Tag: donald trump

Trump says a very wealthy ‘gentleman’ offered to pay troops’ wages through government shutdown

President Donald Trump said that a very wealthy person offered to pay the wages for the military troops if the government shutdown continued.

The president made the comments to reporters on Tuesday as he sat next to Argentine President Javier Milei at the White House.

“I actually have a man who is a very wealthy person … who called — a donor, a great gentleman. And he said, ‘If there’s any money necessary, shortfall for the paying of the troops, then I will pay it,’ meaning he will pay it,” the president said. “How about that?”

But Trump said he refused the offer.

“I said, ‘Look, we’re not going to need it. We’re going to take care of our troops,'” he added. “But this was a position that’s being forced upon us by Democrats.”

Video of the president’s statement was widely circulated on social media.

Trump said in a post on Truth Social Saturday that the administration was seeking alternate methods to pay the troops.

“If nothing is done, because of ‘Leader’ Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, our Brave Troops will miss the paychecks they are rightfully due on October 15th,” he posted. “That is why I am using my authority, as Commander in Chief, to direct our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th.”

Department of Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem posted on social media that she had secured funding to pay the U.S. Coast Guard.

“While Democrats have played politics with military pay to fight for illegal aliens, the US Coast Guard has been defending our maritime borders, stopping the flow of deadly narcotics and illegal immigration into our country, and countering America’s adversaries around the world,” she said in part.

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US Bombs Another Boat Off the Coast of Venezuela, Trump Claims Six ‘Narcoterrorists’ Killed

The US military has bombed another boat off the coast of Venezuela, according to a statement from President Trump, who claimed, without providing evidence, that the vessel was carrying drugs.

The president also claimed that the strike killed “six male narcoterrorists,” bringing the total number of people extrajudicially executed by the US military since the bombing campaign started on September 2 to 27. The Trump administration has not presented any evidence to Congress to back up its allegations that the boats it has been bombing were carrying drugs or that the victims were “narcoterrorists,” a term used to justify the killings.

“Under my Standing Authorities as Commander-in-Chief, this morning, the Secretary of War, ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility — just off the Coast of Venezuela,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday.

“Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route. The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!!!!” he added.

The president’s post included a video that appeared to show a boat that wasn’t moving getting struck with a missile, then exploding.

The latest US strike on a boat in the Caribbean comes amid reports that the Trump administration is considering bombing Venezuela as part of an effort to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The administration is using drug trafficking allegations as a pretext to push for regime change in the country and could potentially take military action directly against Maduro.

In response to the pressure, Maduro and his top officials have denied the drug trafficking allegations by pointing to data that shows the majority of the cocaine that is produced in Colombia doesn’t go through Venezuela. President Trump has framed the military campaign in the region as a response to overdose deaths in the US due to fentanyl, but fentanyl isn’t produced in Venezuela, and it does not go through the country on its way to the US.

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Why we need to take Trump’s Drug War very seriously

Donald Trump has long been a fan of using the U.S. military to wage a more vigorous war against drug cartels in Latin America. He also shows signs of using that justification as a pretext to oust regimes considered hostile to other U.S. interests.

The most recent incident in the administration’s escalating antidrug campaign took place on October 3 when “Secretary of War” Mike Hegseth announced that U.S. naval forces had sunk yet another small boat off of the coast of Venezuela. It was one of four destroyed vessels and a total of 21 people killed since late September. The administration claims they were all trying to ship illegal drugs to the United States.

Colombian president Gustavo Petro said publicly Wednesday that one of the vessels was carrying Columbian citizens and that they were killed. Two administration officials confirmed to the New York Times that Colombians were on one of the boats blown out of the water. The White House called Petro’s claims “baseless” and “reprehensible.”

However, Trump’s enthusiasm for the military option in the war on drugs long predates this episode. Mike Esper, who served as secretary of defense during the final stages of Trump’s first term, relayed in his memoirs that the president had seriously explored the option of conducting missile strikes against suspected traffickers in Mexico. Esper recalled that his boss asked him at least twice in 2020 about the feasibility of launching missiles into Mexico to “destroy the drug labs” and wipe out the cartels.

