The Prime Minister of Qatar has defended the country’s $400 million gift to President Donald Trump, saying that such exchanges between friendly countries are “normal”.
Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani commented on the accusations that Qatar was gifting the jet to Trump just to get on the President’s good side, saying that the gift is simply a donation to another world leader.
In May 1988, Republican President Ronald Reagan spoke from the Oval Office in an address not targeted at the American people, but the citizens of Western Europe. The president was planning a trip to meet with Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and wanted to make his commitment to Europe clear.
Staring directly at the camera, Reagan said: “Shared [moral] standards and beliefs tie us to Europe today. They are the essence of the community of free nations to which we belong.”
Thirty years later, in July 2018, while sitting for an interview with CBS at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, Republican President Donald Trump was asked to name America’s top global foe. “Well, I think we have a lot of foes,” Trump said. “I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe.”
https://www.newsweek.com/maga-republicans-donald-trump-jd-vance-europe-2071814
As secretary of the Air Force, I was frustrated by Boeing’s failure to deliver the new Air Force One aircraft on time.
I can understand that President Trump would like a new aircraft, painted as he desires and available for use during his term in office. I cannot understand his willingness to accept the “gift” of a luxuriously appointed, used Boeing 747 from Qatar.
It is wrong to accept this gift from any perspective.
In an email to the city’s planning office dated April 29, the US embassy asked that Stockholm officials sign a document promising that contractors would not operate any programmes promoting DEI that would violate current US law.
“It’s so bizarre,” Jan Valeskog, Stockholm’s vice-mayor for city planning, told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter on Tuesday.
The city council said Friday that it would not comply with the embassy’s demands or offer an official response.
“We were really surprised, of course,” Valeskog told The Associated Press.
“We will not sign this document at all, of course not.”
The Australian opposition leader likened to Donald Trump for apeing his policies has lost his seat as the incumbent Labor government secures a landslide win.
Peter Dutton has suffered more than a 10 per cent swing against him to Labor rival Ali France, who has so far claimed nearly 59 per cent of the vote under Australia’s two-party preferred system, with election analysts projecting the conservative leader’s ousting.
Far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has claimed that top US Republican lawmakers support bombing “food and aid depots” in Gaza.
The statement, made in a social media post on Wednesday, came after the Israeli national security minister said he had met with “senior Republican Party officials at [US President Donald] Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate” in Florida in the United States.
“They expressed support for my very clear position on how to act in Gaza and that the food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely,” Ben-Gvir posted on X in Hebrew.
And of course any foreign students who might take offence at such atrocities should have their visas revoked and deported! Welcome to King Donald’s Amerika!
Donald Trump will let Vladimir Putin keep almost all the territory he has seized from Ukraine under the terms of a proposed peace deal.
The condition is part of a seven-point plan to end the war that leaves Ukraine with no clear US security guarantee.
It was due to be discussed in London on Wednesday, when US officials would hear Kyiv’s reaction, though the talks were downgraded when US secretary of state Marco Rubio pulled out.
Foreign ministers from the UK, France, Germany and Ukraine withdrew in an apparent response. Discussions were instead scheduled to take place between senior officials from those nations and the US.
The Trump administration’s peace proposal involves the US offering formal recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea and implies de facto recognition of other occupied territories.
This would mean freezing the current front line, allowing Putin to keep almost all the territory Russia has gained.
With no court to verify anything the Trump regime alleges, you could be arrested and sent to a prison in El Salvador for having views the regime dislikes
Friends,
Let’s say you don’t like what the Trump administration is doing, or you don’t like Trump. You express these views on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
You take a two-week vacation in France. When you try to return to the United States, U.S. immigration agents arrest you. They detain you in solitary confinement. They don’t let you contact your family. They don’t let you contact a lawyer. Then they send you to a brutal prison in El Salvador.
But wait! You scream over and over. You can’t do this! I’m an American citizen!
Your screams have no effect.
…
Do you see how perilously close we are to the edge?
A report on a recent meeting between Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, by a WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, someone who was present in the room quoted below…
“ I’ve covered a lot of Donald Trump press conferences over the years. I’ve seen him lie, deflect, and embarrass himself in countless ways. But what I just witnessed in the Oval Office may have been the most off-the-rails, unhinged display yet.
Trump sat down with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte — a serious figure there to talk about security and alliance unity — but Trump wasn’t interested in that. No, Trump used the opportunity to fantasize about annexing Canada. He actually said, “Canada only works as a state,” and gushed about how the U.S. would look on a map if we just erased the border and took Canada as our own. This wasn’t satire. This wasn’t a joke. This was the president rambling about absorbing another sovereign nation — while the NATO secretary general sat there watching this clown show unfold.
And it didn’t stop there. Trump started pushing the idea of conquering Greenland too, saying NATO might need to get involved in helping the U.S. take it over — as if it’s a game of Risk. He literally said we “need it for international security” and tried to rope NATO into his imperial fever dream. The look on Rutte’s face said it all.
Then, Trump pivoted to his usual bigotry. Instead of talking about defense cooperation or global security, Trump bragged about how he uses transgender people as political pawns to rile up his base before elections — saying Republicans should “bring it up a week before the election” to win votes. In other words, he openly admitted he sees cruelty and manufactured culture war nonsense as a campaign strategy. Despicable.
When asked about American small businesses hurting from tariffs, Trump did what he always does: lie and bluster. “You’re going to be so much richer,” he said. Meanwhile, Medicaid is being gutted, Social Security is under threat, and Trump’s billionaire cronies are cheering as the safety net burns.
Oh, and then Trump suggested we start sending drug dealers to the Netherlands — yes, you read that right — in a bizarre attempt at humor that landed more like a diplomatic insult, especially considering the NATO secretary general used to be the prime minister of the Netherlands.
He kept rambling about how the U.S. doesn’t need anything from Canada, said the European Union is “very nasty,” claimed we can’t sell cars in Europe (not true), and then told an utterly deranged story about how he “invaded Los Angeles” to turn on the water — another lie pulled from his fantasyland. What actually happened was that he diverted water from Northern California, destroying farmland and hurting his own voters in the process.
To top it off, he said our allies shouldn’t worry about Putin, brushing off any concerns about Russian aggression with a shrug.
Let me be blunt: This is not normal. This is not politics-as-usual. This is a dangerous, unstable person with authoritarian fantasies, spewing nonsense in front of our closest allies while the world watches.”
Keep speaking up. Don’t accept any of this as normal.
Ben Meiselas
https://www.facebook.com/claudia.scholand/posts/10165155546228345
Europeans:
Some Europeans reconsider trips to US in protest against Trump
And Canadians:
