Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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• 🇺🇸 President Trump today attended the dignified transfer of four U.S. service members recently killed in the Middle East, his third such ceremony amid the Iran war. He told reporters that his message to grieving families will be: "We love you, we love your child." Get the latest.
• 🇮🇱 The White House and the Israeli Prime Minister's Office are discussing a potential Oval Office meeting between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu next week. More from Barak Ravid.

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Judge questions Hegseth’s testosterone policy U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s new initiative to test and treat troops for low testosterone has prompted a federal judge to question the differences between that kind of testosterone replacement therapy and hormone treatment for transgender men in the military. Read more.

What to know: U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington raised the question Wednesday in an ongoing lawsuit against President Donald Trump's ban on transgender troops. Reyes ordered both parties in the lawsuit to address “the similarities and differences” in administering testosterone replacement therapy “for trans men compared to other service members, including cis individuals.” Reyes’ order comes a week after Hegseth announced the new screening program, calling it necessary to allow troops to operate at their “absolute best.”

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Navy revises what information about sailors can be released, citing internal misinterpretation

WASHINGTON (AP) — Citing an internal misinterpretation of a change in policy, the U.S. Navy is backing away from statements that it would begin to restrict press and public access to sailors’ service histories — information that has been freely offered for decades.

https://apnews.com/article/media-navy-press-policy-access-pentagon-b4d5d0f60709692e107e3331370422cd?

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Nepal aid workers left jobless by USAID cuts turn to sex work to survive After the United States slashed its foreign aid funding last year, more than 280,000 aid workers worldwide lost their jobs. AP global investigative reporter Kristen Gelineau found that in Nepal, LGBTQ+ aid workers left jobless have turned to sex work to survive. Read the full story here. Gelineau sat down for a Q&A to take us behind the scenes of telling such a difficult story. Here is an excerpt:

Why did you decide to focus on these aid workers? The few stories that have been done have largely focused on American USAID staffers, even though they make up less than 10% of those left jobless by the cuts. Most of the workers who lost their jobs live overseas, often in conflict zones or impoverished countries where other job options are scarce to nonexistent. I wanted to know what had happened to those people, who are particularly vulnerable and face very different challenges to Americans.   How did you find the workers and get them to talk? It took months to find and earn the trust of these workers, who are highly traumatized. This required working through layers of contacts within Nepal’s LGBTQ+ community, sharing examples of my previous work to demonstrate that I have a history of reporting ethically on marginalized communities, and then initially making contact over text messages before working our way up to in-person interviews.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Gelineau’s full behind-the-scenes Q&A   Telling the story through photos   WATCH: Former aid workers in their own words

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Trump, 80, Threatens to Cry if He Doesn’t Get His Way

The octogenarian president is acting like a 2-year-old.

Donald Trump is threatening to cry if he doesn’t get what he wants.

The 80-year-old president held a rally in Marietta, Georgia, where he ranted about the Senate blocking the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and ID to be shown at the polling booth.

The bill has already passed the House but Democrats have filibustered the bill in the Senate, meaning it needs a supermajority of 60 votes to pass. Republicans hold the Senate 53-47.

Republican senators were in Trump’s firing line at the rally, where he demanded the filibuster be abolished and warned that next time the Democrats seize power they would get rid of it anyway for their own ends.

“We’re not going to be able to take it much longer when they can’t get past voter ID, proof of citizenship, no mail-in ballots because they’re crooked as hell,” Trump ranted. “So right now, Congress is working to get as much of our plan as possible into the budget bill to identify and really terminate.

“Look, what they should do? Very simple. A lot of you don’t know about the filibuster. They should terminate the filibuster and approve everything. Because the Democrats are going to do it. The Democrats are going to terminate the filibuster as soon as they have a chance. And then they’re gonna approve Puerto Rico and D.C. as a state. They got four more senators. They’re gonna end up with 12 more congressmen. They’re going to get like 40 electoral votes.”The president then conjured up a bizarre image, picturing himself sitting crying at home if the bill failed to get through, powerless to do anything about it.“If they are allowed to do that, by that time I’ll be sitting home,” he said. “And I’m not a big crier. I don’t think you wanna see me cry, you know? There are some people they do very well when they cry, but you don’t wanna see me cry. But I may be crying when I’ll be sitting home, and I’ll say, I told them they got to really terminate the filibuster…”

He then spun off on a bizarre tangent about his political rivals, before refinding his thread.

“They should terminate the filibuster,” he continued. “Everybody call John Thune at the Senate—he’s the leader of the Republican Party—and tell them to get this stuff approved. So we’re fighting so that all voters must show voter ID. We’re fighting so that all voters must provide proof of citizenship, OK? And also the no mail-in ballots. Very important.”

Thune has previously rejected Trump’s demands, saying there aren’t enough votes to push the bill through.

Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer has positioned the Democrats as a major hurdle to Trump’s bill, telling The Hill: “Trump said Republicans have to terminate the filibuster, or we’ll have a shutdown in September. Mr. President, the SAVE Act ain’t passing. It ain’t passing in the Senate, it ain’t passing with Democrats, and it ain’t passing in the courts. It’s not happening, so give up on that.”

“Trump said the quiet part out loud. He’s willing to shut down the government to get his way,” he added.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-80-threatens-to-cry-if-he-doesnt-get-his-way/?

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Trump Thirsts Over His Eighth War in Unlikely Country

The Trump administration is reportedly torn over whether to go forward with the strikes.

President Donald Trump is now considering waging another war—this time in the West African country of Mali.

The Trump administration is looking to strike an al-Qaeda-affiliated group known as JNIM, the Washington Post has reported, citing current and former U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations.

If approved, it would mark the eighth country that Trump, who has dubbed himself “president of peace,” has ordered strikes on in his second term.

But senior U.S. officials are reportedly in disagreement on whether they should actually attack the militant group. National Security Council’s senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, is the most vocal advocate for striking them, the Post reported.

Gorka, who has been a prominent architect of U.S. counterterrorism policy under the second Trump administration, long pushed for the U.S. to get involved in countering Islamist extremism. He has been an outspoken advocate for confronting Iran, and has been highly critical of those who have questioned the administration’s current war there.

