02d Agit-Prop

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Over the past two decades, the posture of the United States towards China has evolved from economic cooperation to outright antagonism. US media outlets and politicians have engaged in persistent anti-China rhetoric, while the US government has imposed trade restrictions and sanctions on China and pursued military build-up close to Chinese territory. Washington wants people to believe that China poses a threat.

China’s rise indeed threatens US interests, but not in the way the US political elite seeks to frame it.

The US relationship with China needs to be understood in the context of the capitalist world system. Capital accumulation in the core states, often glossed as the “Global North”, depends on cheap labour and cheap resources from the periphery and semi-periphery, the so-called “Global South”.

This arrangement is crucial to ensuring high profits for the multinational firms that dominate global supply chains. The systematic price disparity between the core and periphery also enables the core to achieve a large net-appropriation of value from the periphery through unequal exchange in international trade.

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The Trump administration declined to provide a guest to ABC News after the leader of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) was fired over a poor jobs report.

On Sunday, This Week host George Stephanopoulos revealed that ABC had contacted the White House after President Donald Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.

“After the president fired the head of the BLS on Friday, we invited the White House to provide a guest to respond,” the host explained. “They declined.”

Instead, Stephanopoulos spoke to former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers about the BLS shakeup.

“I mean, this is way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did,” Summers remarked. “I’m surprised that other officials have not responded by resigning themselves, as took place when Richard Nixon fired people lawlessly. This is a preposterous charge.”

“These numbers are put together by teams of literally hundreds of people following detailed procedures that are in manuals,” he continued. “There’s no conceivable way that the head of the BLS could have manipulated this number.”

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The Trump administration has launched a concerted drive to undermine American elections. These moves are unprecedented and in some cases illegal. They began with the pardon of the January 6 defendants who sought to overturn the 2020 results. They include affirmative attacks on democratic institutions, the repeal and withdrawal of voter protections, and symbolic or demonstrative moves. A clear pattern suggests a growing effort. As the 2026 midterms approach, that effort will likely gather momentum.

This resource offers the first chronicle of the Trump administration’s actions this year to undermine election integrity. They include:

  • attempting to rewrite election rules to burden voters and usurp control of election systems;
  • targeting or threatening to target election officials and others who keep elections free and fair;
  • supporting people who undermine election administration; and
  • retreating from the federal government’s role of protecting voters and the election process.

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CNN anchor Erin Burnett is under fire after describing the gunman involved in a deadly shooting spree in Midtown Manhattan as “possibly white” despite evidence to the contrary.

On Monday night, Burnett angered viewers during a live broadcast when she and her co-anchor discussed surveillance footage showing the shooter, later identified as 27-year-old Shane Tamura, holding a rifle.

Burnett’s initial comment, which was made in reference to Tamura’s appearance, included a description of him as a “possibly white” male with sunglasses and a mustache.

This assessment was supposedly based on the first images that emerged of the gunman.

However, those images, which were obtained from the surveillance footage, clearly showed Tamura with a darker complexion that conflicts with Burnett’s description.

Nevertheless, Burnett and her colleagues continued to repeatedly push the false narrative.

 

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Most mainstream media outlets have made it clear in recent years where their loyalties lie regarding the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.

But while rational observers can disagree about how both sides have reacted in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, the use of misleading photos to manipulate the narrative should never be deemed acceptable.

That’s what the New York Times essentially admitted it did with a photo originally presented as a severely malnourished child in Gaza.

A little legwork by a watchdog group called Honest Reporting helped expose the misrepresentation, as Breitbart reported:

The New York Times admitted Tuesday that an emaciated Palestinian child it featured on the the front page suffered from “pre-existing health problems” that it had presented, inaccurately, as the result of starvation.

There is an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza — the result of poor food distribution, not low supply, as Hamas and armed gangs loot aid convoys. Hamas also refuses to release Israeli hostages and end the war.

As Breitbart News reported, the child, photographed by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini of the Turkish Anadolu agency, had a muscular disorder. Few outlets that ran the photo disclosed that fact to readers.

 

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Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday condemned Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on his show, “No Spin News,” after he called President Donald Trump’s trade deal with the European Union “fake.”

