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

August 18, 2025

ICE Goons Tear Down Pro-Immigration Banner and Leave Sex Toy on Display

Masked agents staged a photo op with a NSFW outcome.

Federal agents tore down a banner protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement, only to reveal a dildo that they left sitting in the middle of a Washington, D.C., neighborhood.

President Donald Trump has ordered a federal takeover of D.C., claiming the nation’s capital is one of the “most dangerous cities anywhere in the world” despite official data showing D.C.’s violent crime rate is at its lowest in 30 years.

The administration has deployed hundreds of federal agents to patrol the streets and sent a full SWAT team to arrest a protester who threw a subway sandwich at ICE agents—even after the man’s lawyer said he tried to turn himself in.

Apparently continuing that tough-on-protest posturing, over the weekend, an eight-person ICE patrol briefly paused its crime fighting to destroy a pro-immigration sign in Mount Pleasant, one of the city’s most prominent Latino neighborhoods.

The agency—which paradoxically loves a good photo op so long as its agents’ faces are hidden—posted a video of masked agents cutting down a sign that said, “Chinga La Migra — Mount Pleasant Melts ICE.”

As they removed the banner, a dildo that was perched directly behind it came into view. The ICE video blurred out the dildo, but it’s clearly visible in photos shared online by local public radio journalist Alex Koma.

“We’re taking America back baby,” an agent told the camera while crumpling up the sign to throw in the trash.

He then added in Spanish, “Esto es par America. Los Estados Unidos el número uno. Estamos tornando a traves de nuevo,” or “This is for America. The United States is number one. We are turning things around again.”

As the group walked away, they left the dildo, which they apparently deemed less offensive than the sign that had been covering it.

“ICE is dedicated to removing criminals from American cities, and D.C. is no exception,” ICE captioned the video. “Make D.C. safe again!”

As the Trump administration has raided neighborhoods and job sites as part of the president’s mass deportation drive, “Chinga La Migra” has become a pro-immigrant rallying cry that roughly translates to “F--- ICE.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to ICE for comment.

Besides sending in federal agents, the White House has attempted to take over the city’s police department and install its own “emergency” police chief. Last week, the District of Columbia’s top prosecutor sued the White House for what he called a “hostile” takeover of the city.

The president has justified the takeover by declaring a public safety emergency in Washington, D.C. The nation’s capital, however, does not even rank in the top 30 of the most dangerous U.S. cities with more than 100,000 residents, Newsweek reported.

In the meantime, Trump has also threatened to take over other cities with Democratic leadership, even though unlike Washington D.C., those cities are not under the legal control of the federal government.

Besides, a recent analysis by Axios found that 13 of the 20 U.S. cities with the highest murder rates were located in red states, raising questions about how much “liberation” would really take place if Trump swooped in.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-goons-tear-down-pro-immigration-banner-and-leave-dildo-on-display/?

August 18, 2025

Karoline Leavitt Can’t Cover Up the Truth. Trump’s Cankles and Hand Makeup Say It All

It’s Trump’s turn under the unflattering fluorescent lights of mortality.

Forget the orange makeup on his hand. Forget the newly grey hair hovering above his scalp. Forget the slits for eyes. The real tell on Donald Trump is below the knee.

His ankles, swollen and straining over his Oxfords, aren’t just unsightly “cankles”; they’re flashing neon signs of a body under pressure. In medical terms, that puffiness often means venous or even cardiac insufficiency, the circulation slowing, the blood not moving as it should. These are not the hinges of stamina that can run a presidential marathon, but the hinges of a retiree glued to his La-Z-boy, feet up and watching Fox News all day.

We’ve already seen this movie when it starred President Joe Biden. The stumbles, the shuffling, the vacant stares, all dismissed until his catastrophic debate meltdown, when the country suddenly realized the emperor had no recall. The press tiptoed around the obvious: he was too old. Then, boom. Reality hit on live TV.

A year later, we’re watching the sequel. Now it’s Trump’s turn under the unflattering fluorescent lights of mortality. He’s 79, a number closer to octogenarian shuffleboard than to nuclear brinkmanship. Just this week, he twice announced he was “going to Russia,” clearly confused about where his hastily scrambled Alaskan summit with President Putin was taking place. The confusion persisted. On Air Force One, he told Brett Baier he was a “deal guy,” and if things didn’t work with Putin he’d “come back to the United States” and work on other things, as if peace in Europe could be abandoned like a casino in Atlantic City.

He’s already forgotten his conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders, who earlier this week were promised a ceasefire. And in the last fortnight, he’s started mixing up names, referring to his head of homeland security Kristi Noem, as Cristie Kerr, the name of an LPGA golfer. During a White House event with Tim “Apple” Cook, Trump thanked his commerce secretary Howard Lutnick “wherever you may be”.

“I’m right behind you,” said a startled Lutnick. Last month at a ceremonial signing of a veteran’s bill, Trump paused to acknowledge the bill’s sponsor, Congressman Derrick Van Orden, asking “Where’s Derrick? Where’s Derrick?”

“I’m here, sir,” said Van Orden, standing right next to him. Embarassing. The decline is as obvious as the white eye circles protected from his spray tan.

Trump’s camp knows it too. Karoline Leavitt has dusted off Karine Jean-Pierre’s old binder of excuses: the president is “working very hard… “every day is a test…” “the bruises come from shaking hands…” Sound familiar?

Age matters in the Oval Office. The job is a high-stress centrifuge, spinning out younger men in six months with gray hair and crow’s feet. Obama grayed, Clinton ballooned, Reagan drifted. But 79? That’s beyond the actuarial horizon.

For Biden, the tell was the papery whisper, frozen smile, and multiple face-plants. For Trump, it’s the gait, the new halo of fat around his neck, and the laborious climb up the stairs of Air Force One, gripping the railing, puffing like an aging club pro on the back nine.

This isn’t age-shaming; it’s reality-shaming. To ignore what’s obvious is political malpractice. The press flinched with Biden. We cannot do the same with Trump, dismissing senior moments as “gaffes” or just “Trump being Trump.”

We shouldn’t need another public collapse to admit the obvious: Donald Trump is old, and showing it. His cankles may be an unglamorous tell, but they’re telling us a lot. Biden had less than a year to go on his contract when the slippage became undeniable. Trump has three years and change. That is a long time for someone to be stumbling through the most dangerous crises of our time.

When Biden reached this weary, stumbling stage, Democrats led improbably by George Clooney rang the alarm. Will Kid Rock now step up to ask the president to step aside for the sake of the country? Will Vice President JD Vance or Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought reach for the 25th Amendment?

Or perhaps Trump’s handlers see this as an opportunity to seize power and pull the puppet’s strings from behind the curtain. If that’s the plan, it may not go quite as expected. Anyone who has ever tried to take the car keys away from a loved one exhibiting elderly mental impairment knows how difficult it is to get them to let go.

Now imagine those keys are not for starting a car but for launching a nuclear strike. Good luck to them. And good luck to all of us.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/karoline-leavitt-cant-cover-up-the-truth-trumps-cankles-and-hand-makeup-say-it-all/?

August 18, 2025

Fox Host Humiliates Trump With Savage Take on Putin Summit

Howard Kurtz said “it was clear not much was accomplished” at the summit.

Fox News host Howard Kurtz has delivered a brutal assessment of President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Media Buzz host said Sunday that “despite some upbeat talk” after Friday’s summit on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, “it was clear not much was accomplished.”

“No ceasefire, no details, no questions from the press, just vague assurances that some progress was made without explaining what that was,” he continued.

Trump remained ambiguous at a joint presser with Putin following the meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, saying that “many points were agreed to.” He conceded that he “didn’t get there” on the peace deal he’s been pushing for Russia and Ukraine.

While the presser had initially been billed as a news conference, the two leaders did not take questions from journalists.

“President Trump, to his credit, didn’t oversell what happened, or more precisely, what didn’t happen,” Kurtz said.