In recent years, Mali has seen bouts of violence between Islamist militant groups and the Russian mercenaries whom the government hired to get the country under control.

The militant groups, in particular the JNIM, which the administration is considering striking, have grown increasingly powerful and have turned the nation into a terrorism hotspot.

Mali had been supported by French troops and U.N. forces, but after its former government President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was toppled in a coup, the new military-led government effectively expelled them and tore up security cooperation with the U.S.

Following the withdrawal of French and U.N. forces from Mali in 2023, Russia’s military and paramilitary forces have joined with Mali’s junta to try and combat Islamist insurgents, including groups like the al-Qaeda linked JNIM.

But since the Russians showed up, the security situation has remained very volatile as the Russian-backed forces have seen major defeats. The Sahel region has turned into the world’s deadliest terrorism hot spot, according to the Global Terrorism Index.

When reached for comment, the Pentagon declined to comment on the Mali strike plans, and referred the Daily Beast to the White House, which did not confirm or deny the potential strikes.

A White House official told the Daily Beast that the U.S. “hopes the Alliance of Sahel States prevails against terrorism, but the blame for the deteriorating security situation falls upon Russia, who has proven to be an ineffective security partner for Mali.”

The official said the U.S. “has been urging North and West African governments to purchase U.S. equipment and services to support their war efforts against the terrorists.”

“We urge regional partners and NATO allies to support the Alliance of Sahel States in their war against JNIM and ISIS,” the official added.

The Alliance of Sahel States includes Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, West African countries whose military-led governments have turned to Russia for security help after overthrowing their democratically elected governments and cutting ties with the U.S. and Europe.

A new skirmish in Africa comes as Trump has repeatedly boasted that he has ended eight wars during his second administration.

Trump has claimed he has ended conflicts between Israel and Hamas, Pakistan and India, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, Cambodia and Thailand, and Serbia and Kosovo.

In reality, several of these conflicts were not full-fledged wars, nor have they been completely resolved.

Before his war with Iran, the president had also been claiming that he ended conflicts between Israel and Iran, but those claims have gone away after Israel and the U.S. together launched strikes on the country starting on February 28.

Potential military action in Mali would only add to the list of countries Trump has ordered strikes against, which includes Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela, whose former president the administration kidnapped in January.

Trump has also threatened to take several places by force, but those have not materialized.

These include Greenland, Canada, Cuba, the Gaza Strip, which he has called an “oceanfront property” and the “Riviera of the Middle East,” and Panama, to gain control of the Panama Canal.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-thirsts-over-his-eighth-war-in-unlikely-country/?

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Republicans Humiliated Trump With Bombshell War Rebuke Vote

The president faces growing opposition from lawmakers to his war in Iran.

The House delivered a stinging rebuke to Donald Trump’s war in Iran and demanded the president end hostilities in the Middle East with the passage of a war powers resolution.

Trump’s war has become increasingly unpopular among voters, as it approaches six months since he first launched strikes and the administration fails to deliver a clear message on its path forward.

The final vote on Thursday on the resolution was 214 to 208, with four Republicans joining Democrats to condemn Trump’s war.

Republican Reps. Thomas Massie, Tom Barrett, Warren Davidson, and Brian Fitzpatrick voted for the resolution. Seven Republicans and two Democrats did not vote.

While the passage of the resolution in the House alone does not have the power to stop the president from waging war, and it faces a nearly impossible path forward, it is a stark reminder that the president does not have the backing of the House.

As the resolution passed, a cheer rang out in the House chamber among members of Congress who are fiercely against Trump’s war. It comes as the U.S. carried out its twelfth consecutive night of strikes against Iran on Wednesday in a conflict that has no end in sight. While the resolution passed in the House, a similar rebuke was blocked in the Senate on Thursday. It went down 47 to 49. GOP Sen. Susan Collins voted for it while Democratic Sen. John Fetterman voted against it. Senators Katie Britt, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul did not vote.

On Wednesday, Trump even threatened that the U.S. would potentially carry out war crimes by targeting Iranian plants and bridges for every Iranian attack on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz.

The House vote came after Iranian strikes killed four U.S. service members in the Middle East over the weekend, bringing the number of American casualties in the war to 18. Hundreds have also been wounded.

Trump attended the dignified transfer of U.S. service members at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Wednesday before jetting to a campaign-style rally in Georgia where he referred to the war as a “skirmish” and insisted Iran wanted to make a deal before later dancing on stage to the YMCA.

But the Trump administration is seeking $70 billion in taxpayer funds for the war from Congress as Americans struggle to make ends meet, with the conflict driving up prices back home.

The national average price for a gallon of gas ticked up above $4 again this week, according to GasBuddy.com, which warned the national average could reach $4.25 to $4.40 in the next couple of weeks.

The House’s passage of the war powers resolution came right before members skip town for a five-week recess, and they do not return until August 31, but they could face increasing wrath over the war back in their districts with just months to go before the midterms.

A recent poll by Politico found that support for the war has dramatically dropped even among Trump voters. Support among those who identify as MAGA dropped from 50 percent in May to 37 percent in July. Nearly one in five MAGA voters said the war should not continue.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-humiliated-as-republicans-join-bombshell-war-rebuke/?

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Pentagon Pete Purge Victims Expose Petty Reason They Were Ousted

Officers forced out under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership shakeup say the real motive isn’t reform.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is denying promotions and pushing out officers who raise questions about his directives, according to insiders.

Two former officers told MS NOW they were pushed out of their jobs and forced to retire early after questioning command decisions. The officers spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns that the Pentagon would retaliate against them and try to strip them of their retirement pensions.

The White House told the Daily Beast in a statement, “People who lie to liberal outlets like MS NOW obviously cannot be trusted with high-stakes national security roles at the Pentagon.”

Over the past year-and-a-half, Hegseth has fired or sidelined nearly three dozen general officers and admirals and blocked the promotion of 40 senior colonels or Navy captains selected for flag rank, a pace widely described as unprecedented. Targets have included women, people of color, judge advocate generals and officers tied to events Hegseth believes were mishandled.

