Madison and the Founders of his generation had it right: what Trump is doing violates both the Constitution and the foundational norms of democracy…
(We can talk about the millions of reasons President Trump had to attack Iran, but it all really boils down to this: Trump realized he was about to be exposed as a predator/child sex criminal and on the verge of losing his job as president. The reason for this Iran invasion was what so many were speculating prior to the attack: Invading Iran would distract from his soon-to-be-exposed crimes on Epstein’s island. That strategy is working well for Trump and his people.
(Right now the politicians and political pundits are trying to figure out why the Trump administration attacked Iran at this time. Never mind that nobody in Washington, President Trump included, can come up with a coherent reason why this war was necessary now. So far Trump’s strategy is working brilliantly–the evidence tying him to the Epstein sex crimes has been forgotten. Politicians and the corporate media are doing what they do best–distracting the American people from the real crimes being done to them.Thom Hartmann understands well.–The TBPR Editor)
Operation Epstein Fury — with a bonus to help Bibi get re-elected so he doesn’t have to face charges for his criminal behavior — is rolling on as Trump ignores the constitutional requirement that only Congress can declare war.
He’s also violating the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that dictates the president, if he reacts to an actual attack on America like Pearl Harbor, must notify Congress within 48 hours and have authorization within 60 days. In this case there was no actual or even imminent attack against America.
To further confuse things, Trump is throwing the Iranian protestors under the bus by saying that he’s willing to talk with the Iranian regime now that Kahmenei is dead, much like he crapped on pro-democracy voters and protestors in Venezuela when he kept that repressive regime intact after illegally removing Maduro and promising democracy.
This conflict is also now spreading. Kahmenei was to many Shia Muslims around the world something akin to what the Pope is to Catholics (there’s no equivalent among the Sunni Muslims). Imagine the Catholic world’s fury if a country had assassinated Pope Leo XIV: we’re now seeing Shia protests and outrage from Bangladesh to Pakistan to Lebanon.
And here at home Trump is musing about using Iranian interference in our 2020 election as an excuse to issue an emergency executive order to seize control of the upcoming November midterm election.
Which is particularly ironic, given that the well-documented Iranian intervention that year was designed to help get Trump reelected (after all, he’d just torn up the JCPOA nuclear deal) and avoid a Biden administration from coming into power.
Four Americans are dead and five in critical condition because of Iranian retaliatory strikes, as are civilians in several other US-aligned countries in the region. Along with around 200 young people in Iran after we bombed a girl’s school and a gymnasium.
And it’s early days. As Winston Churchill famously said in 1936 about war:
“Once the signal is given, no one can predict how far events will go.”
America’s Founders and the Framers of our Constitution not only would have agreed with Churchill, but saw a president seizing war powers from Congress as an existential threat to the republic. On April 20, 1795, James Madison, who had just helped shepherd through the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and would become President of the United States in the following decade, wrote:
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”
Reflecting on the ability of a president to use war as an excuse to become a virtual dictator, Madison continued his letter:
“In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive [President] is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war…and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both.
“No nation,” our fourth President and the Father of the Constitution concluded, “could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
Since Madison’s warning, “continual warfare” has been used both in fiction and in the real world. In the novel 1984 by George Orwell, the way a seemingly democratic president kept his nation in a continual state of repression was by having a continuous war.
The lesson wasn’t lost on Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon, who both extended the Vietnam war so it coincidentally ran over election cycles, knowing that a wartime President’s party is more likely to be reelected and has more power than a President in peacetime.
“One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as commander in chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”
Every Republican president since Reagan has had his own “little war.” Now it’s Trump’s turn, after all the times over the years he warned that if Obama was ever in trouble he’d start a war with Iran to distract us:
“In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.” (2011) “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective…” (2011) “@BarackObama will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him win the election.” (2012) “Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in tailspin — watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.” (2012) “I predict that President Obama will at some point attack Iran in order to save face!” (2013) “Remember what I said about @BarackObama attacking Iran before the election…” (2012)
Given that Baron, Don Jr, and Eric Trump all apparently suffer from hereditary bonespurs and no Trump has ever served as a “loser” or “sucker” in our military (and his grandfather came to America as a German draft-dodger), it’s unlikely this war will mean anything other than profit-making opportunities for the Trump children.