He noted that the meeting, which did not include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, had been preceded by a White House effort to dramatically lower expectations as it became clear in the days before the summit that Trump would not be able negotiate a deal both Russia and Ukraine would agree to.

“The media reaction to the Alaska session varied sharply, but much of it was negative,” Kurtz observed, before asking guest Rich Lowry, the editor-in-chief of the conservative National Review, if he saw the summit as a “setback” for Trump.

“Putin moved the ball a little bit in his direction,” Lowry said, “putting off the talk of the ceasefire, at least for now, and getting Trump to stop threatening secondary sanctions and harsher measures.”

However, he said, “You can’t be premature on these things, you can’t judge them too quickly,” adding that he remains in “wait-and-see mode.”

Kurtz then highlighted Trump’s outburst on Truth Social Sunday morning, when the president raged against negative coverage of the summit in a series of posts, writing, “Fake News violently distorts the TRUTH when it comes to me.”

“So [Trump] sees this as a success, obviously, and [believes that] the coverage is not going along,” Kurtz said, before noting that Fox News had confirmed that “Trump is going along with a Putin plan” that includes several costly concessions, including abandoning a ceasefire and ceding the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

Lowry admitted, “It’s going to be a hard pill to swallow.”

However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back Sunday on reports that Trump supports such a plan, saying, “These are things that the Ukrainian side is going to have to agree to.”

Meanwhile, another guest, former Biden aide Meghan Hays, blasted Trump for letting Putin “have the red carpet” both “metaphorically and actually.”

Trump welcomed Putin on a red carpet upon his arrival, which marked the first time the Russian dictator had set foot on U.S. soil in a decade.

Hays argued that the U.S. had, in effect, “validated” Putin, and made it an “ally of Russia, rather than an ally of Ukraine and our NATO allies.”

Putin left the summit, which ended earlier than planned, with no new sanctions on his country, despite Trump having threatened them for months before chickening out.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-host-howard-kurtz-humiliates-trump-with-savage-take-on-putin-summit/?

August 18, 2025

Senator Says He Knows Why ‘Trump Is Terrified’

California’s Adam Schiff urges people to “fight back” as the GOP pushes for more congressional seats in Texas.

Donald Trump is backing Texas Republicans’ plans to redraw the state’s congressional map in their favor because he is “terrified” the GOP will lose its majority at the midterms, according to Sen. Adam Schiff.

In a message to supporters, the California Democrat who has long been a target of Trump’s fury said it is a “true badge of honor” that the president so frequently attacks him. But Schiff warned Trump is now targeting democracy itself by supporting redistricting efforts that could hand the GOP up to five additional House seats next year.

“Trump is at it again. But this time his attacks aren’t just against me, he’s going after our very democracy,” Schiff wrote, via Raw Story. “You see, Trump is terrified of losing his majority in the midterms. And his solution isn’t to end his pointless tariff wars, stop the indiscriminate masked ICE raids, or rethink his deeply unpopular Big Ugly Bill. It’s to demand Republicans in Texas redraw their Congressional maps.”

Schiff, who served as the lead impeachment manager during Trump’s first trial in 2020 and helped spearhead the House Intelligence Committee’s probe into Russian election interference in 2016, called the Texas redistricting effort “sad” and “tragic” while backing California Democrats’ retaliatory plan that could oust five sitting Republicans in the Golden State in November 2026.

“I was proud to stand with our Governor, Gavin Newsom, as he introduced California’s Election Rigging Response Act,” Schiff said. “The people of our state will vote this November. If we win, we’ll nullify anything Texas does. If we lose... then Trump may very well have two more years of unchecked power.”

“Donald Trump has poked the bear. It’s time to fight back,” he added.

Trump confirmed he supports the Texas redistricting plan, claiming the GOP, who currently have a razor-thin majority in the House, deserve the extra seats in the deep-red state.

“I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats,” Trump told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Aug. 5.

Trump escalated his attacks on Schiff last month, suggesting he should be jailed while reviving old and disputed allegations of mortgage fraud against the senator.

In response, Schiff wrote on X that Trump’s outrage was the “latest attempt at political retaliation against his perceived enemies,” adding the “smear will not distract from his Epstein files problem.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/senator-adam-schiff-reveals-why-donald-trump-is-terrified/?

August 18, 2025

John Oliver Reveals Moment He Knew Putin ‘Steamrolled’ Trump

Oliver pointed to a surprise source in his latest monologue.

John Oliver says he knew President Donald Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin “went so badly” when even Fox News reported that the Russian president had “steamrolled” Trump.

Oliver opened his monologue last night for Last Week Tonight by replaying a clip from Fox News from Friday in which a reporter on the scene in Alaska “couldn’t put a positive spin on it.”

Jacqui Heinrich, Fox News’ senior White House correspondent, said live on air on Friday that it sure looked to her like Putin had the upper hand.

“The way that it felt in the room—um was not, not good,” Heinrich said in a clip Oliver replayed Sunday night. “It did not seem like things went well, and it seemed like Putin came in and steamrolled. Got right into what he wanted to say. And got his photo next to the president. And then left.”

Oliver agreed wholeheartedly.

“And while the White House later released this black-and-white photo of Trump looking tough while talking to Putin, it does seem like the vibe was more accurately summed up by this AP photo,” Oliver added, pointing at the photo “of Putin looking confident and Trump looking like that room-temperature shrimp is coming back up.”

Even Fox News’ Media Buzz host Howard Kurtz concluded on his show Sunday morning that “it was clear not much was accomplished.”

Trump fired back at critics Sunday night in a series of Truth Social posts before a scheduled meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and major European leaders on Monday.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/john-oliver-reveals-moment-he-knew-putin-steamrolled-trump/?

August 18, 2025

Trump Circles Drop F-Bomb After ‘Failure’ Putin Summit: Wolff

MAGA is spinning the summit as a success.

President Donald Trump has tried to put a positive spin on his “failure” of a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but things are not as rosy behind the scenes.

Longtime Trump biographer Michael Wolff tells The Daily Beast Podcast that a member of the president’s inner circle texted him bluntly on Friday: “F--ked.”

The insider did not elaborate.

However, Wolff noted that it is clear that Trump left Alaska as the loser, and those in the president’s camp surely know it, too.

“Trump got f---ed,” he said, agreeing with The Washington Post’s assessment that the summit was more pomp than substance. “We got nothing out of this. This is, you know, this is really, really a loss for Trump, and potentially a loss for Ukraine.”

Trump, 79, raised eyebrows from the moment he arrived in Anchorage, starting with his team ordering U.S. airmen to roll out a red carpet to welcome Putin, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for his alleged role in the abduction of Ukrainian children.

Trump, after meandering his way to a meeting point, applauded Putin as he approached. F-35 fighter jets and a B-2 bomber completed a flyover. The men shook hands, smiled, and Trump invited the former KGB officer to take a ride inside the “Beast,” his presidential limo. Once inside, they smiled and waved.

It was a grand welcome for a leader who invaded a U.S. ally, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and the displacement of millions more. And what, exactly, did Trump gain by offering this extravagant PR gift to the Kremlin?

Practically nothing, Wolff says.

“It was a failure,” he stated. “There is nothing that [Trump] could say. So he decided to, and remember, he threatened, ‘If we don’t get a deal, I’m going to walk away. I’m going to do tariffs. I’m going to do, you know, all of this.’ No, he did not do that. Instead, he basically embraced Vladimir Putin.”

Critics of the president noted that he appeared “defeated” after his meeting with Putin. The two leaders briefly sat for what was billed as a “press conference,” but no questions were answered.

Podcast co-host and Daily Beast Chief Content Officer Joanna Coles said that Trump’s relative silence at the news conference was particularly telling given that he is usually not one to pass up answering questions from shouting reporters. She added of Trump’s cuddling up to Putin: “It’s embarrassing and it’s dirty.”