Most recently, Gen. Christopher Donahue, the top Army commander for Europe and Africa and a widely respected former Delta Force leader, abruptly relinquished his role. Donahue is best known as the last U.S. soldier to leave Afghanistan during the chaotic 2021 withdrawal, which Hegseth has repeatedly blasted as “chaotic,” “disastrous” and a “humiliating retreat.”

His exit follows a string of similar departures, including Navy Secretary John Phelan, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, and Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, the military’s representative to NATO, who was dismissed over what the Pentagon called “a loss of confidence in her ability to lead.”

The departures have become known as the “Pentagon purge,” which Hegseth outlined in a May 2025 memo ordering senior leadership to slash the number of flag and general officers across the forces, saying the goal was to “streamline leadership.”

Acting Pentagon Press Secretary Joel Valdez pushed back on the criticism, saying, “Not a single general officer or flag officer has been fired raising concerns about any issue. That charge is completely false. If they believe what they’re saying to be true, then they should put their names on their statements on the record.”

One of the former officers who spoke to MS NOW called it hypocritical for Hegseth to claim he wants to focus on warfighters while removing someone like Donahue, who commanded the Army’s Delta Force.

Hegseth “is intimidated by people who have real warfighting background and don’t just talk about the warrior ethos,” the officer said, adding, “I think he just can’t stand people around who will call him on his bulls--t.”

Hegseth served as an Army National Guard infantry officer.

Another former officer said the firings aren’t about reform at all, but about consolidating power, pointing to a September speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico where Hegseth issued a 10-point list of reforms aimed at “restoring a warrior ethos.”

“What he was trying to do was establish primacy over the armed forces in a public way,” the officer said. “‘We can get the most senior people in the military to do exactly what we’re going to tell them to do.’”

It comes after Hegseth effectively declared a war on women in the Armed Forces. The New York Times reported earlier this month that Hegseth, in a “highly unusual move,” defied the recommendation of a promotion board comprised of senior admirals to block seven people from achieving two-star admiral rank.

Five were women or people of color, The New York Times reported, citing Pentagon sources. This is the first time in a decade that no active-duty female Navy officers are likely to be promoted to admiral.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-pete-hegseth-purge-victims-expose-petty-reason-they-were-ousted/?

ps:We all know that and anyone that says they didn't are lying to themselves!!

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Government withdraws subpoenas of 3 reporters for The New York Times after admitting legal errors

NEW YORK (AP) — Criticized by a federal judge for sloppy legal work, the government on Thursday grudgingly withdrew subpoenas that would have compelled three New York Times reporters to testify about their sources for articles about President Donald Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet.

https://apnews.com/article/usmediatimesair-force-one-42429e4d4da8accc42b6c3ddf3f4fed5?

ps:Once again this administration shows us how pathetic they are!!!!!

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Secret keeping

A little-known court tasked with handling highly sensitive deportation cases against alleged alien terrorists had lain dormant for 30 years. A first-of-its-kind case filed by the Trump administration sprang it back to life.   Trump will welcome the World Series champion Dodgers to the White House President Donald Trump is welcoming Shohei Ohtani and the reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers to the White House on Thursday with a Rose Garden event celebrating their second title in as many years. Read More.   New tariffs Dozens of America’s trading partners, from Europe to China to India, now face new tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on goods shipped to the United States, according to the office of the US Trade Representative. The new duties will apply to nearly all US imports. Read more   Saudi deal upended Less than 24 hours after the deal's signing, President Donald Trump abruptly announced that a US-Saudi civilian nuclear agreement was subject to a new condition: Saudi Arabia must normalize its diplomatic stance toward Israel. The long-awaited deal had been greeted by negative reviews. Read more

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💰 Trump rebuilds tariff playbook

The Trump administration announced a new round of tariffs of as much as 12.5% on 60 trading partners yesterday — preventing a lapse in import taxes as a temporary tariff program nears expiration, Axios' Courtenay Brown writes.

• Why it matters: It shows the White House's determination to sustain its tariff agenda as it turns to new trade laws as earlier authorities run their course or face legal challenges.

It has been one of the busiest weeks for Trump's trade agenda in months, from new tariffs on Brazil to fresh threats against Canada and now a broader new tariff authority.

🎨 The big picture: The tariffs stem from an investigation launched by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in March into whether trading partners had failed to effectively block goods made with forced labor.

• Countries that have adopted a ban on forced labor but that the U.S. judges are not enforcing effectively will face a rate of 10%. Other nations' goods will be subject to a rate of 12.5%.

👓 Between the lines: Oil and gas, certain fertilizers and some food products are among the goods exempted, reflecting concerns about economic disruption.

• Keep reading ... Full tariff announcement.

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🇸🇦 Trump's nuclear fine print

Via Truth Social

President Trump claimed yesterday that the new nuclear deal the U.S. signed with Saudi Arabia will not include uranium enrichment and requires the kingdom to normalize its relations with Israel, Axios' Barak Ravid writes. Why it matters: Trump is responding to two of the bigger criticisms of the deal — that it could open the door to nuclear enrichment and that Washington gave up leverage to push a peace deal with Israel. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman signed the deal Wednesday in Washington after more than a year of negotiations. Trump wrote on Truth Social yesterday that it's "totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords." The nuclear negotiations began under the Biden administration as part of a broader deal that included a U.S.–Saudi defense treaty and required Saudi Arabia to sign a peace deal with Israel. Keep reading.

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Trump imposes new tariffs President Donald Trump is going ahead with new double-digit tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners just as the clock runs out Friday on stopgap levies he imposed after a stinging defeat at the Supreme Court. Read more.

What to know: The United States will slap taxes of 10% to 12.5% on imports from 60 trading partners accounting for 99% of U.S. imports, charging that they have inadequately enforced bans on goods produced by forced labor. The new tariffs will take effect just as temporary 10% worldwide tariffs expire Friday. Trump had turned to those temporary levies after the Supreme Court struck down his biggest and boldest tariffs in February.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Carney says Canada is ready to respond to tariffs   Canada holding solo celebration of new bridge to US   House again passes a resolution seeking to halt military action in Iran as the conflict escalates    Explosions are heard near a US base in northern Iraq after US strikes Iran   Trump adds new condition to Saudi nuclear deal, says kingdom must normalize relations with Israel

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Trump’s Foul-Mouthed Oval Office Meltdown Is Leaked

Insiders say the furious president is now in “revenge mode.”