Schumer on Monday delivered remarks on the Senate floor criticizing the agreement and rebutting Trump’s claim that it was the “biggest deal ever” in a clip O’Reilly played. In a video of the show posted on O’Reilly’s YouTube channel, the host accused Schumer of “lying” and said he does not believe the senator loves the United States or cares for its citizens. (RELATED: Howard Lutnick Reveals How Trump Admin Secured Massive Trade Deal With Japan)

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“Trump would have you believe it’s the ‘biggest deal ever,’ that’s his words, dangling $250 billion of new energy purchases and more in new investments,” Schumer said in the clip. “There’s just one hiccup – it’s fake.”

“No, it’s not. Schumer is lying. And I very rarely use that word. I usually say he’s misleading or he’s a propagandist, which he is,” O’Reilly said after playing the clip. “But he’s just lying. He’s just head down, reading something that’s been written for him by one of his propaganda people.”

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The mainstream media’s reaction to President Donald Trump’s trade agreement with the European Union was priceless, as multiple outlets had to admit he got the better end of the deal and achieved a huge victory.

Axios led the way with an article titled “Trump trade deals prove access to the U.S. still matters above all else,” stating that “in the Trump-dominated global economy, the U.S. gets plenty but gives nothing in return.”

They also highlighted “how far foreign leaders will go to safeguard access to the U.S. market,” and called the massive investments from the EU “eye-popping.”

The deal imposes a 15 percent tariff on almost all goods entering the U.S. from the E.U. and requires them to make massive investments in American energy.

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the E.U.’s European Commission, said Europe will purchase $750 billion worth of U.S. energy as part of the deal, in addition to making $600 billion of investments in other U.S. endeavors.

The New York Times seemed dumbfounded with their Tuesday headline: “Europe Made Major Trade Concessions to Trump. How Did That Happen?”

<b>WSJ’s Hezbollah Coverage Led by Reporter Who Praises Terrorist Group’s Leaders and Fumes Against ‘The Israeli Enemy’</b>- <i> freebeacon.com</i>

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A freelance reporter who plays a leading role in the Wall Street Journal‘s coverage of Hezbollah has repeatedly praised the terrorist group while condemning “the Israeli enemy,” a Washington Free Beacon analysis has found.

Adam Chamseddine, a Beirut-based reporter, has written or contributed to more than three dozen reports as a freelance contributor for the Journal since last year, including providing coverage of the funeral of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Chamseddine was also the lead reporter for a story on Israel’s use of pagers to assassinate Hezbollah commanders. And he was one of the reporters for a Journal story last week that Iran is rearming its “militia allies,” like Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.

While writing for the Journal, Chamseddine, a former reporter for the pro-Hezbollah newspaper As-Safir, has expressed stark anti-Israel views while hailing groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

He has referred to “the Israeli enemy” in multiple social media posts, according to English translations of his missives, written in Arabic. After Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Chamseddine asserted that “female journalists are dismembered by direct Israeli targeting” and criticized what he said was “Israeli criminality” in response to the Hamas attack, while making no similar condemnation of the terrorist group. He touted an interview “for those who want to understand the Hamas movement” with Tarek Hamoud, the head of the Palestinian Return Centre, which has reportedly been linked to Hamas.

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During an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Shannon Bream asked Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) whether a special counsel was warranted following Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s release of documents alleging that former President Barack Obama led the effort to weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies against Donald Trump in 2016.

“Well, you know, the allegations and the conspiracy theories by Tulsi Gabbard would be sad if they weren’t so dangerous,” Crow replied. “She has turned herself into basically a weapon of mass distraction, is what I’ve been calling it, because it’s very clear what’s happening here. She’s trying to curry favor and get back into favor with Donald Trump, and has concocted these theories to do so.”

He added, “But let’s be really clear here that the Russian investigation and allegations of Russian interference into the election, have been the most examined and reexamined finding in the intelligence community history. There have been four investigations, including a bipartisan Senate investigation led under the first Trump administration and led in part by Marco Rubio. That was very, very clear on these findings.”

