Search Results for Donald Trump

Donald Trump’s AutomatonsIn George Orwell’s 1984, at the climax of Hate Week, Oceania is suddenly no longer at war with Eurasia, but instead is at war with Eastasia, and always has been. The pivot comes with no explanation or even announcement. During a public harangue, a Party orator is handed a scrap of paper and redirects his vitriol “mid-sentence, not only without a pause, but without even breaking the syntax.”Republican politicians in Donald Trump’s Inner Party faced a similar verbal challenge when the president changed sides in Russia’s war against Ukraine. One morning in late February, Republicans in Washington greeted Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky as a hero for continuing to resist Russian aggression. By afternoon, following Zelensky’s meeting in the Oval Office with Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance, the Ukrainian leader was an ungrateful, troublesome, and badly dressed warmonger who, if he hadn’t actually started the conflict with…

Trump’s Tariffs Target Uninhabited Islands, Economic Dead Zones, and Individual Regions of Fra…If you’ve ever played the online game Worldle, where players guess a country based on its silhouette, you’ll know the frustrating experience of failing to accurately identify the day’s blob that turns out to be some insignificant island territory. Frustrated Worldle players (at least American ones) can now have their revenge on these random statelets, thanks to President Donald Trump’s newly unveiled tariff regime. FULL LIST: Liberation Day pic.twitter.com/ZBiRuJBCAr — Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 2, 2025 Included in the White House’s “Liberation Day” list of countries to be hit with “reciprocal” tariffs are a host of uninhabited islands, economic dead zones, and administrative subregions with no independent trade policy of their own. Heard and McDonald Islands, an uninhabited Australian territory, will now pay a 10 percent tariff on any exported goods the penguins there manage to export…

Trump Says Conspiracy Theorist Laura Loomer ‘Makes Recommendations’ and ‘Sometimes I Listen to…President Donald Trump told reporters on Air Force on Thursday that he often listens to advice from far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. Trump denied reports Loomer played a role in his administration’s decision to fire three National Security Council staffers after she laid out grievances against them. Loomer was present during a Wednesday Oval Office meeting along with National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. Per numerous reports, Loomer accused the officials who were let go of being “neocons.” Axios reported three people were dismissed when Loomer said they “slipped through” a vetting process to ensure no George W. Bush-era Republicans ended up working for Trump. The New York Times reported, “Ms. Loomer walked into the White House with a sheaf of papers, which amounted to a mass of opposition research attacking the character and loyalty of numerous…

Why Trump Won’t ‘Produce a Scalp’ After the Signal DebacleIn the telling of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, he was only executing his duties when he shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen in an unclassified group chat on the Signal messaging app. “My job,” he told reporters during a swing through Hawaii, “is to provide updates in real time.”The implication: Nothing to see here.The reaction inside the Pentagon to Hegseth’s communications—disclosed this week by The Atlantic after the editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to the chat—told a different story, as security specialists raced to reiterate rules about the proper channels for classified information.“Incidents like this make my job significantly harder,” a Department of Defense operations security, or OPSEC, official told us this week, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. “When senior leadership disregards OPSEC and security protocols without consequences, it undermines…

Wisconsin’s Message for TrumpThere is a temptation to overhype or read too much into the results of off-year elections. In this case, I suggest we succumb.Yesterday, Wisconsin voters exposed, humiliated, and decisively rejected the world’s richest man. And they sent a stark message to Republicans in Washington.On Sunday, when Elon Musk parachuted in for a rally that featured $1 million checks for voters, he described the race for state supreme court here in apocalyptic terms. Tuesday’s vote, he declared, would determine which party controlled the House of Representatives, presumably because of the court’s role in redistricting. “That is why it is so significant,” he said. “And whichever party controls the House, you know, it, to a significant degree, controls the country, which then steers the course of Western civilization. So it’s like, I feel like this is one of those things that may not seem that it’s going to affect…

Trump wants Musk to stay with admin, says DOGE found something ‘horrible’ todayPresident Donald Trump said he wants Elon Musk to stay on his team “as long as possible” during a conversation with reporters Thursday, adding that DOGE had found something “horrible,” without divulging further details.The president’s remarks came during a conversation with reporters on Air Force One, during which Trump was asked how much longer Musk would stay on as a “special government employee.” The questions followed a media report from Politico this week claiming Trump had told his inner circle that Musk will be leaving his role as a “special government employee” with DOGE soon. The report cited internal frustrations with Musk’s “unpredictability” and his potential to be a “political liability.”  “Elon is fantastic, he’s a patriot,” Trump told reporters, adding that Musk can stay at the White House “as long as he’d like” and that he personally…