📰 Merz Discovers Separation of Powers, Walks Into Trump’s Tariff Circus

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is flying to Washington with what he promises will be a “very clear European position” on Trump’s new global tariffs — which is adorable, given that Trump’s trade policy changes faster than his social‑media posts.

Merz told German TV that customs policy is an EU competence, so he’ll coordinate a joint line on the fresh 15% blanket tariff the White House just slapped on nearly all imports for 150 days, after the Supreme Court killed Trump’s emergency mega‑tariffs.

On paper, he’s not wrong to sound upbeat. The court’s ruling is a rare institutional slapdown that limits Trump’s ability to randomly hike duties into triple digits and forces him back into narrower legal lanes.

Merz even called it “reassuring,” proof that U.S. checks and balances still work. In practice, though, Berlin’s exporters are still staring at a flat 15% tax until further notice, layered on top of years of whiplash over which car part, machine tool, or chemical input is suddenly a “national security threat.”

Brussels will now try to do what it always does: draft a common script, rattle the sabre about “appropriate countermeasures,” and quietly pray Trump doesn’t wake up one morning and decide BMWs are Chinese by association. Merz can arrive in Washington waving a united‑EU memo; Trump arrives with a pen that can still rewrite everyone’s cost structure overnight for five months at a time. The separation of powers may be working — it just hasn’t separated Europe from the bill.

#Germany #EU #Trump #tariffs #Merz #tradeWar #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Trump Wants a War. His Top General Knows He Can’t Afford One.

Trump is talking like he’s ready to hit Iran; his top general is quietly spelling out why that could blow up in his face — militarily and politically. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine has warned Trump and senior officials that the U.S. is low on key munitions, short on allied support, and facing serious risks to U.S. troops if the president orders anything more than a token strike.
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Caine told Trump in a White House meeting that years of defending Israel, shooting down Houthi missiles, and feeding Ukraine’s air defenses have badly depleted stocks of THAAD interceptors, Patriot missiles, and Navy SM‑2/3/6 systems — the very weapons you need when Iran and its proxies start sending ballistic missiles back. These aren’t bullets you reorder on Amazon: experts say each replacement can take two years or more to build, and Congress only partially funded a $30 billion emergency restock last year. The Pentagon, according to former officials, “is not prepared to resource simultaneous conflicts” — adding an Iran war on top of Ukraine and Israel would mean deciding who gets left exposed.
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Allies see the problem and want no part of it. A senior Gulf official says Arab states have already told Washington their bases cannot be used for strikes on Iran; Tehran has threatened to hit any country that helps. That raises basic questions: if regional partners deny basing and overflight, how do you run a days‑ or weeks‑long air campaign across a country more than three times the size of Iraq, against hundreds or even thousands of targets? Taking out missile sites alone would mean hitting mobile launchers, depots, air defenses, and transport networks; going for regime change — something Trump has openly mused about — would explode the target list and the risk of U.S. casualties.
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Inside the administration, some push a “limited strike” to scare Tehran back to the table on its nuclear program, pointing to Iran’s relatively restrained responses to past U.S. and Israeli hits. Others warn that in the current climate — with Trump talking regime change and Iranian hard‑liners ascendant — even a “small” strike could trigger a deadly tit‑for‑tat: rockets on U.S. bases, attacks on diplomats, pressure on Israel, Hezbollah dragged in, and Americans evacuated from embassies like the one in Lebanon, where nonessential staff and families are already being ordered out.
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Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff goes on Fox and asks why Iran hasn’t “capitulated” given all the U.S. firepower offshore. Iran’s foreign minister answers with a single line: “Because we are Iranian.” Translation: they’d rather absorb pain — and possibly dish it out — than surrender on enrichment and national pride. Caine, the one man in the room who has to make the math work, is effectively telling Trump that a big war with Iran today means going in under‑supplied, without regional cover, and gambling with U.S. lives to solve a problem airstrikes can’t actually finish.
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#Trump #Iran #war #Pentagon #military #fakeDemocracy

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Why Is Zelensky’s Whimper Putting His Country’s Future In Jeopardy?

🔠🅰️🔠🔠1️⃣

Zelensky has vehemently appealed to Trump to visit Kyiv, in a video address on the fourth anniversary of the war, and said Ukraine will not betray its people in any negotiations with Russia.

Zelensky said Putin had not achieved his original war goals or “broken the Ukrainian people”. “He has not won this war,” he said. “We have preserved Ukraine, and we will do everything to achieve peace. And to ensure justice.”