Ultimately, though, Trump had not received assurances of a ceasefire, which is what he said he sought to achieve by scheduling the high-profile meeting.

With his original objective dashed, Trump moved the goalposts. He claimed the summit was a success and that he no longer wants a ceasefire agreement, as they “oftentimes do not hold up.” That is likely unwelcome news to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been adamant that a peace deal cannot be reached until a ceasefire is put in place.

Sources told Axios that Trump called Zelensky to break the bad news while making the 3,500-mile trek home from Alaska on Air Force One, where Trump also sat for an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Trump and Zelensky spoke for an hour and a half in what Axios’ source described as a “difficult” conversation. Other European leaders joined the call in its final half hour, but their reactions were not recorded in the report.

Zelensky is due to travel to Washington, D.C., to meet Trump on Monday to discuss his country’s increasingly dire situation. By then, it will have been six months since his last visit, when Trump and Vice President JD Vance chastised him in an Oval Office ambush that famously went off the rails.

In the meantime, the world is talking about Trump and Putin instead of Trump and the convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, which Wolff and Coles speculated may have been a deliberate move by the White House.

Still, Wolff cautioned Trump that fervor regarding his association with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is not going anywhere—no matter what sort of distractions may crop up. Trump has faced backlash from his supporters after his administration concluded Epstein died by suicide in prison, rather than being murdered, and no “client list” of wealthy co-conspirators exists—the subject of whirling conspiracies among his base.

“That’s the thing about the Epstein [scandal],” Wolff said. “You just can’t shake it off. It sticks.”

Reached for comment, the White House provided a statement it has previously sent to the Daily Beast regarding Wolff.

“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud,” said Communications Director Steven Cheung. “He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-circles-drop-f-bomb-after-failure-putin-summit-wolff/?

August 18, 2025

Trump Melts Down Over Negative Coverage of Putin Summit Flop

“That’s why they are the FAKE NEWS!” Trump fired off in a morning Truth Social rant.

President Donald Trump launched into a Sunday morning rage on the heels of negative media coverage around his flop summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Media outlets reported that Trump largely came away empty-handed from his historic Putin meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, save for a puzzling Putin lecture about eliminating “all the primary root causes” of his full-scale assault on Ukraine.

In a post-meeting debrief, Trump said “there’s no deal until there’s a deal.” He added, “I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate, and I’ll, of course, call up President Zelensky and tell them about today’s meeting. It’s ultimately up to them.”

Yet judging from the Truth Social posts he fired off first thing on Sunday, Trump appears to be feeling the pressure of having made no deal with Putin after previously positioning himself as America’s dealmaker-in-chief.

“It’s incredible how the Fake News violently distorts the TRUTH when it comes to me,” Trump posted. “There is NOTHING I can say or do that would lead them to write or report honestly about me. I had a great meeting in Alaska on Biden’s stupid War, a war that should have never happened!!!”

Ahead of his Monday meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a gaggle of European reinforcements, Trump also made sure to add a plug for his long-suffering bid to be an awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He wrote, “Also, they should talk about the 6 WARS, etc., I JUST STOPPED!!! MAGA”Politico reported that Trump has stooped to cold-calling Norwegian diplomats to pester them about the prize, with the summit reportedly playing a large part in his campaign to put himself up for the award.

Yet even before it flopped, MAGA pundits came out and said that Trump deserves the prize regardless.

“If you have a president of the United States trying so hard... for peace, even if he’s not totally successful, just the effort is so, it’s so overt, it’s so public, it’s so aggressive. You know, he deserves recognition at least for that,” Geraldo Rivera told Newsmax host Rob Finnerty last Wednesday.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-melts-down-over-negative-coverage-of-putin-summit-flop/?

August 18, 2025

Dumbest Leakers Reveal Trump’s Secret Plans to ‘Honor’ Putin

Eight pages of U.S. plans were reportedly left behind in the business center of an Alaska hotel.

Eight pages of documents detailing U.S. plans to “honor” Russian President Vladimir Putin during Trump’s failed summit with the world leader were left behind in the business center of a hotel in Alaska.

NPR reported that the papers, which have not been confirmed as authentic, included U.S. State Department markings and were found on a public printer around 9 a.m. by guests at the four-star Hotel Captain Cook. Several of the pages note they were “Produced by the Office of the Chief of Protocol.” This is Monica Crowley, who took her position in May.

The hotel is around 20 minutes away from where Putin and Trump convened at the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, NPR reported.In addition to literally rolling out the red carpet for Putin, the documents reveal that the summit lunch was also designed “in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin.” The documents share precise locations and meeting time schedules allegedly for the summit, including phone numbers of U.S. government employees, and plans for Trump to gift Putin an “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue” on one page. Also listed on the documents are the names of Russian leaders with phonetic spellings for their names, such as “Mr. President POO-tihn,” NPR reported.Diving deeper into the logistics of the summit, the pages also included a seating chart for lunch, with Trump joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles on his right and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff on his left. Similarly, according to pages 6 and 7, Putin would be flanked by Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov and Aide to the President for Foreign Policy Yuri Ushakov.

NPR posted a menu that included a “green salad” with “champagne vinaigrette” paired with surf and turf consisting of a filet mignon with “brandy peppercorn sauce” and “buttery whipped potatoes and roasted asparagus” with halibut, a fish found in Russia’s arctic waters.

For something sweet, crème brûlée was reportedly planned for dessert. Yet in a sour turn of events, the lunch was for some reason called off.

Crème brûlée aside, the contents of the unverified pages could mark the latest security flub out of the Trump administration on the heels of its very public Signalgate scandal in March.

After The Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly added to a chat discussing sensitive attack plans among top defense and intelligence officials—including Hegseth, Rubio and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard—the Trump administration insisted no “sensitive” information had been shared.

Nonetheless, the scandal has eroded trust in the administration’s abilities, said UCLA professor and lecturer on national security Jon Michaels.

“It strikes me as further evidence of the sloppiness and the incompetence of the administration,” Michaels told NPR. “You just don’t leave things in printers. It’s that simple.”

In an emailed statement to the Daily Beast, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly wrote, “It’s hilarious that NPR is publishing a multi-page lunch menu and calling it a ‘security breach.’ This type of self-proclaimed ‘investigative journalism’ is why no one takes them seriously and they are no longer taxpayer-funded thanks to President Trump.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dumbest-leakers-reveal-trumps-secret-plans-to-honor-putin/?

August 19, 2025

Trump offers Ukraine "protection"

President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's Q&A session today had a friendlier tone than their disastrous blowup in February, but immediate peace with Russia remains unlikely, Axios' Dave Lawler reports.

? The vibe was tense ahead of the meeting, with Trump questioning Zelensky's willingness to make peace and Ukrainian officials worrying that Russian President Vladimir Putin manipulated Trump during their recent Alaska summit.
?? Yet Trump's endorsement of strong security guarantees for Ukraine under any peace deal with Russia was welcome news for Kyiv.

? Asked if the U.S. was prepared to send troops to guarantee Ukraine's security after its war with Russia, Trump said that European countries would form the "first line of defense," but "we'll be involved."

☮️ Trump did not offer details beyond saying the U.S. will do its part to ensure any peace deal endures.
?? "We will give them very good protection, very good security. That's part of it," Trump said.

3️⃣ Trump also reiterated his desire for a trilateral summit involving Putin and Zelensky.

Putin has yet to endorse that idea, and Trump said it's unclear whether it will happen.

?? Trump and Zelensky are now taking part in a larger summit with seven European leaders, all strong supporters of Ukraine.

?? Putin's maximalist claims to Ukrainian territory dim the prospects of an immediate breakthrough.
? Zelensky made clear ahead of the meeting that while he and the European leaders "all share a strong desire to end this war quickly and reliably," he won't cede territory to Russia.

Go deeper.