But it compounds his constant ignoring of constitutional limits on presidential power ranging from gutting federal agencies without authorization to having ICE routinely ignore court orders, flagrantly violate the Fourth Amendment, and daily lie to the American people.
Nobody invested in peace or democracy is mourning the death of the Iranian dictator or the possible unraveling of its theocracy. But must we do it in a way that breaks both US and international law?
Trump apparently thinks so; not only will it distract from the news reports that he raped at least one and maybe more 13-year-olds and his naked corruption and bribe-taking but it also carves another “screwed Congress” notch in his belt.
There was no attack on America, as required by the War Powers Resolution. There wasn’t even a serious possibility of an attack on America.
Madison and the Founders of his generation had it right: this is a naked crime by Trump and Hegseth against our Constitution and our laws and requires a strong congressional response such as impeachment.
Donald Trump, America’s President, and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, have a lot in common. They both want unfettered power. and both remain in control and out of jail by consolidating executive power and making sure they are both statutorily immune from prosecution while in power. While each enjoys dictatorial rule, their main difference is that Bibi is a lot smarter than Trump and can convince the American president to willingly do his bidding. Meanwhile Tom Friedman tells us that American and Israeli citizens can only helplessly watch as the actions of these two leaders are mostly condemned by the rest of the world and give antisemites more reason and opportunity to spread their hate.—TBPR Editor
Let’s stop beating around the bush: Israel’s far-right government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is spitting in America’s face and telling us it’s raining. It’s not raining. Bibi is playing both President Trump and American Jews for fools. And if the U.S. lets him get away with it, we are fools.
While keeping Trump focused on the Iranian missile and nuclear threat — which, though reduced, is still very real and will have to be dealt with diplomatically or militarily — Bibi is fundamentally threatening broader U.S. interests in the Middle East, not to mention the security of Jews all over the world. In what way? I cannot put it any more succinctly than Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, did.
“A violent and criminal effort is underway to ethnically cleanse territories in the West Bank,” he wrote in an essay in Haaretz this month. “Gangs of armed settlers persecute, harm, wound and even kill Palestinians living there. The rampages include burning olive groves, houses and cars; breaking into homes; and physically assaulting people.” He continued: “The rioters, the Jewish terrorists, storm Palestinians with hate and violence with one objective: to force them to flee from their homes. All this is done in the hopes that the land will then be prepared for Jewish settlement, en route to realizing the dream of annexing all the territories.”
Israel’s accelerating attempts toward annexation of the West Bank and to permanently remain in Gaza — and deny Palestinians political rights in both areas — are as morally reckless and demographically insane as would be the U.S. annexing Mexico.
But the effects will not be confined to Israel. I believe that this messianically driven endeavor will make today’s Israel permanently indistinguishable from apartheid South Africa and will have seriously detrimental implications for both American interests and the interests and security of Jews all over the world.
If Netanyahu’s government stays on this course, it will rip apart Jewish institutions everywhere as members of the Jewish diaspora are forced to decide whether to stand with or against an apartheidlike Israel. It will also accelerate the trend begun by Israel’s devastation of Gaza wherein growing numbers of young Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. are turning against Israel and, at the fringes, against Jews in general.
Jewish parents around the globe will soon be in a position they never dreamed of: watching their children and grandchildren learn what it’s like to be Jewish in a world where the Jewish state is a pariah state.
A poll by the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, conducted by YouGov in November, found that 51 percent of Republican voters under age 45 said they preferred to support a candidate in the 2028 presidential primary who favored reducing taxpayer-funded weapon transfers to Israel. Only 27 percent favored a candidate who would increase or maintain weapon supplies. Democratic candidates today who do not describe Israel’s war in Gaza as a genocide face real headwinds with young progressive voters.
At the Munich Security Conference last week, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was asked if she thought “the Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 elections should re-evaluate military aid to Israel.” She answered: “I think that, personally, the idea of completely unconditional aid, no matter what one does, does not make sense. I think it enabled a genocide in Gaza.”
