The US president seeks to curb Israel’s intensified offensive as he looks for an exit from war with Iran, but turmoil in the Middle East will not easily be ended“Let’s see how long that lasts,” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday night, addressing his attempts to de-escalate in Lebanon following Israel’s intensified military campaign. Within hours, Israeli drone strikes had killed eight people in the south, including a father and his two children, and damaged a hospital. Hezbollah continued launching rockets and drones.Anxious to escape the illegal war that he launched on Iran, and with Tehran threatening to suspend peace talks over the Israeli offensive, the US president reined in Benjamin Netanyahu – for now – in what was described as an expletive-laden phone call. Mr Trump’s post, despite its unusual admission of doubt, still oversold the agreement. He claimed that Hezbollah and Israel had agreed to “stop all shooting”. Lebanon’s presidency suggested a more limited deal: Israel would not strike Beirut’s southern suburbs if Hezbollah did not launch attacks against Israel.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
Trump announces the White House Correspondents' Dinner is rescheduled to July 24 at the Waldorf Astoria following the April assassination attempt.
Bill Pulte, who does not have any national intelligence experience, is nicknamed ‘Little Trump’ among some Donald Trump’s decision to appoint Bill Pulte as the acting director of national intelligence has set off alarm bells in Washington, as a staunch Trump loyalist with little government experience who has shown an eagerness to retaliate against the president’s political rivals will now sit atop the US intelligence apparatus.Pulte, whose grandfather started PulteGroup, a major residential homebuilder, had no government experience before Trump appointed him to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), an under-the-radar regulator that oversees the government lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Shortly after arriving at the agency, he began to gut it, firing sizable chunks of the boards of both and appointing himself as chair. Pulte had no government experience before being appointed to the role and does not have national intelligence experience. Continue reading...
President Donald Trump has announced who will replace Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence.Gabbard announced her resignation as DNI last month after serving in the office for a year and a half. She cited her husband's "extremely rare form of bone cancer" diagnosis as the main reason.'Bill is a great guy who recognizes that the bureaucracy of the intel community must respond to the elected leadership.' Now, Trump has appointed William Pulte to take her place as acting director.Pulte was the head of Pulte Homes, the third-largest homebuilder in the U.S., with billions in revenue, before he was picked by Trump to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency."I am appointing the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and Chairman of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, William J. Pulte, to serve as Acting Director of National Intelligence," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Tuesday."William has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets, and over 10 Trillion Dollars at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, a substantial increase from where it was just 12 months ago," Trump added.Pulte used the resources of the FHFA to find evidence of alleged mortgage fraud committed by some of Trump's most vehement political enemies, including Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James and former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.).Some Democrats cited those investigations as evidence that Pulte will do the same as DNI."I will be a hard NO on FISA Section 702 reauthorization," wrote Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California in a statement on social media. "Whether or not the totally unqualified and corrupt Bill Pulte gets confirmed, trump’s nomination of Pulte has already shown trump would have no problem with weaponizing intelligence against Americans he doesn’t like."RELATED: Pulte calls for investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell — and for his removal Vice President JD Vance praised the decision."Bill is a great guy who recognizes that the bureaucracy of the intel community must respond to the elected leadership (rather than the other way around). He'll do great!" he wrote on social media.For the time being, Pulte will serve as acting director. He will need Senate confirmation to become the official director.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
At the end of this month, Tulsi Gabbard steps down as the director of national intelligence, following a bumpy 16-month tenure as our nation’s top spy. Gabbard was an unconventional fit, as a Democrat opposed to most foreign wars. In President Donald Trump’s second term, with its multiple military operations around the globe, she became […]
