Mitch McConnell fell down the other day. Utah Senator Mike Lee scolded some unnamed people for allegedly making fun of it.
Right.
I know, I know. But Mike Lee is a US Senator who has gone so far down the MAGA rabbit hole that he’s become nothing more than the id of Eddie Haskell in a red hat. He is as much of a problem as Trump and he’s going to be around for a good long while.
Not a week after Donald Trump floated the idea of supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles, he backed away on Friday. The Kremlin made apocalyptic noise (again) after Trump’s Sunday comments on Air Force One on his way to Israel. Then Vladimir Putin got Trump on the phone the day before Trump met with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
Trump chickened out (again). Zelensky must have experienced that Lucy-and-the-football feeling (again). Still, he needs to keep Ukrainian hopes alive.
President Trump had repeatedly floated the idea of selling long-range missiles to Ukraine that would allow Kyiv to strike deep into Russia, increasing the leverage Ukrainians would have to force Russia to the negotiating table. Mr. Zelensky had scheduled a Friday meeting at the White House hoping to finalize the acquisition of the U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles.
By Friday afternoon, Mr. Zelensky had left that meeting disappointed, telling reporters that Mr. Trump had insisted on keeping the missiles. The Ukrainian president would no longer talk about acquiring them, though the two countries would continue discussing the matter.
What happened? One guess.
Between Mr. Trump’s comments on Tuesday about transferring long-range missiles to Ukraine and Mr. Zelensky’s letdown on Friday was a pivotal moment: a lengthy phone call between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who appeared to talk the American president out of the idea.
It was the latest example of Mr. Trump altering his position after a personal interaction with Mr. Putin. He has acknowledged in the past that he has felt misled by the Russian president. But his frustration with Mr. Putin often dissipates quickly.
A little fluffing of Trump’s ego. A casual mention of Trump Tower Moscow. (Is Trump is still falling for that one?) Except Trump never get that that Comrade Putin is doing a Russian version of Lucy-and-the-football. Trump will never be in the exclusive World Autocrats Club. But knowing how desperately Trump wants it (even more than a Nobel Peace prize) means Putin can get Trump to salivate every time he rings that bell.
Trump has ticky tackied the Cabinet Room too, hasn’t he?
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No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
Find a local protest. Show up in yooge numbers to defend the Constitution.
I know it’s pointless to ask people not to show up with a vast sea of signs, a virtual alphabet soup of pet issues. But today there is just one. Power in numbers, in unity of purpose.
Make the administration fret about what will happen when they lose power to a democratic uprising.
The general strike comes once we get the snowball rolling.
Here’s what I want to ask Speaker Mike Johnson and every professed American who still supports the wannbe king:
UPDATE: She brings the energy to my point. They’re already terrified. Of opponents in numbers.
* * * * *
No King’s One Million Rising movement – Next national day of protest Oct. 18
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
There is only one King we celebrate in America: the King of Beasts!
A whole lot of Americans must hate America
Tomorrow is the big day. If you haven’t found your nearest protest and times, you can look for it here.
Today’s two minutes of slander was as over the top as the rest have been:
I’m not sure why they’ve gone so batshit crazy over this but it’s beyond absurd. It says a lot more about their own paranoia than it says about us. What are they so afraid of?
If you were watching a documentary about cult leaders, that is exactly the kind of narcissistic delusions of grandeur you would expect to see. It’s getting worse every day.
The BBC broke down his claims about ending the wars:
President Trump has claimed that he has “ended 8 wars in just 8 months” in a social media post with the title “the president of peace”.
His latest addition to his list of wars “ended” is the two-year conflict between Israel and Hamas. The other seven were between Israel and Iran, Pakistan and India, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Thailand and Cambodia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo.
A number of these conflicts lasted just days, although they were the result of long-standing tensions – and one of them had no fighting to end. It is also unclear whether some of the peace agreements will last.