European leaders echoed the Ukrainian president’s comments, with Germany’s chancellor, Merz, declaring: “Moscow is not as strong as it would like the world to think.” The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said he was “very sceptical” that the war finish soon because there was “no willingness” from Russia to stop.

On Tuesday Zelensky welcomed a group of European leaders to Kyiv including the British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.

Also attending were prime ministers from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Estonia and Latvia, as well as Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb.

Keir Starmer and Macron chaired a meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, joining by video. Zelensky said his country had survived a “terrible” winter and was grateful to its allies for a delivery this week of an air defence package.

Putinbin his turn claimed Ukraine had sabotaged the peace process with the help of western intelligence agencies.

He said Kyiv and its allies were so determined to defeat Russia they were pushing themselves to the edge, something he said they would regret.

Zelensky recalled receiving a phone call from Joe Biden, who offered to help him leave the country “urgently”. “Here I replied that I need ammunition, not a ride,” Zelensky said, recalling one of the most famous moments of his presidency.

Zelensky said: “I really want to come here with the president of the United States one day. I know for certain: only by coming to Ukraine, and seeing with one’s own eyes our life and our struggle, feeling our people and the enormity of this pain – only then can one understand what this war is really about.”

#trump #putin #zelensky #ukraine #war

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🔠🅰️🔠🔠2️⃣

A trip to Ukraine might make it clear to Trump “who the aggressor is here and who must be pressured,” Zelensky suggested. He continued: “This is not a street fight – it is an attack by a sick state on a sovereign one.”

Trump has not taken up an invitation from Zelensky to visit Ukraine. During their notorious Oval Office meeting last year, Vance, the US vice-president, accused the Ukrainian government of taking visiting dignitaries on “propaganda tours” – a charge Kyiv denies.

In peace talks with Russia brokered by the US, Trump has sided repeatedly with Putin.

Zelensky has rejected Kremlin demands, seemingly endorsed by US envoys, that Ukraine hand over territory in the eastern Donbas region that Russian troops have been unable to seize.

“We want peace. Strong, dignified, lasting peace,” Zelensky said. He added that he had told Ukraine’s negotiators meeting in Geneva this week: “Do not nullify all these years, do not devalue all the struggle, courage, dignity, everything that Ukraine has gone through. We cannot, we must not, give it away, forget it, betray it.”

According to a reliable source close to the Trump administration, Trump said ‘Putin is likely to give another punch to its war aims in Ukraine (...)’ The source claimed that Trump went on a rampage “against both Zelensky’s effrontery and Putin's stubbornness that put the peace deal in the back burner.”

The only American listed among the official guests was Lt Gen Curtis Buzzard, a US officer who represents Nato in Ukraine.

The European leaders visited an energy infrastructure facility damaged during Russia’s recent drone and missile attacks that have left millions of Ukrainians without power during one of the coldest winters for years.

In his anniversary address, Zelensky decried Putin’s aerial attacks against military bases. He said pointedly that since Putin was not “capable of defeating Ukraine on the battlefield”, he was instead “fighting against apartment buildings and power plants”.

He added: “And now Ukrainians are enduring the hardest winter in history. And terror almost every night. I do not know who else could withstand this without collapsing or wavering.”

#trump #putin #zelensky #ukraine #war

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Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton:

“Although you could potentially remove the ayatollah, that would leave the IRGC in place, and the government in Iran is the IRGC, while the ayatollahs act as a religious cover or an ideological cover for them.

I think Trump is just hoping that this show of American power will intimidate the ayatollahs. If I were still his adviser, I would be happy to tell him that it won’t work.

They won’t be intimidated. But Trump really thinks minute by minute; he doesn’t think strategically.”

#john #bolton #trump #ayatollah

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📰 Trump’s Tariff War Meets a Cowardly Congress

Speaker Mike Johnson is basically admitting Trump’s new 15% global tariffs are on political life support. He told reporters Congress is unlikely to “find consensus” on any legislation to codify the tariff agenda after the Supreme Court struck down the previous emergency levies, and he waved off the idea of jamming them into a reconciliation mega‑bill.
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Trump’s Section 122 tariffs automatically expire after 150 days; extending them would require Congress to vote, which senior Republicans privately say they don’t have the numbers to do. Senate Democrats have already promised to block any extension, and with a 60‑vote threshold they can make sure the import tax dies on schedule.

Even swing‑district Republicans like Don Bacon are breaking, calling the tariffs a “ball and chain” on the GOP ahead of the midterms and predicting the new levies will “fail in the courts” as well.

