Tag: donald trump

Trump Reportedly Considering Striking Cartels Inside Venezuela

President Donald Trump is reportedly considering unleashing military strikes directly against drug cartels operating deep inside Venezuela, as part of a no-holds-barred strategy to dismantle Nicolas Maduro’s regime.

The consideration comes amid Trump’s ongoing war on narco-trafficking, which he sees as a direct threat to American security, especially with the flood of drugs pouring across our southern border under failed Biden-Harris policies.

Citing multiple unnamed sources briefed on the plans, CNN reported on Friday evening that Trump has greenlit options for targeted strikes on Venezuelan soil, building on a recent lethal operation that sank an alleged drug-smuggling boat leaving the country.

CNN reports:

The US has moved substantial military firepower into the Caribbean in recent weeks, a move meant in part to be a signal to Maduro, according to multiple White House officials.

Ships armed with Tomahawk missiles, an attack submarine, a range of aircraft and more than 4,000 US sailors and Marines are now all positioned near Venezuela. Two White House officials told CNN 10 advanced F-35 fighter jets are also being sent to Puerto Rico, where a Marine unit is currently conducting amphibious landing training exercises.

The administration has taken steps to connect Maduro to its broader anti-drug mission – labeling him as a narco-terrorist with ties to some of those recently-designated cartels – and doubling the bounty for his arrest to $50 million.

This shift will treat cartel operatives as enemy combatants, not just criminals, allowing for decisive military action.

White House officials emphasized that no final decision has been made regarding strikes inside Venezuela, but the door remains open if it serves U.S. interests.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked on Tuesday if the White House was considering strikes on Venezuelan soil against the Maduro regime, and he did not rule out the possibility.

Keep reading

Trump Bluntly Explains The US Bombed Iran For Israel

President Trump said in an interview published on Tuesday that no one has done more for the state of Israel than himself and cited his recent airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities as an example.

“So, Israel is amazing, because, you know, I have good support from Israel,” the president told the Daily Caller. “Look, nobody has done more for Israel than I have, including the recent attacks with Iran, wiping that thing out. We, that plane, wiped them out like nobody ever saw before.”

Trump made the comments when asked if he was worried about the growing skepticism among young Republicans when it comes to the US relationship with Israel, and he noted the Israel lobby’s control over Congress, saying it has waned in recent years.

“But when, if you go back 20 years. I mean, I will tell you, Israel had the strongest lobby in Congress of anything or body, or of any company or corporation or state that I’ve ever seen. Israel was the strongest. Today, it doesn’t have that strong a lobby. It’s amazing,” Trump said.

“There was a time where you couldn’t speak bad, if you wanted to be a politician, you couldn’t speak badly. But today, you have, you know, AOC plus three, and you have all these lunatics, and they’ve really, they’ve changed it,” he added.

The criticism of Israel among a small number of members of Congress is no longer limited to Democrats, as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who is considered a strong supporter of President Trump, has recently come out strongly against Israel’s campaign in Gaza and became the first Republican in Congress to label it a genocide. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is also known for his opposition to US aid to Israel and the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC.

“Israel, you would understand this very much, Israel was the strongest lobby I’ve ever seen. They had total control over Congress, and now they don’t, you know, I’m a little surprised to see that,” Trump said.

The president, who is strongly backing Israel’s assault in Gaza, said the military campaign is not good for Israel’s public image. “They may be winning the war, but they’re not winning the world of public relations, you know, and it is hurting them. But Israel was the strongest lobby 15 years ago that there has ever been, and now it’s, it’s been hurt, especially in Congress,” he said.

Keep reading

The Power Of Siberia 2 Pipeline Deal Signifies The Failure Of Trump’s Eurasian Grand Strategy

Trump’s escalatory signals in Ukraine, the Indo-US split that he induced, and the attendant alleviation of the Sino-Indo security dilemma freed Russia up to clinch the long-negotiated Power of Siberia 2 deal…

Trump’s Eurasian grand strategy has sought to preemptively avert Russia’s potentially disproportionate dependence on China in order to avoid having its natural resources turbocharge the superpower trajectory of the US’ only systemic rival. In pursuit of this, the US envisaged entering into a resource-centric strategic partnership with Russia upon the end of the Ukrainian Conflict, expecting that this shared goal would incentivize Putin into agreeing to significant territorial and/or security concessions.

Trump’s unwillingness or inability to coerce Zelensky into any of Putin’s demanded concessions paired with increasingly concerning reports about plans to deploy NATO to Ukraine to spook Putin into ditching his balancing act and pivoting to China. The successful clinching of their long-negotiated deal over the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, which will nearly double Russia’s gas exports to China to ~100 bcm a year and at a cheaper price than the EU receives, signifies the failure of Trump’s Eurasian grand strategy.

