Trump says Bill Pulte will serve only in an acting capacity as DNI
The controversial pick drew bipartisan pushback when Trump announced he would nominate him to the position permanently.

Starmer is a hypocrite. The post Failing PM Starmer Says Musk Must Stop Interfering in British Politics (VIDEOS) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
The controversial pick drew bipartisan pushback when Trump announced he would nominate him to the position permanently.
The Trump administration is angry that President Trump was caught sleeping on camera again. The administration’s official Rapid Response account on X took aim at a video clip from Kamala Harris’s news account @Headquarters showing the president clearly slumping back in his chair in the Oval Office and dozing off while surrounded by White House officials Thursday. They posted a screenshot from the video and claimed “His eyes are literally open in the clip you posted, you dumbass mouth-breathers.” Trump appears to be completely passed out asleep during his 3pm Oval Office announcement pic.twitter.com/gKyNjvgZW3— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) June 4, 2026While Trump was awake in the meeting long enough to announce his “Trump Promenade,” a concrete patio extending from the back of the Lincoln Memorial to the Potomac River, the video clearly shows the president falling asleep. It’s only the latest example of Trump “resting his eyes” in public view during his second term in office, as it now seems to happen anytime he’s at an event or meeting where other people talk for a few minutes. Lately, the administration has tried in vain to push back against anyone pointing out Trump’s impromptu siestas, angrily posting on social media that the president is simply blinking. Trump’s own Cabinet members, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, go out of their way to absurdly claim that they’ve never seen the president sleeping. But the public has eyes and can see on live video that Trump is clearly getting older, with visible health issues that aren’t ever explained in the administration’s reports about his health. No matter how many times White House officials insult those who point it out, it’s obvious that there is something wrong with Trump’s physical and mental condition.
The markets are "terribly wrong" to price in an interest rate hike this year by the Federal Reserve, says National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett. He speaks on "Bloomberg Open Interest." US job growth topped all estimates in May. (Source: Bloomberg)
As the war with Iran drags on with no conclusion in sight and its consequences continue to spin out, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta has a dire assessment of the situation: the conflict in the Middle East is “Trump’s Vietnam.”Panetta — who presided over the Pentagon during the Obama administration and helped lead the operation that killed Osama bin Laden — delivered this alarming appraisal on Thursday while appearing on CNN to discuss the faltering U.S.-Iranian peace talks, saying, “I think what you're seeing is that this war is very much turning into Trump's Vietnam. In Vietnam, we negotiated, but in the end, the North Vietnamese took total control. We were lucky to get our forces out. I think we're heading in the same direction with this war.”Spanning 1955 to 1975, the Vietnam War famously became a quagmire from which the U.S. could not extract itself, resulting in the deaths of nearly 60,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians. The conflict left a major stain on the U.S. reputation, and it is today invoked when discussing intractable wars with particularly severe political fallout. Commentators have increasingly raised the specter of Vietnam as the war with Iran has ground on, but Panetta’s assertion raises the volume of such talk. “In Vietnam, we never got a straight story from the administration as to what was happening,” said Panetta when asked what brought him to his conclusion. “And I'm not sure we're getting a straight story right now from this administration as to what's happening in negotiations with Iran.” He also noted that though US-Vietnamese negotiations went on for some time, resolving some issues, “in the end, North Vietnam won that war.”He projected that something similar will happen with Iran.“What I sense here is that no matter what we try to negotiate with a hardline regime in Iran, they're going to be in control of the Straits of Hormuz," he warned. "And they are going to do everything they can to try to continue enrichment so that ultimately, they can develop a nuclear weapon.”Panetta went on to note another parallel between the wars in Iran and Vietnam: a presidential tendency to miscalculate how easily the confrontation would be won. “At the very beginning of this war, the president said, based on Israeli assurances, that once the leadership was killed, that within a few days the regime would collapse,” Panetta explained. “That did not happen. Our intelligence made very clear that was never going to happen, so it was a terrible miscalculation.”With all this in mind and the shadow of Vietnam looming, Panetta’s conclusion was not optimistic: “The hardline regime remains in power, and as long as they are in power, whatever we try to negotiate, very frankly, is only going to be temporary. I think where we're headed is some kind of flimsy agreement here, but in four or five years, I think the United States and Israel may very well have to go back to war with Iran.” - YouTube www.youtube.com