BBC Verify has taken a closer look at the conflicts and how much credit the president can take for ending them.
Israel and Hamas
President Trump has received widespread praise for his role in brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, involving the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
But a lasting peace still requires a number of difficult issues to be resolved, including Hamas giving up its weapons and the establishment of a new government in Gaza. “It is a big but very fragile accomplishment,” argues Michael O’Hanlon, a defence and foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution think tank.
He says Trump does deserve credit for being willing to push Israel more than previous US leaders. “However, this is only stage one and getting to a two-state solution will be even harder. If he pulls that off, he and anyone else key to the success do deserve the Nobel Peace Prize someday,” he adds
Israel and Iran
The 12-day conflict began when Israel hit targets in Iran on 13 June. The US carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites – a move widely seen as bringing the conflict towards a swift close.
On 23 June, Trump posted: “Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World.” After the hostilities ended, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted his country had secured a “decisive victory”.
Israel has since suggested it could strike Iran again to counter new threats. “There is no agreement on a permanent peace or on how to monitor Iran’s nuclear programme going forward,” argues Mr O’Hanlon.
“So what we have is more of a de facto ceasefire than an end to war, but I’d give him some credit, as the weakening of Iran by Israel – with US help – has been strategically significant.”
Pakistan and India
Tensions between these two nuclear-armed countries have existed for years, but in May hostilities broke out following an attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. After four days of strikes, Trump posted that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE”.
He said this was the result of “a long night of talks mediated by the United States”. Pakistan thanked Trump and later recommended him for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing his “decisive diplomatic intervention”.
India, however, played down talk of US involvement: “The talks regarding cessation of military action were held directly between India and Pakistan under the existing channels established between both militaries,” Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said.
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo
Long-standing hostilities between these two countries flared up after the M23 rebel group seized mineral-rich territory in eastern DR Congo earlier in the year. In June, the two countries signed a peace agreement in Washington aimed at ending decades of conflict. Trump said it would help increase trade between them and the US.
The text called for “respect for the ceasefire” agreed between Rwanda and DRC in August 2024. Since the latest deal, both sides have accused each other of violating the ceasefire and the M23 rebels – which the UK and US have linked to Rwanda – have threatened to walk away from peace talks.
In July, the rebel group killed at least 140 people, including women and children, in eastern DR Congo, according to Human Rights Watch. “There’s still fighting between Congo and Rwanda – so that ceasefire has never really held,” says Margaret MacMillan, a professor of history who taught at the University of Oxford.
Thailand and Cambodia
On 26 July, Trump posted on Truth Social saying: “I am calling the Acting Prime Minister of Thailand, right now, to likewise request a Ceasefire, and END to the War, which is currently raging.” A couple of days later, the two countries agreed to an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire” after less than a week of fighting at the border.
Malaysia held the peace talks, but President Trump threatened to stop separate negotiations on reducing US tariffs (taxes on imports) unless Thailand and Cambodia stopped fighting. Both are heavily dependent on exports to the US.
On 7 August, Thailand and Cambodia reached an agreement aimed at reducing tensions along their shared border.
Armenia and Azerbaijan
The leaders of both countries said Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in securing a peace deal, announced at the White House on 8 August. “I think he gets good credit here – the Oval Office signing ceremony may have pushed the parties to peace,” says Mr O’Hanlon.
In March, the two governments had said they were ready to end their nearly 40-year conflict centred on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. The most recent, serious outbreak of fighting was in September 2023 when Azerbaijan seized the enclave (where many ethnic Armenians lived).
Egypt and Ethiopia
There was no “war” here for the president to end, but there have long been tensions over a dam on the River Nile. Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam was completed this summer with Egypt arguing that the water it gets from the Nile could be affected.
After 12 years of disagreement, Egypt’s foreign minister said on 29 June that talks with Ethiopia had ground to a halt.Trump said: “If I were Egypt, I’d want the water in the Nile.” He promised that the US was going to resolve the issue very quickly.