Johnson is also punting on refunds for the illegal tariffs the Court just killed, saying that’s for the White House to sort out and “doesn’t really involve the House at this point.”

Congress doesn’t want to own either the cost of paying companies back or the politics of defending Trump’s trade taxes. Trump can still improvise new workarounds from the Oval Office, but the branch that actually controls tariff power under the Constitution is quietly signaling it has no intention of bailing him out.

#Trump #tariffs #MikeJohnson #Congress #trade #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Epstein’s Inbox Claims Another One: Mandelson in Cuffs

Peter Mandelson just went from “New Labour mastermind” and ex‑ambassador to the U.S. to 72‑year‑old suspect in a misconduct‑in‑public‑office case that carries a potential life sentence. London’s Met Police arrested him at his Camden home after getting U.S. Justice Department emails showing he shared information with Jeffrey Epstein while he was a cabinet minister in Gordon Brown’s government in 2009. His London and Wiltshire properties have already been searched; he’s resigned from Labour and the House of Lords, and his lawyers are suddenly very quiet.
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This isn’t just one fallen operator, it’s a systemic rot story. Mandelson was fired as U.K. ambassador to Washington last year when the depth of his friendship with Epstein became public, despite Starmer’s team insisting they’d vetted him. Now Parliament has ordered the release of those vetting documents, two senior government officials have already quit over the scandal, and the prime minister faces calls to step down for appointing a man who was apparently emailing a convicted sex offender from inside the British state.

All of this comes days after King Charles’s brother Andrew Mountbatten‑Windsor was arrested on the same charge — misconduct in public office — over alleged transmission of confidential documents to Epstein. One royal, one über‑insider of the Blair–Brown machine, both pulled into police stations off the back of the same inbox. The message is not that Epstein corrupted a few bad apples; it’s that his address book was the British establishment.

For decades, Mandelson was sold as the guy who understood power: architect of New Labour, twice‑fallen, twice‑resurrected cabinet minister, resurrected again as Starmer’s “shrewd” choice to manage Washington and even win early tariff concessions from Trump. Now the public watches him bundled into an unmarked car over emails he thought would never see daylight. The British state keeps telling the world it’s a model of integrity and rule of law. The Epstein files keep answering with pictures of who was actually picking up the phone.

#UK #Mandelson #Epstein #Starmer #elites #corruption #fakeDemocracy

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📰 The Anniversary Pitch

Today is the fourth anniversary of the full-scale invasion. Tomorrow is the State of the Union. Zelensky gave CNN the interview between the two — right after pinning medals on families of dead soldiers, right before Trump walks to the podium. The timing is not grief. It's leverage.

The interview is a masterclass in absurdist negotiation — the kind a comedian would run. Demand things nobody can deliver. Demand them loudly. Demand them on camera. Not because you expect a yes, but because the no shifts the frame.

Exhibit A: Zelensky says security guarantees must be ratified by Congress before any peace deal is signed. He knows Congress can't ratify a napkin in under six months. He's not asking for a guarantee — he's buying time by making the sequence impossible.

Exhibit B: freeze at the current front line, but no withdrawal from the remaining 20% of Donetsk. Moscow wants that land vacated. Zelensky calls it the "fortress belt" — railways, roads, industrial cities. He won't say "we keep occupied territory," he says "200,000 people live there, what should I tell them — bye-bye, you're Russian now?" The comedian reframes a territorial demand as a human interest story. The audience claps. The map doesn't move.

Exhibit C: Trump wants one big ceremony — peace deal, security guarantees, handshakes, cameras. Zelensky says no, guarantees first, separately, ratified, locked in. He doesn't trust a photo op to survive the next news cycle. He's telling Trump, to his face via CNN, that his signature is worth less than a Senate vote.

Meanwhile the balance sheet nobody mentions on camera: the US has spent $183 billion on Ukraine since 2022. The minerals deal signed last April gives Washington preferential access to Ukrainian titanium, lithium, graphite — but the actual rare-earth value is closer to $12 billion, not the $500 billion Trump keeps claiming. The "payback" doesn't add up on paper. It adds up as a political prop. And Ukraine's parliament hasn't ratified it yet.

The man whose presidential term expired in May 2024. Who governs under martial law that he himself extends. Who shut down opposition TV channels and detained political rivals. Who is now telling Washington that peace requires more democracy, not less — while running a country that hasn't voted in two years. Trump calls him a dictator. Zelensky responds: "You want another president? One who'll bend easier?"