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“For the children” — the last refuge of the censorious tyrant.

Asked at a joint press conference with President Trump on his European tour earlier this week, Keir Starmer, current occupant of the premiership of the once-great British state, about his regime’s draconian censorship of social media, the PM resorted to the tried-and-true justification that rulers of his ilk always do at the end of their rope: the “children.”

 

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President Donald Trump declared his particular disdain for Jessica Tarlov of “The Five” on Wednesday, voicing annoyance at the Fox News resident liberal co-host after she voiced support for gun control in reaction to Monday’s shooting in New York City.

Tarlov embarked on an emotionally charged monologue after the massacre, in which four people were killed before the shooter committed suicide on the 33rd floor of 345 Park Avenue.

She commended NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch and New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams for their reactions to the incident before offering her take on gun control.

First, she agreed with New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s call for a new ban on so-called assault weapons.

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Donald Trump‘s lawyers are asking a federal court for a quick deposition of media mogul Rupert Murdoch in the president’s defamation lawsuit over a Wall Street Journal article about his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump’s lawyers request in the filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida that the court compel the owner of the Wall Street Journal to be deposed within 15 days, in part because of his advanced age. The filing argues Murdoch, 94, “is believed to have suffered recent significant health scares,” which underscores the urgency of having him testify quickly.

“Taken together, these factors weigh heavily in determining that Murdoch would be unavailable for in-person testimony at trial,” the filing reads.

The Trump lawyers allege Murdoch should be compelled to testify because he spoke to Trump about the story before it was published and is “widely known for having a hands-on approach over editorial decisions related to News Corp’s periodicals.”

“Because Defendants published the Article after President Trump spoke directly with Murdoch and advised him that the letter referenced in the Article was fake, Murdoch’s direct involvement further underscores Defendants’ actual malice and intent behind the decision to publish the false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory statements about President Trump identified in the Complaint,” the filing reads.

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A weird A-block report on NBC’s Sunday Nightly News makes crystal clear the urgency of narrative for the legacy media. In this instance, a dirty frame sets up a palette cleanser following the lead story- the consequential trade agreement between the United States and Europe announced at President Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort in Scotland.

Watch as Sunday anchor Hallie Jackson repurposes the “distraction from Epstein” narrative in order to reclaim viewer focus:

HALLIE JACKSON: Even overseas, the president

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Joe Biden has been cashing in since leaving the Oval Office.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Joe Biden sold his presidential memoir to a publisher for $10 million.

The number may sound high, but it’s significantly lower than the deals Barack Obama and Bill Clinton received.

The New York Post shared more details on the deal and how it compares to previous presidents:

Former President Biden has sold his presidential memoir for a $10 million advance – far less than the lucrative deals won by the Obamas and Bill Clinton, according to a report.

Biden, 82, made a deal with Hachette Book Group for an advance of around $10 million, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal.

The book’s publisher, Hachette’s Little, Brown & Co., has not yet set a publication date.

Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama, meanwhile, sold the rights to their memoirs to Penguin Random House for a record-breaking $60 million in 2017.

Alfred A. Knopf, which is owned by Penguin Random House’s parent firm Bertelsmann, paid $15 million for former President Bill Clinton’s 2004 memoir “My Life.”

President Trump did not publish a presidential memoir after his first term.

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Using a declassified document released this week, it has never been easier to see how the propaganda press partners with politicians to hoodwink the public and shape the political landscape.

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, released a 2020 Oversight Investigation and Referral report about a 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) titled, “Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election.”

It showed that under the direction of former President Barack Obama, then-CIA Director John Brennan and a handful of intelligence agents slapped together an ICA in two weeks, soon after Hillary Clinton lost the election. The ICA was used as the foundation of the Russia collusion hoax — the lie that Trump and Russia together cheated to win the 2016 election.

But the ICA was a terrible foundation for such a claim, because it was hastily written and had sketchy sourcing, including the fabricated and now debunked Steele dossier; and a six-word fragment of a sentence that mentioned Trump out of context. The report shows that intelligence agents argued with Brennen, telling him not to use information that was substandard, unclear, of uncertain origin, biased, or implausible.