President Donald Trump flew into an expletive-laden rage in the Oval Office over his bungled war on Iran, according to people who heard the meltdown. The U.S. and Iran remain locked in a rapidly escalating war, with American forces on a run of 13 consecutive nights of airstrikes. Tensions have peaked since Iran rejected a U.S. ceasefire proposal delivered by Iraq on Thursday.

To make matters worse for petulant Trump, crude oil prices topped $100 a barrel for the first time since May after fighting metastasized into other parts of the region.

On Friday, Al Jazeera reported a top Iranian diplomatic official as saying the U.S. is “up the creek.”

Indeed, he has an ever-growing headache. He is increasingly frustrated by the length of the war, one that he said would be over in a matter of weeks. It’s been almost five months.

He showed this frustration when he was quizzed by a reporter about the timeline at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, after attending Sunday’s World Cup final in New Jersey. “On Iran, Mr. President, you said at the start of the war it would be four or five weeks,” the reporter said. “Now it’s nearly five months?”

Trump immediately shot back that the reporter had somehow undersold the scale of the task at hand. “This is a far bigger job that we’re doing,” he said. “We were doing a little job, stopping them from having a certain capability. Now, we’re just ending it.”

He continued with a rambling, garbled answer before stopping the interview and hot-footing it to the waiting Marine One helicopter.

He was much clearer inside the White House, according to insiders who spoke to the Wall Street Journal. He reportedly went into meltdown mode, calling Iranian leaders “scumbags and lunatics” in a rant peppered with expletives.

Failed negotiations with Iran have made him angry, according to people familiar with the matter. One senior administration official told the Journal that the president believes that the only thing Iran understands is military force.

They said that he was in “revenge mode” against Tehran, adding that he has no bright ideas beyond continuing strikes.

“The United States signed an MOU with Iran and they broke it, shot at commercial ships, and killed American soldiers. President Trump is not going to stand by and allow this terrorist behavior to occur,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. The 28-year-old added that Iran was paying for its behavior and would continue to do so “until they come to the table in what President Trump deems a meaningful way.”

However, a senior Iranian diplomatic source told Al Jazeera that Trump’s approach won’t work. They lamented the “administration’s coercive posturing and continued acts of aggression.”

He accused the U.S. of breaking the Memorandum of Understanding, signed in June. “The U.S. reneging on its commitments under the 17 June MoU is the cause of the current situation,” he noted, adding that Tehran considers all options to be on the table, including diplomacy and—of course—force.

Indeed, the Iranian military released a statement on Friday morning, saying that it has launched drones over U.S. bases in Jordan and Bahrain in response to American attacks on targets in Iran.

The Journal cited “people familiar with the matter” who said that Trump has complained about the Kafkaesque network of people that his diplomats must navigate to reach Iranian leadership. He has also moaned that every time he feels progress has been made at the negotiating table, Iran strikes a U.S. target, undoing all the good work, the sources said.

His headaches have been made worse by claims from Israeli intelligence that he is personally a target. Israeli sources told the WSJ earlier this month that Iran had devised a plot to kill him.

Trump referenced being “No. 1 on the kill list for Iran” when asked why he flew home from a NATO summit in Turkey on an older Air Force One instead of his new plane, the $400 million Boeing 747-800 that was gifted to him by Qatar. After initially claiming he used the older jet for “old times’ sake,” it later emerged that his new Air Force One lacks the same defensive systems—including antimissile capabilities—as the old one, and the Secret Service urged the switch.

The Journal has now been told that this threat extends to his top aides. They have been told to stop using car services as a result, according to people familiar with the matter.

Trump’s answer appears to be to step up the war. He has told aides that he thinks he can break the Iranians’ resolve with another bombing campaign, the Journal reported, citing a person familiar with Trump’s views.

“I believe he thinks he gave peace a chance,” said Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “He’s going back to Plan A, which is the military operation.”

The White House has been approached for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-foul-mouthed-oval-office-meltdown-is-leaked/?

ps:Pathetic little man!!!!!

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Putin Left Out in the Cold as Trump Gushes Over New BFF

The president appears to have ditched the Russian leader in favor of his sworn enemy.

President Donald Trump appears to have hitched his wagon to the Ukrainian cause after ditching under-pressure Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. At home, the Kremlin demagogue is experiencing a mounting crisis. A costly, grinding war with Ukraine has created an economic train wreck, with fuel costs spiraling out of control. His approval rating is ticking down as a result. In short, his stock is low, and Trump appears to be looking towards pastures new. “Very good!!!” the president, 80, gushed on Truth Social, sharing a snippet of Laura Loomer’s upcoming interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Nobody was around us; it was only two of us. And I was very happy to hear [the] president… it was very good. We calmed down, and it was very good, and I’m so happy because a lot of lives depend on such relations and dialogue,” he said in the clip, perhaps attempting to stroke Trump’s ego.

Loomer had asked him, as part of her “Loomer Unleashed in Ukraine” production, about the Oval Office flashpoint with Trump in Feb. 2025 that altered the course of Washington-Kyiv relations and nudged the U.S. president into a cozy relationship with Putin. He hosted the Russian leader in Alaska months later, rolling out the red carpet for him at a summit after which he urged Ukraine to cede territory to Russia to end the war.

Trump has since cooled on Putin and appears to be embracing Ukraine and Zelensky. So too does Loomer, despite her previous position as one of MAGA’s most critical anti-Ukraine voices. Her opposition boiled down to an America-first stance, where she favored not supporting Zelensky’s regime militarily due to the cost Americans would ultimately incur.

But this month, Loomer traveled to Ukraine, where she experienced an air raid, toured sites damaged by Russian attacks, visited the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery, and, of course, met Zelensky. She has now changed her tone, even rattling off friendly tweets about the leader she once called “a Jihadi apologist,” who leads a country “full of Nazi apologists.”

She is now looking inwards, seeking “moral clarity.”

“Just experienced my first air raid in Ukraine. Sirens blaring. This is everyday for every Ukrainian,” Loomer wrote on X on July 21. “I often said I don’t care. Looking back, that wasn’t very nice of me to say.”

