroom?” Fine said during a March committee hearing. “The idea is whether it’s political viewpoints that we agree with or we disagree with, let’s keep that stuff out of government buildings.”
Equity Florida lobbied against the bill with its public policy director Jon Harris Maurer calling the flag ban “unnecessary, unclear, unconstitutional and dangerous.”
“It does not help Floridians struggling with insurance and housing affordability,” he said. “Instead, it is a made-up solution to a culture war for political purposes, but it will have real harms.”
Ultimately, Fine’s bill was withdrawn, failing to reach the Senate floor.
Equity Florida also heralded the defeat of other bills, including HB 1495/SB 440 to prevent governments from using the preferred pronouns for people who are transgender and other bills targeting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI.)
The organization pointed to its grassroots campaign this Session with 400 LGBTQ activists lobbying during “our largest largest advocacy week ever,” 16,000 emails sent to lawmakers and about 325 in-person meetings with legislators.
“It’s students and seniors, faith leaders and frontline workers, parents and teachers, standing together and making sure lawmakers hear us loud and clear: we will not back down,” Smith said in a statement.
Gabrielle Russon
Gabrielle Russon is an award-winning journalist based in Orlando. She covered the business of theme parks for the Orlando Sentinel. Her previous newspaper stops include the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Toledo Blade, Kalamazoo Gazette and Elkhart Truth as well as an internship covering the nation’s capital for the Chicago Tribune. For fun, she runs marathons. She gets her training from chasing a toddler around. Contact her at gabriellerusson@gmail.com or on Twitter @GabrielleRusson
Musk gave Trump $290 million. The quid pro quo? Deregulation.
– The NLRB dropped union-busting charges against SpaceX – The EPA backed off fines for environmental violations – The FAA continues approving launches despite rocket explosions – The FCC is giving Starlink favorable… pic.twitter.com/jH64dF6m1c
SpaceX, already one of the biggest NASA and Pentagon contractors, could win billions of dollars in new contracts if President Trump’s budget proposal is approved by Congress.
Elon Musk at the White House in April.Credit…Eric Lee/The New York Times
Eric Lipton has spent the last 18 months examining SpaceX contracts with the federal government and how federal agencies regulate SpaceX and other companies controlled by Elon Musk.
Elon Musk and SpaceX are big winners in Donald J. Trump’s 2026 spending plan.
President Trump is delivering on Mr. Musk’s wish list at both NASA and the Pentagon to reorient federal spending on space in a way likely to drive billions of dollars in new business to Mr. Musk’s space technology company, if Congress signs off on the budget plan.
At the Pentagon, Mr. Trump is calling for a massive jump in spending, an extraordinary 13 percent increase, almost entirely through allocations in a Congressional budget reconciliation plan under consideration.
The jump would happen while many other federal agencies would be slashed, in part to supercharge federal spending in two areas where SpaceX is positioned to profit: a vast missile defense system and space missions to Mars and the moon.
Mr. Trump has proposed a Golden Dome defense system to track and kill missiles headed toward U.S. targets, possibly sent by China, Russia, North Korea or other rivals.
Pentagon officials say SpaceX is considered likely to be the top recipient of this burst of new spending, which could generate billions of dollars in new contracts for the company.
That is because SpaceX manufactures both rockets that can launch military payloads into orbit and satellite systems that can deliver the surveillance and targeting tools needed for the project, which would require the largest military investments the United States has ever made in space.
Mr. Trump’s budget plan also calls for an undisclosed but large amount of new money for “U.S. space dominance to strengthen U.S. national security.”
SpaceX is already, by far, the largest recipient of Pentagon spending on existing military low-earth-orbit communications systems, and it gets the largest cut of Pentagon rocket launch contracts. Congressional approval for the plan to significantly expand this spending would be a giant win for Mr. Musk and SpaceX.
Mr. Trump’s proposed budget calls for Pentagon spending for 2026 to be $113 billion greater than for this year. But that increase would come entirely from allocations Congress is considering via its reconciliation plan for the 2025 fiscal year, according to Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former space industry executive, who pointed to a footnote in Mr. Trump’s plan.
