Trump’s Alarming Meeting With Foreign Leader Speaks Volumes

While President Joe Biden meets with NATO members in Washington, D.C., Thursday, Donald Trump is having a foreign tête-à-tête of his own—albeit with a member of a starkly different crowd.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is scheduled to meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at his Florida home, just days after the autocratic leader held private meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s leader, Xi Jinping.

The agenda of Trump and Orbán’s meeting is not entirely clear, though the war in Ukraine will likely be a topic of discussion, according to three sources that spoke with Reuters.

The visit will add fuel to growing concerns that Orbán is serving as a proxy between Trump and Putin, reported Bloomberg, and will likely upset a cohort of NATO allies who fear that Orbán’s meeting with the Russian ruler legitimized the country’s claim to the land it has invaded in Ukraine since the war began in 2022.

Foreign policy and national security analyst David Rothkopf slammed Trump’s meeting with Orbán. “Trump meeting Orban opposite NATO Summit immediately following Orban mtg w Putin and Xi is the sort of betrayal of the US that would’ve led to Congressional investigations or worse in the past,” Rothkopf wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

Orbán, who was found earlier this year by the European Court of Justice to have violated the Geneva Conventions regarding the rights of refugees*, was described by the late Senator John McCain as a “neofascist dictator.” He’s also curried a certain level of idolatry from the contemporary American right, and has become one of Trump’s strongest international allies.

*This article has been amended to clarify the Geneva Conventions that Orban violated.

Donald Trump claims that he has nothing to do with Project 2025 and has never heard of it, but a shocking number of his administration staffers and Cabinet secretaries played a part in putting together the political manifesto, CNN reports. 

At least 140 people who worked for Trump while he was president were involved in putting together the 900-page playbook, including six members of his Cabinet and four of his ambassadors. The first 20 pages of the document were written by his first deputy chief of staff.

More than half of the authors, editors, and contributors to the project’s manifesto on overhauling the executive branch titled “Mandate for Leadership” were Trump administration staffers, according to CNN’s investigation. Plus, several of the groups advising Project 2025 employ former Trump officials and staffers, including Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

CNN combed through the online biographies, LinkedIn profiles, and news articles for over 1,000 people listed in the directories for the 110 organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board, in addition to the more than 200 names attached to the “Mandate for Leadership.” In total, almost 240 people have ties to both Trump and Project 2025.

The Project 2025 planning document outlines a dramatic overhaul of the federal government in line with Trump’s authoritarian aspirations, opening the floodgates for extreme policies to be enacted. The former president and convicted felon keeps trying to distance himself from the effort despite his many connections to it, giving Democrats easy lines of attack to point out his lies.

Trump seems to see associating with Project 2025 as bad for his presidential campaign even though it overlaps with his campaign promises. This could backfire on him because his repeated denials are alienating some of his most ardent supporters. The objective truth is that Project 2025 is not just a conservative wish list but also Trump’s, and he isn’t fooling anyone.

Self-described “gay furry hackers” behind a group dubbed SiegedSec on Wednesday released text exchanges between Heritage Foundation executive Mike Howell and a member of the hacker group. The texts followed a leak of nearly two gigabytes of data from The Daily Signal, the Heritage Foundation’s blog site.

In the texts, Howell appears apoplectically humorless, oscillating between threats to expose the hackers and hopes for violence against them. Howell is a columnist for The Daily Signal, the site whose subscriber data SiegedSec leaked amid a spree of other leaks. The hacked data included the “full names, email addresses, passwords, and usernames” of people associating with the Heritage Foundation, one spokesperson of the gay furry hacktivists said, in order to shed “transparency to the public regarding who exactly is supporting” the conservative think tank.

“Are you aware that you won’t be able to wear a furry tiger costume when you’re getting pounded in the ass in the federal prison I put you in next year?” Howell asked a member of SiegedSec who identified themselves as “vio.”

“Please share widely,” Howell told the hacker group after they asked if they could release their text exchanges with Howell. “I hope the word spreads as fast as the STDs do in your degenerate furry community.”

“meow :3” vio responded.

“Bestiality is a weird sin. It shows you’ve gone a “few clicks” too far in trying to satiate your deviant appetite,” Howell continued.

Vio cheekily replied, “whats ur opinion on vore.” Howell elevated the text exchange, which he confirmed to the DailyDot as authentic, by posting lyrics to Eminem’s “The Way I Am.”