The president considered such a drastic step to be justified because Mexican leaders were “not in charge of their own country.”

Esper’s account is not the only evidence of Trump’s enthusiasm for the military option. After a 2019 incident in which cartel gunmen massacred a family of American Mormon ex-pats in northwest Mexico, Trump reacted with a tweet insisting that “this is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR (sic) on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the earth. We merely await a call from your great new president!” He added: “If Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively.”

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‘Disarm or be disarmed by force’: Trump issues new threat to Hamas

US President Donald Trump issued a new threat against Hamas on 14 October, affirming that they will either surrender their weapons or be disarmed by force. 

“They said they were gonna disarm,” the president claimed, despite Hamas and other resistance factions repeatedly rejecting Israeli terms for the surrender of arms. “They know I’m not playing games.”

The president praised the “monumental” achievement of returning the captives, adding that this was needed “above all else.”

He also expressed support for Hamas’s crackdown on outlaw militias in Gaza. “They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad … That didn’t bother me,” he said. 

“But they will disarm, you understand me?” Trump told a reporter. “Everyone’s always saying they won’t disarm … They will disarm. And I spoke to Hamas, and I told them you’re gonna disarm. Yes sir, we’re gonna disarm, that’s what they told me,” Trump claimed. 

“And if they don’t disarm, we will disarm them – and it’ll happen quickly and, perhaps, violently, but they WILL disarm,” he threatened.

Israel has also threatened to disarm Hamas through military force if the resistance group refuses to surrender. “All hell breaks loose” if Hamas does not disarm, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday.

The Deputy Secretary General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement, Mohammad al-Hindi, rejected Trump’s comments and said “the resistance factions did not agree to disarmament,” adding that “we do not accept the threat of disarming them by force.”

Hamas has also repeatedly stressed that it will not surrender its weapons until a Palestinian state is formed. 

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Tuesday that Britain could play a leading role in helping to disarm Hamas in Gaza by drawing on its experience persuading militant groups in Northern Ireland to surrender their weapons. 

According to European diplomats cited by Reuters, the Northern Ireland peace process is being discussed as a potential model for Gaza’s future. They noted that no detailed plan has yet been drawn up.

“Of course, this is going to be difficult, but it’s vital. It was difficult in Northern Ireland in relation to the IRA (Irish Republican Army), but it was vital,” Starmer said.

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Will Russian-US Tensions Likely Spiral Out Of Control If Ukraine Obtains Tomahawk Missiles?

The precedent set by Russia’s restrained response to Ukraine obtaining the F-16s, which could also be nuclear-equipped, suggests that tensions with the US will remain manageable if Ukraine obtains the Tomahawks too due to the modus vivendi that’s arguably been in place for managing them.

The latest talk about the US transferring longer-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, which Putin said earlier this month could only be used with US military personnel’s direct involvement, has prompted concerns about a potentially uncontrollable escalation spiral. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov assessed that such a development would lead to “a significant change in the situation” but nonetheless reaffirmed that it wouldn’t prevent Russia from achieving its goals in the special operation.

Ukraine’s explicitly stated goal in obtaining these arms is to “pressure” Russia into freezing the Line of Contact without any concessions from Kiev, which would essentially amount to Moscow conceding on its aforesaid goals since none would be achieved in full should that happen, ergo why it hasn’t agreed. In pursuit of that end, Ukraine threatened to cause a blackout in the Russian capital, which would likely be accompanied by more attacks against civilian and military logistics targets far behind the frontlines.

Some are therefore worried that that Russian-US tensions could spiral out of control, especially after Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that the Tomahawks can be nuclear-equipped, but the precedent set by the F-16s suggests that they’ll remain manageable. Putin himself warned in early 2024 that they too could be nuclear-equipped, yet Russia ultimately didn’t treat their use as a potential nuclear first-strike. This is arguably due to the modus vivendi that was described here in late 2024:

“[Comparatively pragmatic US ‘deep state’ figures] who still call the shots always signal their escalatory intentions far in advance so that Russia could prepare itself and thus be less likely to ‘overreact’ in some way that risks World War III. Likewise, Russia continues restraining itself from replicating the US’ ‘shock-and-awe’ campaign in order to reduce the likelihood of the West ‘overreacting’ by directly intervening in the conflict to salvage their geopolitical project and thus risking World War III.