NASA’s budget faces overall cuts in Mr. Trump’s plan, but there are increases that largely match SpaceX’s own corporation priorities.
The spending plan goes after Mr. Musk’s commercial rivals, calling for NASA to phase out funding for the Space Launch System, a rocket program being led by Boeing, and also the Orion astronaut capsule, being built by Lockheed Martin, which was part of three planned flights to take humans back to the moon.
Instead, Mr. Trump’s budget calls for “more cost effective commercial systems that would support more ambitious subsequent lunar missions,” an industry that SpaceX now dominates. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which has developed its own new rocket, also could be a big beneficiary of this shift, industry executives said Friday.
Both Blue Origin and SpaceX have moon landing systems that NASA is contracted to use and that have not, at least so far, been targeted for cuts.
“Their design is easier to do than SpaceX,” said Doug Loverro, a former NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations who has also been an adviser to the Trump administration, referring to Blue Origin’s moon landing plan.
The NASA budget also calls for $1 billion in new spending to focus on a mission to Mars, which has been the primary driving force for Mr. Musk since he first started SpaceX. He is already building a new rocket, called Starship, to attempt to deliver on this plan.
“SpaceX’s handprints are all over this,” said Mo Islam, a co-founder of Payload, a commercial space news site. “I don’t see there is any other way to look at it. SpaceX is positioned to be the primary beneficiary of the majority of these budgetary moves.”
There are some items in the NASA budget that could result in declines in spending at SpaceX, such as less spending on the International Space Station, where SpaceX delivers both cargo and astronauts.
But SpaceX still will likely emerge the winner. It recently won an $843 million contract to “de-orbit” the space station when it is retired in 2030. And Mr. Musk has pushed Mr. Trump to speed up that retirement date.
“The decision is up to the President, but my recommendation is as soon as possible,” Mr. Musk wrote on his social media platform, X, in February.
In the 2024 fiscal year, SpaceX secured $3.8 billion in federal contracts, most of it from NASA and the Pentagon. The company has taken a total of $18 billion in federal contracts overall in the last decade, a New York Times analysis of federal contracting data shows.
Experts like Mr. Loverro have long argued that NASA is too focused on an over-budget and behind-schedule moon program called Artemis, particularly the parts of the effort that rely on Boeing and Lockheed. That said, Mr. Loverro said the new spending plan “does impact SpaceX in a lot of very positive ways.”
But Mr. Harrison, the former industry executive, said it also opens up SpaceX and the Trump administration to potential criticism.
“It taints this now all with a suspicion of improper influence,” Mr. Harrison said. “Even if these are legitimate questions.”
Eric Lipton is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals.
President Trump arrives in Warren, Mich., to deliver a speech marking his 100th day in office on April 29. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
President Trump arrives in Warren, Mich., to deliver a speech marking his 100th day in office on April 29. Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
President Trump says a recession is OK in the short term, in a clip of a pre-recorded interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker” released on Friday.
Why it matters: Business owners and politicians alike have shared fears of a recession given the uncertainty surrounding the president’s tariffs.
The latest: When Welker asked Trump whether he’s “comfortable with the country potentially dipping into a recession for a period of time” if he were able to achieve his long-term goals, the president initially avoided answering the question directly.
“Some people on Wall Street say that we’re going to have the greatest economy in history. Why don’t you talk about them?” he instead said.
But after Welker pushed more, Trump responded, “Yeah, everything’s OK. I said, this is a transition period. I think we’re going to do fantastically.”
When asked if he was worried about a recession, Trump said: “Anything can happen. But I think we’re going to have the greatest economy in the history of our country. I think we’re going to have the greatest economic boom in history.”
The full interview will publish on NBCNews.com on Sunday.
Students are shown at Carl Wunsche Sr. High School, 900 Wunsche Loop, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, in Spring.
Melissa Phillip/Staff Photographer
A lawmaker pushing to ban non-human behavior in schools says he based his bill on a conversation with a school administrator, who has since denied so-called furries are a problem in her district.
During an at-times tense hearing Tuesday night, Republican state Rep. Stan Gerdes said he filed the bill after hearing “reports of the presence of a furry” in a Smithville school. He said he called the district superintendent in November, who told him “this is happening in districts across the state” and schools don’t have the ability to stop it.