August 19, 2025

Joyful Russian State TV Says Putin Hoodwinked Trump During Limo Ride

Kremlin propagandists are thrilled by the outcome of Putin’s summit with Trump and happy to brag about how he pulled it off.

The Alaska summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin was savored by the state media as an incredible breakthrough—not because it produced any tangible outcomes, but because it blasted Russia out of international isolation. Despite an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court, the Russian leader was treated to a red-carpet reception, with gifts and honors reportedly being bestowed upon a seasoned war criminal.

“The summit in Alaska was triumphant for Putin,” exclaimed state TV host Olga Skabeeva during Monday’s broadcast of 60 Minutes. Likewise, other hosts and experts have relished a string of “Putin’s victories,” from the red carpet and the impressive flyover to cajoling Trump into abandoning his idea of a ceasefire. For this, they’ve credited the twosome’s ride in the presidential limousine, unaccompanied by interpreters or U.S. government officials, where they assert that the two presidents have “divided Ukraine.”

During his Saturday show Mardan, host Sergey Mardan relished the situation, as he mockingly said, “Who knows what Vladimir Vladimirovich and Donald Trump agreed on? Especially when they rode in that presidential Cadillac. Even interpreters weren’t there. Maybe he gave Trump a gold star medal of the “Hero of Russia.” Maybe he handed him General’s epaulets or a letter from his relatives in the Motherland. I have no idea. The only conclusion we can make as to the outcome of this summit is that the United States is stepping out of this war.”

Vladimir Putin winking in front of an image of him and Donald Trump in a motorcade in Alaska — Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters

Trump and Putin were originally scheduled to hold face-to-face talks with no one else in the room but that was altered after pundits raised concerns and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff were added to the meeting along with some of Putin’s closest aides.

Despite that schedule change, Putin did manage to get his one-on-one moment with the U.S. president as they drove from the plane in the presidential Cadillac, which is known as “the Beast.” Video footage showed Putin laughing and the two men involved in an animated conversation.

As a result, Putin was able to sway Trump into pressuring the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky into surrendering a number of his territories to Russia—with no known concessions by the Kremlin. Back in February, Zelensky’s first Oval Office ambush was predicted by State Duma member Oleg Morozov on 60 Minutes. The Russian lawmaker said that the meeting would be a lesson in humiliation, designed to condition Zelensky to capitulate to the United States—and later to Russia.

Russian pundits are particularly excited by the inclusion of Vice President JD Vance in Monday’s meeting with Zelensky and the European leaders. During his weekend show, Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solovyov, host Vladimir Solovyov celebrated this development, noting that Vance “hates Zelensky” and “despises the Europeans.”

Solovyov pointed out a total about-face by Trump towards Moscow after the Alaska summit, “Note that there is not one more word about ultimatums, sanctions, pressure or the necessity for a ceasefire.”

During the same show, pundits who frequently proclaim that Trump is “theirs” and mock him as a clown have changed their tune and started to describe him as a “serious” and “experienced” statesman, having apparently received instructions not to insult the American president while negotiations are at a delicate stage.

Political scientist Vladimir Kornilov urged fellow panelists not to talk about Putin’s triumph over Trump, complaining that translated video clips from Russian TV shows circulate on the Internet and are being used “to anger Trump and pull him in the opposite direction.”

Another useful element of the Alaska summit for Moscow is a deepening divide between the United States and its European allies due to Trump’s approach to the Ukrainian conflict.

Appearing on Saturday’s broadcast of the radio show Mardan, Alexey Naumov, member of the Russian International Affairs Council, said that Europe is incapable of providing adequate support to Ukraine without American participation. He stressed, “I hope that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will end up in the same boat, jointly forcing the European Union into peace. As we know, Russia can do this not only by military means.”

A common thread in the state media’s coverage of the summit was the urgency to act now and to “take advantage” of this situation, where Russia stands to benefit without offering any concessions. State TV’s experts and pundits point out that this lucky streak might not continue when there’s another president in office, as they acknowledge, “We will never be friends with America.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/joyful-russian-state-tv-says-putin-hoodwinked-trump-during-limo-ride/?

August 19, 2025

Trump Family Has Turned Down ‘No Opportunity’ to Cash In on Presidency

An investigative report found that the first family is projected to rake in $3.4 billion thanks to their proximity to the White House.

The journalist behind a bombshell report detailing the staggering amount of money that President Donald Trump’s second term is raking in for the first family said Trump and Co. have cashed in on the presidency at an unprecedented rate.

The New Yorker’s David Kirkpatrick calculated that Trump, his children, and their spouses will earn more than $3.4 billion thanks largely to deals, transactions, and investments that almost certainly would not have happened if Trump were just a real estate agent and reality TV star.

During an interview Sunday with MSNBC’s The Weekend Primetime, Kirkpatrick said other presidents and their children have found ways of “cashing in” with book deals and speaker fees but that it was all “small change” compared to the Trump family deals.

“The speed at which he and the family are doing it, they seem to turn down no opportunity,” he said.

Since Trump won re-election in November, the Trump family has announced deals for a new Trump Tower in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a Trump-branded luxury golf course in Qatar that will be part of a $5.5 billion development project, and a $1 billion Trump hotel and residence in Dubai.

Other venture include cryptocurrency investments that now rival the Trump family real estate portfolio; a private members-only club in Washington, D.C., called The Executive Branch; venture capital investments; and various low-grade Trump memorabilia and souvenirs.

Also, the Qatari royal family is gifting Trump a luxury Boeing 747-8.

Kirkpatrick told MSNBC that he didn’t include some of the sketchier crypto ventures, like the Trump family meme coins, but that he did include the family’s Bitcoin holdings for a key reason.

The Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns the Truth Social platform, trades in meme stocks, meaning the company trades its stock at an irrational price that is basically just a barometer of how Trump’s supporters feel about him, Kirkpatrick explained.

The president owns 42 percent of the company, and he can’t sell his stock because the price would collapse. So his team has taken the irrationally inflated stock and swapped it for about $3 billion in cash and Bitcoin, giving Trump an influx of about $1 billion in just the past two months.

The situation is all the more remarkable because not only is Trump still in office, but he vowed at the beginning of his first term that he and his family would not do anything that could even be perceived as exploiting the presidency for personal profit.

“If I was a foreign government considering doing business with the Trump Organization as a way to try to curry favor with the president—perhaps to get some sort of official act in my benefit—I have to believe that I would see that eagerness for money and think, ‘Yeah, there’s an OK chance here that if I do business with the Trump Organization, they really want that money. It might work out for me,’” Kirkpatrick said.

In response to his comments, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Daily Beast in a statement, “The media’s continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest are irresponsible and reinforce the public’s distrust in what they read. Neither the President nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.”

Trump’s children have also denied getting rich off the White House.

“If there’s one family that hasn’t profited off politics, it’s the Trump family,” son Eric Trump told the Financial Times in June.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-family-has-turned-down-no-opportunity-to-cash-in-on-presidency/?

August 19, 2025

Improvisational and Opportunistic

																(Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty)
															

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One week after Donald Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, D.C., the militarization of the city is escalating.

Trump now says that he expects Congress to allow him to maintain control of D.C. police after a legally mandated 30-day limit. Members of the National Guards of Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, and West Virginia will soon be joining the D.C. National Guard in the streets. Humvees posted at places such as Union Station make the capital look more like the Green Zone in Baghdad than the place you get off the Amtrak. Federal agents appear to have torn down a political sign in a liberal neighborhood and refused to identify themselves or their agencies in confrontations. Although the Army initially said that the Guard would neither carry weapons nor make arrests, a Guard spokesperson told NPR yesterday, “Guard members may be armed consistent with their mission and training.”

What exactly is their mission and training, though? National Guard troops prepare for civil unrest, which is why they’re frequently called up when major protests break out. But D.C. isn’t seeing big demonstrations—certainly not before Trump’s takeover, and not really since, either, despite some smaller protests by residents.

