Reporter: “hello, everybody.” Donald Trump: “hi, how are you? so we’ll be going to a great place, mississippi, and we’re going to get cindy hyde-smith elected. she’s doing very well, i think. and we want to make sure she gets elected because she’s a great senator.” Reporter: “mr. president, this race was moved from solid republican to likely republican.” Donald Trump: “what was?” Reporter: “the race for cindy hyde-smith.” Donald Trump: “i don’t know. i mean, i think she’s doing very well, but i want to make sure she wins. she’s a great person, and she’s a great senator. she loves mississippi.” Reporter: “mr. president, bolsonaro’s loss in brazil. any comment on that? do you think the election was fair?” Donald Trump: “well, it looked terrible to me. i thought it was a terrible look, and i didn’t take sides, but it looked like another rigged election, frankly. i didn’t take sides, but it was a terrible look for the world. it’s another election. you know, elections have to be indisputable, and it looked very bad to me. i didn’t take sides. i didn’t endorse anybody or anything, but i watched the election. it looked so, so corrupt. so terrible.” Reporter: “mr. president, you’ve made it very clear that any non-citizen that votes would be automatically deported, and do you think that would clean up elections? and should you say that at all of your rallies?” Donald Trump: “well, i think so, and we do that, and we’re starting that process, and i’m also going to be issuing a million-dollar bonus, or reward, or whatever you want to call it, for anybody that reports voter fraud, leading to the arrest and conviction of somebody. we’re giving that person a million dollars.” Reporter: “mr. president, on the israel elections, did prime minister netanyahu ask you to give that second endorsement? did he plead with you?” Donald Trump: “no, i never spoke about it, no. i gave it. it wasn’t an endorsement. it was just, i put out both endorsements. i put out both. it was just a, i think he’s done a very good job as prime minister under very dry conditions.” Reporter: “sir, could i ask you just on brazil, just one more thing on brazil? do you want to do something about the election?” Donald Trump: “well, i’m not running brazil. i’m running the usa. and i just thought that the election was, i like lula. i get along with her very well. i just think it had a very bad look, the election, the way it was tabulated. you know, the extension given was very strange.” Reporter: “further response to obama, who made fun of the cheesecake factory, comparing it to the white house in your decorations?” Donald Trump: “you know, i’ve taken care of the white house. i fixed it with the finest artisans in the world. we’ve re-skinned it. it was in horrible shape. a lot of the ornaments of the things that were originally built on the white house were missing or damaged or gone for a long time. they were laying on the ground, in some cases. and it was in terrible shape. the exterior plaster was broken, cracked. the painting was terrible. and i’ve re-skinned the building beautifully with the highest, most talented people. anywhere in the world, you’re not going to find more talent. and the white house looks beautiful. and guys like obama, they would pass the front door. they’d see the broken masonry. they’d see the broken, the beautiful pilasters that were all broken. for years, they were broken. and he wouldn’t notice because he doesn’t notice that. he doesn’t notice dirt and filth that hadn’t been cleaned, where the walls hadn’t been cleaned for years. he doesn’t notice areas that haven’t been painted. so it’s very easy for me to do. i do it very, very simply. i’m a very clean person. and the white house was in terrible shape. the white house is now in the best shape it’s been since 1792, when it was built. it’s in beautiful shape. you take a look at it. it looks beautiful. and i’m proud to do it. i do it with five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day. i have the very talented people. they work there. many of them are in the department of interior. they’ve done a fantastic job. and you have to remember, the white house, we have to explain that to obama because he doesn’t understand it, because he’s not a smart guy. let me tell you, in my opinion, he’s not smart at all, because the way he ran the country, only a stupid person would run the country like that. but we have to explain to obama that the white house is a symbol of america. and it has to be maintained properly. it has to be painted. and the exterior plaster can’t be falling off the walls. and the decorations and ornaments around the windows that are magnificent can’t be on one side of the window and falling off on the other side. so we took molds of the one side, and we put it on the other side. and we did a beautiful job. very little money spent. it’s not about money. it’s about seeing. guys like obama don’t see it. you don’t see dirt. he doesn’t see filth. he doesn’t see broken ornaments on a building. the white house to president obama is a symbol of america. it has to be clean. the columns can’t be broken. the bricks can’t be falling off from under the plaster. and for you to say it’s a cheesecake factory, that just shows why you’re a lousy president. right? thank you.” Reporter: “mr. president, do you have any thoughts of machado coming back into the country? and do you think they’re going to need a debt restructuring?” Donald Trump: “i don’t know. we’ll take a look at it.”