Putin might have held out for longer had Trump not inadvertently catalyzed the incipient Sino-Indo rapprochement via his hypocritically punitive tariffs that aim to derail India’s rise as a Great Power. That spooked India into patching up its ties with China, which alleviated their security dilemma that the US was exploiting to divide-and-rule them. This in turn reduced India’s worries about closer Russian-Chinese energy cooperation that it previously feared could lead to Russia becoming China’s junior partner.

It was never officially voiced, but astute observers and those who’ve talked to Indian thinkers know that India was worried that China might leverage its influence over Russia to get it to curtail or cut off military exports to India, therefore giving China a pivotal edge in their border dispute. The Trump-induced Indo-US split and attendant alleviation of the Sino-Indo security dilemma freed Russia up to clinch the Power of Siberia 2 deal without fear of spooking India into the US’ arms and thus dividing-and-ruling Eurasia.

The growing convergence between BRICS and the SCO, which aim to gradually reform global governance via their complementary efforts to accelerate multipolar processes, is due in no small part to India’s embrace of both in response to new strategic threats from the US. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to China in seven years to attend the SCO Leaders’ Summit, during which time he held an important bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping, is expected to lead to a new normal in Sino-Indo ties.

The roots of their tensions haven’t been resolved, but Russia expects that they’ll now be better managed, ergo why it clinched its deal with China over the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline right after also concluding that the US won’t try to help it obtain any of what it wants from Ukraine. To review, Trump signaled escalatory intent in Ukraine reportedly as the quid pro quo for the US-EU trade deal and then Sino-Indo ties improved as Indo-US ones worsened, thus making Power of Siberia 2 politically possible.

Keep reading

Navy SEALs Reportedly Killed North Korean Fishermen and Mutilated Their Bodies To Hide a Failed Mission

You are a fisherman in one of the poorest, most repressed countries in the world. About 20 years ago, your country was suffering from a famine that is still forbidden to discuss frankly. The streets are filled with living reminders of starvation, people whose bodies are marked by childhood malnutrition. Food is precious to you.

So today, as other days, you woke up before dawn with your companions to go diving in the freezing cold ocean, in hopes of putting some mussels on your family’s table. But suddenly, you die. A man you have never met and whose presence you did not know about has shot you with his rifle. His companions stab your lungs so that your body will sink to the bottom of the sea. Your family will likely never know what happened to you.

That is what happened to a group of unnamed North Korean fishermen who accidentally stumbled upon a detachment of U.S. Navy SEALs in 2019, according to a Friday report by The New York Times. The commandos had set out to install a surveillance device to wiretap government communications in North Korea. When they stumbled upon an unexpected group of divers on a boat, the SEALs killed everyone on board and retreated.

The U.S. government concluded that the victims were “civilians diving for shellfish,” sources told the Times. Officials didn’t even know how many, telling the Times that it was “two or three people,” even though the SEALs had searched the boat and disposed of the bodies. The mission wasn’t just an intelligence failure. It was a failure that killed real people through no fault of their own.

The mission was carried out during the first Trump administration. The U.S. government wanted insight into North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his high-stakes nuclear negotiations with President Donald Trump. Matthew Cole, one of the reporters who broke the story, wrote on his Substack that he first caught wind of the story in 2023 from a source who wanted him to know “how the SEALs involved in the mission had avoided any accountability because of how secret the mission was.”

The broader point of the story, according to the Times, was that the U.S. government “often” hides the failures of special operations from policymakers. Seth Harp, author of The Fort Bragg Cartel, roughly estimates that Joint Special Operations Command killed 100,000 people during the Iraq War “surge” from 2007 to 2009. The secrecy around America’s spying-and-assassination complex makes it impossible to know how many of those people were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Keep reading

Greene says she got ‘a lot’ of pushback from White House over Epstein discharge petition

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said she got “a lot” of pushback from the White House over supporting a discharge petition aiming to force the administration to release all of the documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

“Oh, I got a lot of pushback. I got phone call after phone call last night. They didn’t want me to sign the discharge petition. They want to focus on the Oversight [Committee] investigation. They hate Thomas Massie more than they can hate any Democrat, which makes no sense to me. And they don’t want to work with Democrats at all,” Greene, an ally of President Trump, said during her Wednesday appearance on Real America’s Voice “Bolling!” 

Greene, who has disagreed with some of the administration’s positions before, told host Eric Bolling that she does not blame the president, but some of his staff. 

“Eric, you and I both know any president is insulated and in a cone of information based on the people that work directly with him, and I don’t think they’ve informed him on what a big deal this really is,” Greene said. 

The Georgia Republican, who is one of the four members of the House GOP conference who signed on to the petition spearheaded by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), said she told Trump Wednesday morning to host Epstein’s survivors at the White House.

