Tag: donald trump

FAFO: Karoline Leavitt says President Trump is Planning to Cut Federal Funding to Portland Amid Violence From “Leftwing Domestic Terrorists” – “We Will Not Fund States That Allow Anarchy”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Friday addressed the incident in Portland, Oregon, where Republican journalist Nick Sortor was swarmed and attacked by Antifa thugs, then arrested by Portland police. 

The Gateway Pundit reported on the incident, which is now under investigation by the Department of Justice.

“Portland: it’s FO [Find Out] time. Buckle up,” Assistant Attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who will lead the investigation, said in an X post.

Leavitt announced to reporters on Friday that not only has the Portland Police Department come into the DOJ’s crosshairs, but President Trump is now taking steps to cut federal aid to the city, citing the lawlessness in the streets.

“Since June alone,” she said, “radical left-wing lunatics have violently breached the ICE facility by using a stop sign as a battering ram, hurled explosives and other projectiles at law enforcement, repeatedly assault and dox officers, berate their law-abiding neighbors, and have even rolled out a guillotine in front of the ICE facility.”

In addition to cutting funding, “there will also be an additional surge of federal resources to Portland immediately, including enhanced CBP and ICE resources. Law and order will prevail, and President Trump will make sure of it,” Leavitt said.

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Unprecedented US Military Build-Up Near Venezuela Is Sign Of Possible War

Venezuela continues to be on high alert given the growing number of US military assets parked off its coast in the southern Caribbean. Venezuelan Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrinohas recently said “We’re watching them, I want you to know. And I want you to know that this doesn’t intimidate us. It doesn’t intimidate the people of Venezuela.”

He noted that American military “planes flying close to our Caribbean Sea is a vulgarity, a provocation, a threat to the security of the nation” – further calling it “military harassment.”

This comes as President Trump updated Congress on the situation in a memo this week. It stated the US was now in “a non-international armed conflict” with the cartels, which his administration earlier designated as terrorist organizations. 

Sufficient Pentagon forces have been assembled which would allow for the capture a strategic infrastructure in Venezuela, such as a port or airport, fresh reports say.

Additionally, there’s this fresh development previewed in Newsweek: “a platoon of U.S. Navy SEALs—typically comprising 16 personnel—will conduct joint drills this month with approximately 40 Argentine tactical divers,” according to a US Southern Command spokesperson.

The same publication lists five signs that possible war with Venezuela could be looming:

  • F-35B Jets in Puerto Rico
  • Pentagon Imagery
  • Cargo and Naval Deployments
  • Special Operations
  • US military units in the Caribbean

All of this also allowed The Washington Examiner to speculate in a major Thursday report, saying it “understands that military planners believe the assembled forces are now sufficient to seize and hold key strategic facilities such as ports and airfields on Venezuelan territory (the Washington Examiner is withholding some details for national security reasons).”

It adds: “US control over such locations would allow for the increased, sustained projection of U.S. military power into Venezuela from defensible positions.”

Washington Examiner further notes that Pentagon maneuvers and potential conflict preparations have been an open secret:

A Defense Department readout from late August notes how a training exercise off the U.S. Virgin Islands saw “six special tactics airmen parachuted into the Caribbean Sea with an inflatable boat, 3 miles off the shore. … Eleven more combat controllers and pararescuemen then jumped directly into [an airport] from the same aircraft, with both forces combining to take control of the airfield.”

While the Trump administration has vowed to to not start new wars – and the president has of late been boasting of solving several conflicts – Washington has been reviving ‘war on drugs’ type imagery and a rationale for the military build-up. Meanwhile Friday saw another attack on an alleged smuggling vessel in regional waters:

US STRIKES ANOTHER VESSEL IN WATERS OFF VENEZUELAN COAST

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Hegseth Announces 4th Deadly Strike On ‘Narco-Terrorist’ Boat Off Venezuela

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth announced Friday another military strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat off Venezuela which killed four people.

This marks at least the fourth such attack, and after President Trump formally notified Congress this week that the US was entering a “non-international armed conflict” with drug cartels. Hegseth made clear on social media, “These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!”

Hegseth affirmed in a social media post that he had directed the latest strike on Trump’s orders, and released overhead drone video of the attack.