President Donald Trump has built his political brand on defying limits, but a series of high-profile reversals in recent days suggests that even he cannot indefinitely outrun the consequences of his most outlandish gambits.The Trump administration signaled Monday that it plans to abandon its $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization fund" following an adverse court ruling — a significant retreat on an initiative that had already sparked a revolt among Republican congressional leaders, and he beat a retreat on renaming the Kennedy Center after himself, reported CNN's Aaron Blake."In both situations, it remains up in the air precisely how much Trump has capitulated," Blake wrote. "But he’s at least telegraphing retreat. Both ideas were wild to begin with — and now the president appears to be dealing with the consequences."On the so-called slush fund, Senate Majority Leader John Thune had called on the administration to "shut it down themselves," while other GOP senators demanded the White House explicitly rule out reviving the fund in the future.The fund, created as part of a settlement resolving Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, was intended to compensate allies who claimed they were victimized by the Biden-era Justice Department. Critics — including a federal judge — questioned whether the two sides of the settlement were colluding, and the fund drew outrage when the administration acknowledged it could benefit Jan. 6 defendants who assaulted police officers.That announcement followed Trump's Friday retreat on the Kennedy Center, where he said he would transfer control back to Congress after a judge ruled that plastering his name on a building memorializing a dead president was illegal. Trump had previously purged the center's board to install loyalists before the renaming — a move that a court found violated federal law.The two reversals fit a pattern. Earlier this year, Trump abandoned his push to seize Greenland amid bipartisan opposition, and his plan to fund a lavish White House ballroom with taxpayer money was stripped from a spending bill after Republican panic over the optics."In all of these cases, Trump was asking the courts and/or Republicans to sign off on what seemed to be impossible requests," Blake wrote. "He was asking them to stomach something drastic because he’s Trump, and they’re supposed to do what he wants.""But when his wild gambits push the envelope too far — and increasingly seem to jeopardize the GOP’s chances in November — they reinforce that Trump isn’t the unrestrained leader of his political movement that he’d like to be," Blake added.Trump, for his part, shows no sign of moderating his ambitions — his appointment Tuesday of a controversial housing official as acting director of national intelligence suggested the envelope-pushing is far from over.
Last week, the broadcasting world was shocked by the sudden firing of two correspondents and key production staff at the legacy news program 60 Minutes. Now, the figure behind the shakeup — CBS News chief and MAGA media personality Bari Weiss — is being accused of attempting to “sabotage” the show for the benefit of President Donald Trump. While such accusations may be expected from liberals, even conservative voices are slamming the “shameful” decision. “There are many words that can be used to describe 60 Minutes: Venerable. August. Excellent. Important. Beloved,” writes longtime Republican strategist Steve Schmidt. “But since the purchase of CBS News by the Ellison family, another word belongs on the list: Sabotaged.”As Schmidt suggests, under its new ownership, CBS News — and as a result, 60 Minutes, which is part of CBS — has been reworked in a way that critics say is a blatant effort to support Trump’s political project. After its purchase, Weiss — an opinion journalist with no experience in broadcast news — was appointed to helm the organization, and since then she’s raised many eyebrows with her decisions. The latest involves the firing of anchors Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega and executive producer Tanya Simon, who were replaced by Nick Bilton, who, like Weiss, also has no background in TV news. This has prompted no shortage of outrage, including from those on the right. Says former Fox host Megyn Kelly, Weiss is “loathed” for her actions. And according to Schmidt, the program has been “assaulted with malicious intent by new corporate leadership that appears determined to gut one of the last remaining institutions in American journalism in order to satisfy a corrupt political arrangement with Donald Trump.”“The destruction isn’t accidental,” asserts Schmidt. “It’s deliberate. It’s strategic. It’s ideological. It’s transactional.” As he noted, 60 Minutes has long been known as a serious program where facts and credibility mattered. “That is what is being destroyed for no reason beyond the insatiability of Trump’s ego.”Shortly after the firings were announced, it was revealed that longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley had subsequently laid into Weiss and Bilton, accusing the former of trying to “murder” the show and arguing that the latter has “slender” qualifications for his new job. “Scott Pelley represents the tradition that built the program,” says Schmidt, explaining that he got to know him while staffing for Senator John McCain, whom Pelley interviewed. “There was no performance. There was no ideological hysteria. There was no narcissism. There was no branding exercise. There was no desperate attempt to become the center of the story. There was journalism. There was rigor. There was seriousness.” Schmidt notes that while Pelley has never made his politics obvious, “The same obviously can’t be said for Bari Weiss.”