United States | News & Politics

Donald Trump told Israel to allow “every ounce of food” into Gaza as he acknowledged for the first time that there is “real starvation” in the region.

The US president told reporters that Israel bore “a lot of responsibility” for the crisis in a rebuke to Netanyahu, who had claimed earlier on Monday that there was “no starvation in Gaza”.

Asked whether he agreed with this assessment, Trump said: “I don’t know. Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.”

He later added: “We can save a lot of people, I mean some of those kids. That’s real starvation; I see it and you can’t fake that. So we’re going to be even more involved.”

Pure corruption.

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Interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell is the Trump administration’s first big move to allay concerns about its hugely unpopular handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Friday wrapped up two days of interviews with Epstein’s convicted associate.

But there were already all kinds of reasons to be skeptical of this move and what it could produce, given the motivations of the two sides involved.

And President Donald Trump epitomized all of them in a major way on Friday.

While taking questions on his way to Scotland, Trump repeatedly held open the possibility of pardoning Maxwell for her crimes.

“Well, I don’t want to talk about that,” Trump said initially.

When pressed, he said, “It’s something I haven’t thought about,” while conspicuously adding, “I’m allowed to do it.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Trump has appeared to dangle a pardon over someone providing evidence that could impact him personally and politically. (In this case, he has demonstrated past personal ties to Epstein, and his administration is scrambling to clean up its botched handling of the Epstein files after previously promising to release them.)

A similar situation played out during the Russia investigation, when Trump repeatedly left open the possibility of pardoning key witnesses like Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Michael Cohen. Critics alleged this amounted to obstruction of justice.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report didn’t draw conclusions on possible obstruction, but it did cite Trump’s pardon comments as “evidence” that Trump’s actions “had the potential to influence Manafort’s decision whether to cooperate with the government.”

Manafort indeed wound up being a decidedly uncooperative witness, with a bipartisan Senate report saying his repeated lies hamstrung its own investigation. And Trump later pardoned him in a move that could certainly be understood as a reward for his lack of cooperation.

We are a joke of a nation.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, Angela, are longtime owners of a $1.5 million house in a gated community outside Dallas. In 2015, they snapped up a second home in Austin. Then another.

The problem: Mortgages signed by the Paxtons contained inaccurate statements declaring that each of those three houses was their primary residence, enabling the now-estranged couple to improperly lock in low interest rates, according to an Associated Press review of public records. The lower rates will save the Paxtons tens of thousands of dollars in payments over the life of the loan, legal experts say.

The records also revealed that the Paxtons collected an impermissible homestead tax break on two of those homes, and they have routinely flouted lending agreements on some of their other properties.

Help me understand the administration angle here. I mean, obviously, it disenfranchises American workers and corps have been abusing it for 30nyears now, no news there. Is it to pressure concessions elsewhere from tech companies as the corporate-technofascist state solidifies?

Here's an article from 2022 about how when working in VC he of course invested in companies that proscribe to the visa abuse practices he's railing against: https://www.axios.com/2022/04/22/jd-vances-investments-made-use-of-h-1b-visas-he-opposes

Is the snake eating its tail here? Is the left hand slapping the right hand? TF.