Putin is going to demand NATO withdrawal to its 1997 borders in Ukraine peace talks as a key condition, he wants no NATO troops in Finland, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland and cites this as a key condition for starting the war in Ukraine-Telegraph Wow…

Trump claims he did not order restrictions on Ukraine’s access to Starlink “I don’t know who it could have been, but it wasn’t me. And I don’t think it was Elon Musk either,” the US president said. Reuters previously reported that the order to restrict Ukraine’s access to the Starshield military system came from the White House. What a circus…

No, Governor. You are violating federal law by facilitating voting by noncitizens. I’ll refer you to 18 U.S.C. § 611. Look it up.

Kimberly Guilfoyle is threatening to bring the Trump family down with her following her shock firing this week, insiders say. thedailybeast.com/trump-insi…

Yes - normal Starlink has been speed-restricted since 2025, so the issue is with Starshield - indicating that this is a DoD action (not directly SpaceX). Ukrainian OWA drones (plus some interceptor drones, helicopters, and planes) have apparently been using Starshield.

AI has a $6 trillion problem. The global AI industry needs to earn $6 trillion a year by 2031 to justify the data centers being built today, per Bain. They say that existing AI products like chatbots and coding tools may bring in $1.8 trillion at most.

I spent 15+ years investigating Russian secret services and organized crime. I know people who served with Putin in the KGB and sat in on his deals with St. Petersburg crime bosses. So let me explain the "diesel deal" the way they would — in gangster slang. Because that's the language Putin actually thinks in. First, the facts. Putin just raised Russia's 2027 military budget by 27% to a record 17.1 trillion rubles — about $203 billion. Who budgets that kind of money for a war they're about to end? The FT reported yesterday that Western intelligence has warned the heads of European defense companies that Russia is plotting to assassinate them. Since September, Tusk, Macron and the intelligence services of Poland, Czechia, Latvia, Belgium, France and Denmark have all warned that Russian hybrid attacks — including drone and missile strikes — will intensify in the coming months. None of this looks like a country preparing for peace. Who actually benefits? 🇺🇸 What the US gets: Every serious analysis I've read says the announced volumes won't move American diesel prices. This is a PR move for Trump before the midterms — a story about prices that will "very, very soon" come down once his friend Vladimir's tankers reach US shores, plus the chance to claim he ended another war (I've lost count). The only US "benefit" is Trump's rating. 🇷🇺 What Russia gets: billions of dollars to keep funding its genocidal war against Ukrainians. Sanctions relief. A demonstration of power to the rest of the world. A deeper rift between the US and its European allies. And a real chance to disrupt US weapons and intelligence flowing to Ukraine. So what is Putin's actual goal? Trump's disapproval is at record highs and polls show his party will most likely loose midterm elections. In less than a month his power will be badly weakened. Why would Putin sign a long-term peace deal with a lame duck whose signature will soon be scrutinized at best and annulled at worst? He wouldn't. And here's where the slang comes in. In the eyes of Putin and his siloviki, Trump is a baryga — a greedy, unscrupulous businessman who puts profit above law and principle. Gangsters despise barygas, but they love using them. The goal is always to turn a baryga into a lokh — a mark, an outsider who doesn't understand the rules of the underworld and gets played to serve the gang's interests. By signing the diesel deal, Putin plays two scenarios at once: A) The deal miraculously helps his lokh keep power — great. B) The deal changes nothing, the baryga loses the midterms — but by then it has already done its job: inflamed US political tensions and acted as arson inside the American system. Putin knows that the majority of Americans support Ukraine. He knows that by signing, Trump draws unprecedented criticism, including from his own party. And he knows a baryga won't give up power easily, because he will have to answer for everything he did in office — this deal included. That's classic gangster/secret-service method: tie a man to your organization, make him a partner in your crimes, so he can't walk away. Pouring more oil — diesel, in this case — onto the most explosive fault lines of American politics, raising the stakes for Trump and pushing him past the point of no return serves Putin far better than a peace deal that could be voided within months. Remember: Putin's goal in the West is chaos, not peace.