Now that Scott Pelley has been fired by 60 Minutes and CBS News, MSNOW star Rachel Maddow wants him to join her network. The post Rachel Maddow Wants Fired ’60 Minutes’ Journo Scott Pelley to Join MSNOW Because of Course She Does (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
If you hadn’t noticed, Trump is failing. Iran is more dangerous today than it was when went to war on it, and energy prices are far higher. Trump’s brutal efforts to crackdown on undocumented people in the United States have generated a huge backlash, including among Latinos who voted for him in 2024 but are moving into the Democratic camp. His attempt to cover up the Epstein files continues to rankle MAGA voters. His $1.8 billion “slush” fund and family immunization from future IRS audits, in “settlement” of his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, has drawn widespread bipartisan scorn and hit judicial roadblocks. I could go on, but you get the point. Trump’s failures are mounting. Why? I’ve worked for three presidents and advised a fourth. All of them solicited honest feedback, including criticism. Trump solicits only praise. He relishes compliments. He needs everyone around him to pander to his egomaniacal need for admiration. He punishes the bearers of bad news. He promotes people who kiss his assets, such as Bill Pulte, the home-building heir Trump put in charge of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and who Trump is now making acting director of national intelligence.And Todd Blanche, the lawyer who represented him in his multiple lawsuits and who Trump now wants to become Attorney General. Pulte, with no known experience in national security, got the job because he told Trump what Trump wanted to hear. He weaponized the housing agency and tried to dig up dirt on Trump enemies — specifically, the Fed’s Lisa Cook, Senator Adam Schiff, and New York Attorney General Letitia James. As the person in charge of national intelligence, Pulte will continue to tell Trump whatever he wants to hear. Trump won’t get national intelligence; he’ll get national stupidity.Trump has so many people “he could be listening to,” said a former Trump official, “and he listens to Pulte, who just continually f---- things up.”Blanche got the nod for Attorney General because he went even further than his predecessor, Pam Bondi, was willing to go in throwing integrity and principles odown the toilet in favor of going after Trump’s enemies. He secured a second felony indictment against the former FBI Director James Comey, alleging Comey threatened Trump ia a social media post that arranged seashells to spell “86 47.” Blanche also commenced a bonkers criminal investigation of Fed chief Jerome Powell, and tried to establish a $1.8 billion slush fund for Trump as well as immunity from I.R.S. audits as a fake “settlement” of Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the I.R.S.So how does Trump make decisions if he doesn’t have people telling him the truth? He relies, he has said, on his gut. “My gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.” He told The Washington Post that he reaches decisions “with very little knowledge other than the knowledge I [already have], plus the words ‘common sense,’ because I have a lot of common sense.”In other words, he doesn’t listen to anyone — especially not anyone who tells him anything he doesn’t want to hear. Presto. He makes colossal mistakes. Even normal people don’t like to get negative feedback. And most people don’t want to give it. Yet receiving and giving truthful feedback are absolutely essential in a complex world. If you have power over other people, it’s even more important to get negative feedback, because your mistakes could harm many others. Yet the more power you have, the less willing people are to give you negative feedback, since they have more reason to fear your reaction to it. Which means you have to go out of your way to solicit it. The best leaders I’ve had the privilege of serving during my nearly 60 years of working life have been people who have actively sought and rewarded negative feedback. Trump does just the opposite. Small wonder he’s one of the worst leaders the nation has ever endured. Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
President Vladimir Putin says Russia will strengthen its air defenses to counter recent Ukrainian drone attacks, which have reached deep inside his country and cast a cloud over his showcase economic forum in his hometown of St. Petersburg.
The Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act was brought to the Senate as an amendment by Lindsey Graham as part of the $70 billion budget reconciliation package funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. The usual senate suspects, Thom Tillis, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Mitch McConnell voted with Democrats to kill the […] The post Usual Suspects – Senate Fails Again to Pass Save America Act, Voter Integrity Legislation appeared first on The Last Refuge.