Her change in tone appears to be down to apparent Russian support for Iran in its war with the U.S. “I don’t care about what the media says about me or anyone’s opinion about why I came to Ukraine. I am deeply disturbed as an American citizen about how many Americans minds have been warped to support Russia’s third world slop that pushes communism and a multipolar world where Xi, the Ayatollah and Putin are our masters,” she wrote on X on Thursday.

“I hope the DOJ in the US starts cracking down on Americans who participate in Russia and Iran’s networks of disinformation and influence peddling.”

Another surprising flip-flop came from her fellow conservative influencer, Tim Pool. “Ukraine has been fighting for their very existence against an evil dictator,” he posted on X on Thursday evening.

“I see now the importance of the Ukrainian victory against Russia. I hope Trump and the people of the United States will lend their support.”

This is all the more stunning given that the right-wing influencer was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to spread Russian propaganda during the 2024 presidential election.

The turnaround is completed by reports that Trump is willing to meet with Zelensky in D.C. next week, perhaps even at the funeral of the late South Carolina senator, Lindsey Graham, who was in Ukraine hours before he died. Graham, who died earlier this month at 71, was a staunch pro-Ukraine advocate.

DW News U.S. Correspondent Misha Komadovsky scooped on Friday that the meeting could take place, but details still need to be thrashed out. “President Zelensky is expected in Washington, D.C. next Tuesday, two senior officials tell me,” he posted on X.

“He plans to attend Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral. A meeting with President Trump is also being arranged — officials are still finalizing the format, whether a sideline meeting at the funeral, a private sit-down, or an official White House visit.”

Loomer confirmed this with Zelensky.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/putin-left-out-in-the-cold-as-trump-gushes-over-new-bff-zelensky/?

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Trump’s Mass Deportation Humiliation Is Exposed

New ICE figures reveal an awkward truth for the president.

New ICE figures show President Donald Trump is on course for a record 458,000 deportations this year—barely half the one million removals pledge that he swept into power on.The agency’s FY2026 detention statistics, posted quietly on July 20, show that 356,389 people were sent back to their home countries between October 1 and July 11—about 1,255 a day, according to analysis by PunchUp.

At that pace, Trump, 80, will beat the all-time single-year record of 409,849 set in 2012 under Barack Obama, 64, that earned him the “Deporter-in-Chief” tag, the Daily Beast’s new sister investigations Substack reports.

But the record is still unlikely to endear Trump to his deportation-obsessed supporters, PunchUp says.

Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, 40, and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, 54, demanded ICE hit at least 3,000 arrests a day in order to hit the one million deportations target. The Trump administration says that the current figure is around the 2,000 mark.

Who is being deported has changed, too, according to PunchUp. Roughly 55 percent of those Obama removed in his record year had criminal convictions. Of the 65,765 people in ICE detention on July 11, some 46,436—70.6 percent—have no criminal conviction at all, and 40.5 percent of everyone booked into detention this year had neither a conviction nor a pending charge.

Border czar Tom Homan, 64, admitted the shift on Fox News on July 18, saying “60 percent of everyone arrested right now is a criminal, 40 percent are non-criminal.”

The operation has also moved from the border into American neighborhoods. More than 90 percent of the 353,948 people booked into detention this fiscal year were seized by ICE in the interior, not caught at the border—and the machine is speeding up again, with 43,138 book-ins in June being the busiest month of the fiscal year thus far.

As PunchUp revealed in May, ICE’s daily arrest rate jumped from 226 in the 19 days before Trump’s inauguration to 544 in his first 12 days back—while the share of arrestees with no criminal charges rose from 58 to 69 percent. The administration denied that it had any arrest quota at all.

Asked about the surge, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told PunchUp at the time: “President Trump campaigned on and won an election based on his promise to deport criminal illegal aliens. The entire Administration is working to carry out the President’s agenda.”

The current record pace does, though, mark an acceleration. ICE logged 319,980 removals in the 2025 fiscal year, according to researcher Austin Kocher’s analysis of the agency’s year-end data, though ICE’s footnotes fold voluntary returns and expulsions into that count. After two years of ramping up immigration and tens of billions spent, deportation numbers are still barely half of Trump’s promise.

A spokesperson for DHS told PunchUp that ICE was “delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens,” that “nearly 70 percent of ICE arrests” had been “charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S.,” and claimed, “more than 3 million illegal aliens are out of the country and counting.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-mass-deportation-humiliation-is-exposed-by-ices-own-figures/?

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Trump’s Secret Fury Behind White House Nuclear Chaos Exposed

The president is said to be livid about the terms of a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia.

President Donald Trump’s frantic bid this week to revise the terms of a historic nuclear pact his administration had already signed came about because his energy secretary reportedly jumped the gun on the deal.The landmark cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia has unleashed chaos at the White House, sources told CNN, as Trump scrambles to assure lawmakers and voters that it’s not the no-strings giveaway it appears to be.

The White House had asked the Energy Department to hold off finalizing the pact, but Energy Secretary Chris Wright seems to have gone ahead regardless.

He signed the agreement Wednesday at his department’s headquarters in downtown Washington, his Saudi counterpart joining by video link from Riyadh. Then the 61-year-old went on Fox Business to sell the deal.

Wright’s people thought they were clear. Approval had finally landed late last week, his team believed, after months of delay driven by the Iran war and fears Congress would vote the pact down. One source told CNN that any nod from Trump, 80, had only been for a provisional bargain. It had not been a green light to sign and trumpet the agreement.Washington and Riyadh have been circling this since 2008. Successive U.S. administrations have insisted that Saudi Arabia agree to buy its nuclear fuel on the open market, rather than enriching uranium on its own territory. The Biden administration added provisions requiring the kingdom to normalize relations with Israel. Wednesday’s deal appears to have dropped both demands, without securing any concessions for the U.S. in return.Critics have savaged the pact as a missed opportunity to smooth relations between the kingdom and Israel and warn that it could lead to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Many cast the giveaway as the president’s olive branch to Saudi Arabia amid tensions between Washington and Riyadh over the chaos sparked by Trump’s war on Iran—which he sold as a bid to curb nuclear proliferation in the region. Trump himself, according to CNN, is livid. By Thursday morning, he had publicly blown up the deal his administration had signed only the day before, posting on Truth Social that Saudi Arabia would first have to recognize the state of Israel and denying that the pact allows the kingdom to enrich its own uranium.