Both of them are right. Neither of them is honest about why.
The medal ceremony before the CNN sit-down wasn't an accident. Crying mothers and orphaned children — then a cut to the interview chair, soft lighting, the plea. Every frame is currency.

Zelensky is converting casualties into negotiating chips, the same way every wartime leader does, except this one used to do it for laughs on television and now does it for $183 billion in sunk costs that Washington can't write off without looking weak.

It's the fourth anniversary. Everyone is performing. The comedian asks for the impossible. The dealmaker wants a ceremony. The dead get medals. The bill stays open.

#Ukraine #BabylonBurning #FollowTheMoney

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📰 Iran Waits for Trump’s War in a Country Too Broke to Prepare

On paper, Iran looks calm: shops in Tehran are stocked, there are no visible shortages of food, fuel, or water, schools and offices are still open, and the subway runs on time. Underneath, 90 million people are stuck between push‑notifications about “last chance” Geneva talks and the very real possibility of U.S. airstrikes in a country that already endured a 12‑day war with Israel last year. Some pack go‑bags and plan escape routes to villages or the Caspian coast; others say they can’t even afford two days of supplies, never mind two weeks.
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The state’s contingency plan is basically vibes. Tehran’s mayor has floated turning metro stations and underground parking lots into shelters, while admitting only “minimum” steps have been taken, and dismissing detailed preparation as premature because authorities “don’t want to cause panic.” Experts warn those spaces lack ventilation, heating, and sanitation; there is no public sign any of that is being fixed. Online, activists circulate checklists — three liters of water per person per day, canned food, flashlights, power banks — and get flooded with replies from people who can’t afford meat or eggs, let alone stockpiles. Inflation is around 60% compared with last year, the rial keeps hitting new lows, and many families are already choosing between rent and food.
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Everyone expects the government to pull the internet plug again. During last June’s war and last month’s protests, authorities repeatedly shut down mobile data and messaging; now Iranians swap tips on emergency meeting points and which VPN subscriptions might survive the next blackout. People follow every leak about Trump’s “limited strike” vs “regime change” talk, but say they can’t make sense of his shifting threats or timing. In the south, the Revolutionary Guards stage drills for cameras; in the capital, an artist adds a VPN to her emergency kit and a startup worker describes the feeling of being trapped while two distant leaders argue over a house they’re prepared to burn down with everyone still inside.
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The slogan Iranian officials like to use is “no war, no peace,” as if it were a kind of stability. On the ground it looks more like “no future, no plan”: too poor to prepare, too censored to trust, and too exposed to do anything but wait to find out whether they’re going to be statistics in a U.S.–Iran bargaining session that was never about them in the first place.
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#Iran #war #Trump #Tehran #economy #fakePeace

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📰 Netanyahu’s Fantasy Axis: From India to ‘Kush’

Netanyahu has finally given his quiet security networking a Marvel‑style brand: an Israeli “axis” stretching “from India to Kush” to counter the Iranian Shiite bloc and what he calls a radical Sunni / Muslim Brotherhood axis. In a speech to Shin Bet brass, and wrapped around Modi’s visit, he sold it as a “hexagon of alliances” — India on the eastern flank, Greece and Cyprus in the middle, and Gulf monarchies like the UAE and Bahrain (and, in the dream version, Saudi Arabia) tying the Eastern Med to the Indian Ocean.

Extend that line down the map and you get the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa: Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, Emirati infrastructure in Berbera, silent coordination on watching Houthi supply lines and Iranian activity in Bab el‑Mandeb, plus security links to Ethiopia, Kenya and others as a southern screen. None of this is really new — it’s a patchwork of bilateral deals, trilateral drills, intel liaisons and port concessions that have been quietly growing for a decade. The novelty is the marketing: recasting transactional, fragile cooperation as a coherent “axis from India to Kush,” a third pole to match the “radical” Shiite and Sunni camps he needs for his narrative.

For domestic and foreign audiences, the pitch is simple: Israel is not isolated; it is the hub of a rising security‑tech‑energy bloc linking Delhi, the Med and the Red Sea — with Arab and African partners on board and Iran boxed in. In practice, it’s a slogan draped over deals that depend on leaders, not publics; on secret memoranda, not treaties; on today’s interests, not tomorrow’s elections or coups. Netanyahu is trying to turn geography and quiet cooperation into ideology. The risk is that when the branding meets reality — Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon, Red Sea shipping, internal politics from New Delhi to Nairobi — the “axis” looks less like a new order and more like a PowerPoint map with too many arrows and not enough consent.

