Putin Already Has a Plan to Manipulate Trump

Moscow is planning to wrap Donald Trump around its finger, with state propagandists spilling the details even before the president-elect’s second administration begins.

Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT,  believes that personal meetings between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will bring about positive outcomes for the foreign nation, so long as they’re able to meet face-to-face, according to The Daily Beast.

During an interview on the program The Right to Know, Simonyan—a Kremlin insider—claimed that a second Trump presidency would see multiple sanctions on Russia lifted, as well as RT’s return to U.S. cable sets.

Simonyan also advocated for Russia to follow in the footsteps of China, supporting a totalitarian level of government censorship that would allow the country to control digital platforms of information, including Google and YouTube.

The propagandist also shrugged off Trump’s promises to quickly end the war in Ukraine, while likening the intelligence of U.S. politicians to that of Soviet children. During a spontaneous press conference on Monday, Trump said that he believed the Ukraine-Russia conflict could be more difficult to solve than the Israel-Palestine war in the Middle East and suggested that he might hobble Ukraine’s weapons capabilities by reversing the country’s long-range strike authorization that allows Ukraine to use the Army Tactical Missile System against Russian positions.

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he would be open to temporarily ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia if it meant entering the country into NATO, the strategic Western military and trade alliance. That is, however, unlikely to get very far with Russian negotiators. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s Cabinet picks are “thrilling” Russian mouthpieces, according to the Beast, which reported that Simonyan views some of Trump’s most unqualified choices—such as DOGE co-chair nominee Vivek Ramaswamy and director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard—as familiar faces on the Russian network.

“I would endorse most of what [Vivek] Ramaswamy says,” Simonyan said. “These people who are being announced as potential members of his team certainly bring us lots of joy.

“Most of these people are constant guests of RT’s broadcasts,” she continued. “Until RT was shut down, they were our constant guests. For example, Tulsi Gabbard, who keeps being hounded about this right now, ‘Ah, you love RT, you constantly shared their clips, you constantly went there.’ Well, she did come to us all the time, it’s true. It’s not something you can conceal—and she is not the only one.”

Thirty-three days out from Trump’s inauguration, the president-elect’s comments show he intends to make good on his vows for revenge against his political opponents. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Trump issued yet another warning to former Representative Liz Cheney for her role in the congressional probe into the January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.

Soon after 3 a.m. Wednesday, Trump set his sights on the former Republican representative, writing, “Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee, which states that ‘numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, and these violations should be investigated by the FBI.’ Thank you to Congressman Barry Loudermilk on a job well done.”

On Tuesday, Republican Representative Barry Loudermilk, who chairs the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, released a 128-page “interim report” by House Republicans on the January 6 committee. Specifically, the report called for Cheney to be criminally investigated, accusing the former January 6 committee vice chair of witness tampering and colluding with former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified before the committee on the events surrounding that day, including Trump’s behavior during the riot.

Loudermilk’s report shows House Republicans in lockstep with Trump’s plans for retribution against his political foes. Recently, Trump has said of everyone on the January 6 committee, but namely Cheney and its former chair, Bennie Thompson: “Yea, honestly, they should go to jail.”

Both Loudermilk’s report and Trump’s continued threats toward Cheney come as the president-elect assembles an administration that shares his ardor for vengeance against MAGA’s enemies, including his pick for FBI director, Kash Patel, who has promised to go after the president-elect’s opponents in the government and media.

Cheney responded to Loudermilk’s interim report Tuesday with a statement on BlueSky.

“The January 6th Committee’s hearings and report featured scores of republican witnesses, including many of the most senior officials from Trump’s own White House, campaign and Administration,” Cheney wrote. “All of this testimony was painstakingly set out in thousands of pages of transcripts, made public along with a highly detailed and meticulously sourced 800 page report. The Department of Justice conducted its own independent investigation and reached the same fundamental conclusions.”

Cheney’s statement said Loudermilk’s report “intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence,” instead spinning up “lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did.”

“No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”

Luigi Mangione has been accused of terrorism in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.  

The indictment, released Tuesday evening, lists 10 charges and 11 counts, including one for first-degree murder “in furtherance of an act of terrorism” and “murder in the second degree as a crime of terrorism.”

Mangione is also charged with possession of forged instruments, several counts of weapons possession, committing murder “with intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion, and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping,” and simply with “murder in the second degree.”

In a press release, District Attorney Alvin Bragg said that Mangione faces “a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole.”

Separately, Bragg told a press conference that murder in the second degree carried a mandated sentence of life without parole with “no discretion for the judge at all.”

