Republicans are struggling to extend a powerful surveillance authority set to lapse this weekend after President Trump alienated lawmakers with his choice of acting spy chief.
President Donald Trump said the US would strike Iran again Thursday and threatened to take control of the country’s energy infrastructure including the key oil export hub of Kharg Island “at some point.”
This fall's midterm election is a referendum on President Donald Trump, according to a veteran journalist, and he's not making things easy for Republicans trying to hold onto their congressional majorities.Polling has made clear that affordability remains the top voter concern, and Punchbowl News co-founder John Bresnahan told "CNN News Central" that Republicans on Capitol Hill, whom he's covered for decades, were aghast when Trump declared "I love inflation" during an Oval Office event."Oh yeah, Trump is the issue of the election," Bresnahan said. "I mean, he is the biggest issue. His conduct, the war, his handling the economy, his conduct in office. I've got to tell you, I was on the Hill yesterday when he made those comments and they went through the Capitol pretty quickly, and it was just, you know, every Republican just winced. They're upset."Trump was re-elected to a second term on a promise to fix the economy on Day One, but a year and a half later, voters have soured on his handling of the affordability crisis."The messaging they're hearing out of the White House is not about inflation," the well-connected reporter said. "It's not about the economy. It's not about Americans' financial status, their overdue credit card payments. They're struggling to pay for school, and every day that Trump is out talking about Iran, he's talking talking about other issues, he's talking about the 2020 elections is a disaster for Hill Republicans. They're just – it's a big problem for them.""Speaker Mike Johnson can talk, you know, say Trump's labors are focused on inflation, but the American public doesn't think so, Congress doesn't think so – even the Republicans in Congress, I'll tell you that," Bresnhan added. "So this is a big problem for them." - YouTube youtu.be
An international crime expert was floored by President Donald Trump's "quantum" trail of slush funds that he's set up during his second administration. Jonathan Winer, a former State Department official who investigated international money laundering cases, said during a new episode of the "Court of History" podcast on Wednesday that Trump's slush funds appear quantum in nature because "you never know where [they're] going to end." He referred to the $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund," the U.S.-controlled fund in Qatar established to hold money from Venezuelan oil sales, the so-called Board of Peace, and the America 250 celebration, which is being organized with private donations, and Trump's ballroom. On top of all that, Winer noted that Trump's Department of Justice just gave him immunity from tax cases as part of a settlement over a 2019 case involving the president's leaked tax returns. That settlement has been valued at roughly $100 million, according to public reports."It's really quite remarkable," Winer said. Winer added that there are instances in which Trump used existing federal structures to create slush funds, even those not designed to operate that way. The silver lining, according to Winer, is that there are documentable ways to find out what Trump has been up to. For instance, there will be shipping logs and bank records that correspond with the oil sales. There will also be ways for a future Congress to trace donations to the Board of Peace and other entities controlled by Trump, Winer said. The problem future lawmakers may face is enforcing the laws against Trump if he can prove the money was connected to official activity, Winer added. "Congress has absolute right to investigate it, but the problem is enforcement," he said. "There's no penalty at this point. There's no such thing as contempt of Congress for the president and, on this, no one can go after him criminally if he stole all the money in connection with official activity. So it's essentially impeachment and removal for him."
Based upon his own reporting and excerpts from a bombshell new book penned by the New York Times ' Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, MS NOW host Jonathan Lemire claimed on Thursday morning that Donald Trump has become a man alone inside his own White House.Noting that Vice President JD Vance and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles retreated to the Situation Room with the rest of the Trump inner circle — with the president left on the outside — Lemire pointed out that it is nearly impossible to deliver bad news to the increasingly embattled president.Lemire cited Trump’s blurting “I love the inflation” before reporters on Wednesday as evidence that the president has lost touch with even his own people, who would have made sure he was better prepared when questioned by reporters.“I wrote a few months ago about the bubble he's in,” Lemire told the “Morning Joe” panel. “All presidents exist in some sort of bubble, but this one in particular, it's an echo chamber. He only talks to people who agree with him. He does no domestic travel anymore. None. And to [conservative journalist] David Drucker’s point, that is where he would go out on the road. He'd go to these rallies, he'd see what lines would work or what not. And that would give him a sense as to what the American people, or at least his voters cared about.”“That stopped. Instead, he's being fed AI slop on Truth Social,” he observed. “That's the only feedback he's getting from, quote, real people. And he is completely out of touch. I mean, yesterday him blurting out, ‘I love the inflation.’ It's like Brick and ‘Anchorman ‘ yelling, ‘I love lamps’ because he didn't know what else to say. I mean, it was just it was that nonsensical. And it will be featured in every possible campaign ad this fall.”“I think the point here is, right, that it's not just disconnected from voters, it's also disconnect from what Republicans need him to be,” Lemire elaborated. “They need him to be talking about the economy. They need him to at least pretend to care what people are thinking and feeling about. And instead, he's consumed with foreign adventures. And he's consumed with his legacy and remaking Washington in his own image. He cares about what, what, how he'll be remembered forever, and he's losing sight of what got him back to the office in the first place.”Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough drove the same point home, telling viewers Trump appears to be cut off even from those closest to him. "Nobody could talk to the president about what could be the biggest crisis in his presidency," Scarborough said, referencing the Haberman and Swan reporting. "He's completely isolated even inside the White House according to this report." - YouTube youtu.be