#Israel #Netanyahu #India #RedSea #Somaliland #Iran #fakeGeopolitics

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Is Trump Racking Up Victories For the American People or For Himself? 🤔🇺🇸

Trump proclaimed his first year in office a success at the State of the Union address on Tuesday evening, even as his presidency is dogged by low public approval ratings before November’s midterm elections in which voters could hand control of Congress back to his Democratic opponents.

The annual address to a joint session of Congress came after months of turmoil for the Republican president, including a crackdown on immigrant communities in Minneapolis that resulted in the deaths of two US citizens, and faltering progress on his campaign promise of lowering the cost of living.

Despite Democrats walking out, holding signs, and verbally clashing in the chamber, Trump maintained a triumphant tone in his speech, arguing that he had rebuilt a country ruined by Biden.

Speaking for just under two hours, his speech was the longest State of the Union ever delivered, and saw Trump repeatedly bring out surprise guests to serve as living embodiments of what he saw as the country’s greatness.

“We will never go back to where we were just a very short time ago. We’re not going back.”

Recent surveys have shown that many voters disagree. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released this week found a mere 39% of voters view his presidency positively, and others have found him underwater on key issues such as the economy and immigration.

But Trump gave no acknowledgment to the bad vibes, instead running through his administration’s accomplishments in a speech that was interspersed with falsehoods and exaggerations but light on new policy proposals.

He announced that his vice-president, Vance, would lead a “war on fraud”, and that he had negotiated a “ratepayer protection pledge” to offset the impact of new data centers on households electricity costs.

Four supreme court justices were in attendance, three of whom – John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan – had last week signed on to an opinion saying he could not use executive power to impose tariffs on US trading partners.

As the three sat in the front row together with Brett Kavanaugh, who had not signed on to their opinion, Trump issued a relatively measured criticism of their decision, calling it “unfortunate” and “disappointing”.

He was less restrained when it came to Democratic lawmakers, who he wrote off as “crazy”, or Somali immigrants, who he described as “pirates who ransacked Minnesota”, the site of a long-running and contentious immigration operations.

And though he has ordered a major military buildup around Iran, he revealed little about what his intentions were for the longtime US adversary.

“My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.

Reviews from those who remained throughout were equally negative.

“For nearly two hours tonight, Trump spewed lies, propaganda and hatred,” said Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democrat in a statement.

“Instead of presenting the nation with a positive vision for our future and the economy, the president blamed others for his failures.”

The speech was nonetheless a key moment ahead of the November midterm elections, in which Trump’s Republican allies are defending their slim control of the Senate and House.

After failing to stop Trump’s return to the White House in 2024, Democrats have taken heart from successes in recent off-year and special elections that may indicate voters are ready to deliver them victories in key races that could decide control of Congress.

The official response to Trump’s speech was delivered by Abigail Spanberger, the Virginia governor who won a decisive victory last year in an election that put Democrats firmly in control of the southern state.

#trump #trump #victories #american #people #democrats

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📰 Eight Minutes to London: Missile Porn for Both Sides

Russia’s war PR just dropped a new scare brand: “Son of Oreshnik,” the hypersonic upgrade that state‑friendly talking heads say could reach London from Belarus in about eight minutes and carry more warheads than the original.

They sell it as more powerful, smarter, with better guidance and a heavier payload, while reminding viewers that Oreshnik has already been used against Ukraine and pitched as basically impossible to stop.

On the other side, Western media grabs the same talking points and wraps them in their own horror graphics: flight paths to NATO capitals, big red circles over Europe, and the ritual “World War Three fears grow” framing to keep the nuclear anxiety permanently humming.

Politicians then wave those headlines around to argue for more money, more bases, more “deterrence,” and no one ever asks why the doomsday product line keeps expanding while diplomacy is treated like obsolete tech.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry hasn’t publicly rolled out this “Son of Oreshnik” as an official, operational system, but that doesn’t really matter: the image is already doing the job. Moscow gets to posture as the fearless disruptor, NATO gets to pose as the panicked guardian, and media on all sides quietly cash in on the same nuclear suspense script.

The only people who aren’t shareholders in this arms‑race content business are the ones who live under those eight minutes and get told their terror is just part of “strategic messaging.”