“One charges that the killing was done as an act of terrorism, and the second [pertains] to the fact that the killing was intentional,” Bragg said. “In its most basic terms, this was a killing that intended to evoke terror.”

Mangione’s lawyer, former Manhattan Chief Assistant District Attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo, declined to comment on the charges.

It’s unclear how exactly Mangione’s alleged crime was intended to “influence the policy of a unit of government,” which companies such as UnitedHealthcare are not, or “intimidate” the civilian population. Rather, Mangione’s alleged act appeared to have been planned to target a specific class of individuals who profit exorbitantly off the suffering of the civilian population. 

“The ruling class is treating killing one of their own, with the motive being related to the evils of our health care system, as a fundamentally different act than if you or I were to be murdered,” wrote journalist J.P. Hill on X Tuesday.

Mangione was reportedly discovered with a manifesto admitting to having worked alone and explaining why he allegedly committed the violent act.

“I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done,” Mangione wrote. “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson is facing the fury of his Republican colleagues over yet another delayed and outsize spending bill.

Conservative lawmakers took to social media to publicly vent their dismay with the 1,500-page continuing resolution, torching the massive omnibus for failing to meet their party goals. At least one member of the upper chamber—Kentucky Senator Rand Paul—took that critique to the next level, outright questioning Johnson’s strength as a party leader.

“I had hoped to see @SpeakerJohnson grow a spine, but this bill full of pork shows he is a weak, weak man,” Paul posted on X early Wednesday. “The debt will continue to grow. Ultimately the dollar will fail. Democrats are clueless and Big Gov Republicans are complicit.

“A sad day for America,” Paul added.

The stopgap spending measure will fund the government through March 14, giving conservatives a chance to organize and reassess their spending priorities once their Republican trifecta takes effect.

The resolution was intended to be a “very skinny, very simple” stopgap solution, but what was ultimately presented to House lawmakers late Tuesday was a thick 84-day measure riddled with unrelated policies, including disaster relief needs related to the devastation caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, an extension on the farm bill, health care policy, and, naturally, a raise for members of Congress.

Lawmakers have only until Friday to iron out their disagreements with the package and pass a version of the bill, or the government will enter a shutdown that will last through the holiday season.

Before the text of the continuing resolution was released on Tuesday, several other lawmakers hurled their own fire at the bipartisan effort, arguing that the three-month spending solution will only add to the federal deficit.

“Since we’ve been given the majority again, we’re adding $30 billion in literally totally unpaid-for additional deficit spending, just since November 5—in 45 days,” Texas Representative Chip Roy told C-SPAN. “I don’t see how that’s doing what we’re supposed to be doing.

“The conference itself owns this. The conference needs to decide whether we’re actually serious about spending.… We’re just fundamentally unserious about spending,” Roy continued, highlighting the fact that his party intends to shift cash away from Social Security, shrinking the time before the program goes bankrupt. “As long as you got a blank check, you can’t shrink government. If you can’t shrink government, you can’t live free.”

Elon Musk’s shady behavior has gotten him and SpaceX flagged for federal review three times, according to reporting from The New York Times. Musk has reportedly failed to cooperate with security clearance reporting rules, hiding info on things like meetings with foreign leaders.

According to disclosure stipulations, Musk is required to report details of his international meetings and travels as well as any drug use. He has apparently shirked that responsibility since at least 2021, according to four people with knowledge of SpaceX, putting his ability to handle highly classified information into question.

Musk, who currently has top secret clearance, gets access to classified information on the U.S. military. But in 2023, the Air Force rejected his request for an even higher level of security clearance, known as Special Access Program. A Pentagon official told the Times that Musk was rejected due to a “lack of explanation” for some of his meetings with foreign leaders.

Without access to the clearance, Musk should theoretically be blocked from joining certain meetings between SpaceX and the Air Force on extremely sensitive classified information. But the Times reported Pentagon officials are concerned Musk is still joining many of those conversations anyway. 

No formal accusations have yet been leveled at Musk, and it is unclear how the reviews will impact the SpaceX CEO, if at all. Donald Trump could unilaterally grant Musk security clearance after his inauguration.

“To have someone who has major contracts with the government who would be in a position to pass along—whether deliberately or inadvertently—secrets is concerning,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen told The New York Times. The New Hampshire Democrat requested that the Air Force and the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General investigate Musk for having inappropriate talks with foreign leaders, like Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The world’s richest man and incoming Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, co-chair has continuously blurred the lines between civilian and elected official—especially as he cements himself further into Trump’s inner circle after stumping for the president-elect all election season.