It can only be speculated whether this interplay is due to each’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (‘deep state’) behaving responsibly on their own considering the enormity of what’s at stake or if it’s the result of a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’. Whatever the truth may be, the aforesaid model accounts for the unexpected moves or lack thereof from each, which are the US correspondingly telegraphing its escalatory intentions and Russia never seriously escalating in kind.”

The latest talk about the US transferring longer-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine fits the pattern of leaks serving to tip Russia off about this preplanned escalation so it can prepare its responses in advance. Time and again, Putin has exercised an almost saintly degree of self-restraint in refusing to escalate, whether symmetrically or asymmetrically. Readers can learn more about these precedents from the eight analyses enumerated in the one from late 2024 that was hyperlinked to above.

The only exception was him authorizing the use of the Oreshniks in November after the US and UK let Ukraine use their long-range missiles inside of Russia, obviously through the direct involvement of their military personnel, which he might repeat if Ukraine obtains the Tomahawks. He didn’t authorize them after Ukraine’s strategic drone strikes against parts of Russia’s nuclear triad in June that were much more provocative, however, which might have been due to his diplomatic calculations vis-à-vis Trump.

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Maduro Offered the US Access To Venezuela’s Oil and Mineral Resources To Avoid War

The government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had offered the US access to Venezuela’s oil, minerals, and other natural resources as part of a potential deal to avoid conflict, The New York Times reported on Friday.

The report said talks on the potential deal went on for months despite the US increasing military pressure on Venezuela and bombing boats in the Caribbean, but they have ceased since President Trump recently ordered his special envoy, Ric Grenell, to halt diplomatic efforts with the Venezuelan government.

Under the potential deal, Venezuela was willing to open up all existing and future oil and gold projects to US companies and give preferential contracts to US businesses. The report said Maduro was also willing to make other significant concessions concerning Venezuela’s relationship with other countries, including reversing the flow of Venezuelan oil exports from China to the US, and ending contracts with Chinese, Russian, and Iranian firms.

Maduro’s government has also continued accepting US deportation flights despite the military tensions. According to ICE Flight Monitor, a group that tracks US deportation flights, since February, the US has deported more than 10,000 Venezuelans on 58 flights, including nine that landed since the US bombed its first alleged drug-running boat in the Caribbean on September 2.

An official familiar with the issue told The Wall Street Journal last week that Venezuela remained “one of the best relationships” the US has had on deportations.

The Trump administration has permitted some trade with Venezuela by reinstating Chevron’s license to pump oil in the country in July, but US officials seem determined to escalate. Multiple media reports have said the US is now considering launching direct airstrikes on Venezuelan territory and that the real US goal is regime change, though it’s being dressed up as a counter-narcotics operation.

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Washington is Sleepwalking Toward Nuclear Armageddon

In 1914, Europe stumbled into a war no one wanted and few understood;a war that destroyed empires and redefined civilization.

Today, Washington risks repeating that mistake, this time with nuclear weapons on the table. Through arrogance, ignorance, or incompetence, the United States is drifting toward direct confrontation with Russia, the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, with consequences that could be apocalyptic.

President Trump last week said he has “sort of” made a decision about supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine or NATO allies.

He wants to learn more about “what they are doing with them” before making a final decision. His goal is to avoid escalating the conflict, but his words suggest he is doing anything but.

Is Trump posturing, playing 5-D chess as some claim, or joining the warmongering wing of the GOP?

Recent developments in Ukraine point to an alarming erosion of Western deterrence.

Russian Iskander tactical ballistic missiles, the short-range workhorses of the Kremlin’s arsenal, are reportedly reaching their targets with increasing accuracy, potentially in the 90% range based on Patriot missile interception rates.

According to open-source analyses, the Iskander’s circular error probability (CEP) may now be as tight as 10–20 meters when guided by optical seekers, compared to 200 meters with inertial-only systems. This level of precision makes even subsonic versions deadly against fixed military targets.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air defense network is struggling. The Financial Times recently reported that Russian missile upgrades have sharply reduced Patriot missile interception rates from roughly 37 percent in August 2025 to just 6 percent in September 2025.