 

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“You are a bunch of lying f*cking scumbags. You terrorize, you try to terrorize Supreme Court justices over a decision that didn’t go your way.”

In a recent interview with PBS’ Frontline program, War Room host Steve Bannon criticized the outlet for expressing concerns about “rhetoric” from President Donald Trump, but not when Supreme Court justices were targeted in the wake of the Roe v Wade decision.

“You can’t let these radical judges do it. And this is going to be a showdown. It has to be a showdown,” Bannon said.

“And the rhetoric about the judge, because a lot of lawyers say, you know, all of the rhetoric, calling for impeachment, the radical left lunatic, that this rhetoric, it shouldn’t—that’s not the type of thing the President should say. He should appeal. He should abide by the court ruling and not—,” the PBS interviewer asked before being cut off.

“Listen, by the way, was there any complaint from PBS, or was there any complaint by the Democrats on the rhetoric used against the judges when the Roe v Wade decision came out and they had to have police protection at their houses?” Bannon asked. “I don’t remember, I don’t remember anything about the rhetoric being too high.”

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Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) accused the media of being “either duped or complicit” on the interference of the 2016 election by Russians.

“I want the press to be honest. I want Pulitzer Prizes to be returned. They were either duped or complicit in pushing that false narrative that put America in political turmoil for years,” Johnson told NewsNation’s Blake Burman on “The Hill.”

“It’s continuing to go on, all based on a Hillary Clinton dirty trick, the Steele Dossier that those guys knew was a dirty trick, and yet they used that to gin up the Mueller investigation, impeachments, everything else,” he added. “Listen, this is, again election interference orders of magnitude worse than anything Russia or China ever, ever could hope to achieve,” he added.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard put out a report last week alleging that Obama administration officials manipulated intelligence linked to Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Gabbard argued in a statement that former officials took part in a “treasonous conspiracy” and said her office was turning over evidence to the Justice Department for possible criminal referrals.

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As the mainstream media crumbles, PoliticusUSA can stand tall thanks to your support. Please consider supporting us by becoming a subscriber.

The best way to fight back against an imperial president who is determined to rewrite history through bullying threats and intimidation is not to yield.

Former CIA Director John Brennan is one of four former intelligence officials who have been referred to the DOJ for prosecution because they wrote reports and signed letters about Russia interfering in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump.

On MSNBC’s Deadline: White House, Brennan defended the intelligence:

 Anybody who looks at the intelligence assessment and the work that was done will see that it was very carefully worded, meticulously done, and it stands up to scrutiny and to the test of time. As you pointed out, there have been numerous reviews about it, and it didn’t say any of the things that tools Gabbard alleges it said or didn’t say.

And I, I really do encourage people to read it because it was very clear in terms of what it said that the Russians were using at President Putin’s direction influenced operations to try to denigrate Hillary Clinton, try to increase the prospects for Donald Trump’s selection, and also just to undermine the integrity of our election system.

And again, those were the primary judgements. Again, they are ones that certainly I and others who were involved continue to stand behind.

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Now that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget is larger than those for most of the world’s militaries, they’ve got plenty of money sloshing around to hire 10,000 new agents, which will surely allow them to ratchet up arrests of harmless day laborers at Home Depot. But how to find those 10,000 new hires? ICE seems to be starting by begging retirees to come back.

A recruitment page on ICE’s website features the obligatory scowling Uncle Sam. Retired ICE agents who return are eligible for up to $50,000 in bonuses and can still receive their basic federal retirement annuity. In other words, for these rehires, taxpayers will be paying:

  1. Their base salary, which starts at $105,000 for ICE criminal investigators and nearly $89,000 for deportation officers.
  2. Federal health care benefits.
  3. Base federal retirement annuity.
  4. A stratospheric hiring bonus of up to $50,000.

That may seem like a steep price, but hey, how else to ensure that migrant children are left alone when their mothers are deported, or that immigrants are mistakenly deported? How else to ensure that ICE has enough agents to arrest migrants at courthouses after federal immigration judges, in collusion with government attorneys, drop immigration cases so that the migrant can be immediately arrested when they leave the courtroom?

