"Nothing From China Allowed": Team Trump Dumps Chinese Passes, Burner Phones

05/16/26 7:27 AM

While Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping kept up a cordial front on camera, relations between American and Chinese press and security teams were far more strained behind the scenes.

"Spiral Of Annihilation": Pope Leo XIV On Rise Of AI-directed Warfare

05/16/26 9:56 AM

Pope Leo XIV denounced how military spending had increased dramatically this year, especially in Europe, at the expense of education and healthcare

"They Will Take Out Gun": Russian Foreign Minister Warns Journalist At Delhi Briefing

05/16/26 11:09 AM

The interaction was interrupted multiple times by a journalist who was allegedly speaking on the phone while Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was answering questions.

"Thought He Could Hide": Trump Says Top ISIS Leader Abu-Bilal Killed

05/16/26 12:50 PM

US Kills ISIS "Second-In-Command" Globally Abu-Bilal-Al-Minuki In Africa, Says Donald Trump

$200,000 Reward On US Ex-Air Force Specialist Accused Of Spying For Iran

05/16/26 9:23 AM

Monica Witt served in the Air Force between 1997 and 2008, where she was trained in the Farsi language and was deployed overseas on classified counterintelligence missions.

'Glaring': Speculation abounds as Melania noticeably absent from husband's China trip

05/13/26 7:21 PM

President Donald Trump's high-stakes three-day China visit has revealed one person conspicuously missing — his wife, First Lady Melania Trump. Trump was accompanied to Beijing with his cabinet, his son Eric, and daughter-in-law Lara, and 16 corporate CEOs, The Daily Beast reported. And hours before taking off to leave the United States, the first lady's office dropped a cryptic confirmation in a statement to the South China Morning Post, without any explanation for why she would miss out on the trip. "First Lady Melania Trump is not travelling this time," Melania's spokesperson said. When pressed for additional details, her team went silent.The snub marks the latest chapter in what insiders describe as a widening rift between the first couple. "The move comes amid speculation about the first lady increasingly breaking with her husband as she seems to be trying to charter her own course," The Beast reported. "Trump and his White House aides were reportedly blindsided last month when she called a surprise press conference to read a statement declaring she had no ties to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The move appeared only to revive the scandal that Trump himself had been eager to put to rest."Melania has been noticeably absent at the White House throughout the second Trump administration and often does not travel with the president. And although first ladies don't always attend trips, the questions around her attendance have raised eyebrows. "Her absence is all the more glaring because it follows a trend that has stood out in Trump’s second term: She’s been appearing alongside him less and less on state visits," according to The Beast.

'How is this real?' Hegseth pilloried for bizarre cartoon asking for $1.5 trillion

05/14/26 4:09 PM

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced backlash after he shared an animated video arguing that the Pentagon needed a massive $1.5 trillion for war preparations.In a social media post on Thursday, Hegseth called the funds a "GENERATIONAL DOWN PAYMENT on America's national defense.""We remain the strongest military power on Earth, but that power requires renewal," the defense secretary said in the video. "And with global threats that are constantly evolving, it's time to make a $1.5 trillion investment, a generational down payment. For far too long, Washington bureaucrats allowed America's defense industrial base to fall apart."The video featured a cartoon version of former President Joe Biden alongside a crumbling factory."The execution of operations Midnight Hammer, Southern Spear, Absolute Resolve, and Epic Fury are testaments to this restoration of strength," Hegseth crowed. "America's $1.5 trillion investment guarantees that the United States military will maintain this advantage against any adversary, anywhere, at any time."However, not all viewers of the cartoon were sold on Hegseth's pitch."How is this real?" author Jim Stewartson asked. "This is a pitch for $1.5 trillion and it looks like a bad Sora demo. The Pentagon is a clown show. What a tragedy.""Not for nothing, but the School House Rock vibe is bad," Lincoln Project strategist Reed Galen observed."More bullsh— from a bulls—er," Democratic author James Graham quipped."We've never seen a Secretary of a Cabinet position have to SELL the PRESIDENTS ideas with bad AI commercials," KRLL radio host Mark Bland commented.

'Insatiable' demand: Inside the fight for a bigger U.S. Special Forces budget

05/15/26 1:55 PM

Modern warfare carries an "insatiable" demand for the complex, dangerous missions that only America's elite Special Operations Forces can execute, such as the daring January raid to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from a heavily guarded compound in a foreign capital.

'Tale of two readouts': White House statement curiously breaks from China's in taut summit

05/15/26 12:49 AM

A White House statement about Trump's discussion with Chinese leader Xi Jinping curiously took on a different tone from what counterparts put out, reporters noticed.Politico correspondent Phelim Kine posted on X that the White House statement touted discussions of Chinese investment in the United States, fentanyl, the Strait of Hormuz, purchasing oil from the United States, and an agreement that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon."A Tale of Two Readouts: Here's what's in the WH readout of the Trump-Xi meeting but conspicuously absent in the Chinese readout: 1. Chinese investment into the U.S. 2. fentanyl 3. Hormuz 4. Chinese purchases of U.S. oil. 5. Agreement that Iran "can never have a nuclear weapon," Kine said.However, Kine found that any mention of these discussions was "conspicuously absent in the Chinese readout."Semafor journalist J.D. Capelouto wrote that it "exposed the sharp divides in their foreign policy postures," adding that "experts also noted that Beijing's briefing included a stark warning over Taiwan, which Washington's didn't mention."Michael Froman, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, also noticed the diverging readouts in a Thursday piece, and wrote that it showed how the summit is "unlikely to alter the character and course of the US-China relationship long-term."

'This is so sad': MS NOW panel pounces as Trump lets China insult US

05/15/26 11:40 AM

As Donald Trump returns from his trip to Beijing, where he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the consensus of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe” panel is that the American president appears weaker now before the summit.And Trump all but admitted it.On Friday morning, longtime political analyst John Heilemann pointed to Trump’s admission that the Chinese leader talked about the US as a “declining nation,” without pushback, was a particularly humiliating effort by the American president to ingratiate himself to Xi.Pointing to Trump posting on Truth Social, “When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct,” Heilemann admitted he was stunned that Trump would admit that in public thinking it would help him make the case for his presidency.“So basically, this is Xi Jinping saying, hey, let's not get into war. But the implication was decline, that the U.S. was in decline and Trump's response to that was so sad,” he exclaimed to agreement from the panel. “I mean, not just the fact that he's blaming Joe Biden, but let's read the first sentence of it where he says something like yesterday, when Xi Jinping, so elegantly, I have it here: ‘When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation,’ that's all you need.”“It's like — that's just — it's an amazing thing to write,’ he elaborated. “It's a wonder — one of the more incredible Trump sentences ever. ... Because I can't ever say anything critical of Xi Jinping. Never does. Right?““You didn't have to to pin the tail on the donkey and say, the United States is the declining power for it to be very clear that in the optics and dynamics and on any metric that Trump understands, let alone the rest of the world: which of those two countries is the declining country? “ he added. “And Xi Jinping didn't need to say it directly. It's pretty clear to everyone where they stand in terms of relative power.” - YouTube youtu.be