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Morning Joe 'aghast' at Trump's off-hand remark: 'Wait, what?'
Reacting to remarks Donald Trump made at a press conference in France on Wednesday that he could easily start bombing Iran again just before signing a peace deal with the war-torn country, left MS NOW’s Mika Brzezinski baffled and appalled.MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” began with a clip of the president standing between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, with Trump remarking, “It's a memorandum of understanding. If it doesn't get done in 60 days, that's all right. We go back to bombing. You know, I don't want to do that because it's so good, but we might have to because we're never going to let them have a nuclear weapon. But they've agreed not to and you'll see that very clearly in the agreement.”That led the “Morning Joe” co-host to ask incredulously, “What, what, what? It's like, I'm going to give you a gift and I'll bomb you if you don't take the gift that I'm giving you?”“President Trump yesterday repeatedly threatening to bomb Iran if the country violated the memorandum of understanding, which has finally been released,” she elaborated. “The president is defending the deal amid widespread criticism here at home, with one Republican senator calling it ‘the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.’”“The agreement appears to give Iran everything it wants in exchange for opening up the Strait of Hormuz, which was wide open before Trump started the war in late February,” she continued. “While Trump tries to spin the terms of a big win, here are the key items: Iran gets its sanctions lifted, gets access to hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction funds, and can now sell its oil across the world. Tehran's nuclear program also stays at its status quo while negotiations continue for the next 60 days.”Addressing co-host Joe Scarborough, she blurted, “Joe, I am aghast.” "Aghast, aghast, aghast,” Scarborough offered before teasing her with, “This is the first time you're going to be upset at what's been going on over the past decade.”“A couple of things really that bear repeating for the uninitiated, and certainly for some people that are listening to what Donald Trump is saying right now, that, ‘Oh, they've agreed not to have a nuclear weapon,’” he continued. “This is the same position they have had for 50 years as the Wall Street Journal editorial page and everybody else will tell you it is the same exact position that they've had for 50 years. Secondly, why would Iran not take this deal, this memorandum of understanding is as [MS NOW’s] David Rohde is reporting, and we'll talk to him about it in a second, everybody else is reporting, this is a dream. They [Iran] can't believe they got what they got from Donald Trump.” - YouTube youtu.be
Trump snaps at 'fools' over Iran deal in middle of the night tirade
After a full day of criticism of his Iran peace deal, President Donald Trump finally had enough and went off on Truth Social in the wee hours of the morning.As Republicans and Democrats alike have lined up against him, with Nikki Haley, Trump’s former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, writing on X, “If this is true, Iran wins,” after details were released, the president labeled his critics “fools.”According to NBC News, Trump’s deal will be a “tough sale,” with one DC insider confiding, “It’s an embarrassing way to get out of this, but I think everyone just wants to get out of it.”Nonetheless, the president snarled on Truth Social, “These fools, who think I haven’t been tough enough on Iran, when the Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD HIGH, and Oil prices are 'tumbling' down, are either jealous, bad people, or stupid. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! President DJT”
As Hungary’s Magyar joins EU summit, sidelined Orban meets with far-right allies
European Union leaders are meeting in Brussels without Hungary's Viktor Orbán for the first time in 16 years
Taliban order ban on smartphones as officials shown destroying devices
Directive aimed at government workers, but reports of wider implementation spark warnings of future Afghanistan-wide prohibitionThe Taliban have ordered a sweeping ban on the use of smartphones by government officials – in what some analysts say could foreshadow broader, population-level restrictions.In a directive issued by the Taliban’s military courts and reviewed by the Guardian, the ban was to take effect this week and prohibits “high rank, low rank, general mujahideen, or service staff” from using mobile phones. Continue reading...
MAGA senator skewered online after 'surreal' CNN remarks on Trump deal
A MAGA senator was walloped online after he parroted a head-spinning Trump defense of his dubious Iran deal.Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) was asked by CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday about Trump's deal to end the war with Iran."Are you okay with Iran having missiles?" Collins asked.Marshall responded, "I prefer that they not, but they have to defend themselves," echoing Trump, who hours earlier defended letting Iran keep its ballistic missiles because "other people have some."Commentators online let Marshall have it for his overt effort to remain in lockstep with Trump."This guy will say whatever Trump says on any given day," Ron Filipkowski, the editor-in-chief of the MeidasTouch news network, said. "He has no core beliefs. His political philosophy is whatever position Trump takes today, which may be different from the position Trump had yesterday.""Trump/flunkie Republican senator says Iran has to be able to defend itself," summarized journalist John Harwood."Couldn't we have just come to this conclusion before 13 Americans and thousands of Iranians died for nothing?" asked American Saga writer Zaid Jilani."So America's adversaries need to be able to defend themselves against America for America's sake?" wondered Max Meizlish, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "Got it. Nothing to see here. Nothing weird going on at all."Spanish-language journalist León Krauze described the comments as "surreal." Meanwhile, Pradheep J. Shanker, a doctor and contributor for the National Review, simply wrote, "JFC" to express his frustration.
