Vance admonished by West Wing insiders as questions linger about his future: NYT
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Vice President JD Vance remains on shaky ground as the heir to Donald Trump’s MAGA kingdom, with the president continually polling anyone within earshot about what they think of his veep and White House insiders counseling the veep on how he conducts himself.According to the New York Times, Trump has made a habit of conducting what amounts to running focus groups on Vance's performance, comparing him unfavorably to his own achievements and reminding allies that Vance "has never won a tough race without his help."Trump frequently reminds people that his endorsement was decisive in Vance's tight 2016 race for an Ohio Senate seat — a rhetorical device designed to underscore Vance's dependence on Trump's political machinery.The Times is reporting that, beyond policy disputes, Trump has zeroed in on Vance's personal conduct and presentation. He has criticized the vice president's shoes and ribbed him for his tendency to interrupt.ALSO READ: Republicans have a JD Vance problem – 'no one seems to like him': reportWith the Times noting that Vance is known for obsessively scrolling on his phone, there are concerns about his combative interactions with critics on social media that led White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to call him on the carpet and tell him to dial it back; a position also taken by other "West Wing insiders," the report notes. Trump has openly wondered aloud why Vance didn't behave with more deference, using Chinese President Xi Jinping's subordinates as his model."Why don't you behave like that?" Trump asked Vance during a breakfast for Republican senators. "JD doesn't behave like that! JD butts into conversations. I want to have that for at least a couple of days. OK, JD?"In a recent Fortune interview in the Oval Office, when asked who was best positioned to carry on his legacy, Trump offered an ominous assessment: "Whoever gets this is going to be very important. And if you get the wrong person: disaster."During that interview, Vance stood silently in the back of the room as Trump delivered his ambiguous verdict on the vice president's future.
The White House erupted Saturday after the New York Times reported that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had advised Vice President JD Vance to step back from social media, with Trump aides calling the story fabricated and accusing the paper of deliberately burying their denial.The Times reported that Wiles "recently advised Mr. Vance to take a break from social media, as have other officials in the West Wing, according to people familiar with those interactions, because the fighting was beneath his office."White House Communications Director Steven Cheung rejected the account in unusually sharp terms. "This isn't true," Cheung wrote on X. "We denied it to the New York Times and they refused to run our quote. Complete fake news. This supposed 'conversation' never happened."Alex Bruesewitz, another Trump adviser, backed Cheung's account and used the episode to go on the offense. "White House Communications Director Steven Cheung has stated clearly in the article and reiterated on X that this is completely fake news," Bruesewitz wrote, adding that Vance is "an exceptionally effective communicator and an invaluable member of President Trump's team.He closed with a line likely to become a recurring talking point: "Vance Derangement Syndrome is real, folks."The Times story comes amid scrutiny of Vance's social media presence, which has at times drawn criticism even from conservative commentators.
China has expelled a New York Times journalist from the country over an interview the US-based newspaper conducted with Taiwan’s president, as Beijing ramps up its campaign to isolate the self-ruled island on the world stage.