Egypt welcomed Trump’s words, but Ethiopian officials said they risked inflaming tensions. No formal deal has been reached between Egypt and Ethiopia to resolve their differences
Serbia and Kosovo
On 27 June, Trump claimed to have prevented an outbreak of hostilities between them, saying: “Serbia, Kosovo was going to go at it, going to be a big war. I said you go at it, there’s no trade with the United States. They said, well, maybe we won’t go at it.”
The two countries have long been in dispute – a legacy of the Balkan wars of the 1990s – with tensions rising in recent years. “Serbia and Kosovo haven’t been fighting or firing at each other, so it’s not a war to end,” Prof MacMillan told us.
The White House pointed us towards Trump’s diplomatic efforts in his first term. The two countries signed economic normalisation agreements in the Oval Office with the president in 2020, but they were not at war at the time.
To the extent that the US had any effect on ceasefires, he gets some credit for putting the hammer down on Netanyahu and threatening poor Thailand and Cambodia with a thousand percent tariffs. Azerbaijian and Armenia is a good outcome but he has no idea what his administration did, doesn’t know which countries were involved and couln’t find either of them on a map. For instance:
Pakistan and Iran… no.
The rest is equally bullshit and, except for the fragile peace in Gaza, are nothing any other president would call “ending wars.”
Trump notoriously knows absolutely nothing about history, But even so, that is ridiculous.
Here are just a few examples according to Gemini AI, so I’m sure it’s incomplete. But from what I see, this much is correct:
Military victories
- Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman: Led the Allied forces to victory and ended World War II. Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan ultimately led to its surrender.
- Woodrow Wilson: Led the U.S. to victory in World War I.
- George H.W. Bush: Orchestrated the 1991 coalition victory in the Gulf War against Iraq.
Diplomatic mediation
- Theodore Roosevelt: Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his role in mediating the peace agreement that ended the Russo-Japanese War.
- Jimmy Carter: Brokered the Camp David Accords in 1978, a peace agreement signed between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their roles. Carter himself won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his broader efforts in resolving international conflicts and championing human rights.
- Bill Clinton: Played a significant role in mediating the 1995 peace agreement that ended the Bosnian War. He also contributed to the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and Palestine.
Enduring or de-escalating conflicts
- Dwight D. Eisenhower: Ended the Korean War with a truce in 1953.
- John F. Kennedy: His actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, including negotiating with Soviet leaders, are credited with de-escalating the standoff and preventing a nuclear war.
- Ronald Reagan: Presided over the winding down of the Cold War and engaged in summitry with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
- Barack Obama: Received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” and for supporting nuclear non-proliferation.
- Joe Biden: Oversaw the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, ending the longest war in U.S. history.
He now sees himself as a religious figure, kind of like an Egyptian pharaoh, building great tributes to himself in an attempt to win in the afterlife. (He keeps talking about whether he’s going to get into heaven.)
It’s just getting weirder and weirder.
How can that be? Joe Biden has left the White House.
- CNBC interviewed nearly a dozen small business owners to get a better understanding of how much tariffs are costing them and the impact the duties are having on their strategy and operations.
- Many of the small businesses said they’ve been forced to freeze hiring, pull back growth plans, take on new financing or cut salaries to keep operations afloat.
- “It’s to the point now where it could kill us, it could take us down, and I could lose everything. … Being a small business owner isn’t worth it when your country turns on you,” said Jared Hendricks, the CEO of Village Lighting, a small business selling Christmas products.
One story:
Viresh Varma can’t sleep.
The CEO of AV Universal Corp., a small footwear company that sells through retailers like Macy’s, Nordstrom and DSW, said he needed to take out a $250,000 loan to pay his tariff bill on a container of shoes he imported from India for the holiday shopping season.