Things have been even uglier behind the scenes. Some of Trump’s advisers did not regard the pact as finished, because Congress had yet to receive the notifications the process requires, and were as incensed as the president himself, sources said.

The snafu has fired the starting pistol on a frantic blame game inside the administration. White House aides say it’s squarely the fault of the Energy Department. Its officials have long irritated the West Wing, who have grumbled before that Wright, who made his fortune in the 2010s fracking boom, has a habit of going off half-cocked.

Nobody has said any of it on the record. The official narrative is that Trump’s energy team is “fully aligned, and always has been,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told CNN. “This is fake news,” Energy Department press secretary Ben Dietderich said, insisting the announcement had been squared with both Trump’s office and the State Department.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for further comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-secret-fury-behind-white-house-chaos-over-saudi-arabia-nuclear-deal-exposed/?

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Trump says the US will investigate EU trade practices, claiming the bloc unfairly fined tech giants

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will open a formal investigation into the European Union’s trade practices, President Donald Trump said on Friday, claiming the bloc has unfairly levied billions of dollars of fines against Google, Apple and other U.S. tech giants.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-eu-trade-tech-fine-google-2e125ac0d3c1ac7a96c9194a372ba47e?

White House correspondents' dinner, redux: What will Trump have to say?

When guests arrive for the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Friday at Washington's Waldorf Astoria hotel, security will be much tighter, the guest list smaller, the partying pared down, and the dress code more relaxed. Read More.

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Insults, potshots and quip about a third term: Trump’s rambling gala address

President mocks opponents and journalists in mostly lighthearted speech at White House correspondents’ dinner

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/24/white-house-correspondents-dinner-trump-washington?

Triggered Trump Launches Vile Attack on Kaitlan Collins

Minutes into his one-hour speech, the 80-year-old president began mocking the CNN star.

President Donald Trump met an awkward silence when he used a speech that was supposed to celebrate press freedom to attack a female reporter and liken her to a transgender influencer.Appearing at the redo of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Friday, Trump hit out at CNN star Kaitlan Collins after she won an award for her coverage of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the Oval Office.

This year’s dinner was the first Trump had attended since 2015, after more than a decade of boycotts.

But about 10 minutes into his speech, the 80-year-old president mocked Collins, telling the audience: “I want to personally congratulate CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on receiving her award. It was all about me. It was a fake, she shouldn’t get the award, it was a fake. But I didn’t mind. I said, ‘Kaitlan, congratulations.’ But it was fake, there’s no question about it.

“But she’s a young, attractive woman,” Trump added, as some people in the audience grimaced.

“She never smiles. I said, ‘Kaitlan do you ever smile? Smile!’ You have a nice position; you’re at CNN fake news. You should be a happy person. So smile, Kaitlan! Just smile.”

Trump then went on to suggest Collins looked like transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who prompted a Bud Light backlash a few years ago when she appeared in an ad for the popular beer.

“I thought Kaitlan had really made it big with a major new sponsorship,” Trump said. “But then I informed her that it wasn’t her on the Bud Light can, it was Dylan Mulvaney.”

The dinner took place three months after the original event was derailed in April by a gunman who breached security in a bid to assassinate the president.

Trump aides and Cabinet secretaries attended, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

However, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were absent due to scheduling conflicts, according to the White House.

The dinner has long occupied a peculiar place in Washington: part celebration of the First Amendment, part networking event, and part roast.

The president kicked things off by declaring that the roast he had planned to give in April would have been even more of “a doozy” and a “ripping” of the media.

But over the course of about an hour, he nonetheless took aim at everyone from CNN’s Jake Tapper (“it only took him one year to break the story that Joe Biden might have suffered from cognitive decline”), commentator Don Lemon (“he has the lowest ratings and the lowest IQ”), and MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell (“I never thought he had any talent”).

The president’s jokes often fell flat, with many of the 700 guests in the room checking their phones as he launched his assaults.

One of his better received gags involved calls for fixed term limits in Congress—something that several Republicans have also called for in the wake of Senator Mitch McConnell’s prolonged absence.

“All joking aside, I do think we need term limits in Congress,” he said, regaling a story a senator had told him about his partner.

“The other day, a senator I knew got a text… ‘When you get home, I want to have you immediately come up the stairs and make love to me.’ And he said, ‘I can’t do both!”

Earlier in the night, the president was forced to endure a video roasting him about press freedom and America being a country of “no kings.”

Things became even more awkward when The Wall Street Journal was celebrated for reporting on a lewd letter he allegedly sent to notorious child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump had filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the publication, but it was dismissed by a federal judge in April for failing to meet the legal “actual malice” standard required for public figures.

Photographer Andrew Harnik was also awarded for his iconic photo featuring Trump looking lost and confused in the Oval Office after a man collapsed behind him during an event last November.

The image immediately sparked ongoing speculation about the president’s health. Handing out the award, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer described it as a “truly striking image of contrast, skillfully captured in a chaotic moment.”

Trump was seen repeatedly closing his eyes for extended periods of time as scholarships and awards were handed out.

He ended his remarks on a more gracious note, giving the press a compliment of sorts as he donned a Trump 2028 cap and suggested he would run for a third term.

“I just want to say… I have tremendous respect for the people in this room,” he told the crowd.

“Sometimes I don’t feel you treat me fair, or maybe you do. I don’t know… Your profession is amazing and I want to thank you for having me.”

A CNN spokesperson said in a statement: “Kaitlan Collins is an exceptional, trusted journalist being honored tonight for her depth of knowledge and the context she provides to audiences all over the world... We stand by her to the fullest extent.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/triggered-trump-launches-vile-attack-on-kaitlan-collins/?

🍽️ Correspondents' dinner 2.0

President Trump used his speech at last night's White House Correspondents' Association dinner redo to condemn the political violence that interrupted the annual event — and in the next breath attack and insult the gathered press.