Views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author. The California gubernatorial primary is getting down to that nitty-gritty, and while things aren’t looking as rosy […]
I was stumped. On Wednesday, I watched Trump’s Cabinet meeting. I’m not only a glutton for punishment, but I will not be handing out compliments for a very long time. Stunned, I have been mulling over what to write about that beyond-cringe meeting, trying to figure out what prompts middle-to-older-aged, white adults - educated, although… - suck up to a man like this.I’ve been around and followed politics long enough to know that sycophancy is as old as licking George Washington’s revolutionary boots. I worked on Capitol Hill in the 1980s and 1990s, and believe me, members of Congress lived in self-constructed bubbles where staffers, lobbyists and hangers-on told them exactly what they wanted to hear. But there is not a gross enough word that can even begin to describe what happened in the White House Cabinet Room on Wednesday, an over-the-top lesson in leeching that made your skin crawl, your mouth gape, your stomach churn, your ears melt, your eyes cross.The sensation of watching it was a full-body blow of epic adulating proportions. And if you think I’m exaggerating, try and watch the whole thing as I did. But don’t watch it more than once.Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler looked Donald Trump dead in the eyes and said, “Mr. President, you have made us a nation of builders again. You’re leading us to the greatest economy that the world has ever known… I hear it everywhere I go: ‘Please thank the president for putting us back on track. Thank you.’ They love you.”They love you. Bleck!.Yuck! That is now part of the historical record. And I don’t know whether my eyes were crossed and I wasn’t seeing straight, but she looked like someone AI-generated not only her, but her words.Speaking of bleck and yuck, there was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. When he opens his “manly” moronic motor-mouth, it’s akin to watching a blue whale dump 50 gallons of excrement on your head. His words are that abhorrent and that disgusting, and so hard to wash off.He defecated praise on Trump’s renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, describing the maintenance efforts as "a great segue" and linked it to the Iran war.What?But then again, maybe Hegseth knows of what he speaks. Because Trump said that the reflecting pool was a “disgusting place,” and that crews had to pull "more than 10 dumpsters" of accumulated garbage and waste from it. The reflecting pool sounds an awful lot like Hegseth.Hours before the meeting, as if they knew the tragedy that was about to transpire, the New York Times ran an analysis article titled, “Trump is the Only Person Who Can Save America, According to His Cabinet.” If you haven’t read this, read it now. It found that at least one in six sentences spoken by Cabinet members contains praise for Trump, attributes every administration success to him personally, or attacks Democrats. One in six sentences. Watch yesterday’s Cabinet meeting and you will see that come to life.Six sentences go by fast, so your head will start to spin once your brain starts catching on. It’s almost like each Cabinet member goes five sentences, and then Trump pushes an electrical shock button, and that sixth sentence of praise is jolted out.When you are watching, you have to keep reminding yourself that these are the people running the most powerful government on earth. And they spend a sixth of their time essentially writing pseudo-Hallmark cards to a man who eats McDonald’s everyday and calls people “piggy,” “dummy” and “scum” on social media.This is a man who reportedly emits a bad odor. And if you believe the viral videos from yesterday — and other instances — did Trump have an accident in front of the White House after returning from his medical check-up?Here’s what these people need to understand. You are making absolute fools of yourself and you're wasting your time and your careers tripping over yourselves and fighting each other in order to get a quick lick in on this man’s odorous derriere. History is littered with the political corpses of people who kissed Donald Trump’s ring and got nothing but humiliation in return. Pam Bondi spent years fawning over this man. Gone. Chris Christie practically built a shrine to Trump after 2016. Trump mocked his weight publicly and called him a loser. Even John Cornyn, a senator in his 70s who should have known better, genuflected before Trump and still got crushed in his primary by Ken Paxton, a man with one of the most scandal-ridden records in history. Where do these people go when Trump is done with them? They end up as guests on NewsNation. They write books nobody reads. They show up on panels where the other panelists are also people Trump fired or humiliated. Do they then try and kiss up to Sean Hannity, thinking that’s their way back into Toady Trumpland?Earlier this year, The Bulwark writers Sam Stein and Andrew Eggers did what I did and watched an entire Cabinet meeting.
President Donald Trump went off on another long Truth Social rant Friday as he fumed over criticisms of his renovations to the Reflecting Pool."The Failing New York Times is doing everything possible to criticize the magnificent restoration of the Reflecting Pool," Trump's rambling post began.The NYT has reported on the various questionable contracts and high costs involved with Trump's restoration of the landmark. Trump was upset that it hadn't instead highlighted his efforts to bring the pool "BACK TO LIFE!"The post included screenshots of similarly long posts by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. Trump promised the "Great and Beautiful" construction would wrap up before July 4.His attack on the NYT sunk to repeated claims that it's "doing poorly" and told the publication to "spend more of its energy fixing its broken 'shop,' and celebrating America's greatness."