Varma didn’t have the cash on hand to pay the duties, which he said used to be around $7,500 for a similar-sized container before President Donald Trump’s new tariffs. But without the financing, he wouldn’t have anything to sell during the holidays
He took the loan which has very onerous terms requiring him to raise prices. It will probably bankrupt him. What choice did he have?
Often called the backbone of the U.S. economy, small businesses routinely represent more than 40% of the nation’s GDP and employ nearly half of the American workforce, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Trump says his tariffs allow the U.S. to reduce its trade deficits with other nations and encourage domestic manufacturing, but some of the small business owners who spoke to CNBC said that’s happening partially at their expense.
The struggles they’re facing could be a warning sign for the rest of the economy and bigger businesses in 2026, said Kent Smetters, a professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
“The small businesses … they’re kind of like the canary in the coal mine here,” said Smetters, the faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model. “They’re going to get hit first, and then I think you’re going to see more of an impact with some delay on larger businesses.”
Larger retailers have been able to manage higher tariff costs in part because they had the foresight and ability to order extra inventory before the new duties went into effect, said Smetters. At a certain point, that stock will run out and push costs higher, and those companies only have so many low-tariff countries where they can produce goods.
It’s working out great.
Trump is saying that prices have come down on everything and that we now have $2.00 a gallon gas. His cult will always believe him over their lyin’ eyes. But how about the rest of us? When is reality going to hit the 70% who aren’t Trump lovers?
He was very happy after his call with BFF Vlad. As Always:
Sorry Ukraine. Putin fluffed him just right again. You’re going to have to wait for a week until he forgets about it.
That didn’t take long… On Wednesday he was saying that he didn’t have a problem with Hamas killing people in Gaza because he thought those who were being killed were bad guys.
It’s nice that he thanks Hamas, though. It’s important to have good manners when you’re threatening to kill someone.
When Donald Trump first announced his candidacy for president back in 2015, he didn’t have what anyone could call a real campaign. Loosely advised by his old pal Roger Stone and others, there was no real structure or normal hierarchy since Trump saw himself as a managerial genius who didn’t think he needed a formal campaign apparatus. A year earlier, at an event in New Hampshire, he met a fellow backstage who had been hovering around the fringes of politics for a while. Corey Lewandowski was a lobbyist and an ex-cop, and Trump eventually hired him as campaign manager. He was just the first of several to have the job, but he’s one of the few from those early days who made it back inside the Trump orbit. But it was a long, circuitous road to get there.
According to the New York Times, Trump liked Lewandowski for his “feisty instincts and off-color humor” but he ended up reluctantly firing him after he’d manhandled a reporter. Lewandowski knocked around on the periphery for a while, but in 2019 he went on a fishing junket hosted by conservative billionaire donor Foster Friess, where he met Kristi Noem, the recently elected GOP governor of South Dakota. The pair reportedly hit it off right away, and Lewandowski was soon serving as her unpaid adviser.
Rumors of an affair began almost immediately. This was slightly inconvenient, since both parties were married to other people and were working closely together in the governor’s office. When the gossip became public a year or so later, Noem dismissed it as “total garbage.” The governor was enmeshed in several other scandals, including allegations that she strong-armed a state official into giving her daughter an unearned certification as a real estate appraiser. Lewandowski, meanwhile, stood accused of sexually harassing a Republican donor at a Las Vegas charity event in 2021. This was just too much for the governor, who announced that he would no longer be working with her.
But there was no keeping the political soulmates apart for long. Widely considered a top prospect to be Trump’s running mate, Noem ruined her chances by proudly revealing in her 2024 memoir that she had taken her dog to a gravel pit and shot her for misbehaving. Republicans are more than fine with cruelty to humans, but apparently even they are leery of trying to elect a puppy killer.
After being axed from Noem’s office, Lewandowski wormed his way back into Trump’s inner circle. He was hired to work on the 2024 presidential campaign, where he immediately began to interfere with the machine put together by co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. And as it turned out, he and Noem were still in touch, planning how to rescue her future.