Analysts at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) noted that intercepting six Iskanders can require 12–18 PAC-3 missiles, costing between $48 million and $72 million per engagement. Ukrainian stocks are depleted faster than they can be replenished.

Every Patriot missile fired in Ukraine represents one less available for America’s own defense. Every escalation that weakens U.S. readiness increases the risk that our sons and daughters could one day fight a nuclear war we didn’t choose.

Some observers have suggested that localized electromagnetic interference, possibly even low-yield EMP effects, occurred before certain missile strikes, temporarily impairing Ukrainian radar and communications.

While unconfirmed, this would fit with Russia’s doctrine of combined-arms electronic warfare. EMP warheads are a recognized capability of the Iskander weapons system.

This is the “good” news because Moscow still sees ways to achieve its military goals without using nuclear weapons.

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Tomahawk Missiles Are A Problem For Both Trump And Putin

President Donald Trump warned Russia that he may send Ukraine long-range Tomahawk missiles if Moscow doesn’t settle its war there soon — suggesting that he could be ready to increase the pressure on Vladimir Putin’s government using a key weapons system.

“I might say, ’Look: if this war is not going to get settled, I’m going to send them Tomahawks,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew to Israel. “The Tomahawk is an incredible weapon, very offensive weapon. And honestly, Russia does not need that.”

Trump also said, “I might tell them that if the war is not settled — that we may very well.” He added, “We may not, but we may do it. I think it’s appropriate to bring up.”(1)

And former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday that supplying U.S. Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine could end badly for everyone, especially U.S. President Donald Trump.

Medvedev said it is impossible to distinguish between Tomahawk missiles carrying nuclear warheads and conventional ones after they are launched – a point that President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman has also made. “How should Russia respond? Exactly!” Medvedev said on Telegram, appearing to hint that Moscow’s response would be nuclear.(2)

However, Medvedev is known for his harsh statements that are not always in line with the Kremlin’s decisions. That is why the reaction to the mentioned topic from a serious Russian politician and geopolitical analyst, often present in the state media and close to the Kremlin – Senator Aleksey Pushkov is important as he reflected on the importance of this topic for Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the USA.

“Today, the decision to supply Kiev with Tomahawk missiles looks like a path towards an unlimited missile war against Russia, which will be even more difficult to avoid,” Pushkov said.

“The issue is being discussed in the US, Europe and, of course, Russia. However, in the West, the public debate is mainly focused on the political decision itself – whether to deliver or not – and not on the issues that should actually be discussed, nor on the consequences of such deliveries (if they occur). And that’s a shame, since there are very serious, I would say critical, questions about the Tomahawk.” — writes Pushkov on his Telegram channel.

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US Intelligence Has Been Enabling Ukraine’s Destruction Of Russian Energy Sites

Fresh reporting in the Financial Times offers more confirmation that the Trump administration has been escalating the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, in hopes of forcing Moscow to the negotiating table.

The Sunday report makes clear that “The US has for months been helping Ukraine mount long-range strikes on Russian energy facilities, in what officials say is a coordinated effort to weaken Vladimir Putin’s economy and force him to the negotiating table.”

“American intelligence shared with Kyiv has enabled strikes on important Russian energy assets including oil refineries far beyond the frontline, according to multiple Ukrainian and US officials familiar with the campaign,” it adds.

One source described Ukraine’s drone program as the tool the US is using to weaken Russia’s economy and pressure Putin into ending the war on terms more favorable to Kiev.

Washington has sunk billions of dollars in expanding Ukraine’s drone capabilities, with the CIA reportedly supporting the initiative. Attacks on Russian oil and energy sites have become almost a nightly occurrence. In many cases Russian anti-air defense fail to intercept the small drones – or else only destroy some among larger swarms.

FT provides a timeline of when this ramped-up intel sharing began. The program reportedly expanded based on a July phone call between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump allegedly asked whether Ukraine could target Moscow if supplied with longer-range weapons.