Judging by interviews President Donald Trump doesn’t sound eager to envision a world without him in charge, and he’s slow to acknowledge up-and-coming lieutenants who are eager to take the reins.The New York Times reports that when confronted with the prospect of Vice President JD Vance as MAGA’s next crowned leader, Trump is loathe to discuss it openly — even as his own personal brand struggles to reclaim the supremacy it once held with legions of largely racist, antisemitic MAGA men.Citing information from more than a dozen anonymous White House sources, the Times reports that Trump “has told several allies that Mr. Vance has never won a tough race without his help. (Mr. Trump’s endorsement got Mr. Vance over the finish line in a tight race for an Ohio Senate seat.) He has brought up the number of vacations Mr. Vance has taken as vice president. (Mr. Trump does not generally take them.)” The president has also has repeatedly mentioned the vice president’s initial opposition to starting Trump’s wildly unpopular war with Iran and has even pointed this out in front of. Vance, saying “I’m more of a peace person than you are — but I had to do it,” according to the Times. And Trump has also questioned his decision to send a delegation led by the vice president to an international negotiation — which ultimately failed to end Trump’s war.Trump, says the Times, has “zeroed in on moments when Mr. Vance might not look the part,” such as when Vance almost dropped Ohio State’s national football championship trophy on a White House lawn. And Trump has “continued to needle … Vance on matters of substance and style, from criticizing his shoes to ribbing him for his tendency to interject in conversations.” Last November, Trump even openly mulled why Vance “was not more subservient, like the officials who work for President Xi Jinping of China,” says the Times.“Why don’t you behave like that?”. Trump asked Vance during a breakfast for Republican senators. “JD doesn’t behave like that! JD butts into conversations! I want to have that for at least a couple of days. OK, JD?”Trump may not appear happy with the idea of a MAGA world with a hole where the aging Trump once stood. But neither, apparently, are critics eager for Vance to sidle into the encroaching Trump-shaped void as Trump hits 80 and routinely nods off at public events.“Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who is widely seen as a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, has repeatedly accused Mr. Vance, who was born in Middletown, Ohio, of overstating his blue-collar roots and misrepresenting himself as a product of Appalachia,” reports the Times. In an interview, Beshear accused Vance of “governing in a way that only hurts the places he claims he was from.”“JD Vance doesn’t have a real bone in his body,” said Beshear. “Last week he’s appointed the fraud czar, and this week he’s defending a new $1.7 billion slush fund for the Trump administration to give to their allies.”
Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff haven't been officially seen together at any public events for many months. Adding fuel to the fire is the purchase of an $8million Malibu pad.
Despite bombing small boats, Trump's aggressive military operations outside South America have made zero progress towards stopping the flow of cocaine, according to reporting by The New York Times. Nine months ago, the Trump administration started attacking dozens of small boats, killing nearly 200 people in the process. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth touted the strikes as "highly effective" at stopping drug trafficking into the United States.However, epidemiologists, addiction scientists, and public health experts are saying that cocaine is just as easy to get in the United States as it was before those strikes began, according to the Times. "In addition to being morally abhorrent, this method is as likely to succeed as much as would bombing a handful of McDonald's in Dallas, Texas and claiming that you've made America healthy again," Dr. Carl Latkin, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins University, told the Times. "Cocaine remains highly available, highly prevalent and relatively inexpensive," Latkin added. Other experts told the Times that another sign of the campaign's ineffectiveness is that the purity and price of cocaine in the U.S. have stayed the same.The Trump administration deployed gunships, F-35 fighter jets, guided-missile destroyers, drones, fixed-wing aircraft, and 15,000 U.S. military personnel to fight small boats, all to the tune of $4.7 billion, according to a Brown University study cited by the Times."Signs are also emerging that traffickers are simply adopting other methods for smuggling cocaine," the Times reported. Drug smugglers are basically going around Trump's military operations by "shifting to land routes through Central America or placing cocaine in container ships, while absorbing the occasional loss of shipments on small boats," according to the Times.The U.S. military also captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro to face drug trafficking charges and started ground strikes in Ecuador, the Times noted. "They're not moving the needle at all," Adam Isacson, the defense director at the Washington Office on Latin America, told the Times. "Is that worth killing all these people?"