“The strike was conducted in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela while the vessel was transporting substantial amounts of narcotics – headed to America to poison our people,” Hegseth said on X.

“Our intelligence, without a doubt, confirmed that this vessel was trafficking narcotics, the people onboard were narco-terrorists, and they were operating on a known narco-trafficking transit route,” he added.

Trump’s rationale for the attacks in the aforementioned memo states the cartels are “non-state armed groups” whose actions smuggling drugs “constitute an armed attack against the United States”.

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Putin claps back at Trump’s ‘paper tiger’ comment

Following accusations from President Donald Trump that Russia is a “paper tiger” in the war against Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not hold back.

“We are fighting against the entire bloc of NATO and we keep moving, keep advancing and feel confident and we are a paper tiger; what NATO itself is?” Putin said. “A paper tiger? Go and deal with this paper tiger then.”

The fiery comments come as the White House is considering approving a request from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for Tomahawk cruise missiles that would allow Ukraine to hit targets deep inside Russia.

During a forum of international foreign policy experts in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi, Putin said this request would bring a “new stage of escalation” between Russia and the U.S.

However, he added that with the missiles, not much would change in their air defenses.

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“Invasion From Within”: Trump’s Plan to Use the Military in U.S. Cities

On Tuesday, President Trump addressed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his war secretary, and senior commanders (transcript is available here) at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. The session was convened to review military readiness, budget priorities, and upcoming initiatives. The agenda included new weapons programs, expanded force structure, and the administration’s shift in doctrine under the restored name “Department of War.” It was both a policy briefing and a directive, outlining the missions Trump expects the armed forces to undertake in the coming year.

However, the most striking element of the address was not the budget figures or hardware announcements, but the language Trump used to describe the nation’s internal situation. He warned that America is under assault, not from abroad but from within:

We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways…

The military, he stressed, should defend not only the nation’s borders but its streets, treating domestic disturbances as a theater of war.

D.C. as a Case Study

Trump held up Washington, D.C., as a proof of concept for his vision of military intervention in American cities. On August 11, he signed Executive Order 14333 placing the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) under federal control. The order also mobilized the D.C. National Guard under federal command and called in Guard units from other states to “augment the mission.” Trump justified the takeover by citing a “crime emergency,” even though both independent and official data (see here and here) showed violent crime in the capital was already at or near a 30-year low.

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Donald Trump’s Dangerous Tilt Towards War at Home and Abroad

Donald Trump’s speech yesterday at Quantico to the assembled General Officers of the US militaray was a tour de farce of narcissism (not a tour de force). His attempt to emulate the late George C. Scott in his iconic role in Patton was a bust because, instead of delivering a pithy, punchy message, Trump droned on for more than an hour repeating many of his standard lines — e.g., this war never would have started if I was President — but he did so with little enthusiasm. Definitely a low-energy moment.

Although the generals and admirals assembled sat in stony silence throughout his rambling address, none of them had the courage to stand up, walk out and resign in protest. It was a bad bobble head convention… And a lot of bald heads to boot. They are more interested in securing a lucrative retirement package than they are in refusing to obey an illegal order — i.e., bombing a civilian boat that was allegedly carrying drugs that had not fired on US ships or personnel.

In christening the Department of Defense as the new Department of War, Trump is not sending a message of peaceful intentions to the other nations that inhabit this world. Just the opposite. While he appears to have handed off the responsibility for waging war against Russia to Europe, there are disturbing indicators that he has not fully disengaged from the dream of defeating Russia. For example, just a few days after vowing never to refer to Russia as a paper tiger, he did it again.

Some European leaders are still toying with the idea of seizing Russian assets. We have this today in a short piece from Bloomberg: Moscow prepares a counterstrike in case of confiscation of Russia’s frozen assets. Here are the key points:

▪️Russia may nationalize and quickly sell foreign assets under a new privatization mechanism in response to any European moves to seize Russian assets abroad, the publication writes, Bloomberg reported a source close to the government.

▪️On Tuesday, Putin signed a decree allowing accelerated sale of state assets in a special procedure.

▪️If the European Union starts seizing Russian assets, Moscow may respond with symmetrical measures.