Trump officials admitted to Congress their new Iran plan is financing terrorists: report
President Donald Trump's administration admitted to Congress that Iran was still directly involved in financing terrorist activity, at exactly the same time the president was planning to give them money, Punchbowl News reported on Wednesday.According to the report, the State Department "told Congress that Iran’s oil exports are a primary revenue source for the regime’s funding of terrorist activities — just hours after the United States and Iran electronically signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to lift oil sanctions."This 515-page report, which detailed U.S. efforts against international drug trafficking, indicated that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “controls significant portions of the domestic economy.” The report continued that “Iran’s oil and petroleum exports are a primary source of revenue for its armed forces, terrorist partners and proxies. The majority of Iran’s oil transactions are conducted by illicit networks.”All of this follows reporting that a key obstacle to Trump's Iran deal is the difficulty of delisting IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), which is in theory required for the full-scale sanctions relief the administration is promising.Legislation passed by Congress in 2022 about the Ukraine war contained a provision requiring that any U.S. intelligence that Iranian drones were attacking Americans would prohibit the IRGC from being delisted as an FTO for four years. Per Punchbowl's Andrew Desiderio, "Last April, the State Dept formally told Congress that the IRGC had indeed attacked Americans with drones."The memorandum with Iran "also sets up a $300 billion 'reconstruction fund' that many Republicans believe will inevitably be used for terror financing," noted the report, as well as allowing "the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran to direct where much of that funding goes."
Trump 'falls flat on his face' as desperation for greatness backfires: columnist
As President Donald Trump's vanity projects collapse, the reality of his failures is reflected in his presidency, according to a columnist on Wednesday.Trump has attempted to remodel the White House and build a ballroom, slap his name on the Kennedy Center, and remodel the reflecting pool by spending millions to repaint it dark blue only for algae to return and turn it neon green — but that has all backfired, wrote James Ball, political editor at The New World, in a piece published by The i Paper."Trump, in other words, waded into a complex problem that successive administrations failed to address, declared he alone could fix it, didn’t learn anything about the actual underlying issues, and fell flat on his face," Ball wrote. "Some readers might be spotting parallels between the reflecting pool and the President’s Middle East policy, but even just sticking to his misadventures in the capital provides no shortage of disasters."His second term has been marked by missteps and "laws keep tripping him up," Ball explained."Trump sees himself as a strongman and wants the world to see him in the same way," Ball wrote. "He thinks Congress and the Supreme Court work for him. Laws are things he gets to write, not things he has to follow. He seems to believe that every other nation has to do what he wants."Yet Trump has continued running into problems."But it is a lot harder to project that image when you can’t even manage a home renovation or fix the pool at the bottom of your garden," Ball wrote."Trump is a man in a rush, particularly to leave a lasting impression on Washington DC. But by trying to build a legacy in the nation’s capital, he risks doing the opposite. He wants a legacy in marble, not one covered in algae," Ball added.
War-supporting conservative pinpoints 'bone spur' Trump's 'worst betrayal' yet
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens dropped the hammer on Donald Trump for “betraying” conservatives like himself who were encouraged that he took on Iran — only to capitulate when his war stalled out because he miscalculated the enemy.To make his point about the president’s lack of courage, Stephens brought up the way the president avoided the Vietnam War by getting a doctor to diagnose him with bonespurs, purportedly making him unable to serve and fight.With the headline reading, “Iran Found Trump’s Bonespur,” he jumped right in with, “War is a contest of wills. And in that contest, the hard men of Tehran appear to have scored a decisive victory over the vain man of Washington.”“I write this as someone who supported the war from the outset and hoped to see Trump carry it through to a decisive result: if not regime change, then at least a deal in which Iran would be forced to relinquish all of its enrichment capabilities and access to the Strait was unfettered,” he continued before adding, “But Trump got spooked after the regime didn’t instantly crumble and energy prices shot up. He then effectively abandoned the war he had started after less than six weeks of sustained combat — combat in which the United States lost fewer service members than in the 1983 invasion of Grenada. He compounded the error with an almost comical succession of military threats and last-minute climb-downs, each of them signaling indecision and weakness to Iranian adversaries practiced in the study of weakness.”Pointedly writing that the Iranian leadership, “took the measure of Trump’s courage. What it found was a bone spur,” he noted, “Though the details of the deal remain murky — a telling indicator of its likely shoddiness, since the administration would surely trumpet the terms of a strong agreement — it’s already clear that Trump has betrayed his promise to the Iranian people, after they were massacred in January to quell antigovernment protests.”According to the conservative columnist, Trump’s deal is leading to his “worst betrayal.” “We believed that Iran, which has waged a 47-year war against us, posed an increasingly intolerable threat to our security and vital interests,” he insisted. “This cease-fire neither ends nor eases that threat; it hardens and magnifies it. It removes the one point of U.S. leverage over Iran — the naval blockade of its ports — before there’s any negotiation over its nuclear program, which the Iranians will almost surely drag out until Trump is out of office.”After writing, “This is a debacle,” he predicted, “It gives Iran’s leaders something even more vital: The confidence that, whatever Trump may threaten, they can withstand the most any American president or Israeli prime minister can throw at them.”