As for the mission, that’s even more obscure. Last Monday, Trump said that the plan was to “liberate” D.C. from crime. Depending on who you believe, the takeover was triggered by the president’s desire to change the subject away from Jeffrey Epstein, a reflexive reaction to a Fox News segment about D.C., or anger about an attempted carjacking involving a former DOGE staffer. But Trump cited no acute emergency, and he hasn’t explained what the goal is. With no stated objective, there can be no end point. (It can’t be that crime ceases to exist, an impossible goal.) That raises the scary prospect that it could just go on forever—or slide into martial law around the country.

The past week has seen a lively meta-debate about crime data, in which some people point out that crime is down sharply from two years ago and even more drastically from 30 years ago, while others emphasize that D.C. still sees more murders than some other big cities. (None of this is necessarily in conflict.) Still others question—sometimes in good faith, sometimes in bad—how accurate the available statistics are.

But this is all a little beside the point. Nothing about these deployments suggests that they will durably solve any of the real problems. The Guard isn’t trained for routine police work. The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration whom Trump tried to install atop the Metropolitan Police Department has no experience in municipal policing. The Washington Post’s mapping shows that federal officers are mostly not in the district’s highest-crime neighborhoods. Immigration arrests are, however, up sharply.

D.C. residents are hardly unfamiliar or uncomfortable with men and women in uniform. Civilians ride the Metro with service members, work with them in federal offices, or serve them in restaurants. Several military facilities are located in the city, and the Pentagon is just over the Potomac in Virginia. Yet many people are rattled and upset by the takeover. To choose one rough metric, restaurant reservations are down significantly. If the idea was to make residents feel safe, it isn’t working. If the idea was to intimidate them, however, it might be.

Legally, Trump has control over the D.C. National Guard, and he also has the power to temporarily take over D.C. policing in a declared emergency (even if he hasn’t actually identified any such circumstance). The addition of Guard troops from elsewhere is curious because, as the journalist Philip Bump reports, they come from states with cities more dangerous than D.C. Jackson, Mississippi, has the highest murder rate in the nation, compared with cities of the same size or larger. But the troops also come from states with Republican governors, making them into a force whose leaders are presumably more politically loyal to the president. The Associated Press delicately noted, “It’s unclear why additional troops are needed.”

The unique status of the District of Columbia gives Trump more power to put soldiers in the streets. The bounds of the law have still held so far. When the Justice Department tried to install an emergency police commissioner, supplanting the current police chief, the city sued, and the administration backed down. But Trump and some of his allies are eager to move into other states where their authority is not so clear.

“President Trump doesn’t have a limitation on his authority to make this country safe again,” border czar Tom Homan said last week. “There’s no limitation on that.” That’s patently false, but it appears to be the animating force of administration actions. The Constitution and U.S. laws establish no such thing as martial law, and a president’s power to use federal troops inside the country is circumscribed. Trump did not outline what authority he might claim for similar actions elsewhere, but in his announcement last week, he said he’d look at taking over New York and Chicago next. “I think that this is an experiment that’s probably needed in a lot of the Democrat-run cities in America,” Representative James Comer, a Kentuckian close to the White House, said recently. Trump and his allies have long been focused on Philadelphia, Baltimore, and St. Louis as well.

Nearly every major city is run by a Democrat, which makes them ripe targets for politicking and also for retribution. A group of Border Patrol agents showed up last week at a political rally in Los Angeles held by Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat and outspoken Trump critic, in what many of those present took as attempted intimidation. (“Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law—not about Gavin Newsom,” a Department of Homeland Security official said in a social-media post.)

What’s happening doesn’t look like a carefully regimented and organized attempt at standing up a military dictatorship. Trump seldom acts with that sort of discipline. Instead, it looks like an improvisational and opportunistic grab of power—Trump seeing what he can get away with and what he can normalize. With no stated goal, and with an acquiescent Congress and Supreme Court, the country could end up with the U.S. military occupying its major cities before most Americans realize what’s happening.

Related:

August 19, 2025

?? ?? Trump's summit setup

The White House wants a meeting between Russia's Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky to take place before the end of the month, a source with knowledge tells Axios' Barak Ravid.

Why it matters: Trump said on Truth Social that he'd called Putin yesterday and "began the arrangements for a meeting" between Putin and Zelensky, to be followed by yet another summit, this time also including Trump.

The call took place while Zelensky and seven European leaders were gathered in the White House for a hastily arranged meeting after Trump and Putin's Alaska summit, two sources familiar with the call tell Axios.

Russia didn't confirm a meeting with Zelensky but only said that Trump and Putin had discussed "the idea of raising the level of Russian and Ukrainian representation in the negotiations."

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Today's coverage by Harry Cole of The Sun of London (first two) and the New York Post, both Rupert Murdoch papers.

? Zoom in: The on-camera parts of both of yesterday's meetings were friendly in tone, particularly compared to Zelensky's disastrous visit in February. The Ukrainian president described it as his "best" meeting with Trump so far.

The European leaders praised Trump's efforts for peace while prodding him to reconsider his decision to stop pushing Putin for a ceasefire, and instead jump straight to negotiating a comprehensive deal.
Trump said the U.S. would "be involved" in providing post-war security guarantees for Ukraine. He didn't rule out sending in U.S. troops, though he said the Europeans would be the "first line of defense."
The discussion around security guarantees seemed to strike a nerve in Moscow. The Foreign Ministry said it "categorically" rejects the possibility of "a military contingent with the participation of NATO countries" inside Ukraine.

? What we're watching: Security guarantees for Ukraine and territorial claims by Russia will be two of the thorniest issues if Putin and Zelensky do end up at the negotiating table.

August 19, 2025

White House's D.C. arrest tally

Nearly half of non-immigration-related arrests during President Trump's D.C. takeover have taken place in two of the city's most crime-ridden areas, according to an analysis the White House shared with Axios' Cuneyt Dil and Marc Caputo.

Why it matters: The figures refute critics who claimed the takeover was all for show or was not targeting high-crime areas, according to a White House official who crunched the numbers this weekend.

The big picture: Trump's D.C. takeover is unprecedented, as is the use of White House staff to analyze metropolitan crime data.

Images of National Guard troops patrolling touristy areas, protesters chanting at police and masked agents arresting people on the streets have dominated headlines and chatter on social media for days.

? By the numbers: 212 people have been arrested for various crimes during the federal takeover since Aug. 8, according to White House data that excludes immigration-related arrests.

101 of those arrests, or 48%, took place in Wards 7 and 8, home to many low-income and working-class majority-Black neighborhoods of Washington. They have long experienced the most violent crime in the city.

Keep reading ...

ps:Maybe it's not as chaotic as we've heard??

August 19, 2025

Ukraine

Even as President Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and seven European leaders met at the White House yesterday to discuss efforts to end Russia’s war, Moscow was engaging in its largest aerial assault on Ukraine in weeks. The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia fired 270 drones and 10 missiles overnight, killing at least 8 people and wounding 54 others. Amid the continued violence, diplomatic talks in Washington, DC, managed to secure the potential of a bilateral meeting between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as a willingness on the part of the US to work on security guarantees for Ukraine. Part of those guarantees included plans for Ukraine to purchase $90 billion in US weapons through European funding. Negotiations on Ukraine’s security guarantees are expected to continue today, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the BBC. To avoid further bloodshed, European leaders remain keen to see a ceasefire enacted before Zelensky meets with Putin.

August 19, 2025

Immigration

A federal judge late last week denied the Trump administration’s request to end a policy that is meant to protect immigrant children in federal custody. The 1997 Flores v. Reno court agreement limited how long US Customs and Border Protection could detain child immigrants to 72 hours. After that, the Department of Health and Human Services takes over custody. The Flores agreement also set quality of life standards for detained minors, including food, drinking water, medical assistance, toilets, sinks, temperature control, supervision and as much separation from unrelated adults as possible, according to a Congressional Research Service report.