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It was another banner news suppression day for the legacy network evening newscasts. In addition to their continued non-coverage of the Biden autopen scandal and of the explosive Russia Hoax document drop, the legacies mostly suppressed the revealing interview of one Robert Hunter Biden.

ABC and CBS, in addition to ignoring the aforementioned events, made no observance whatsoever of the one-year anniversary of President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential campaign and subsequent de facto appointment of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell very gingerly navigated this potential minefield for NBC Nightly News. Here’s how her D.C. roundup closed out:

KELLY O’DONNELL: While exactly one year after Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, his son, Hunter, offered a new theory about Mr. Biden’s struggle at that fateful debate.

JOE BIDEN: …if…we finally beat Medicare…

JAKE TAPPER: Thank you, President Biden.

O’DONNELL: Blaming sleep aid Ambien, taken around his foreign travel, for his performance.

HUNTER BIDEN: He’s 81 years old. He is tired as [bleep], they give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage and he looks like he’s a deer in the headlights.

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Donald Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan cried to the media that a migrant doesn’t have to be a criminal to be arrested, detained and deported now because their immigration status decides if they are a criminal. This, despite the fact that being undocumented is not a crime; it’s a civil violation.

During the run up to the 2024 election, Donald Trump and JD Vance continually proclaimed that every migrant crossing the border were either serial killers, cannibals, murderers, or rapists.

These were the migrants he was going to deport.

Since racist Stephen Miller is in control of ICE now (basically the whole country really), Trump’s immigration policies require 80-year-old migrants, children playing on soccer fields, day workers, farm workers, and brown people in general to be scooped up by unmarked cars and balaclava-wearing masked men so they can be shipped off to alligator prisons.

This is Trump’s America.

Here is Tom “General Zod” Homan ranting during a presser earlier today.

ZOD: Then I read another story about how most people in ICE detention aren’t criminals. Now the story is, how bad of a criminal they have to be.

I saw a story the other day, only 1% of the illegal aliens removed were murderers.

Are you kidding me? Being in the country illegally is not illegal anymore, you got committed murder to be deported?

If you look at ICE detention, I’ll say it again, look at detention, who’s in detention, I looked at the numbers this morning, a majority are criminals, have criminal history.

Who are the rest? Border cases, who a judge ordered removed. The others are expedited removal, by federal statute, demands they be detained. So with the media out there, let’s try telling the truth about the men and women of ICE and the men and women of the Border Patrol.

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Wall Street experienced a record-breaking revenue surge in the year’s second quarter, investment bank Goldman Sachs announced Wednesday morning, following the market uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in April.

Goldman Sachs’s trading revenue for the second quarter was $4.3 billion, $600 million higher than expectations and $100 million above the first quarter’s total, which was also a record. The company’s total revenue jumped 15% to $14.58 billion, a billion dollars more than what analysts expected. A similar upward trend was seen in the bank’s profit, which rose 22% to $3.72 billion.

“The economy and markets are generally responding positively to the evolving policy environment,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said. “But as developments rarely unfold in a straight line, we remain very focused on risk management.”

JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley also reported sizable increases in trading revenue, indicating that Wall Street has benefited from the tariff upheaval, despite market volatility.

After Trump’s tariffs took effect in early April, the stock market index S&P 500 took a drastic dive within minutes. Once an erroneous report indicated Trump was considering a 90-day pause on his “Liberation Day” tariffs, the S&P 500 added $3 trillion within 10 minutes. The White House quickly denied the report, calling it “wrong” and “fake news.”

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Wall Street experienced a record-breaking revenue surge in the year’s second quarter, investment bank Goldman Sachs announced Wednesday morning, following the market uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs in April.

Goldman Sachs’s trading revenue for the second quarter was $4.3 billion, $600 million higher than expectations and $100 million above the first quarter’s total, which was also a record. The company’s total revenue jumped 15% to $14.58 billion, a billion dollars more than what analysts expected. A similar upward trend was seen in the bank’s profit, which rose 22% to $3.72 billion.