▪️Hundreds of Western companies operating in various sectors — from banking to consumer goods production — still operate in Russia, including UniCredit SpA, Raiffeisen Bank International AG, PepsiCo Inc, and Mondelez International Inc., the agency reminds.

▪️So far, Russia has refrained from nationalizing the assets of international corporations. Instead, it has taken some companies under temporary management.

Meanwhile, France appears to have grabbed the war-flag and is leading the charge in stirring up an expanded confrontation with Russia. The French Navy detained the tanker Boracay off the country’s coast on Tuesday, allegedly from the so-called Russian “shadow fleet.” The vessel is under sanctions by the UK and the EU. Earlier this year, it was already detained in Estonia for sailing without a valid flag.

According to MarineTraffic, the Boracay departed on September 20 from the Russian port of Primorsk carrying oil, passed through the Baltic Sea, went around Denmark from the north, entered the North Sea, and proceeded through the English Channel. The tanker is currently anchored near Saint-Nazaire in France.

In tandem with this, the French Army Chief of Staff announced that French troops must be ready for the start of intense warfare as early as tonight. This may be in response to a report from Borzzikman today that the Russians struck a maritime target in Odessa and killed 20 French engineers.

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US Demands of Iran Make Another War Likely

The Trump administration is committed to ramping up the pressure on Iran, The Washington Post has reported, and the demands that the US is making of Tehran make another US-Israeli war on the country more likely.

According to the report, the US is demanding that Iran accept four conditions as a baseline for negotiations, including committing to “meaningful” and direct talks, agreeing to end its uranium enrichment program, imposing curbs on its ballistic missile program, and ceasing funding of its allies in the region.

Before the 12-Day War, Iran made it clear that it wouldn’t end its uranium enrichment altogether, although it was willing to reduce its enrichment to much lower levels and was exploring the idea of an enrichment consortium involving other regional countries. But those negotiations were abruptly ended when Israel launched the war on June 13, two days before Washington and Tehran were set to hold another round of talks.

In the wake of the US-Israeli bombing campaign, Iran has maintained that it won’t give up its nuclear enrichment program, framing it as a matter of national pride. Iranian officials have also made clear they will never accept a deal that would impose limits on its ballistic missile program since the weapons are the only real deterrent Tehran has.

The Post report comes after the UN Security Council reimposed sanctions on Iran under the “snapback” mechanism under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which was triggered by France, the UK, and Germany. Both Iran and Russia have rejected the reimposition of the sanctions as “illegal,” pointing to the fact that the US quit the nuclear deal back in 2018.

Arab officials told the Post that they’re worried another war could be coming. “The region today cannot go through the same Iranian-Israeli war or the other wars of the last two years. The cost is too high,” a senior Arab government official told the paper.

Israeli officials have been threatening that another attack on Iran may come soon. “We are monitoring what is happening across the Middle East and in Iran and are preparing for a variety of scenarios and options; one of them is that we may need to act again against Iran,” a senior IDF official told the Israeli newspaper Maariv on Monday.

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TrumpRx Is Obamacare in Trump’s Handwriting

This week, President Donald Trump announced the next in a long line of vanity projects: TrumpRX, a forthcoming, federally branded website where Pfizer sells steeply discounted drugs in exchange for a three-year exemption from his proposed 100 percent tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals. Imagine a strip mall furniture store with a permanent, flashy 70-percent-off sale, masking the fact that prices were inflated in the first place. TrumpRx, slated to launch in early 2026, is no different—a government-run platform that promises savings while hiding costs.

But this isn’t just another Trump-branded vanity project like the ill-fated Trump Steaks or Trump University. It’s a wild pivot in right-leaning political thought on health care, and it’s a gut punch for those who see where this road leads.

Flash back to 2016: Trump hammering the Affordable Care Act, calling it a “disaster” and suggesting that the government’s only role should be to ensure these companies have “plenty of money.” He was channeling what economists had long warned: Government-run health care distorts markets, creates perverse incentives, and collapses under its own weight. Now, the president is embracing the very heavy-handed tactics he once trashed.