The report relates this exchange as follows:

Trump signaled his backing for a strategy to “make them [Russians] feel the pain” and compel the Kremlin to negotiate, said the two people briefed on the call. The White House later said Trump was “merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing”.

After this, as if to demonstrate its existing capabilities to Washington, Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy sites sharply increased in August and September.

Interestingly, the FT notes that the Biden administration had avoided backing such strikes, but still authorized the supply of US Army ATACMS missiles, capable of reaching targets up to about 190 miles away, against Russian border areas.

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The Matrix Abides

Of the 251 hostages seized in the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas raid on Southern Israel, 20 came out alive today, all men. The shockingly low number of survivors altogether should tell you something about the moral disposition of Hamas. World opinion has not processed this in the heat of this moment, with the Gaza War ostensibly resolved, for now. . . or so we’ll see. Soon, the captives’ stories will be told.

Of course, world opinion is not what it used to be even a few years ago. These days, it oscillates around the poles of sane / insane. The Lefty-Woke wine-ladies of the Boston suburbs and their nose-ring Ivy League daughters must have the blues today over the implicit surrender of their heroes, Hamas. The keffiyeh is headed out as a fashion accessory. Who will be their next pet oppressed minority? (The Eskimos? The New York Times will put out a whole cooking section on blubber.) Note to the men (so-called) in their orbits: the gals will be loading up on Paxil and Klonopin, on top of all that Chardonnay. Consider hiding the cars keys.

Meanwhile, over at Conflict Central, the action shifts to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, today for a “peace summit” among the various party’s involved in a war settlement, many of them Arab nations of the region, plus key Euroland players. Somebody will have to police the joint, probably some combo of Gulf State soldiers and American troops. The UK, France, and Germany will have to content themselves with pretending to participate, as they have their hands full just now pretending to ignite a war with Russia. Turkey could be in the mix, too, though the odor of pre-1918 Ottoman subjugation lingers on in that corner of the world. Don’t expect a whole lot to be sorted out quickly.

Donald Trump will take a few brief victory laps and, by Tuesday, all that nasty business might be behind him, at least for a while. . . maybe.

Mr. Trump has a whole lot of fish to fry back here.

He is fixing to disassemble the entire armature of Democratic Party sedition by wrecking the armature of NGOs that feed it — and you should not be surprised to learn that billions of the dollars sloshing through that colossal money-laundry originate in US government tax receipts.

For instance, the diligent “X” account known as “DataRepublican (small r)” reports that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) with gross receipts of $363,001,576 received $362,047,237 from taxpayers, mainly through the State Department (including pre-Trump 2.0 USAID). The org, initially founded by Reagan Republicans, is now controlled by Democrats and their Neocon cronies bent on “nation-building” and color revolutions. Wherever there is turmoil in the world — Ukraine, Sudan, Pakistan, Myanmar — the NED has a piece of the action.

Stanford University, with an endowment of $23,780, 883,880, received $1,518,836,616 in taxpayer funds (those are billions), used to sponsor its Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), which spun off the Election Integrity Project (EIP) and the Virality Project. The former was dedicated, under “Joe Biden,” to assist Christophe Wray’s FBI and Homeland Security’s Global Engagement Center, in censoring social media on matters such as the Hunter Biden Laptop .

The Election Integrity Project ran a parallel op under “Joe Biden” tracing 2020 election “disinformation” — i.e., anybody who reported ballot fraud — and the EIP worked to censor such content across platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube with help from Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Global Engagement Center (GEC). The Virality Project likewise dedicated itself to Covid-19 speech suppression. A lot of this money was funneled through subsidiary NGOs such as the National Science Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Omydyar network (the eBay fortune).

You see what I mean by armature? (And that was a mere schematic sketch of a small part of it.)

This is a vast edifice of funny-money. The Democratic Party had captured all of it, and has been using it largely to maintain its power, which is to say, to keep the colossal money-laundry operating, because the salaries of all the people employed in these supposedly beneficent endeavors support a huge managerial cohort of officers who circulate in and out of government and comprise much of what’s called the “Swamp,” the “blob” or the “Deep State.”

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