'When you've lost the NY Post': MS NOW panel piles on Trump's Iran disaster
At the end of a segment on Donald Trump’s Iran deal, which is being highly criticized across the board as a disaster, MS NOW host Willie Geist made a point of holding up in the front page of Wednesday’s edition of the New York Post featuring a blaring headline criticizing the president.Prior to Geist’s display, each member of the “Morning Joe’ panel took a shot at the president now that details of his memorandum of understanding (MOU) have been leaked, with the Financial Times’ Ed Luce offering, “It doesn’t even pass the laugh test.”“Iran today is a considerably stronger regional power, considerably more threatening one to Israel and other of America's allies than it was on February 28th,” he continued. “There is no other way to see this than as a complete capitulation, capitulation by President Trump. And really a moment, I think of, well, I'm not going to use the word shame, but I mean, a really bad moment for the United States.”After co-host Mika Brzezinski shared a clip of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) stating, “Until I get more specific information, I'm going to hesitate to say anything more about it,” conservative New York Times columnist David French interjected, “This should go before the Senate, at the very least. This is absolutely a treaty by any understanding of the word. So yeah, the United States Senate should weigh in here. But the problem is and they'll know this if they say no to this, if they say no, what does that mean?”“Does that mean a very unpopular war restarts? Does that mean that negotiations restart? What's next?” he added. “Because we were sort of led into this war without these kinds of questions being asked and answered on the front end. Here we are in the allegedly back-end with Congress trying to reassert itself, but no real Plan B here at all.”That led Geist to hold the Post front page with the headline, “LOVEBOMB” followed by "Prez says Islamic regime not radical,’ his deal showers mullahs with cash –– and no sanctions.”He remarked, “I would just point out the New York Post this morning. A rare moment when you've lost the New York Post. ‘Lovebomb,’ the New York Post ripping President Trump on this deal for showering, it says, this regime with money, the lifting of sanctions and this $300 billion investment fund for funding the radical regime. That's The New York Post going after Donald Trump.” - YouTube youtu.be
‘Period tax’ on sanitary products to be abolished, says Pakistan minister
Campaigners welcome announcement cutting levies on menstrual health items, but say their work to end period poverty is ‘far from over’Pakistan plans to abolish “period tax”, in a victory for young campaigners who had taken the government to court over the charges.Finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb announced that sanitary towels and related items were “daily necessities that are indispensable for women’s health, dignity and full participation in social activities”, and said he intended to remove the sales tax. Continue reading...
Lululemon apologises after Japanese drum row at Great Wall yoga event
Online uproar follows Canadian brand’s use of taiko drum at sponsored festival held to celebrate Chinese cultureThe activewear brand Lululemon has apologised after a promotional event held on the Great Wall of China appeared to mistakenly feature a Japanese drum, prompting an uproar.The Canadian-headquartered company, known for its upmarket leggings, has been growing rapidly in China and arranged for a yoga festival to take place in late May on a section of the wall near Beijing. Continue reading...
Vietnam police rescue hundreds of cats stolen for meat by crime ring
Major operation launched after spate of pet thefts in Ho Chi Minh City, according to local mediaPolice in Vietnam have rescued more than 400 cats in a bust of a cat meat crime ring in Ho Chi Minh City, according to animal welfare groups and local media reports.More than 40 cats were reunited with their owners after the multiday operation last week, but several dozen of those rescued have died due to the harsh conditions in which they were found, the groups said. Continue reading...