A must-watch exchange between Brian @kilmeade and Rachel Campos-Duffy on FOX & Friends about Ukraine and Trump’s Russian diesel deal. Here’s the full transcript: CAMPOS-DUFFY: I know you're a big fan of Zelensky, but yesterday President Trump said maybe it's time for an election and a new leader in Ukraine because Zelensky keeps blowing up these refineries after the president said, "Please don't do that," especially before the midterms. He keeps doing it, and it's hurting President Trump and the administration, who's been very generous toward him and his war effort. KILMEADE: The president got ticked off because Zelensky came out and said, "Do not buy 5 million tons of diesel," which is in violation, I thought, of the bill they just signed, Lindsey Graham's bill, that says if you buy any energy from Russia, you're going to get sanctioned with tariffs. Are we going to tariff ourselves? So I have no idea. Zelensky's frustrated because now all this money is going to flow into Russia, which started this whole war unprovoked. They are the bad guys, and there is no way Zelensky turned down any plausible deal. In fact, since that time, when they told him he was going to lose the Donbas, he has gained back portions of the Donbas. CAMPOS-DUFFY: Are you saying that there were no peace efforts? KILMEADE: There was no plausible, practical peace effort that Vladimir Putin would participate in effectively that would end this war. There's one person who is responsible: Vladimir Putin. That is it. And he gets his ass kicked. CAMPOS-DUFFY: There was a peace deal that—I think Turkey was trying to broker it, and Boris Johnson advised Zelensky not to take that deal. KILMEADE: It doesn't matter. I don't know what Boris Johnson's doing now. Is he in a retirement home? CAMPOS-DUFFY: I think there's a reason why the president is buying diesel from Russia, and that's because Zelensky keeps blowing up the refineries. KILMEADE: Can you blame him? That's the war machine that's killing his people, that bombs apartment buildings. CAMPOS-DUFFY: But he's dependent on us, and the president said, "Don't do this." Are you for America or for Ukraine? KILMEADE: The diesel fuel got stopped because Iran was blowing up the Gulf states' oil and their refineries, and now all of a sudden there's a new emphasis on Russia. But for me, the way Ukraine innovated drone technology in order to take out what's fueling the Russian war machine is phenomenal. They'll be writing about this in war journals forever. The Ukrainians have modernized modern war before our very eyes. CAMPOS-DUFFY: I'm not so sure that's a positive, Brian. I mean, there are 30,000 young men on each side who are dying every single month. KILMEADE: Vladimir Putin. CAMPOS-DUFFY: Every single month. We should not be practicing drone technology and using these kids as guinea pigs. KILMEADE: What kids? CAMPOS-DUFFY: The soldiers. These are young men… KILMEADE: Rachel, these are in response to attacks. They're getting rocketed, so they found a way… CAMPOS-DUFFY: The president said he wanted peace in Ukraine, and he said he was going to do that. KILMEADE: Tell Vladimir Putin. CAMPOS-DUFFY: Well, now, because of what Zelensky is doing, we're probably going to get peace there because President Trump is now working with Russia, because Zelensky is so arrogant. KILMEADE: It would be the biggest mistake of his administration to work with Russia. That is the modern Hitler of our generation. He is the cause of all the problems in the region, and now he's helping Iran kill our guys and blow up our bases. And now, yeah, the story you pointed out to me today in The Wall Street Journal—you see that they and China are providing drones to the Houthis. China and Russia are the problem.

She's lighter than air.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he is considering a run for president in 2028. The Louisiana Republican said he has not yet made a decision and that right now he’s planning on running for re-election in 2028. nbcnews.com/politics/2028-el…

Kansas Republican Roger Marshall: I'm sorry gas prices are going up but your national security is more important than your pocketbook

🧵Iran FM Araghchi said the Iranians had proposed a seven day plan for reopening the Strait of Hormuz via mediators, with elements similar to the Islamabad MOU, that could go into effect the day after the US would accept it.

*ORACLE SENDS FORCE MAJEURE NOTICE OVER NEW MEXICO DATA CENTER *ORACLE IS TRYING TO PUT OFF PAYMENTS ON PROJECT IF IT'S DELAYED This is how things start to unwind

Bryan Boughton, who runs the Fox News Washington bureau and is the current TV pool chair, says in an email; ”This is to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President.” “This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.” Via @brianstelter

I’m hearing of multiple organizations pulling back on their token spend due to low ROI on their AI deployments. If the AI trade falters it would be a major problem for . . . well the entire economy at this point.