As I said when I began, Netanyahu has played Trump for a sucker, as well as the pro-Israel lobby led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and many other so-called American Jewish leaders. He has gotten them to focus on Iran and ignore the fact that everything he is doing in Gaza, in the West Bank and inside Israel will strain ties between the U.S. and its major Middle East allies, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Qatar.
Yes, Iran remains a reduced but very real nuclear threat after Israeli and U.S. airstrikes hit its nuclear enrichment and ballistic missile facilities in June. It has already largely rebuilt its stock of ballistic missiles that could do real physical damage to Israel if war resumes. I take that very seriously.
But focusing exclusively on the external threat from Iran ignores the internal threat Netanyahu’s government poses to Israel and its standing as a rule-of-law democracy and unified society. Netanyahu has been engaged in a three-year effort, even during the war in Gaza, to carry out a judicial coup that would all but eliminate the separation of powers in Israel — one that enables its Supreme Court to check the excesses of the governing political party. Is Iran responsible for that? No.
Has Iran been engaged in a relentless effort to purge or disempower Israel’s courageous, independent attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara? No, but Bibi has. That attorney general, backed by the Supreme Court, is the only thing standing in the way of further assaults on a rules-based government: the dismissal of Netanyahu’s corruption trial, as well as Bibi’s efforts to politicize civil service appointments and a wholesale exemption from military service for the ultra-Orthodox Jews who keep him in power.
Has Iran blocked establishment of an independent commission of inquiry into the incredible intelligence and leadership failure before Hamas’s murderous Oct. 7 invasion? No, but Bibi has. That invasion not only happened on Netanyahu’s watch but also was clearly caused in part by his efforts to prove to the world that Israel could have peace with the Arab states without making peace with the Palestinians.
Hamas grew in strength thanks to Netanyahu’s long efforts to prop up Hamas with Qatari money so the Palestinian leadership would always be divided between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. That way Bibi could tell every U.S. president that he was so sorry that he had no unified Palestinian peace partner to negotiate with.
Did Iran nominate inexperienced Bibi cronies to run Israel’s most important security organizations — the Shin Bet and Mossad? No, Bibi did.
What prompted Trump to publicly demand that the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, pardon Netanyahu — even before a verdict — for the corruption charges he has been indicted on? It would be a terrible blow to the rule of law in Israel. It certainly was not Iran.
And here is what is truly crazy. Israel today has never been more militarily feared and technologically admired by its Arab neighbors, because of the blows that it dealt Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. If Netanyahu engaged in negotiations for a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority — on any reasonable terms — it would pave the way for peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
The whole neighborhood, and the whole Muslim world beyond it, would open up to Israel; Iran would be totally isolated. Israeli technology and Arab energy would create an amazing synergy for the age of A.I.
That would be a huge boon to U.S. interests. While some complications would surely persist, the Middle East would essentially be making peace under an American umbrella. And the reduction in tensions between Israel and the Arab world would allow the Trump administration to do what the past several U.S. administrations have craved: reduce its military presence in the region and shift its focus to counterbalancing China in Asia. Unfortunately, Bibi has other priorities.
The annexationist ambitions of the Netanyahu cabinet directly clash with Trump’s 20-point plan, which imagines a two-state solution one day. The “Board of Peace,” Trump created to oversee that plan, is holding its inaugural meeting in Washington on Thursday, but Netanyahu is skipping it.
Bibi’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Tuesday that after elections this fall, he would in his next term be “encouraging the migration” of Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, all of America’s key Arab allies and Turkey, which are central to Trump’s Gaza cease-fire deal, got together on a statement strongly condemning Israel’s decision to designate land in the occupied West Bank as Israeli state land.
When Israel is engaged in de facto annexation, with what human rights groups describe as ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank, it is turning itself into a major contributor to permanent conflict in the region. None of that is in America’s interest, but it is greatly appreciated by Iran.
Tehran’s Islamo-fascist rulers pose a very real threat to Israel. They lead a terrible regime whose downfall would be a blessing to its people and the region. But please — please — spare me the nonsense that Iran is the only threat to Israel today.