#war #nukes #russia #uk #nato #fakeDemocracy

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🔺 Netanyahu’s Three Axes: When Your Enemies and “Partners” Are the Same People

At the Shin Bet conference, Netanyahu drew his new cosplay map of the Middle East: a wounded Shia axis (Iran), a “radical Sunni axis” built around the Muslim Brotherhood, and his own “Zionist axis” — a glossy “hexagon” with India, Greece, Cyprus and unnamed Arab and African partners.

There’s just one glitch. That “radical Sunni axis” in Bibi’s script is basically Turkey and Qatar. The same Turkey and Qatar Trump likes to frame as guarantors of calm in Gaza, the same Qatar whose envoy stood next to Israeli minister Gideon Sa’ar at the launch of the Board of Peace, the same Turkey Washington leans on to talk to Iran. Netanyahu casts them as a strategic threat; Trump sells them as service providers. Two realities, one set of clients.

On the ground, the “Zionist axis” looks a lot more concrete. From March 1, Israel is forcing out 37 international NGOs from Gaza and the West Bank for not complying with new rules demanding full staff lists, IDs and internal structures, after warning that their licenses would be pulled. Officially it’s about “security and transparency.” In practice it’s a controlled purge of foreign civilian presence: Russia pushes NATO out of Ukraine with artillery, Israel pushes outside networks out of Palestinian areas with regulations. Different tools, same instinct — clear the field, then talk about “stability.”

At the same time, Nordic Monitor lays out how that same Sunni axis operates. A Turkish state‑run foundation, Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı (TDV), has funneled at least 46.3 million dollars into Gaza after October 7, built nine mosques, and put the name of Abdullah Azzam — co‑founder of Hamas and Al‑Qaeda, the “father of global jihad” — on one of them. His books are formally banned by Turkish courts, yet you can still order them on Amazon Turkey. Jihad as a controlled asset class: outlawed on paper, monetized at retail.

Netanyahu brands this as an existential threat. Trump presents the same actors as peacemakers. On the surface it looks like a contradiction; in reality it’s just different slices of the same picture being plated up for different audiences. Each leader reaches for the version of reality that best fits the story he’s selling.

And the famous “hexagon”? Beyond Bibi’s microphone, nobody is exactly rushing to sign on. India is sticking to its habit of avoiding formal Middle East camps, Greece and Cyprus are bound by EU obligations to cooperate with the International Criminal Court, which has an arrest warrant with Netanyahu’s name on it, and the unnamed Arab partners are the same ones that just shut their airspace to an Israeli strike on Iran.
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An axis without committed members isn’t a coalition. It’s a monologue dressed up as geometry.

#Israel #Netanyahu #ThreeAxes #Turkey #Qatar #Gaza #Shabak #MiddleEast #geopolitics #Modi

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Trump Took Umbrage With De Niro’s Personal Attacks On Him 🤬🎤

Trump has responded to a recent podcast appearance by Robert De Niro, in which he called the president “an idiot.”

Speaking on Monday’s episode of The Best People with Nicole Wallace, De Niro, who has long criticised the politics, morals, and competence of Trump, said: “He’s an idiot. We gotta get rid of him. He’s gonna ruin the country.”

He added: “ I don’t want everybody going around with their Maga, the American flags, like they’re the only ones. We are Americans too.”

The actor then took headline billing at the State of the Swamp, a Washington event intended as a riposte to Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday. In his emotional speech, De Niro described the president as “failing, flailing and desperate” and said he felt “betrayed by my country.”

Writing at length on Truth Social on Wednesday, the president first proposed deporting representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who left the Capitol building early on Tuesday after shouting him down during his speech.

Trump called them “Low IQ” and claimed they “screamed uncontrollably last night at the very elegant State of the Union, such an important and beautiful event.”

“They had the bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people, LUNATICS, mentally deranged and sick who, frankly, look like they should be institutionalised.”

He added: “They should actually get on a boat with Trump Deranged Robert De Niro, another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely Low IQ, who has absolutely no idea what he is doing or saying – some of which is seriously CRIMINAL!”

Trump continued: “When I watched him break down in tears last night, much like a child would do, I realised that he may be even sicker than Crazy Rosie O’Donnell, who is right now in Ireland trying to figure out how to come back into our beautiful United States.”

“Trump derangement syndrome” is a phrase the president has frequently used to describe his political opponents. His suggestion this was the cause of the death of the late Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, caused considerable backlash.

Shortly before Trump’s re-election in 2024, De Niro told HBO Max’s Chris Wallace that he felt Trump and his allies were “not real Republicans” and called him “a jerk, an idiot (…) and a clown.”