“I want him to be the hero and champion of this issue,” she said. “And I want him to fight for these women, because I know him to be a fighter.” 

Trump dismissed the pressure to release the files regarding Epstein, arguing it is a push to distract from the achievements of the administration.

“But it’s really a Democrat hoax, because they’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president,” Trump said Wednesday.

Greene said Wednesday, “It’s not a hoax, because Jeffrey Epstein is a convicted pedophile. That takes away the whole hoax things. It’s not a hoax. It’s not a lie.” 

Lawmakers hosted Epstein victims on Capitol Hill, where they urged Congress to act. Some of the Epstein accusers spoke with members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is conducting its own probe regarding the Epstein case, behind closed doors for more than two hours Tuesday. 

Keep reading

NYT: Seal Team 6 Killed Civilians During Mission In North Korea

Today the New York Times revealed U.S. Navy SEALs killed North Korean civilians during a failed covert operation in 2019.

In 2019, U.S. Navy SEALs embarked on a clandestine mission to install a listening device inside North Korea, at a time when then-President Trump was engaged in landmark discussions with Kim Jong Un. 

The operation was reportedly green-lit by Trump.

The mission went awry when the SEALs encountered civilians fishing or diving for shellfish at night. The Americans opened fire, resulting in the deaths of all aboard the fishing vessel.

A subsequent classified Pentagon review deemed the killings justified under the established rules of engagement.  

The disclosure is significant as many have wondered how President Trump got the reclusive and belligerent North Korean leader to be so docile in the public face of the peace negotiations at the time.

There has also been rumors that Trump threatened Kim with assassination via SEAL Team 6.

The origin of those rumors now seems more clear.

Keep reading

Trump Administration Looking at Ways to Ban Transgender People from Purchasing Firearms Following Recent School Shootings

The Trump Administration is considering a bold action that will undoubtedly spark a significant debate about public safety and the Second Amendment in the wake of recent school shootings by transgender individuals.

As The Daily Wire reported, the Trump Department of Justice is looking at potentially barring those who identify as transgender from purchasing firearms.

“Individuals within the DOJ are reviewing ways to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell,” a Justice Department official explained to The Daily Wire.

A DOJ source told CNN that one way this could work is for Trump to issue a declaration that people who identify as transgender are mentally ill and thus cannot possess firearms.

The outlet notes that current federal law says that a judge must declare a person to be mentally “defective” before being stripped of their right to own guns.

The New York Post reports that members of the Department of Justice DOJ) think the move can be approved as a follow-up on Trump’s executive order preventing trans folks from serving in the military.

The far-left advocacy group GLAAD lashed out upon hearing the trans individuals may be declared mentally ill and no longer allowed to own guns.

“Instead of actual solutions, the administration is again choosing to scapegoat and target a small and vulnerable population,” a GLAAD spokesperson whined. “Everyone deserves to be themselves, be safe, and be free from violence and discrimination.”

Statistics show that the transgender community indeed has a mental health crisis, providing the Trump Administration ammunition for pursuing a potential ban of sorts. For example, statistics show more than 40% of transgender people have attempted suicide, while 56% have engaged in self-harm over their lifetimes.

Keep reading

Trump to reinterpret 1987 missile treaty to sell heavy attack drones abroad

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to unilaterally reinterpret a 38-year-old arms control treaty to sell sophisticated “Reaper” style and other advanced military drones abroad, according to a U.S. official and four people familiar with the plan.

The new interpretation would unlock the sale of more than 100 MQ-9 drones to Saudi Arabia, which the kingdom requested in the spring of this year and could be part of a US$142 billion arms deal announced in May. U.S. allies in the Pacific and Europe have also expressed interest.

By designating drones as aircraft like the F-16 rather than missile systems, the United States will sidestep the 35-nation Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) agreement it signed in 1987, propelling drone sales to countries like UAE and in Eastern European nations that have struggled to get their hands on America’s best unmanned aerial vehicles.

The new policy will allow General Atomics, Kratos, and Anduril, which manufacture large drones, to have their products treated as “Foreign Military Sales” by the State Department, allowing them to be easily sold internationally, according to a U.S. official speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

This effort is the first part of a planned “major” review of the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, the official said.

A U.S. Department of State spokesperson declined to comment.

Under the current interpretation of the MTCR, the sale of many military drones is subject to a “strong presumption of denial” unless a compelling security reason is given and the buyer agrees to use the weapons in strict accordance with international law.

The MTCR was originally meant to curb the sale of long-range missiles that can deliver weapons of mass destruction. Though drones were invented many years later they were considered within the scope of the MTCR due to their ability to fly long distances and carry weapons.

U.S. drone manufacturers are facing stiff competition overseas, especially from Israeli, Chinese and Turkish rivals who often sell under lighter restrictions.

Keep reading

Trump and Biden Tried To Break Up Google. Now, They’ve Both Failed.