Iran is not the greatest threat to Israel as a democracy governed by the rule of law. It is not the greatest threat to U.S.-Israeli relations. It is not the greatest threat to the unity and security of Jews around the world. It is not the reason so many talented Israeli technologists, engineers and doctors are moving away. And it is not the biggest reason Israel is becoming an apartheid state by not only refusing to try anymore to create a separate Palestinian state but also by working instead to make that impossible.
That title goes to the government of messianic zealots, Arab-hating nationalists and anti-modern ultra-Orthodox Israelis put together by Benjamin Netanyahu to keep himself in power.
Documents released by the Justice Department briefly mention a woman’s unverified accusation that Donald J. Trump assaulted her in the 1980s, when she was a minor. But several memos related to her account are not in the files.
At this point we have to ask ourselves this question: Is Donald Trump the most corrupt individual in American history? The answer is obvious. Based on so the number of crimes committed by one individual, negatively affecting the public in the most ways, and setting democracy back for decades, the answer is obvious: Donald J. Trump. –-TBPR Editor
The vast trove of documents released by the Justice Department from its investigations into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein failed to include some key materials related to a woman who made an accusation against President Trump, according to a review by The New York Times.
The materials are F.B.I. memos summarizing interviews the bureau did in connection to claims made in 2019 by a woman who came forward after Mr. Epstein’s arrest to say she had been sexually assaulted by both Mr. Trump and the financier decades earlier, when she was a minor.
The existence of the memos was revealed in an index listing the investigative materials related to her account, which was publicly released. According to that index, the F.B.I. conducted four interviews in connection with her claims and wrote summaries about each one. But only one of the summaries, which describes her accusations against Mr. Epstein, was released by the Justice Department. The other three are missing.
The public files also do not include the underlying interview notes, which the index also indicates are part of the file. The Justice Department released similar interview notes in connection to F.B.I. interviews with other potential witnesses and victims.
It is unclear why the materials are missing. The Justice Department said in a statement to The Times on Monday that “the only materials that have been withheld were either privileged or duplicates.” In a new statement on Tuesday, the department also noted that documents could have been withheld because of “an ongoing federal investigation.” Officials did not directly address why the memos related to the woman’s claim were not released.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Justice Department said in a new statement that it was reviewing which documents were released in connection to the index. The department said it would publish any documents “found to have been improperly tagged in the review process” that are legally required to be made public.
The woman’s description of being assaulted by Mr. Trump in the 1980s is among a number of uncorroborated accusations against well-known men, including the president, that are contained in the millions of documents released by the Justice Department.
When the files were made public late last month, officials described the trove as including all material sent by the public to the F.B.I. “Some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the F.B.I. right before the 2020 election,” the department said in a statement at the time, calling such claims “unfounded and false.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. In a statement on Tuesday, a White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, said Mr. Trump had “been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein.”
A lawyer who previously represented the woman in a lawsuit against Mr. Epstein’s estate declined to comment.
The missing records deepen questions about how the Justice Department has handled the release of the Epstein files, which was mandated by a law signed by Mr. Trump last year after bipartisan congressional pressure.
Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, addressing reporters after the Justice Department released more Epstein files last month.Credit…J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
Under the law, the Justice Department can redact material that could be used to identify Mr. Epstein’s victims, depicted violence or child sexual abuse, or would hurt a continuing federal investigation. But the law expressly prohibited federal officials from withholding or redacting materials “on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm or political sensitivity” to public figures.
Some lawmakers and survivors of Mr. Epstein’s abuse have strongly condemned the department for how it handled redactions, noting that details identifying some victims were left exposed and nude photographs of young women were included in the public release, while material related to claims of abuse by other men had been heavily redacted.
The woman who made the accusation about Mr. Trump came forward in July 2019, days after federal investigators arrested Mr. Epstein on sex-trafficking charges, according to records in the public files of tips the F.B.I. received during that period. She claimed that she had been repeatedly assaulted by Mr. Epstein when she was a minor in the 1980s, according to a summary of an F.B.I. interview with her on July 24, 2019.
The F.B.I. did three subsequent interviews to assess her account in August and October 2019 and made a summary of each interview, according to the index of records compiled in the case. But the memos describing those three interviews were not publicly released.