During their conversation, Howell promised to reveal the identity of the hackers, declaring, “Closeted Furries will be presented to the world for the degenerate perverts they are.” This proved unintimidating, as vio reassured him none of their members would be identified and that their hack is small potatoes compared to the Heritage Foundation’s aspirations. “the rights your org violates will be 10x worse than any crime ive committed,” vio told Howell. “you do not follow god if you use religion as a crutch to hate people. while i hide behind a screen to fight for my rights, you hide behind religion to attack the rights of others.”

Following the release of the text exchanges, Howell took to X (formerly Twitter) to falsely accuse someone reviewing the leak of being involved. Howell also declared “complete and total victory” that he “forced the Gay Furry Hackers to DISBAND” after the group posted that their Heritage hack would be their last. SiegedSec has claimed credit for over two years of hacktivism against far-right sites, as well as hacking NATO, twice, and a nuclear lab to demand it create catgirls.

SiegedSec stated they hacked the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal in rejection of Project 2025, which they describe as “an authoritarian Christian nationalist plan to reform the United States government.” The hack is part of the group’s campaign against anti-trans organizations and websites dubbed #OpTransRights. While claiming the Heritage hack would be their last, SiegedSec also stated that in addition to releasing their texts with Howell, they “have an extra surprise for him coming soon~.”

Even from behind bars, Steve Bannon’s message is clear: Republicans want Joe Biden to stay in the presidential race. Why? Because they know it will be better for Donald Trump.

In an email interview with Matthew Boyle from far-right Breitbart News, the former Trump adviser was asked what he made of the Democrats sticking with Biden amid widespread criticism of the president’s performance in last month’s debate and the calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.

“So we got the candidate we want … and the country is stuck with a nonperforming cadaver,” Bannon replied.

Bannon took over Breitbart in 2012, and directed the site to publish his patently pugnacious rhetoric and conspiracy theories cooked up by far-right activists and white supremacists. In 2016, Bannon stepped down to join Trump’s presidential campaign as its CEO and went on to mastermind the authoritarian MAGA movement.

Earlier this month, Bannon chaotically reported to Danbury federal prison in Connecticut after being found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress. The former Trump strategist had made several desperate attempts to avoid jail time, all of which were clearly unsuccessful.

In his interview with the propaganda machine he helped build, Bannon laid out his own plan for how Republicans can use all of the discourse around Biden’s health to launch Trump back into the White House.

First, he urged the GOP-led House to force Biden’s fitness as an issue of urgent “national security.”

“This is not about whether Biden can serve four more years but can he get the country safely to January 2025?” he said. “The House should move immediately to investigate and get to the bottom of who knew this when—the cover-up is all-important.”

He also advised right-wing media to work to tarnish any attempt to switch candidates.

“The political goal here for MAGA is to ‘toxify’ the process of the Democratic bait and switch as much as possible,” he said. “This is all process, and the American voter should be armed with minute-by-minute information on what is actually going on.… I’m sure they will be repulsed.”

Bannon has a point: If MAGA Republicans are given the airtime and column inches to successfully poison the well, it could prove difficult for Democrats, the media, or voters to get fully on board with another Democratic candidate.

Still, it’s revealing that a political strategist, and one of Trump’s biggest backers, is hoping that Biden sticks around until November. If Biden doesn’t listen to Democrats asking him to exit the race, maybe he should be scared by Republicans who ask him to stay?

Before actor George Clooney published an op-ed in The New York Times Wednesday calling for President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 race, he reportedly reached out to former President Barack Obama, who didn’t try to dissuade him. 

Obama didn’t encourage or advise Clooney on what to say, but he also didn’t try to stop him, according to Politico, which is telling, considering what Clooney ended up writing. The actor didn’t hold back, saying, “We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate.”

Clooney and Obama are on friendly terms. The actor hosted a major fundraiser for Biden last month that the former president also attended, raising $28 million for Biden. Obama initially publicly defended Biden after his disastrous debate performance two weeks ago, saying that “this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”

But he didn’t try to dissuade a high-profile celebrity from calling for Biden’s ouster, and that could be an omen for Biden. Obama isn’t just a former president, but one of the most senior Democratic figures in the country aside from Biden. This may signal an opening for Biden to be replaced without objections from Obama, if not his outright approval.

Obama’s non-objection to a major call for Biden to step down echoes similar actions from other leading Democrats, including Senator Tim Kaine and Representative Nancy Pelosi. Rank-and-file Democratic politicians can take all of this as a sign that their objections to Biden staying on aren’t hurting their standing with the party, and could ultimately strengthen the momentum behind the efforts to replace Biden with a new candidate.