• "In America we do not yield to political violence," Trump told the black-tie crowd, referring to the gunman who opened fire outside the ballroom 90 nights earlier at the original dinner.
• "In this country we believe in freedom of speech, we settle our differences not with bullets but with open and vigorous debate, and no deranged loser with a gun will ever change that. We can't let that ever happen."

The dinner was moved from the traditional location at the Washington Hilton to the Waldorf Astoria, formerly the Trump International Hotel. As is traditional, the presidential remarks mixed seriousness with humor, Axios' Donica Phifer writes.

• "Everyone is looking really good tonight, and I know it's not easy finding shoes to match your bulletproof vest," Trump said. "Many people would rather die than look 20 pounds heavier, you know that, right? They put one on me. I said, 'Are you sure? I'm not wearing this.'"
• "Just like my presidency, the second time is always better," the president quipped. "And the third time will be better yet. ... I'm only kidding." At the end, he donned a red "Trump 2028" cap and delivered the "scoop" that he was running again, to chuckles and light applause.

📺 Trump attacked prominent reporters by name, going after CNN's Kaitlan Collins (demanding she smile more) and Jake Tapper (he called him "Fake Tapper").

• CNN released a statement during Trump's speech defending its reporters, writing in part: "Honest, accurate journalism may sometimes irritate politicians, but our right to report and present that reporting to the public without government interference is fully protected by the U.S. Constitution."

Trump cracked a joke about a "once-feared and powerful regime" being toppled and now being run by "a gay dictator facing internal divisions" — adding "I for one wish Bari Weiss all the best at CBS News."

💭 Thought bubble from Axios media correspondent Sara Fischer: Trump's repeated praise of Paramount chair David Ellison may complicate life for the company, which faces an antitrust lawsuit from a dozen Democratic state attorneys general as it tries to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.

ps:What a petty little man!!

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Trump Goons Make Bombshell Admission About Enemies List

A court filing reveals the true motivations behind billions of dollars in grant cuts.

Trump administration officials admitted in court that they canceled hundreds of federal grants simply because they benefited states Kamala Harris won in 2024.That stunning acknowledgment, which contradicts what the administration said last fall when canceling upwards of $7.5 billion in funds, came in court documents this month, The New York Times reported. Several grant awardees had sued over the cancellations, and as a result, the Trump administration’s weaponization of all sorts of aid is now coming into fuller view.

Last year, the Energy Department presented the White House Budget Office with a list of more than 600 Biden-era grants in blue and red states that it said should be canceled. But in October, the budget office, under 50-year-old Director Russ Vought, canceled 284 of those grants. Of them, 283 were in blue states.

“With one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators,” an Energy Department lawyer wrote in a July 15 filing.

None of the grants were canceled “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor,” the lawyer added. Rather, it was purely political.

“DOE accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State,” the lawyer admitted.

The Times reports that axed projects included electrical grid upgrades in California, as well as clean-burning hydrogen fuel hubs in the Golden State, where Gov. Gavin Newsom is a vocal Trump foe.

Newsom, 58, responded Friday on X to the news.

“The corrupt Trump administration has just admitted to withholding taxpayer dollars from states based on how they voted,” he wrote. “Last I checked we were a democracy, not a dictatorship. Where the hell is Congress?”

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, a ranking member on the GOP-led Senate appropriations committee, and Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who sits on the House’s top energy appropriations panel, issued a statement calling the cuts “outright un-American.”

“This administration has now admitted in court what has long been obvious: It terminated nearly 300 cost-cutting energy projects for no reason other than the fact that the states they were in did not vote for the president in the 2024 election. This is an astounding admission that the president and his team corruptly abused their power to kill good jobs and punish hard-working families because of their political views,” they said.

The pair also criticized Energy Secretary Chris Wright, 61, who said at a House hearing in June that “no decisions were made on politics.” Accusations to the contrary, he insisted then, were “b------t.”

“Secretary Wright swore up and down for months that these project terminations had absolutely nothing to do with politics, and now his lawyers are declaring that, in fact, politics was the only consideration,” the lawmakers said in their statement. “Weaponizing the Federal government like this is outright un-American, and it’s hardworking families already struggling with sky-high costs who are suffering the consequences of this corrupt abuse of power.”

Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich told the Times in response to the filing, “There is no contradiction, and any suggestion of a contradiction is a misrepresentation of the court filing.”

The Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast, nor did the White House.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-goons-make-bombshell-admission-about-enemies-list/?

ps:Pathetic!!!!!

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✈️ Iranian threat prompted Air Force One swap

President Trump abruptly switched aircraft when leaving Turkey this month after what officials judged to be a credible threat that Iranian proxy forces were targeting him and Air Force One, the N.Y. Times reports (gift link).

• After the U.S. government picked up on the threat, the Secret Service urged Trump to switch to the traditional presidential plane from the new Qatari-gifted Air Force One, per The Times.

Following criticism from a federal judge for sloppy legal work, the Justice Department on Thursday withdrew subpoenas attempting to compel three Times reporters to testify about their sources on the plane swap.

• Go deeper: "Inside the Rushed Effort to Get Trump His New Air Force One," by the N.Y. Times' Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Maggie Haberman (gift link).

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💰 Trump's tariff déjà vu

President Trump has revived a provision from one of former President Herbert Hoover's most infamous policies: the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.

• Why it matters: Smoot was long thought to be moot — widely considered a failure and, possibly, an exacerbating factor in the Great Depression, Axios' Emily Peck writes.

Trump has repeatedly said that he doesn't want to be associated with Hoover, who presided over the country during that economic collapse and has forever been associated with it.

• Earlier this year, he told Axios' Marc Caputo: "I have one primary wish as president, in terms of people: I never want to be the late, great Herbert Hoover."

Keep reading.

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Health Expert Blasts FDA for ‘Catastrophic’ Food Poisoning Response

Former FDA insider rips lack of “strong federal leadership” amid dangerous “mismanagement on multiple fronts.”

A former food safety commissioner in President Donald Trump’s first administration has demanded an independent review of the federal government’s disturbing response to an outbreak of cyclosporiasis that has sickened thousands of people.

“It’s starting to approach a catastrophic level in terms of how mismanaged it’s been on multiple fronts,” Frank Yiannas, who was also a deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration during President Joe Biden’s administration, told Politico.