The public files do contain a 2025 description of her account, as well as other accusations against prominent men contained in the documents. In that 2025 memo, federal officials wrote that the woman had said that Mr. Epstein introduced her to Mr. Trump, and that she claimed Mr. Trump had assaulted her in a violent and lurid encounter. The documents say the alleged incident would have occurred in the mid-1980s when she was 13 to 15 years old, but they do not include any assessment by the F.B.I. about the credibility of her accusation.
The Times’s examination of a set of serial numbers on the individual pages in the public files suggests that more than 50 pages of investigative materials related to her claims are not in the publicly available files. The missing materials were reported earlier by the journalist Roger Sollenberger on Substack and by NPR.
Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said that when he reviewed unredacted versions of the Epstein files at the Justice Department on Monday, interview summaries related to the woman’s claim were also missing from that trove.
“Documents that are listed, which should be included, which are referenced in other documents, are not in the files,” Mr. Garcia said. He added that the Justice Department had also not provided them to the Oversight Committee, which issued a subpoena last year for all of the Justice Department’s investigative material regarding Mr. Epstein.
Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said that interview summaries related to the woman’s claim were also missing from a trove of unredacted files he reviewed on Monday.Credit…Heather Diehl/Getty Images
Mr. Garcia said the Justice Department had not provided a proper explanation for why the materials were missing. Democrats plan to open a separate investigation into why the documents are not available.
In the sole summary of the F.B.I. interview that was released, the woman told investigators that she did not know Mr. Epstein’s full identity until 2019, when a friend sent her a photograph of Mr. Epstein. She said she then recognized the person who she said had raped her.
The woman told the agents she still had the photo on her phone, and they noted that it was a widely distributed photo of Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump, according to the document. She gave the agents permission to take a photograph of the image but asked them to crop out Mr. Trump. When asked why, her lawyer interjected that the woman “was concerned about implicating additional individuals, and specifically any that were well known, due to fear of retaliation,” according to the F.B.I. memo.
It is unclear exactly what F.B.I. agents learned about her claims related to Mr. Trump in their three subsequent interviews.
The woman spent most of the interview on July 24, 2019, describing in detail what she said were repeated violent assaults by Mr. Epstein that she had endured, as reported earlier by The Post and Courier. She said that as a teenager in South Carolina, she was asked to babysit at a house on Hilton Head Island. But after she arrived, there were no children to babysit, and only a man she came to know as Jeff who she said plied her with alcohol, marijuana and cocaine. She described him raping her on multiple occasions.
The woman joined a lawsuit later in 2019 against Mr. Epstein’s estate. She subsequently dropped her claim. Court records do not indicate if she received any financial settlement. A court record from 2021 said she was separately deemed ineligible for compensation from a fund set up for Epstein victims, but it did not specify why.
Here is one more example of Donald Trump’s record-breaking hypocrisy. President Trump, who has no clue how to offer healthcare to millions of Americans, offers healthcare to Greenland, a country that already offers free healthcare to its citizens. Mind-boggling!— TBPR Editor
Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen is turning down an offer from President Trump, who has openly sought to acquire the island from Denmark, to send a Navy hospital ship to his country.B
“It’s going to be a no thank you from here,” Nielsen wrote on Facebook. “President Trump’s idea to send an American hospital ship here to Greenland is noted. But we have a public health system where treatment is free for citizens. It’s a deliberate choice. And a basic part of our society. It’s not like that in the United States, where it costs money to go to the doctor.”
“We are always open to dialogue and collaboration. Also with the U.S. But talk to us now instead of just coming up with more or less random outbursts on social media. Dialogue and cooperation require respest that decisions about our country are made at home.”
On Saturday night, Trump posted a photo to his Truth Social platform of the USNS Mercy, a 1,000-bed hospital vessel commissioned in 1986. While the Mercy is typically docked on Naval Base San Diego, Calif., it has been in Mobile, Ala., since August, according to Marine Traffic.
“Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there,” the president wrote. “It’s on the way!!!”
Landry, who addition to his duties as Louisiana governor is serving as Trump’s envoy to Greenland, criticized Nielsen for turning down the offer Sunday. The Navy referred The Hill to the Pentagon regarding whether the Mercy will still head to Greenland.