“Her ideological agenda radiates from every pore of her public conduct,” Schmidt claims. “Her loyalties plainly do not include CBS News, 60 Minutes, institutional integrity or the preservation of a shared factual reality. She’s not a steward. She’s a vandal. Additionally, she’s staggeringly incompetent.”Schmidt argues that while many viewers have tuned into 60 Minutes for decades, watching with a trust that was “earned through excellence, not algorithms,” and “through reporting, not branding,” “now Bari Weiss has effectively stolen something Americans love in order to help deliver profits to the son of one of the richest men in the world, while accommodating the demands of an American fascist who despises the First Amendment, and views journalism as an enemy to be subdued.”According to Schmidt, “America is living through a period during which many of its most important institutions are being hollowed out from within by weak people desperate for proximity to power, and terrified of losing money.” Furthermore, “What’s happening at CBS News isn’t merely a business story. It’s a warning story. It’s a story about how institutions collapse. Not all at once, but piece by piece. Compromise by compromise. Coward by coward.”“Americans should understand clearly: when journalism dies, corruption flourishes,” concludes Schmidt. “And that’s why what is happening right now at CBS News should outrage every American who still believes truth matters in a free society.”
At least four Republican senators are not feeling Bill Pulte, President Trump’s pick to replace Tulsi Gabbard as acting director of national intelligence. “I see no evidence of any qualifications for that job,” GOP Senator John Cornyn, who recently lost his reelection campaign thanks to a Trump endorsement of his opponent, told PBS’s Lisa Desjardins. “He doesn’t seem very qualified,” added Senator Bill Cassidy, who also lost his reelection campaign thanks to the president. “I don’t know of any national security experience that he has,” said Senator Thom Tillis, who is retiring at the end of this term. “So I’ll be looking at that first and foremost.”“Well, we don’t need a weaponized DNI, we need professionals there,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune. “So, again, I’ve just heard about it. I’ll try and get more information about the current state of their thinking about that position. And again, if he’s somebody they want in that position permanently, he’s got, as you all know, a lengthy road ahead of him.” Thune is right to be worried about a weaponized intelligence community in Pulte’s hands. With zero national security experience, Pulte has made a name for himself using his previous role at Fannie Mae to attack Trump’s political enemies. Now, with even Republicans voicing displeasure just hours after his announcement, any possibility of Pulte’s taking over the position permanently is firmly in jeopardy.
Donald Trump’s attempt to insert Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHA) Director Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on Tuesday could run into a legal roadblock according to MS NJOW’s Ken Dilanian, with Republican lawmakers also questioning whether he should hold the job.According to a report from the New York Times, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), James Lankford (R-OK) and Susan Collins (R-ME) are questioning his stunning lack of experience in intelligence matters.As Dilanian pointed out, that lack of experience runs afoul of the law that created the intelligence gathering department after the 9/11 attacks.Speaking with host Anna Cabrera, he explained, “This is really an incredible development. Bill Pulte is an investment guy, he's a real estate guy. He has not only no intelligence experience, [but] no foreign policy experience. And we should remember there is a provision in the law; this job was created after 9/11, remember, to knit together strands of intelligence and connect the dots and there's a provision in the authorizing legislation that requires that the person holding this job has significant, substantial intelligence experience.”“When Tulsi Gabbard was nominated for this role, a lot of people believed that she didn't fit the bill, but at least she had been a military officer and a member of Congress,” he recalled. “I don't even know if Bill Pulte has a security clearance right now. And this role, this job, this person gets access to some of the most sensitive intelligence that the U.S. government collects. The biggest secrets, just incredible things, sensitive compartmented programs, need-to-know things that only a handful of people in the government know — and now Bill Pulte will know them.” - YouTube youtu.be