August 19, 2025

Trump, 79, Can’t See World Leader Right in Front of Him

The president has made a string of similar baffling slip-ups at the White House.

Donald Trump struggled to find his new best friend from Finland at Monday’s Ukraine peace talks, even though President Alexander Stubb was seated right opposite him and the pair are officially golfing buddies.

Trump, 79, was the oldest person ever to be sworn into office when he began his second term in January.

Lately he has suffered a series of “senior moments,” repeatedly saying he was going to Russia when in fact he was headed to Alaska, forgetting the name of a “big” war he supposedly ended, writing incomprehensible social media posts, and losing track of people standing right behind him.

On Monday, seven European leaders joined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House for a high-stakes gathering to discuss Russia’s ongoing invasion. While Trump was introducing the participants, who were seated around a conference table, he seemed to get lost.

“President Stubb of Finland. He’s uh, somebody that, where are we here?” Trump said.

He then looked all around the table until Stubb, who was sitting next to Zelensky and directly across from Trump, said, “I’m right here.”

“Oh!” Trump said, leaning forward. “You look better than I’ve ever seen you look. But you’ve done a great job and we wanted to have you here.”

The president’s flailing was reminiscent of a White House press conference earlier this month with Apple CEO Tim Cook in which Trump forgot that his Cabinet members were standing right behind him.

“Thanks as well to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for being here, wherever you may be,” he said.

“I’m right behind you,” Lutnick said, catching Trump off-guard.

“Oh hey fellas, I missed you,” the president quipped.

Something similar happened when Trump was signing a veterans’ bill on July 31 and didn’t realize the legislation’s sponsors were standing right behind him.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

Trump’s exchange with Stubb was all the more striking because the president and his Finnish counterpart have bonded on the golf course.

“I just played a round of Golf with Alexander Stubb, president of Finland. He is a very good player,” the MAGA chief wrote on social media in March.

The center-right conservative attended Furman University in South Carolina on a golf scholarship and was a member of the Finnish national golf team. He had planned to go pro after graduation but decided to quit after a year to focus on his political science degree.

Trump said the two leaders won the Men’s Member-Guest Golf Tournament at Trump International West Palm Beach, according to the Palm Beach Post.

Stubb apparently made an impression on Trump, because since their golf victory the U.S. president has called him late at night to chat about Russia, which shares a land border with Finland, along with chipping, driving, and putting.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-79-cant-see-world-leader-right-in-front-on-him/?

August 19, 2025

Rocker Jack White Shames Trump’s ‘Vulgar’ White House After Ukraine Meeting

The American musician said the Oval Office now resembles a “professional wrestler’s dressing room.”

Grammy-winning rock musician Jack White has lashed out at Donald Trump for the “disgusting” way he has transformed the “historic” White House.

The rock star posted a photo on his Instagram account on Monday night featuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump sitting in the Oval Office, surrounded by gold-framed paintings, gold trinkets, and trophies.

The outspoken White claimed the Oval Office now resembled “a vulgar, gold leafed and gaudy, professional wrestler’s dressing room. Can’t wait for the UFC match on the front lawn too.”

The musician, who called Trump an “obvious fascist” and a “wannabe dictator” after he won the 2024 election, continued to slate the president in his latest post.

“Look at his disgusting taste, would you even buy a used car from this conman, let alone give him the nuclear codes?,” White said. “A gold plated Trump bible would look perfect up on that mantle with a pair of Trump shoes on either side wouldn’t it? What an embarrassment to American history.”

The former White Stripes front man made sure to praise Zelensky, closing his caption with the comment: “Also pictured in this photograph, a REAL leader of a nation in a black suit.”

The post came after Trump’s highly publicized meeting with the Ukrainian president alongside a host of European leaders to discuss ways of ending the Ukraine war.

The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.

Trump’s changes to the White House have included replacing the lawn in the Rose Garden with paving and an influx of gold items including gold cherubs from his Mar-a-Lago estate, gold vases, gold urns, gold picture frames, and a gold “Trump” crest over the door leading into the historic building.

Decor aside, White has clashed with Trump in the past. Last November, White dropped a copyright infringement lawsuit after Trump used his song “Seven Nation Army” in a political video. The White Stripes hit was used to soundtrack Trump boarding a plane during campaign stops.

“Don’t even think about using my music you fascists,” White wrote in a fiery Instagram post responding to the video. “Lawsuit coming from my lawyers about this (to add to your 5 thousand others.)”

Trump had also used Beyoncé’s “Freedom” in another campaign video last year without getting permission.

His lengthy Instagram post after Trump’s election win left no doubt of where he stood on the new president.

“Trump won the popular vote. End of story. Americans chose a known, obvious fascist and now America will get whatever this wannabe dictator wants to enact from here on in,” White said.

“He’s not one of you and can’t cite one verse of Jesus’ teachings, Immigrants? He wants you out. Veterans? He’s a draft dodger... Working class Americans? He doesn’t give a damn how much you’re struggling. Women? You know exactly what he thinks of you. Dying on the stretcher from a miscarriage of your rapist’s pregnancy? Oh well, too bad.”

Last month, White posted on Instagram: “The people who have supported this professional liar, egomaniac conman all these years will all pretend they never did once he’s gone.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/rocker-jack-white-shames-trumps-vulgar-white-house-after-ukraine-meeting/?

August 19, 2025

How Svengali Putin Keeps Trump the Chump Dancing to His Tune

The Russian president remains a KGB agent at his core, a former senior U.S. intelligence official told the Daily Beast.

As recounted by President Donald Trump on Fox News, “one of the most interesting things” Russian President Vladimir Putin told him was “‘your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting.’”

“He said, ‘You won that election by so much... and if you would have won, we wouldn’t have had a war, we’d have all of these millions of people alive now instead of dead,’” Trump said on Sean Hannity’s show on Friday night. “And he said, ‘and you lost it because of mail-in voting, it was a rigged election.’”

The Kremlin did not immediately confirm Trump’s account and he has been known to confabulate conversations that could not have possibly occurred.

But the supposed exchange with Putin is exactly what Trump would have most wanted to hear. And, as a former senior U.S. intelligence official noted on Monday, Putin remains a KGB agent at his icy core.

“As an intelligence officer, it becomes innate when you size somebody up to assess their vulnerabilities, their needs, their desires, and then figure out which ones to exploit,” the former official, who wished to remain anonymous, told the Daily Beast on Monday. “In Trump’s case, he’s an open book. His vulnerability is ego, his need is petting, and his desire is to look powerful. So, you know, Putin is figuring out how to j--- him off. “ 

To say that Trump colluded with Russia suggests there was some secret understanding. Much more likely than collusion, there was manipulation of Trump by Putin, of a ruse by a veteran spy turned tyrant.

“Trump, oh, my God, this guy for an intelligence officer is a dream machine,” the former official told the Daily Beast. “All you have to do is press the buttons and it does exactly as advertised.”

His I-beat-Biden button duly pushed, Trump went on Truth Social early Monday to rage about a rigged election that wasn’t rigged. He could have better spent his time planning for a meeting between Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and six other European leaders who were coming to the White House with the hope of stopping the war that Putin started.

“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post as Russian missiles and drones continued to kill innocent Ukrainians, in this latest instance including a toddler.

During his first term, Trump had seemed to be intimidated by Putin. The former official believes this was at least in part because oligarchs with ties to the Russian president had the power to tell banks on which Trump depended to cut him off.

“Whenever Putin was around, [Trump] seemed mousy and weak,” the former official said.

But since he returned to office, Trump and his family have raked in billions. Trump has become an appeaser transformed.

“He could push Putin around in ways he couldn’t before,” the former official said. “Once [Trump] realized this guy can’t financially destroy me because I’m liquid, [Trump] got a little chesty with him. He’s like, ‘What’s happening in Ukraine is disgusting. I’m giving Putin a deadline. I’m shortening it. I’m cutting the deadline in half. I’m going to make this happen, blah, blah, blah.’”