“Shame on Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen! President @realDonaldTrump and America care,” Landry wrote on social platform X. “After speaking to many Greenlanders about the day to day problems they face, one issue stood out—healthcare.
“Many villages and small towns lack basic services that Americans often take for granted. Small settlements are without permanent doctors, diagnostic tools, or specialist care — forcing residents to travel great distances for vital treatments that should be available at home.”
Last month, Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte announced a framework agreement on Greenland, after the president repeatedly expressed interest in acquiring the semi-sovereign Danish territory. Details of the agreement, which gives the U.S. preferential access to Greenland’s minerals, remain sparse over a month later.
“A healthy Greenland is vital for America’s national security,” Landry continued. “America is committed to defending Greenland, and that begins by ensuring its people are defended against basic illnesses and ailments. These missions matter because health is inseparable from security. America’s commitment to defending Greenland must begin with ensuring its people are healthy.”
His real goal is regime change, which will get us bogged down there for years.
There is one area that many voters felt Donald Trump was superior to Democratic Party presidential candidates in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 elections. Trump appeared to be adverse to war and regime change. He seemed less hawkish compared to many Democrats. Many of his votes were due to the perception of voters that Trump would more likely avoid foreign wars and stick to America First policies. But after seeing what happened in Venezuela a few weeks ago, it appears his views have changed. He arranged a large military presence there and then removed its leader, Nicholás Maduro. Flash forward to a similar situation with another troubled nation, Iran. Trump may decide to invade them like he did in Venezuela. In a more dangerous and unstable area in the Middle East, the consequences would probably be more uncertain and dangerous. What is on Trump’s addled mind?Robert Reich explains why we need to worry…..TBPR Editor
America is on the brink of a full-scale war with Iran — but no one is willing to say exactly why, including the occupant of the Oval Office.
But there are clues.
The U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, is en route from the Caribbean Sea to the Middle East. It should arrive there within days. The U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and three guided-missile destroyers are already there.
As the world’s largest armada assembles near Iran, a second round of talks between the U.S. and Iran has just concluded, apparently without getting anywhere. Meanwhile, Tehran is conducting military drills in the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial choke point for the world’s oil.
Americans have never had exceedingly long attention spans, but the last year of Trump “flooding the zone” has further shortened them. To refresh memories:
In late June, Trump claimed that U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites had been “a spectacular military success” and that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.” He told reporters that “Iran’s not going to have a nuclear weapon. I think it’s the last thing on their mind right now.”
Nearly six months later, in early January, when Iranians took to the streets, Trump warned that if Iran threatened protesters’ lives, the U.S. would “come to their rescue.” He said, “We are locked and loaded, and ready to go.”
As the reported death toll in the protests soared into the hundreds, Trump urged the protesters to take over Iranian institutions and log the names of their “killers and abusers.” “HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” he posted in all caps. “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!!.”
Yet despite reports that as many as 3,428 Iranians had been killed and that more executions were imminent, no help was on its way. Many Iranians said they felt betrayed and confused by Trump’s failure to act.
By the fourth week of January, Trump once again talked about Iran, saying, “We have a lot of ships going that direction, just in case.”
In case of what? By then the death toll in Iran was said to be more than 5,000 (some reports had it many times higher), but Trump no longer even mentioned Iran’s brutal crackdown.
On January 28, with U.S. ships assembling in the Middle East, Trump said of the armada, “like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary.”
What exactly was this “mission?” And why did Trump compare it to the mission in Venezuela? It was a clue.
Last week, Trump warned that the U.S. would attack Iran unless it made a “deal” and has “NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS.”
But the Trump regime’s apparent objectives have shifted once again.
Yesterday — after a second round of talks between Iran and the United States concluded in Geneva without any breakthrough, and Iran insisted that the talks be strictly limited to its nuclear program — U.S. officials said they’re pushing to curb all of Iran’s ballistic missiles and its support of militias across the region.
In an interview with Fox News yesterday, JD Vance said the Iranians aren’t acknowledging some “red lines” that Trump has set, but Vance didn’t say what those red lines were.
I wouldn’t be as worried if we had a thoughtful person in the Oval Office, a competent secretary of defense, and a secretary of state who seemed to be in charge.