“The economy and markets are generally responding positively to the evolving policy environment,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said. “But as developments rarely unfold in a straight line, we remain very focused on risk management.”

JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley also reported sizable increases in trading revenue, indicating that Wall Street has benefited from the tariff upheaval, despite market volatility.

After Trump’s tariffs took effect in early April, the stock market index S&P 500 took a drastic dive within minutes. Once an erroneous report indicated Trump was considering a 90-day pause on his “Liberation Day” tariffs, the S&P 500 added $3 trillion within 10 minutes. The White House quickly denied the report, calling it “wrong” and “fake news.”

Once traders learned of the denial, the S&P 500 lost $2.5 trillion in five minutes. A similar pattern was seen in the Nasdaq and Dow Jones.

Soon after the higher “Liberation Day” tariffs took effect, Trump implemented a 90-day pause that ended earlier this month. The pause was made to allow time for foreign trading partners to negotiate with the United States on trade deals.

Trump has so far announced trade deals with the United Kingdom, China, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

The president’s pattern of threatening tariffs and then pausing them or extending the deadline to negotiate has caught the attention of traders, who have created the “Trump always chickens out,” or TACO, strategy to capitalize on it.

Trump disputed TACO, which holds that Wall Street should “buy the dip” following immediate panic caused by a new tariff announcement, considering the perception that Trump will back off on his tariff threats. Trump said his strategy is simply a negotiation tactic.

“We have the hottest country anywhere in the world … Six months ago, this country was stone-cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country, people didn’t think it was going to survive, and you ask a nasty question like that,” he told reporters in May.

EU DELAYING RETALIATORY TARIFFS AHEAD OF TRUMP’S AUG. 1 DEADLINE

“It’s called negotiation. You set a number. And if you go down, if I set a ridiculous high number and I go down a little bit, a little bit, they want me to hold that number, 145% tariff. Even I said, ‘Man, that really got up,’” Trump said, adding he brought down the said tariff rate after negotiations.

Trump is proceeding with implementing his next phase of tariffs on Aug. 1, including a 30% tariff imposed on the European Union. The 27-member bloc delayed its retaliatory tariffs this week amid negotiations with the U.S. in the hopes of reaching a trade deal before the new tariff deadline.

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Tuesday on MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said President Donald Trump “abused” the National Guard for a “political show” when he deployed them to Los Angeles.

Host Lawrence O’Donnell said,  “I want to get your reaction to the news from Los Angeles tonight. The L.A. Times reporting that 4000 National Guard soldiers who’d been deployed in Los Angeles by Donald Trump are being released from that duty finally. Something you’ve been saying was something that duty they never should have had, but certainly they could have been released from an awful long time ago.”

Schiff said, “They should have been released, frankly, they should never have been called up. This was a political show, a political parade from the very beginning by Donald Trump over the wishes of the governor and of the mayor to militarize an already tense situation in Los Angeles, just made matters worse.

He added, “Trump feeds on that chaos. So this was by his design. To see the Guard so misused in that way, the trust that Californians have for the Guard abused in that way was just awful. Plus those Guard members that he took off their ordinary duties it meant at present, when we’re already dealing with fires breaking out in California, they were understaffed because we rely on our Guard in case of fire and other emergency. So I think they had to cut them loose sooner or later. This was way too late, but I’m glad that this is finally happening. I hope it means the release of all of those who were deployed, not just the Guard, but also the Marines, an even worse abuse.”

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On Monday night’s episode of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, viewers were treated to a familiar ritual in left-wing media: the exploitation of tragedy to advance a partisan agenda. This time, the devastating floods in Texas served not as a moment of national unity, but as a launchpad for attacking political opponents with science as the supposed casualty.

Maddow’s conversation with meteorologist Eric Holthaus was less an interview and more a political indictment dressed up as weather commentary. Holthaus, a frequent contributor to progressive publications like The Guardian, wasted no time blaming the Trump administration for climate-related disasters, claiming it had “systematically undercut science.”

Missing from the conversation? Any acknowledgment that disaster preparedness and environmental policy were shared responsibilities across local, state, and federal levels, something that the large state of Texas had often struggled to meet.