Trump threatened Putin with punishing sanctions if he did not agree to a ceasefire.

“And everybody wondered like, ‘When did Donald Trump get a set of balls?’” the former official recalled. “Donald Trump did not grow a set of balls. He grew $5 billion.”

But the newly emboldened Trump suddenly turned TACO when he met with Putin in Alaska on Friday. The former official figures that Putin had simply told himself to modulate the manipulation.

“Putin says, ‘You know, even though I can’t pull the rug under him financially like I could before, which was the fear factor, I could still use the ego factor, because with Donald Trump that never fails,’” the former official surmised, theorizing that Putin told himself, “All I have to do is stroke him three times and then talk to him about the big picture.’”

If Trump’s account of the Alaska meeting is accurate, the big picture as drawn by Putin is this: Without mail-in votes, Trump would have won the 2020 election and there never would have been a war in Ukraine and millions of lives would have been saved.

Trump came out of the meeting also saying that it was up to Zelensky to stop the killing. Never mind that it had in actuality been started by Putin and Putin alone.

Zelensky “can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Zelensky looked grim when he arrived at the White House along with the half dozen other European leaders on Monday afternoon. He had set his pride aside by wearing a black suit instead of the military attire he customarily wears as a tribute to his soldiers. The White House correspondent for a conservative cable news network had termed it disrespectful when Zelensky first visited The White House in February.

And during that same visit, Vice President JD Vance had criticized Zelensky for not being adequately grateful for American support. Zelensky made a point of thanking Trump seven times in under three minutes during an open press session on Monday, including for allowing him to point out details on a battlefield map.

“Thank you for the map by the way, it was great,” Zelensky said.

Zelensky also asked Trump to convey his thanks to First Lady Melania Trump for a letter she wrote to Putin about the thousands of Ukrainian children the Russians abducted from their families in territory they seized. Zelensky did not mention that the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant charging Putin with “the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) …from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.” He simply said he hoped a peace agreement would present an “historic” opportunity to “to bring kids back to the families and be happy.”

“Bring people back, yeah,” Trump said.

When Zelensky was done, Trump seemed pleased, at least for the moment.

“Great remarks,” Trump said. “I appreciate it.”

But even before Zelensky and the other leaders departed The White House, Trump telephoned Putin. Trump and Putin are said to have spoken for 40 minutes.

“I called President Putin, and began the arrangements for a meeting, at a location to be determined, between President Putin and President Zelenskyy,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This was a very good, early step for a War that has been going on for almost four years.”

Yet, judging from what a hot mic picked up of Trump whispering to French President Emmanuel Macron in the East Room, the master manipulator was hard at work.

“I think he [Putin] wants to make a deal,” Trump said. “I think he wants to make a deal for me, you understand that? As crazy as it sounds.”

Crazy indeed.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-svengali-putin-keeps-trump-the-chump-dancing-to-his-tune/?

August 19, 2025

Trump wants to do away with mail-in voting, but the Constitution doesn't give him that power

Trump on Monday vowed to make more changes to the way U.S. elections are conducted, but under the Constitution there is little to nothing he can do on his own. Read more.

Why this matters:

Trump pledged on his social media site that he would do away with both mail voting, which remains popular and is used by about a third of voters, and voting machines that are used in some form in nearly all of the nation’s thousands of election jurisdictions.
Trump’s post came after he told Fox News that Russian President Vladimir Putin echoed his grievances about mail voting and the 2020 election during their Friday meeting in Alaska. Trump continued his attack on mail voting and voting machines in the Oval Office on Monday during his meeting with Zelenskyy.
Although Republicans control Congress, it’s unclear whether they would want to eliminate voting machines nationwide, possibly delaying vote tallies in their own races by weeks or months. Even then, legislation would likely be blocked by Democrats with a filibuster in the Senate.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

August 20, 2025

Despite a flurry of meetings on Russia’s war in Ukraine, major obstacles to peace remain

Despite the guarded optimism after U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Oval Office meeting on Monday, there was little concrete progress on the main obstacles to ending the war. The deadlock likely favors Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose forces continue to make steady, if slow progress on the ground in Ukraine. Read more.

August 20, 2025

Trump’s Justice Department is investigating whether DC police officials falsified crime data

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether police officials in Washington, D.C., have falsified data to make crime rates appear lower than they are, according to two people familiar with the probe who weren’t authorized to publicly discuss an open investigation.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-crime-data-rates-washington-police-7429711db32e2cd44c5b70504cacef40?

FACT FOCUS: Trump misrepresents facts about wind power during Cabinet meeting

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has opened an investigation into whether police officials in Washington, D.C., have falsified data to make crime rates appear lower than they are, according to two people familiar with the probe who weren’t authorized to publicly discuss an open investigation.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-crime-data-rates-washington-police-7429711db32e2cd44c5b70504cacef40?

Trump embraces air support

Senior American, Ukrainian and European officials are hammering out a detailed proposal on security guarantees for Ukraine with an eye toward peace between it and Russia, Axios' Barak Ravid reports.

? Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading a newly formed joint commission on the matter, and any resulting plan will likely involve U.S. air power.

?? President Trump has come around to the idea of U.S. involvement in protecting Ukraine after its war with Russia, following months of refusing to discuss the issue.

In a "Fox & Friends" interview, Trump stressed there'll be no U.S. boots on the ground, but said he's open to providing air support for European forces.

?? Trump said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin would accept U.S.-European security guarantees for Ukraine, "but we will know in the next few weeks."

Trump is also pushing a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
? During a phone call yesterday, Trump told Putin that he will have to meet directly with Zelensky to discuss his demands for Ukrainian territory, and urged him to be "realistic."

Yes, but: There's still no date or location for such a meeting. Zelensky has long rejected Putin's desired territorial gains.

Go deeper.

Trump administration revokes security clearances of 37 current and former government officials

August 19, 2025

The Trump administration has ordered the revocation of the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials, including some who worked on the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it by name.

August 20, 2025

Tracking tariffs

Hundreds of items just got a lot more expensive to import into the US, now that President Donald Trump’s 50% tariff on steel and aluminum has kicked in. Deodorant, butter knives, baby strollers and fire extinguishers had been excluded — but not anymore.

August 20, 2025

Process vs. Substance

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On the surface, yesterday’s White House summit on Ukraine showed an impressively unified front among President Donald Trump, major European leaders, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The participants all smiled and expressed optimism. Zelensky donned a suit, avoiding harangues like those he received over his military attire during his previous visit.

Yes, the leaders offered sometimes exaggerated praise for Trump, but the president also praised each of them in hyperbolic terms, and he had a few good lines, even if NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte laughed a little too hard at some of them.

The biggest division during the meeting was not about whether Trump is more sympathetic to Russia or Ukraine, the central question in the past. Instead, the disunity was over substance versus process. Trump appeared to treat the peace negotiation as basically a series of steps to be completed, while his counterparts were more focused on questions of cease-fires and security guarantees. This cleavage suggests that although European leaders appear to have succeeded—at least for now—in persuading Trump to move somewhat toward them and away from Russian President Vladimir Putin, turning that into a real peace will still be challenging.

For Trump, the answer to stopping the war appears to be getting the right sequence of meetings: First, he met with Putin; then he met with Zelensky; next, he will meet with both men and, he says, hammer out a deal. “We’re going to try and work out a [trilateral meeting] after that and see if we can get it finished, put this to sleep,” he said yesterday. (Zelensky was open to such a meeting yesterday. The White House said today that Putin has agreed as well, but the Kremlin has been publicly noncommittal.)

