This isn’t cowardice. It’s a calculation: If allied leaders thought that their sacrifice might count for something in Washington, they might choose differently. But most of them have stopped trying to find the hidden logic behind Trump’s actions, and they understand that any contribution they make will count for nothing. A few days or weeks later, Trump will not even remember that it happened.

An insider says Trump “grossly overestimated” his own abilities in the conflict.

“The president had a feeling, again, based on fact, that Iran was going to strike the United States, was going to strike our assets in the region, and he made a determination to launch Operation Epic Fury based on all of those reasons,” Leavitt said.

“We knew that there ​was going to be an Israeli action, ​we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we ​didn’t preemptively go after them before they ​launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said Monday.

And Trump declares a state of emergency and postpones the election. The Supreme Court issues an emergency stay, saying he can’t do that. But the court has no army, and Trump does, along with a handful of lickspittle governors who just might follow him down whatever dark path he plows.

That, not to mince words, is a coup d’état. Will he get away with it? I don’t know, but having effective control over how it is presented to viewers of CBS and CNN, and readers of the Bezos-owned Washington Post, to say nothing of the already vast pro-Trump propaganda empire of Fox News and the rest, will certainly make it easier.

That’s how fascism descends. And it’s becoming less and less hypothetical by the week.

“Everything that has been written about a potential War with Iran has been written incorrectly, and purposefully so,” he added. “I am the one that makes the decision, I would rather have a Deal than not but, if we don’t make a Deal, it will be a very bad day for that Country and, very sadly, its people, because they are great and wonderful, and something like this should never have happened to them.”

The ruling hit while Trump was in a closed-door meeting with a bipartisan group of governors. The president’s initial reaction was to label the decision a “disgrace” and vow to implement a backup plan, according to a person familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to describe the closed-door event. The White House and US Trade Representative haven’t yet responded to requests for comment. Trump has called tariffs “my favorite word” and vowed they will “make us rich as hell.”

For years, Trump has claimed he had “no idea” about Epstein’s abuse of underage girls. Yet records show that in 2006, he privately told Palm Beach police that “everyone” knew about Epstein’s activities and described Ghislaine Maxwell as evil.
Trump’s call to Palm Beach police chief

According to an FBI interview conducted in October 2019 with former Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter, Trump personally called him in July 2006, just as Epstein’s criminal sex charges became public. Reiter told agents that Trump said, “Thank goodness you’re stopping him, everyone has known he’s been doing this.”

"I mean, there's tons of redacted stuff. ... And [Trump's] name, I think I put his name, and it appears more than a million times. So it's all over the place."

The bottom line: "To me, this whole rollout of saying that members can come from nine to five to sit at those four computers, is just part of the coverup," Raskin asserted.

The 3 million documents that the administration has not publicly released "are the ones I'd like to see," he said.
"The administration says that these are duplicative. Well go ahead and release them then! If they're duplicative, what's the problem? We'll be the judge of that." 

"Epstein's lawyers synopsized and quoted Trump as saying that Jeffrey Epstein was not a member of his club at Mar-a-Lago, but he was a guest at Mar-a-Lago, and he had never been asked to leave," Raskin said. "That was redacted for some indeterminate, inscrutable reason."

Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.

Another American strength is its electoral system. Voters in Venezuela and Russia had no opportunity to check the power of aspiring autocrats until it was too late, whereas the US midterms offer an opportunity to at least partially defang a rogue administration. And with a robust and decentralised media landscape rendering the Trump administration’s excesses clear for all to see, this is an opportunity the American electorate appears keen to take. Indeed, it is possible that one reason Trump’s second term has been so fast and furious is that the administration believes it only has two years to act.

two of Elite’s senior women executives had pleaded with both Casablancas and Marie to stop sleeping with underage models, but had been ignored. (“We are men,” Marie reportedly said. “We have our needs.”)

"China reportedly coordinated the whole operation," the post reads. "The CIA oversaw it, the FBI covered it up, all to install Biden as a puppet."

The abrupt firing and replacement of 12 of President Biden’s appointed council members, which no president has done before, has been perceived by many as a partisan attack on the museum. Especially after White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, issued a statement saying, “President Trump looks forward to appointing new individuals who will not only continue to honor the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, but who are also steadfast supporters of the State of Israel.”

Former Special Counsel Jack Smith testified publicly for the first time on Capitol Hill about his investigation of President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

He said the case had “proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” and remained confident had it gone to trial.

Smith told the committee that he believed he could have obtained a conviction in what was seen by many as the most serious of the charges: Conspiring to deny Americans a free and fair election by pushing to overturn the 2020 election.

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” said Smith.