But we don’t have any of them.
The United States is being represented in the talks by “Special Envoy” Steve Witkoff (whose son is the chief executive of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency company, nearly half of which was purchased last year for $500 million by an investment firm tied to the United Arab Emirates). And by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner (who’s been making private deals with the Saudis and who raised several billion dollars before Trump’s second term from overseas investors including sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates).
No one from the State Department. Nobody from the National Security Council. No one who knows much of anything about Iran.
So what’s the real goal?
On Friday, in a little-noticed remark, Trump said “the best thing that could happen” in Iran would be regime change, noting “there are people” who could take over from Iran’s Islamic ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Bingo.
Trump promised his MAGA base that he wouldn’t be involved in seeking regime changes abroad. But that was before he abducted Venezuela’s Nicholás Maduro and replaced him with Maduro’s vice president.
Yet regime change in Iran would be far, far more difficult to pull off than regime change in Venezuela. The Middle East has demonstrated that it can swallow up America, even with the largest fighting force in the world. Anyone remember Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, and … Iran?
I just happened to see that the noted polling company Gallup, founded by George Gallup in 1935, made an important policy change this month. Gallup, after 88 years, will no longer measure presidential approval, a decision it said “reflects an evolution in how Gallup focuses its public research and thought leadership.” However they say it, I don’t buy it. Like every other media-related firm, they feel the need to please our insecure commander-in-chief. How does the president feel when he sees Gallup’s last poll of 2025, which found 36% of Americans approving of Trump with 59% disapproving. My best guess is that President Trump will be pleased with Gallup’s decision. –TBPR Editor
Producer Alicia Hastey departed CBS News Wednesday, saying the kind of work she came to do was “increasingly becoming impossible,” as stories were now evaluated “not just on their journalistic merit but on whether they conform to a shifting set of idealogical expectations.”
Whose ideological expectations was Hastey referring to? Would it be impertinent for me to suggest it’s the sociopath in the Oval Office?
Hastey’s criticism came a little over two weeks after Bari Weiss, the anti-“woke” opinion journalist who became editor-in-chief CBS’s News, unveiled her “21st century” vision at a town hall meeting. Weiss told producers and staff they were free to leave if they didn’t like it.
Since then, at least six out of CBS Evening News’s twenty producers have accepted buyouts.
At that town hall meeting Weiss also named a bunch of new contributors — including the anti-aging influencer Peter Attia. In the latest tranche of Epstein Files, Attia appears over 1,700 times, including an email in which he tells Epstein that “p—y is, indeed, low carb.”
In a missive to the newsroom, Weiss declared that “We love America” should be a guiding principle for the relaunch of the CBS Evening News.
Meanwhile, Weiss has replaced Evening News anchors John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois with Tony Dokoupil — who was best known for hassling the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates for his “extremist” belief that apartheid is morally wrong.
In one of his first broadcasts, Dokoupil accepted without question Israel’s justification for violating the terms of the ceasefire when it killed three journalists in Gaza, reporting only that “Israel said it was targeting a group operating a drone affiliated with Hamas.”
Weiss faced blowback in December when she shelved a “60 Minutes” report about Venezuelans being deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, hours before it was set to air.
Sharyn Alfonsi, a long-standing “60 Minutes” correspondent who reported the segment, had accused CBS News of pulling it for “political” reasons. “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” she wrote in a note to the CBS News Team. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
The story CBS posted about Renee Good’s killing in Minneapolis reported that “The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fatally shot Renee Good last week in Minneapolis, Jonathan Ross, suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident, according to two U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition.”
No identifiable source was given for CBS’s assertion of “internal bleeding.” A CBS News staffer reported “huge internal concern” that the source was an anonymous leak by the Trump administration meant for an outlet they could trust to run it, no questions asked.
Weiss doesn’t exactly report to Donald Trump, of course. Trump runs CBS News the way he runs Venezuela — with a widely-understood threat that he’ll wreak havoc if it doesn’t do what he wants.
As Trump told Dokoupil recently in a rambling nearly 13-minute interview, if Kamala Harris had won the presidential election in 2024, “you probably wouldn’t have a job right now.”