You can say what you want about Iran but they're definitely pretty unique in their communication: never seen a country threaten another with a math equation before 😅 For those who didn't get it: there is a famous monetary policy formula used by the Fed called the "Taylor rule" that says a central bank's policy rate (i) should equal the neutral real rate (r*) plus target inflation (π*), plus 1.5 times the inflation gap and 0.5 times the output gap (the "i = r* + π* + 1.5(π−π*) + 0.5(y−y*)" part of Ghalibaf's formula). Ghalibaf adds α(SOH−SOH*) and β(BEM−BEM*): SOH referring to the Strait Of Hormuz and BEM to Bab El-Mandeb. Both have positive coefficient, meaning the more those chokepoints are choked, the higher the rate the Fed would have to set to fight the resulting inflation. In a nutshell this is Ghalibaf trolling the Fed, telling them that Iran is - in a very real way - setting American monetary policy.

Scott Bessent sat in front of Congress on Tuesday and either lied or is clueless about how to do his real job. There is no third option. But based on Bessent's testimony and what I found, it looks like we could be stealing ~$11 billion from Venezuela. Bessent told the committee Venezuela's oil money is "one of the largest assets ever to go on the US balance sheet." The executive order the president signed on January 9 states that the money is "property of the Government of Venezuela," held by the United States "solely in a custodial and governmental capacity." You cannot hold another country's money in custody and call it your asset, because that is the difference between a bank and a thief. Bessent said he "won't give out" the total. I found it in 15 minutes on Treasury's own daily cash statement, the one he wants to call a balance sheet when it flatters him. It is public record. So it is hard for me to believe he can't tell Congress how much. So let me help him and Congress out. Attached is the Daily Treasury Statement for February 5, 2026, the month the Venezuelan money left Qatar. The State Department, which runs the fund, deposited $514 million in a single day. The prior two-year high for that line was $54 million. Since January it has taken in $14.5 billion against a normal year of $3.4 billion, roughly $11 billion more than it should have. About $3.5 billion has been documented going back to Venezuela. That leaves about $7.5 billion nobody has accounted for. SO, we took a country's primary revenue stream at gunpoint, routed it through a bank in Qatar, then a Citibank account, handed the sales to two Swiss traders with federal bribery cases, put the Pentagon in business with a man the Justice Department once named in a $1.2 billion PDVSA laundering case, and declared the whole thing immune from American courts by decree. Okay.... A little more on the people we handed this to. (1) Trafigura is the Swiss trading house that sells the oil and now carries Venezuela's gold to US refineries too. In March 2024 it pleaded guilty in a Miami federal court to bribing Brazilian officials and paid $126 million. That is a felony conviction less than two years old, and it was handed a no-bid contract to market another country's oil "at the request of the U.S. government." (2) Vitol, the other trader, paid $135 million in 2020 under a deferred prosecution agreement for bribery in three countries. One of Vitol's senior traders gave $5 million to the president's super PAC, then stood in the White House on January 9 and told Trump that the "influence you have over the Venezuelans" would make sure he got what he wanted. Vitol had the first contract five days later. (3) Alejandro Betancourt is the Venezuelan businessman the Pentagon just took a 35 percent stake alongside. His earlier company, Derwick Associates, won billions in no-bid power-plant contracts under Chávez. Federal prosecutors in Miami named him as an unindicted co-conspirator in a $1.2 billion scheme to launder PDVSA money. He hired Rudy Giuliani in 2019 to lobby the Justice Department about it. The AP reports that investigation was "paused earlier this year." Spain reopened its own case against him in June. He has never been charged and denies wrongdoing, and he now has the United States military as a business partner under a contract nobody outside the government has read. (4) And David Rivera, a former congressman and Marco Rubio's old housemate, was convicted on May 1 of acting as an unregistered foreign agent after taking a $50 million contract from Citgo's parent company to lobby for normalizing relations with the Maduro government. Rubio testified at his trial. Rubio's State Department now signs off on every dollar that leaves the Venezuela account. The president says we "paid for that war many times over" and that "to the victor belong the spoils." The executive order says it isn't our money. Bessent says it's our asset and won't say how big. Meanwhile Venezuela's acting president spent July writing to King Charles begging for gold in a London vault while we sat on eleven billion dollars of her country's oil revenue. The written agreement Bessent promised Congress in February still has not been produced. When asked Tuesday when they'd get it: "I'll check with my staff." Sure as heck looks like we are stealing from Venezuela and Congress doesn't have a clue, doesn't care, or both.

NEW: Trump tells Axios he's approaching major crossroads in Iran war "It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me." axios.com/2026/09/17/trump-a…