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“Farmageddon” – Farmers Across the U.S. Sound the Alarm on the Disaster Unfolding from Trump’s Tariffs

As the U.S. now heads into the Fall harvest season, the impacts of Trump’s tariffs are being more clearly seen, where farmers all across the U.S. are sounding the alarm about the collapse of our agricultural system, with one out of every three farms going out of business in certain parts of the country.

What we are seeing this Fall in the U.S. are the effects of a mass loss of farm labor due to deportations, increased prices on farm equipment and other farm materials that are mostly imported (like parts for John Deere tractors), and of course the loss of the China market, the country where most U.S. farm products have been exported to in past years.

Ohio family farmers describe life under Trump tariffs: ‘We’re in a hell of a mess here.’

“We’re in a hell of a mess here,” said Ohio farmer Chris Gibbs as he worked on his combine at the start of harvest season.

“A severe cash flow mess,” he sighed. “A working capital mess.”

Gibbs, who farms more than 500 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, and alfalfa hay in Shelby County, along with a 90-head cow-calf operation, described the five-alarm fire raging in the farming community from Trump’s blanket tariffs.

Some growers have called the fallout from his chaotic trade war, and the reciprocal tariffs it provoked, a “farmageddon” that could ruin what made rural America great.

It’s that bad.

The Trump tariffs are shrinking incomes and exploding expenses for farmers, who, thanks to a president they still overwhelmingly support, fear losing their farms.

Many don’t know how much longer they can hang on.

Trump’s punitive tariffs on foreign buyers made their crops less competitive in markets around the world (and drove down prices more) while other senseless tariffs on fertilizer, steel, aluminum, and lumber just sent the cost of doing business through the roof.

The double whammy of Trump tariffs is especially painful for family farms that make up about 87% of all farms in Ohio.

Individual farmers struggle to break even, buy supplies, sell their crops, and build a sustainable future with long-term customers.

But the current tariff dance with Trump keeps them up nights.

Everything a farmer buys “from phosphate and potash to agricultural chemicals, herbicides, machine parts, is up by 50% over the last decade, while our proceeds from the sale of crops is down by 40%,” said fifth-generation Ohio farmer Joe Logan.

The former president of the Ohio Farmers union — a group focused on family farmers — maintained “the industrial agricultural community is chugging right along, raking in billions of dollars” while family farmers are not making any money.

Instead, they’re battling irrational tariffs, rising costs, high interest rates, farm bankruptcies and abiding dread.

How will they move crops without buyers or the major trade deals Trump promised to fix what he broke? (Full article.)

The biggest crop losses to China are American soybeans. Last year China bought $12.6 billion of soybeans, and this year they have bought ZERO, since Trump levied tariffs against them earlier in the year.

Instead, China has turned to Brazil to import soybeans, and after the Trump Administration just gave Argentina a new $20 billion bailout package to “help their economy,” Argentina immediately removed their own tariff to China and sold them several shiploads of soybeans, betraying U.S. farmers.

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Leaked texts on Scott Bessent’s phone suggest the White House got played bailing out Argentina—and U.S. soybean farmers are the casualties

“Finally—just a heads up, I’m getting more intel, but this is highly unfortunate,” the text said. “We bailed out Argentina yesterday and in return, the Argentine’s [sic] are removing their export tariffs on grains, reducing their price, and sold a bunch of soybeans to China, at a time when we would normally be selling to China. Soy prices are dropping further because of it. This gives China more leverage on us.”

A second message said, “On a plane but Scott I can call you when I land.”

Last week, Bessent outlined on X a plan to financially support Argentina following extensive talks between longtime allies President Donald Trump and Argentine President Javier Milei, a libertarian economist with a populist, Trump-like appeal, known for wielding a chain saw and cloning his enormous mastiff dogs.

The Treasury has arranged a $20 billion swap line with Argentina’s central bank, part of an effort to infuse the South American country with capital. Stabilizing Argentina ahead of an October midterm would help Milei’s chances of staying in power. Milei has had more success taming Argentina’s hyperinflation than first expected, but has been dealing with a brewing currency crisis and several corruption scandals.

Amid Argentina’s talks with the U.S., China ordered at least 10 cargoes of soybeans from the South American country, Reuters reported, citing multiple traders.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Treasury Department did not respond to Fortune’s requests for comment.

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