Although not a particular fan of Kamala Harris, De Niro said that she was “at least … sensitive to the condition of the country, the people.” “She’ll make mistakes,” he continued.

“Of course, everybody does, but we need somebody with the right intentions, this guy does not have the right intentions, and everybody knows that. It’s insanity. Period.”

Earlier that year, the National Association of Broadcasters rescinded a leadership award it had been due to present to De Niro after the actor spoke out against Trump outside the latter’s criminal trial in New York.

#trump #deNiro #idiot #maga #harris

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🛢 Trump’s Red Line: Don’t Hit the Oil

While Russia was freezing Ukrainian cities through their coldest winter in a decade, Washington quietly drew its own front line — around a pipeline.

Ukraine’s ambassador in DC, Olga Stefanishyna, says the US delivered a formal demarche after Ukrainian drones hit Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in November, damaging infrastructure tied to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium and cutting Kazakh exports, where Chevron is a major shareholder. Translation from diplo‑speak: hit Russian assets all you want — just don’t torch the business.

Stefanishyna said she was told that Kyiv should “refrain from… attacking American interests,” even as the US insists it isn’t asking Ukraine to stop striking Russian military and energy targets in general. The problem is simple: American economic interests sit on Russian‑controlled territory via Kazakhstan, in the middle of a war Washington claims it wants Ukraine to win. The missiles are “Ukrainian,” the barrels are “global,” and the shareholders are very specifically American.

The ambassador acknowledged that the message exposed a brutal asymmetry. The US has deep, protected stakes in Kazakhstan; in Ukraine, four years into full‑scale war, it still doesn’t. Trump’s White House froze new military aid last year, but went ahead and signed an “economic partnership” giving the US access to Ukraine’s mineral resources in exchange for an investment fund. Security for American capital is non‑negotiable. Security for Ukraine is itemized.

All this landed while Russia was ramping up missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian power plants and cities — strikes that European and Ukrainian officials call a deliberate effort to inflict suffering on civilians. Kyiv gets sympathy, speeches and a warning not to hit the wrong terminal; Novorossiysk gets diplomatic protection because it’s plugged into the right consortium.

Zelensky still tells CNN he wants Trump “to stay on our side,” then admits Trump isn’t putting enough pressure on Putin. Но демарш по Новороссийску уже дал главный ответ: в этой войне “our side” — это там, где нефть течет спокойно и контракты не горят. Все остальные должны подстраивать свои цели под чужие активы.

#Ukraine #Russia #Trump #Novorossiysk #Kazakhstan #Chevron #CaspianPipeline #war #energy #geopolitics

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🧾 Epstein Files, Trump, and the Pages That Vanished

The Justice Department swore it dumped “everything the public sent the FBI” on Epstein into the big transparency release — and then somehow misplaced over 50 pages tied to a woman who says Trump assaulted her when she was a minor.

According to the index of the case file, the FBI interviewed her four times in 2019 after she came forward saying Epstein abused her in the 1980s and later introduced her to Trump, who she claims violently assaulted her at around 13–15. There are supposed to be four interview summaries and handwritten notes; the public release includes exactly one memo, focused on Epstein, plus a later 2025 summary that repeats her allegation about Trump — and zero trace of the other three interviews or the underlying notes.

The Justice Department’s line is that anything withheld is either “privileged,” “duplicate,” or tied to an “ongoing federal investigation.” In the same breath, it brands some Trump‑related material “untrue,” “sensationalist,” and “false.” The law Trump himself signed to force this release explicitly bans hiding documents for “embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity” — yet what’s missing just happens to be the deeper FBI paper trail on a woman accusing the sitting president of assaulting her when she was a minor.

Democrat Robert Garcia, who saw an unredacted log at DOJ, says those Trump‑related interview summaries weren’t just absent from the public database — they weren’t in the internal trove provided to Congress under subpoena either. NPR and other outlets count the same hole: dozens of pages gone, all orbiting the same accuser. Victims’ details and even nude photos made it into the public dump, but potential evidence about a president’s alleged crimes somehow didn’t clear the bar for disclosure.

The woman dropped her civil claim against Epstein’s estate, was later ruled ineligible for the special victim fund, and the FBI has never publicly vouched for or debunked her story. Trump’s spokesperson now says he’s been “totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein,” which is a neat trick in a case where the crucial records are missing and the department insists nothing important was hidden.

So that’s the picture: accusations labeled “unfounded,” a law that forbids political redactions, key memos that somehow vanished, and a Justice Department that failed to shield victims on paper but managed to shield the president in the record. There is transparency — just not for the people who hold power.