The federal government’s five-year-long antitrust case against Google has ended. Instead of forcing the tech giant to divest from Chrome, a federal judge on Tuesday opted “to allow market forces to do the work.”

The suit was first brought against Google in October 2020 by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department (DOJ) and 11 states, who complained that the company had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by monopolizing the general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising markets in the United States. Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia—the same judge who issued Tuesday’s decision—ruled in favor of then-President Joseph Biden’s DOJ in August 2024.

In November 2024, the Justice Department proposed wide-reaching actions that the federal government said were necessary to address Google’s monopolization of the search market: divestiture from Chrome; conditional divestiture from Android; termination of its paid partnerships with Apple and Android; forced sharing of its search, user, and advertisement data with competitors; and prohibition on “query-based AI product” investments. In March, the Justice Department submitted its revised proposal, which largely maintained these remedies but eliminated the AI-investment prohibition.

On Tuesday, Mehta rejected the proposed Chrome divestiture, saying it “cannot reasonably be described as a remedy ‘tailored to fit the wrong'” and characterized the contingent Android divestiture as suffering “from similar legal infirmities.” Mehta declined to forbid Google from paying distributors like Apple for default placement of its search engine on its iPhones in light of the “GenAI products that pose a threat to the primacy of traditional internet.” Doing so would disadvantage “Google in this highly competitive space.”

Geoffrey Manne, president of the International Center for Law and Economics, says that Mehta’s refusal to enjoin Google from making payments for search access is “entirely borne out of adherence to a consumer-welfare-focused antitrust and rejection of the ‘big is bad’ vision underlying the [Justice Department’s] proposed remedies.” Likewise, Mehta’s rejection of the choice screen remedy, which would’ve required users to choose their device’s default search engine on first use and again every year thereafter, “recognized that judicial micromanagement of product design would not be beneficial for innovation or consumer welfare in the long run,” says Manne.

Mehta did prohibit Google from maintaining exclusive distribution agreements that condition access to the “Play Store or any other Google application on the distribution, preloading, or placement of Google Search.” He also sided with the plaintiffs on some search-index data-sharing provisions but opted for a narrow definition of search index, which excludes user-side data and only includes information about websites. Qualified competitors will only receive a one-time snapshot of this search index data, not the ongoing, periodic disclosure proposed by plaintiffs.

Keep reading

The White House Says Trump’s Tariffs Have Raised $8 Trillion in Revenue. That’s Not Even Close.

The White House celebrated Labor Day by announcing that President Donald Trump’s “protectionist trade policies have helped drive more than $8 trillion in new U.S. investment.” The accompanying photo refers to “$8 trillion in tariff revenue.” There’s a difference between $8 trillion in U.S. investment and $8 trillion in tariff revenue, but Trump’s trade policies have achieved neither.

The second claim is easier to refute. The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) calculates the gross tariff and excise tax revenue generated from January 1 to August 28 to be $158.8 billion, according to the Treasury Department’s Daily Treasury Statements. The customs and excise taxes collected from January 20, when Trump took office, to August 28 amount to about $156 billion.

According to the Treasury Department’s own data, the president’s policies have clearly not raised anywhere near $8 trillion; they’ve raised 2 percent of this figure. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the tariffs Trump has implemented since January will generate an estimated $3.3 trillion over 10 years—significantly less than the $8 trillion that the White House is claiming the tariffs have already raised.

Gross tariff revenue isn’t even the most relevant statistic; net tariff revenue is. The BPC explains that the latter “removes ‘certain other excise tax revenue’ and accounts for refunds of tariffs,” i.e., the tariff revenue that stays in federal coffers. Although net tariff revenue is not available in the Daily Treasury Statements, the BPC was able to determine that net tariff revenue was $135.7 billion from January through July 31 using the Treasury’s Monthly Treasury Statements, which account for tariff refunds. Net tariff revenue as a percentage of total imports jumped from about 2.4 percent in March to 5.73 percent in April, reflecting the impact of Liberation Day’s “reciprocal tariffs,” and climbed to 10.31 percent in June.

Still, the net tariff revenue of $135.7 billion amounts to 1.7 percent of the White House’s claimed $8 trillion in tariff revenue. (That’s neglecting the fact that the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that “$1 of excise tax revenue will lead to a $0.25 decline in income and payroll tax revenue,” according to the BPC.)

The first claim is more slippery; it’s unclear what the White House means by saying Trump’s policies “helped drive” investment. One interpretation is that it is crediting Trump’s reciprocal tariffs and hostile negotiations for producing more foreign direct investment (FDI) in the U.S. than would have otherwise existed. Even assuming that all FDI since January is the direct result of Trump’s protectionist policies, it is completely inconceivable that $8 trillion has been raised as a result.

Keep reading