Perhaps CBS News didn’t edit Dokoupil’s rambling interview with Trump because, moments after it ended, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt conveyed Trump’s threat that “‘if it’s not out in full, we’ll sue your ass off.’”
You see the way Trump now controls CBS News? Dokoupil is Bari Weiss’s newly-minted anchor. Bari Weiss is David Ellison’s newly-minted head of CBS News. David Ellison is his father’s (Larry Ellison) newly-minted head of Paramount, which is the new owner of CBS. Larry Ellison is a pal of Trump’s, who contributes to Trump’s super PAC. And Trump? He has the power to take the prized Warner Bros Discovery out of the clutches of Netflix and deliver it to Ellison.
Among David Ellison’s first moves at CBS was to gut DEI policies, appoint right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein to a new “ombudsman” role, and appoint Weiss.
I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow (who also revealed to America the danger of Joe McCarthy) and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS. And when the top management of CBS felt they had responsibilities to the American public that transcended making money for CBS’s investors.
America can survive without a “60 Minutes” it can trust, just as we can survive without trustworthy editorial pages of the Washington Post — which Jeff Bezos has censored, and whose newsroom he just gutted.
But at some point, as Trump continues to repress criticism of him and his regime, American democracy is compromised beyond repair.
Anti-ICE Protest: Yes, we had one in Monterey Saturday at Window on the Bay……Several hundred of us and mostly positive beeps from the thousands of cars passing by on Del Monte Blvd……
Should we be surprised that someone like the pro-Trump billionaire CEO of Oracle, Larry Ellison is among the American investors with major influence over content of Tik Tok? Ellison is right-wing and very pro-Israel. Will that affect the content of Tik Tok? Don’t be surprised. –TBPR Editor
Well-known Gaza journalist Bisan Owda has been banned from TikTok, she says, just days after the finalization of the company’s sale to U.S. investors — including a firm headed by the notoriously pro-Israel Larry Ellison.
Owda announced the censorship of her account in a video on Instagram on Wednesday, saying that TikTok had banned her permanently. She had 1.4 million followers on the platform, she said, as a result of years of audience-building under Israeli occupation and genocide.
“I had 1.4 million followers there. I have been building that platform for four years now,” she said.
The account did appear to be banned on Wednesday and Thursday. However, late Thursday afternoon Eastern Time, Owda’s account appeared to be restored, but restricted. Some content seemed to not be available, and a banner appeared at the top of her feed that read: “Posts that some may find uncomfortable are unavailable.”
The Palestinian journalist has spent years documenting life in Gaza under Israeli occupation and, recently, amid Israel’s genocide. Her series with Al Jazeera’s AJ+ has won numerous awards, including a Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and even an Emmy. At the same time, pro-Israel voices have sought to silence Owda, including in a campaign in 2024 to pressure her Emmy nomination to be withdrawn.
In her Instagram video, Owda said that the ban was “expected” due to pressure from high-powered figures to censor Palestinian voices from TikTok.
She also shared a video with the company’s U.S. CEO, Adam Presser, saying that the company made a change to designate critically labelling someone as a “Zionist” as hate speech. “Over the course of 2024, we tripled the amount of accounts that we were banning for hateful activity,” Presser bragged at a conference last year.
Indeed, pro-Palestine advocates have said that TikTok’s role in exposing users to Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the reason that lawmakers and world leaders have sought its censorship — stretching back to Congress’s original bill to force its sale from Chinese owners in 2024.
On Thursday, that campaign finally reached its endpoint as the transfer to U.S. leadership was finalized. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, still retains 20 percent ownership, while 80 percent is now owned by investors. This includes Oracle, a tech company co-founded and still led by Ellison, a vehement advocate for Israel and billionaire who has spent recent years amassing more and more power over the American mediascape.
The censorship of Owda’s account lends credence to accusations by users in recent days that the app’s owners began restricting activities on their accounts nearly immediately after the app’s transfer. Users have said that they are being restricted from uploading content critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in favor of Palestinian rights, or generally opposed to the Trump administration. The owners, however, have blamed bugs and a power outage at a U.S. data center.
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