#EpsteinFiles #Trump #DOJ #FBI #accountability #USpolitics

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💸 “Somali Fraud” vs. Wall Street Fraud: Who Gets the Microscope

The official story is simple: Team Trump says it’s hunting fraud in Minnesota. The real story is nastier — a political show trial built on a federal dragnet that even Trump’s own sanctions chief doesn’t want his name on.

Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence John Hurley — a Trump donor, hedge fund guy, Senate‑confirmed loyalist — is on his way out after clashing with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the White House over a Minneapolis crackdown that slaps a “Somali” label on an entire financial ecosystem.

He reportedly raised data privacy and overreach concerns about a geographic targeting order that forces banks and money transmitters in the Twin Cities to flag any overseas transfer from $3,000 with extra data: recipient address, email, birth date, and whether the funds came from benefits. Career officials called the tool clumsy, partisan and inefficient; Hurley backed at least some of their criticism — and was overruled.

On paper, it’s about “Somali fraud.” In reality, every immigrant family wiring money home, every small business, every nonprofit in Minneapolis can end up in the dragnet because of where they live, not what they’ve done.

Former officials and civil liberties lawyers are already calling the order blanket surveillance that tramples the basic idea of the Fourth Amendment: suspicion first, data grab later, not the other way around. Banks warn payments will stall or get killed outright while they hoover up paperwork the government wants to feed FinCEN.

Trump, meanwhile, goes on national TV and tells America that “members of the Somali community” have “pillaged” billions and “shredded the fabric of the nation,” throwing out a $19 billion figure prosecutors don’t recognize and local media say is wildly inflated.

The White House blasts out talking points and videos about “fraud empires” and “Somali‑dominated scams,” promising a “no‑holds‑barred” assault, while at the same time celebrating crypto as a cool alternative to the banking system — a space with far less scrutiny and far more documented fraud.

So the message from Washington is clear: when fraud is allegedly tied to poor immigrants in Minnesota, you get geographic targeting orders, bulk surveillance, and a president talking about “pirates” and “ransacking” on prime time.

When fraud runs through more upscale channels — tax havens, private equity, “innovative” crypto casinos — you get photo‑ops, pilots, and regulatory yoga. Same crime category, different skin tone, different ZIP code, different treatment.

Hurley will probably land softly as an ambassador somewhere in Europe, praised as a “faithful servant” of the agenda he quietly tried to slow down. The Somali community in Minneapolis gets to live under a microscope designed in DC to feed a campaign storyline for 2026.

Call it what it is: not a war on fraud, but a war on the kind of fraud that polls well with the base.

#Somalia #Minnesota #Trump #Treasury #FinCEN #surveillance #immigration #USpolitics

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✈️ White House War Math: Let Israel Bleed First

Inside Trump’s team, they’re not just gaming out how to hit Iran — they’re gaming out who should take the first punch on live TV. Senior advisers are arguing that it’s “politically a lot better” if Israel strikes Iran first, Iran hits back, and only then does the U.S. roll in with its own assault. That way, the White House gets a casus belli with polling on its side, not a preventive war that voters might blame on Trump personally.

The logic is brutally simple: Americans tell pollsters they like the idea of regime change in Iran, especially Republicans, but don’t want to lose a “single American life” doing it. So officials are talking about optics and sequencing as much as uranium enrichment — an Israeli first strike, Iranian retaliation on U.S. assets, then a “reluctant” American response sold as self‑defense. In practice, that means treating Israeli pilots and Iranian civilians as variables in an electoral equation.

At the same time, the Pentagon is warning that a serious, sustained campaign against Iran — nuclear sites, missile infrastructure, maybe even “decapitation” strikes on the leadership and IRGC — could chew through U.S. munitions and open a window for China over Taiwan, while putting thousands of American troops, ships, and bases across the region in range of Iranian missiles and proxy attacks. Trump has already parked two carrier strike groups and a small air force within striking distance. He still claims last year’s strikes “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. His own briefers now say Tehran is trying to restart it.

The full Trump doctrine fits in one Iran debate: Washington talks about “red lines,” “options” and “leverage.” Israel demands that America “do what it has to do.” Iran insists its program is peaceful while spinning centrifuges and arming militias. And inside the West Wing, the real question isn’t whether a new war in the Middle East is wise — it’s whose flag should be on the first explosion so the polling looks clean.

#Iran #Israel #Trump #war #USforeignpolicy #elections #geopolitics

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