He blasted the lack of “strong federal leadership” in the current crisis, and mounting consumer confusion amid mixed messages from officials.

Cyclosporiasis is a parasitic illness that causes severe gastrointestinal symptoms, including watery diarrhea, severe stomach cramps, and extreme fatigue. It is often linked to poor sanitation.

The FDA revealed earlier this month that it had traced the rapidly spreading outbreak of cyclosporiasis to contaminated Taylor Farms lettuce that had ended up in some Taco Bell outlets.

Taylor Farms initiated a voluntary recall of its lettuce, but then insisted that the FDA later “apologized” to the company after it claimed the contamination had been linked to a single “false positive” test result.

The FDA denied apologizing to Taylor Farms, and officials insisted that its lettuce was still strongly suspected in the spread of cyclosporiasis.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported more than 4,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., and is investigating an additional 7,400 across at least nine states.

Taylor Farms donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC that supported Donald Trump, in March 2025. Company officials also reportedly visited the White House during the clash with the FDA, raising concern among consumers that the federal government’s information couldn’t be trusted.

Yiannas said the FDA must be transparent about its process, and explain to skeptical consumers how its investigation appeared to be derailed by a single false positive result, which he called “extremely rare.”

“They went too fast and they made a mistake,” he speculated. “They should share more about how and why it happened, and what they’ll do to prevent it in the future.”

The cyclosporiasis outbreak is the latest crisis for a federal health department headed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Trump appointee who is not known for his support of traditional medicine.

Georgia senator and rising Democratic star Jon Ossoff has angrily blamed Kennedy’s beliefs and funding cuts for leaving Americans vulnerable to cyclosporiasis and other illnesses.

“Your foolish and self-indulgent demolition of critical public health programs puts Americans at risk,” Ossoff said in a blistering letter to Kennedy.

Kennedy has also railed against the measles vaccine. So many Americans now refuse to vaccinate their children against the potentially deadly disease that the number of reported measles cases this year hit a 35-year record high of 2,300.

Some parents are now also increasingly opting not to have their newborns injected with Vitamin K after birth to prevent bleeding, resulting in an unknown number of deaths.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/health-expert-blasts-fda-for-catastrophic-food-poisoning-response/?

ps:What did we expect from administration puts puppets in charge and only do what there told!!!!!

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The Ghost Advising Donald Trump’s Presidency

Who does the president listen to? Here’s who.

I once pressed Steve Bannon about Trump’s intelligence. He said, “He’s as smart as any guy who’s spent 20 years listening to Lou Dobbs.” As one of cable’s first business anchors, correspondents, and commentators, Dobbs developed a variety of stances: birtherism, anti-immigration, and the simple fix of putting tariffs on everything. The underpinnings of these views were not facts, study, but ratings.

All of this formed the certainties with which Donald Trump entered politics, and became popular positions for him too. In turn, Dobbs promoted Trump and would later become a dedicated advocate of Trump’s election conspiracy theories, making him a named defendant in the Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network defamation lawsuit, which cost the network almost $1 billion and finally got him fired. Dobbs died in Palm Beach in 2024.

He continues, however, to live on in Donald Trump, in the president’s unwavering, obsessive focus on tariffs as the necessary and magical correction to all ills. This obsession persists even when it might otherwise seem unreasonable and counterproductive—and, in this case, against the law.

Trump is not a man of principle; he is a man of fixation. Tariffs—which, by all evidence and logic, will undermine the promise of economic growth that is central to Trump’s political identity and fortunes—have assumed for him a sacred meaning.

The tariffs themselves may be less the point than his obsession with them. He will pursue a discredited policy because… well, he just can’t get it out of his head, can’t adapt to another way of looking at a problem, can’t challenge his own thinking, doesn’t have enough intellectual capacity to have a replacement for the one idea he already has.

Lou Dobbs explained it all, and that’s good enough.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-ghost-advising-donald-trumps-presidency/?

ps:Just pitiful and pathetic!!

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CNN Blasts Trump as the White House’s Least Reliable Source

“In addition to how much he speaks to the press, he is also one of the most unreliable sources at the White House.”

CNN correspondents fired back after President Donald Trump used the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to target and criticize one of the network’s star reporters.

During the rescheduled Friday event, which was intended to celebrate press freedom, Trump drew immediate backlash when he mocked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins just 10 minutes into his speech.

“That was an appalling hit at our colleague Kaitlan Collins,” said CNN’s Betsy Klein. Within minutes, Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter noted that Collins’ spokesperson had already issued a response. “And the fact that CNN had a statement supporting Kaitlan ready to go... in advance... tells you everything about this media moment,” he wrote.

As the criticism mounted, Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny pointed to the irony that the president had spent much of his hour-long speech attacking journalists he described as producers of “fake news.”

“For a president who complains so bitterly about the press, there’s never been anyone in the history of the modern presidency who spends as much time talking to reporters,” Zeleny wrote.

CNN correspondent Kristen Holmes then delivered a sharp rebuke aimed at Trump: “In addition to how much he speaks to the press, he is also one of the most unreliable sources at the White House.”

Holmes’ rebuke came as Trump used a dinner packed with journalists to launch repeated attacks on the press. It also comes amid growing scrutiny of the president’s frequently inaccurate claims he makes to the media.

According to The Washington Post, Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first year in the White House. CNN recently highlighted the same pattern in his second term by compiling clips of the president telling reporters that Iran “wants to make a deal so badly” amid the war that began in February, despite simultaneously saying that a peace deal with Tehran was “over” as fighting resumed.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner marked Trump’s first attendance while president. It had originally been scheduled for April but was postponed after a gunman, Cole Tomas Allen, entered the venue and attempted to target multiple Trump administration officials, officials said.

Trump targeted Collins after she received an award for her coverage of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the Oval Office, dismissing the honor as “fake” while claiming the recognition was ultimately “all about” him.

The president then turned his attention to Collins’ appearance, describing her as a “young, attractive woman,” but criticizing her for “never” smiling. He went on to compare her to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, whose appearance in a Bud Light advertisement sparked a conservative backlash several years ago.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cnn-blasts-trump-as-the-white-houses-least-reliable-source/?