Zelensky and the other Europeans, meanwhile, were much more concerned about the details of what might come up at this eventual trilateral meeting, or along the way. For the pro-Ukraine bloc, the big victory from yesterday was a discussion of security guarantees for Ukraine—basically, assurances that once a peace deal is in place, allies will assist Ukraine if Russia restarts hostilities. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, discussed creating something similar to NATO’s Article 5 mutual-defense agreement. But Trump was notably vague about what sort of commitments he might make.

Trump also wavered on the importance of a cease-fire. Prior to his summit with Putin in Alaska last week, Trump had insisted on a cessation of hostilities, which Putin flatly rejected. Now Trump seems to have given up on that. “All of us would obviously prefer an immediate cease-fire while we work on a lasting peace,” he said. “And maybe something like that could happen. As of this moment, it’s not happening.” (As if to underscore the point, Russian drones struck Ukraine yesterday—though this sort of provocation also seems to be one reason for Trump’s new openness to Ukraine.)

Some observers were appalled by Trump’s meeting with Putin on American soil, noting that the Russian president is a butcher, an autocrat, and a war criminal wanted on international warrants. All of this is true, and nauseating, but as National Review’s Rich Lowry notes, achieving peace will require dealing with Putin. (When President Barack Obama tried diplomacy with Iran, Republicans were outraged; now the roles are reversed.) Peace deals are judged on results, not always the character of those making them. Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger were Nobel Peace laureates, after all.

Sitting down, however, is not enough on its own, and if treated that way, it can simply encourage bad actors such as Putin by giving them status and recognition without requiring any or many concessions. Trump sees himself as a dealmaker, and he’s often described—sometimes, though not always, positively—as transactional. But he is so personally motivated by deals per se that he doesn’t always appear to grasp that others are not, or why they’re not. Trump’s approach to this negotiation has ignored the fact that Putin doesn’t seem interested in a deal at all: He appears content to drag the war out as long as possible. Nor does Trump’s method account for the fact that some terms of a peace deal would be so onerous as to make it unacceptable to Zelensky on patriotic and political grounds. Dealing with the messy details is hard work, and Trump has never shown much interest in, or patience for, policy minutiae.

This fetishization of process over substance has previously led Trump into the same diplomatic cul-de-sacs. In 2018—despite the skepticism of some of his own aides—he met with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in Singapore. The summit produced all the pageantry and pomp that Trump adores, and it led to a pen-pal relationship between the men, but in part because that was his focus, the gambit has not produced any breakthroughs on North Korea opening up, reducing nefarious activities overseas, or relinquishing nuclear weapons. Trump has held multiple meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to move toward a peace deal in Gaza, but his inability to get much traction there has led him to lash out at his ally.

Other perils still dog the Ukraine peace process. Trump continues to speak about Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine as though Ukraine had some choice or culpability in the matter. (“Russia is a powerful military nation, you know, whether people like it or not,” he said on Fox & Friends this morning. “It’s a much bigger nation. It’s not a war that should have been started; you don’t do that. You don’t take—you don’t take on a nation that’s 10 times your size.”) Trump also has a tendency to latch on to whatever he heard from the last person he spoke with, which explains his vacillation between Friday’s friendliness to Putin and yesterday’s chumminess with Zelensky, and makes it hard to know where he might settle.

But the biggest challenge at this moment is the nitty-gritty. Process is important and shouldn’t be written off, but it’s important because it provides a framework for resolving the substance. No peace deal can be achieved without accepting that.

Related:

August 20, 2025

Influencing Trump

Illustration of a hand holding a red horseshoe magnet emitting electric sparks, attracting Donald Trump as he walks away.

Photo illustration: Maura Kearns/Axios. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images.

There's a clear map for swaying President Trump — and it goes far beyond the cartoonish commentary that flattery and gifts are the surest ways, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen write in a "Behind the Curtain" column.

Why it matters: We talked to CEOs and world leaders who've had some success in working with Trump, as well as several aides watching the action inside the room. From their accounts, we stitched together the tricks for shifting or shaping Trump's views.

State of play: In Trump's second term, he's more self-confident and more indifferent to the opinions of others. But the savviest internal operators still know how to retrofit logic and strategy so they're speaking fluent Trump — his love language.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is a master practitioner, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio is none too shabby.
As far as foreign leaders go, Finnish President Alexander Stubb — a transatlantic triathlete straight out of central casting — has impressed Trump with his golf game, vivid history lessons and tough talk on Russia.

For obvious reasons, none of our sources would discuss their Trump tradecraft on the record. But here are 11 top Trump tactics, given the known knowns of operating today. Each component or step was confirmed to us by multiple people who've seen success up close:

Put a sock in it. There's nothing but downside to trashing Trump, his policies, or allies. There are simply too many Laura Loomers desperately seeking evidence of disloyalty. It's widely known internally that the boss feeds on evidence that someone is not right "on Trump."
Put a sock in the mouths of others. You often pay for the sins of friends, partners or associates who trash Trump. One big job of ambassadors to the U.S. and lobbyists for big companies is to argue for silence among those above, and let things play out privately.
Don't overreact. Many make the mistake of responding impulsively to Trump's impulsiveness. No matter what he says or claims to be doing, wait. It often takes days or weeks to realize if Trump will stick to something — or will simply change his mind or move on.
Build two spheres of influence. Think of Trump's two ears. One is full of throwback MAGA purists, skeptical of anyone not purebred MAGA. You need to deeply understand this world and find — or hire — MAGA-savvy operators like Arthur Schwartz, Cliff Sims, Andy Surabian, Jeff Miller, Jason Miller, Chris LaCivita, Kellyanne Conway, Brian Ballard or Ches McDowell. The other ear hears the whispers of more conventionally rational actors like Rubio, Bessent or White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. These relationships tend to be peer-to-peer and require cultivation.
Everything's negotiable. Trump lives for the transaction and public illumination of "big deals." You see this almost daily now, with Nvidia giving the U.S. a 15% cut of chip sales to China, or Apple's Tim Cook announcing another deal investing in American workers. You need to come to the table with a deal that's glossy and easy to explain, even if the details are flimsy.
Remember, it's WWE or reality TV. Trump thinks about optics differently than, um, probably everyone else in business and politics. In his mind, it's all pageantry, posturing and PR — basically make-believe until a deal is done or dead. Shock and awe is a tactic. Outrage is good, or at least fine. In his mind, you only remember "the deal," not how you got there.
Kiss ass — but in moderation. The cartoonish interpretation of Trump is to just come, like the three kings, bearing gifts, preferably of gold. There's some truth here. But Trump is better at sniffing out cringey obsequiousness than some think. He loves gifts but also exploits pure weakness. Grandeur in his love language. He loathes betas. The Saudis put on a masterclass with the palatial pomp and opulence during his state visit in May, when he secured $600 billion in investment commitments to the U.S. But pure boot-licking can backfire. The single most successful way to frame an idea for Trump is to show how it'll benefit him.
Get face-to-face. Trump will say or write horrible things about people, nations or companies. But rarely in person, one-on-one. He wants to be liked and comes off kinder, more interested, less erratic when face-to-face. Just ask Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan: Trump said in a Truth Social post that he "must resign, immediately," then wrote four days later after meeting with him: "His success and rise is an amazing story." The trick is getting in the room, away from cameras and social media.
Never assume the deal is fully done. What makes Trump maddening to deal with is his propensity to change his mind or mood — often on a dime, provoked by a random clip or conversation. A final deal is never truly final. Think of it as a happy moment in time — subject to change.
Play the long game. None of these techniques is a one-off. We're not quite one-sixth of the way (213 days) through Trump's second term. The savviest leaders, companies and people tend to all 11 of these steps methodically and consistently over years, in bright times and bad.
Pony up. Trump is aggressively fundraising for his MAGA Inc. super PAC and other political committees. Dinners sometimes cost $1 million a plate. The New York Times has extensively documented how contributors have received favorable treatment, including executives from crypto and healthcare companies.

Zachary Basu, Marc Caputo and Dave Lawler contributed.

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