Maddow’s leading question was a perfect example of that (click “expand” to read):

MADDOW: The rescue and recovery operations in Texas are still underway. It is heartbreaking. It’s also, I think, increasingly infuriating that we’re in this situation. Is it fair to say that we are taking action as a country to basically lessen our readiness, to lessen our ability to protect people and warn people in the face of this kind of disaster?

HOLTHAUS: Yeah. I mean, unfortunately that’s exactly right. I think that what the Trump administration has been doing is systematically undercutting science. I mean, let’s take a step back. Here we are in the middle of the most severe problem our species has ever faced in climate change. And that problem is accelerating. Emissions are accelerating, and this administration has really decided to just say, “nope, we’re not going to pay attention to that and we’ll hope that everyone can, you know, fend for themselves.” And it’s really, really infuriating as someone who’s been covering this beat for 20 years now. I have little kids, you know, like I wake up at night and am just worried for, you know, when’s– where’s the next flood going to be? We haven’t entered hurricane season yet and it’s just it’s going to be bad and it’s heartbreaking.

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Tucker Carlson, who seems fully dedicated to the anti-Israel movement now, provided yet another platform for the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism (Iran) to lie to the world. One of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s denials is disprovable with a simple internet search — yes, Iran has repeatedly called for Donald Trump’s assassination.

Carlson rarely seems to do any research that would enable him to call out his interviewees’ lies, allowing multiple guests in recent months to make preposterous claims that the barest journalistic prep would have warned him are false claims. In this case, he was so focused on trying to claim Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is lying to trick Americans into fighting a regime that has been at war with us for four decades that he let Pezeshkian make a mendacious semi-denial. Ignore the fact that Iran’s grand ayatollah just issued a fatwa saying Trump must receive the punishment of death.

Netanyahu said in June about Iran, “They want to kill [Trump]. He’s enemy number one.” And if Tucker weren’t an antisemite more interested in irritating other conservatives than in fact-checking foreign dictators’ claims, he’d know that Iran’s desire to see Trump dead isn’t a big secret — Iran has been posting online about it for years.

“Has Iran ever backed an assassination attempt against Donald Trump?” Carlson asked. Predictably, Pezeshhkian lied without an outright denial, while cleverly manipulating Carlson by using one of Tucker’s favorite phrases: “This is actually what Netanyahu is trying to insinuate and to make your people or the president of your country to believe. But this is wrong because Netanyahu, who has his own agenda, wants to drag the U.S. into forever wars as I said and to bring insecurity and instability and onwards to the whole region.” Pezeshkian also denied Iranian sleeper cells in America, about which the Department of Homeland Security is raising alarms.

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“Squad” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) is coming under fire for misstating her supposed hardscrabble background in the Bronx, with the Democrat now claiming she grew up in an area adjacent to the notoriously violent New York borough.

AOC, who rose from humble bartender to congressional celebrity after the 2018 election, backpedaled on her origin story after a new report alleging she went to high school in Yorktown Heights, a suburb 40 miles outside of New York City.

The controversy began when AOC fired back at President Donald Trump, who labeled her “one of the dumbest people in Congress” after she attempted to impeach him for striking Iran.

“Also, I’m a Bronx girl. You should know that we can eat Queens boys for breakfast. Respectfully,” the progressive lawmaker replied on social media.

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Prominent MAGA-aligned commentators launched xenophobic attacks on Zohran Mamdani over the 33-year-old state lawmaker’s Muslim religion following his apparent Democratic primary win in the New York City mayoral race.

In a series of posts, conservative social media personality Laura Loomer wrote “New York City will be destroyed,” Muslims will start “committing jihad all over New York” and that “NYC is about to see 9/11 2.0.”

If elected in November, Mamdani would become the first Muslim mayor in New York City’s history. And while many conservatives have criticized Mamdani’s progressive policies, others have taken aim at Mamdani for his religion.

“24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11,” conservative activist Charlie Kirk posted on X, referencing the number of people killed in New York. “Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.”

“New York City has fallen,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote, quoting a post by Michael Malice about when New Yorkers “endured 9/11 instead of voting for it.”