According to a blockbuster exposé by Ben Terris at New York Magazine, Noem and Lewandowski cooked up a scheme to have Noem named as Trump’s secretary of homeland security. Lewandowski rounded up supporters such as Tom Homan, the immigration czar who is reported to have taken bribes before the election — although there’s no evidence that Lewandowski paid him for his endorsement. Trump apparently offered Noem her choice of the interior or agriculture departments, but she held out, telling him she wanted to run the department that was his top priority. He agreed.
But there was a caveat. Trump tasked Stephen Miller, whom he named as White House homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff, with overseeing the administration’s immigration policy. The mass round-up and deportation of millions of immigrants, undocumented or not, is his life’s dream. Miller is the one guiding the homeland security ship, while Noem is in charge of public relations and day-to-day departmental operations. She brought Lewandowski with her to run the massive department as if it’s their own fiefdom.
While Noem is the agency’s public face, Terris reported that Lewandowski is her enforcer, reprising his role as an unpaid adviser. While he was disappointed he wasn’t named chief of staff, it’s worked out fine for him. He can maintain his outside businesses and run roughshod over the department while Noem, in Terris’ words, “brings reality-show energy” as she travels the world, dresses up in various costumes and makes propaganda videos.
The story revealed Noem’s stunningly poor management of DHS, a vastly important agency that has poured virtually all its resources into deporting immigrants while ignoring counterterrorism efforts, FEMA and cybersecurity. The dynamic duo has clogged up the bureaucracy, requiring that all contracts over $100,000 be personally approved by Lewandowski — a step that has created massive delays in paying the bills. (The department’s electricity was reportedly nearly cut off.). People are being fired willy-nilly, even MAGA die-hards, if they get on the wrong side of Lewandowski. He routinely demands that top employees take polygraphs if he suspects they are leaking to the press. The disarray is so bad that Trump was persuaded to tell them to get their acts together.
With her famous shiny pout and long dark tresses, Noem is the public face of Donald Trump’s emergent police state. And she is everywhere. At nearly every immigration hotspot, the secretary stages photo shoots demonstrating her hands-on leadership of the administration’s crackdown, all while sporting attire that she (mistakenly) believes fits the moment. In one surreal instance, Noem posed in front of prisoners in the notorious El Salvadoran gulag wearing a $50,000 Rolex.
DHS has spent more than $50 million filming television commercials of Noem thanking Donald Trump for securing the border, and the agency recently distributed a public service announcement of the secretary informing passengers in Transportation Security Administration lines that Democrats have shut down the government and are to blame for any delays. (Many airports are refusing to air it.) The low-rent Leni Riefenstahl social media propaganda campaign, in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and street theater are meticulously documented, has the effect of inuring the public to the idea that troops are invading American cities and no one who opposes the regime is safe.
But Noem has a lot of money to play with. The One Big Beautiful Bill handed over a massive $170 billion war chest to the department, which is engaged in building detention camps all over the country — by private companies, who are making a killing, naturally — and is offering up to $50,000 signing bonuses to any dude willing to put on a mask and start cracking heads.
Terris writes:
Under Noem, it is DHS, not the Justice Department, that has emerged as Trump’s most devastating and visible weapon against the right’s perceived enemies. “She’s going to play a key role in advancing Donald Trump’s effort to consolidate the powers of the presidency,” a former DHS official told me. “I think by the end of this administration, if she stays the whole time, she’s likely to become the warden of the police state.”
But in the meantime, Noem and Lewandowski are working night and day together, preparing for the next step in her political career. She’s clearly swinging for the fences, and is almost certainly planning a run for president in 2028.
When Noem was confronted about the reprehensible story of her shooting her dog, she responded that she told the story to illustrate her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly.” In that regard, Noem is certainly proving her capability, and she is evidently counting on the fact that her image as the cold, remorseless executor of the plan to rid America of foreigners will launch her into the White House. They don’t call her ICE Barbie for nothing.
Salon