Trump's U.S. ambassador to Turkey is accused of helping Jeffrey Epstein find a personal assistant who became both a recruiter and a victim in his sex trafficking network, Raw Story has learned.Sarah Kellen told members of the House Oversight Committee last month that she was working as a host at the W Hotel in Honolulu in 2001 when she was recruited to work for Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell. A woman working as an intern at the hotel’s front desk befriended her and told her about the opportunity.Kellen told the committee that Epstein had helped get the woman, whose name is redacted from an interview transcript, an internship at the W “because he was friends with Tom Barrack," who owned the hotel.Kellen said she didn’t realize at the time that Epstein and Maxwell were her prospective employers.“She never told me his name,” Kellen told members of the committee, chaired by Rep. James Comer (R-KY), during her May 21 interview. “She just told me there was a wealthy couple in New York that was looking for a new traveling assistant and if I would be interested. She had taken some risqué photos of me earlier, and I learned that she had sent them to Jeffrey, and then she started telling me about the job opportunity.”Barrack, a key diplomatic player for the Trump administration in the Middle East as ambassador to Turkey and special presidential envoy for Syria and Iraq, has not commented publicly about his well-documented, decades-long relationship with Epstein. His role in potentially connecting Kellen with Epstein has not been previously reported.The start of Kellen’s employment with Epstein and Maxwell overlaps with a period when the couple was friendly with the future president and first lady. Donald Trump told New York magazine in October 2002 that he had known Epstein for 15 years and that he was “a lot of fun to be with,” adding, “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”The friendship between Epstein and Trump, along with Barrack, is detailed in the book Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff, which describes the three as “a 1980s and ’90s set of nightlife Musketeers.”A billionaire real estate investor, Barrack reportedly introduced Trump to Paul Manafort, his first campaign chairman during the 2016 campaign. Manafort was later convicted of crimes related to his political consulting work for a pro-Russia party in Ukraine.A prolific fundraisier for the Trump campaign, Barrack spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention, and following Trump’s election, chaired the 2017 inauguration committee.Before that, Barrack reportedly leveraged his business connections in the Middle East to smooth over distrust among Gulf Arab leaders following Trump’s call early in the campaign for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering” the United States. The effort appeared to pay dividends when Trump made the first international trip of his first term, a visit to a summit in Saudi Arabia. The close relationship between Trump and the Gulf states has continued into the second administration, with the government of Qatar giving a plane to the president. Tom Barrack described Donald Trump as "one of my closest friends for forty years" during his speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention.Courtesy C-SpanIn 2022, Barrack was acquitted of charges that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates during the 2016 campaign. Now, as a U.S. diplomat stationed in Ankara, he praises the partnership between the two countries as being "of critical importance to the Middle East," and recently claimed credit for processing visas for the Iranian team so they could travel to the United States to compete in the World Cup.Epstein, who would be indicted for sex trafficking in July 2019, appeared to view himself as the odd-man-out during Trump’s ascent to power, while Barrack quietly assisted.Summarizing Wolff’s Fire and Fury in a January 2018 email, Landon Thomas Jr. — author of the 2002 New York profile — reported to Epstein: “There are a few paragraphs on you, TB, DJT partying around NYC in 90s etc. — and then MW says you are airbrushed out of DJT history while Barrack sticks around.”“I know,” Epstein replied.Raw Story was unable to reach Barrack for comment through the State Department or the U.S. Embassy in Ankara.In 2012, Epstein credited Barrack with connecting him to Kellen in an email to another employee to arrange for a visit by Barrack and Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, then the ruling emir of Qatar who was interested in buying Epstein’s New York townhouse.Epstein had planned to be in Paris at the time of the visit. In an email, he instructed an unidentified employee to be ready to receive the guests “well dressed” and in “heels.”“It’s Tom Barrack coming, so you can tell him I thank him every day for Sarah,” Epstein added.
The dispatching of top officials underscores the island remains a top US target
Pressed on election fraud claims and a proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund, the president abruptly ended a tense exchange with NBC’s Kristen Welker.
The president himself has repeatedly contradicted that claim.