“We just want to help them have the tools to get some of the distractions out of the classroom so we can get back to teaching time,” Gerdes told the House Public Education Committee.
But the Smithville school district issued a public statement last month disputing Gerdes’ claims. It said Superintendent Cheryl Burns told Gerdes there were no litter boxes on campus for use by students dressed as cats, but as a courtesy to the lawmaker, she “made the extra effort to walk the campus to confirm.”
“At this time, the District has no concerns related to students behaving as anything but typical children,” the statement said.
Still, Gerdes argued the legislation was needed to curb the “extremely concerning” trend while providing scant evidence furries are a problem, or even present, in Texas schools.
Both Gov. Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows have backed the “Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education (F.U.R.R.I.E.S) Act,” which would prohibit any “non-human behavior” by a student, including wearing animal ears or barking, meowing or hissing.
The bill includes exceptions for sports mascots or kids in school plays and would only apply to grades 6-12. Still, it includes a clause that would amend the family code to deem schools “allowing or encouraging” a child to “develop a dependence on or a belief that non-human behaviors are societally acceptable” as child abuse.
The furries trend has existed for years, at least among adults. Many like taking on animal personas, dressing up in costumes and attending gatherings. The annual Anthrocon convention in Pittsburgh draws thousands.
Rumors about classrooms adapting to child furries appeared to start online in 2022. School districts in Iowa, Michigan and Nebraska later debunked claims they were providing litter boxes in bathrooms, and the fact-checking team at PolitiFact could not find any credible news reports that supported the claim.
Under questioning from a Democrat on the panel, who cast the bill as part of a “smear campaign” against public schools, Gerdes could not point to a single example of a school providing litter boxes to students.
Gerdes, a two-term legislator and past aide to former Gov. Rick Perry, said his office has received “some reports of them.”
“Did I go to these school districts and visit and see it with my own eyes? No,” Gerdes said.
When Gerdes introduced the legislation last month, he said he fully expected members of the subculture he was targeting to show up at the Capitol “in full furry vengeance” when the bill was heard.
“Just to be clear — they won’t be getting any litter boxes in the Texas Capitol,” the Smithville Republican said in a press release announcing the bill.
But there were no so-called furries or litter boxes at the late-night hearing Tuesday. Instead, the four people who showed up to testify against the measure included a public school teacher and a Texan who worried the measure could affect students with disabilities.
State Rep. James Talarico, a Round Rock Democrat who grilled Gerdes on the legislation, called the bill a “joke,” but said it would have serious consequences for educators. Teachers and schools could face fines of $10,000 to $25,000 for allowing behavior prohibited by the bill.
Talarico questioned whether a student licking their fingers after eating Cheetos would be prohibited by language in the bill, which defines “non-human behavior” as “licking oneself or others for the purpose of grooming or maintenance.” He asked whether students reading “Animal Farm” would be flouting the law if they made sounds like the characters in the book.
Gerdes said neither would meet the intent of the bill, and said he would be open to working with Talarico on the language to make him more comfortable with the legislation.
“I’m not comfortable with any bill that’s going after a non-existent issue,” Talarico responded. He cast the bill as part of an effort by Republicans to undermine public schools.
“Governor Abbott has used this litter box rumor to paint our schools in the worst possible light,” Talarico said. “That’s because if you want to defund neighborhood schools across the state, you have to get Texans to turn against their public schools. So you call librarians groomers, you accuse teachers of indoctrination, and now you say that schools are providing litter boxes to students. That’s how all of this is tied together.”
Gerdes denied the accusation. Later in the hearing, state Rep. Jeff Leach, a Plano Republican, defended Gerdes as a supporter of public schools and cast Talarico’s opposition to the legislation as part of an “obsession” with the governor.
“His hatred for Gov. Abbott and for private school vouchers or educational savings accounts has just gone too far,” Leach said. “You’re highly respected,” he told Gerdes, “and this bill doesn’t change that.”
The committee left the measure, House Bill 54, pending.
Gabrielle Russon
Scottie's Playtime 