Trump and Vance’s Official Portraits Are as Ugly as It Gets

Donald Trump and JD Vance debuted new presidential and vice presidential portraits Thursday and, boy, are they weirdly sinister.

Daniel Torok, the president-elect’s chief photographer, revealed the portraits on X Wednesday evening. “We are entering the GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICA,” Torok wrote.

“They go hard,” wrote Trump’s transition team in a press release hyping the official portraits.

Clearly, the purpose of these photographs was to evoke some kind of masculine energy that would delight the manosphere. In Trump’s portrait, the president-elect went for a glowering stare reminiscent of his unsettlingly viral 2023 mugshot taken in Fulton County jail, which has appeared on everything from a commemorative $2 bill to NFT trading cards sold by the president-elect and his buddies.

This marks a significant departure from the toothy grin he sported in his portrait from 2017, signaling a new strongman Trump who wants everyone to think he’s really tough. To be sure, he does look kind of scary scary—but mostly because his partially cocked eyebrow manages to make his other eye appear somewhat collapsed.

There is also the shock of bright white light that makes the 78-year-old’s eyes appear the same color as his hair.

Meanwhile, Vance’s portrait showed off his startlingly blue eyes. Almost too blue, some felt.

Like Trump, Vance’s face also reflected a supernatural glow and a ghoulish gleam that painted his face in an entirely different color than his hands—something he could have in common with Trump, whose face is typically darkened to a burnt orange.

Despite their technical similarities, some online noted that the two portraits had extremely different vibes.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken held his final press conference on Thursday, during which he kicked out a journalist for asking questions about Gaza. 

Reporter Sam Husseini tried to ask questions about U.S. policy regarding Israel’s war in Gaza early during the press conference, only to be told to wait until the end. When he persisted, he was physically removed from the room by three security guards.

Husseini posted on X after the incident, saying he was fine but had planned to ask several different questions, including about the Geneva Convention’s application to Gaza and Israel’s Hannibal directive, among other topics. But he never got the opportunity, and the whole  incident unfortunately encapsulates the Biden administration’s approach towards Israel and Gaza, especially in responding to questions from the press. 

For more than a year, following the October 7, 2023, attacks, the White House and State Department repeatedly masked Israel’s brutal actions in Gaza, ignoring and covering up possible war crimes while even lying to Congress. Alternative courses of action were dismissed, and deadlines made to the public were ignored. Even given the opportunity, Vice President Kamala Harris refused to break with White House policy while running for president, which may have cost her the 2024 election. 

Ultimately, Israel’s war, fueled by American weapons and protected by American diplomacy, officially killed more than 46,000 Palestinian civilians, likely a massive undercount according to analysts and human rights groups. Thursday’s press conference was a reminder that under Joe Biden, the United States has refused to acknowledge its role in the conflict or stand up to any scrutiny. And when Donald Trump is sworn into the White House on Monday, that’s not likely to change. 

Google announced its intention Thursday to flout European Union standards for digital fact-checking, opting not to build an internal department to moderate and verify YouTube content despite requirements from a new law.

The European Commission’s Disinformation Code of Practice has remained a voluntary policy, leaving the ball in the tech industry’s court. Companies that opted in to the code—including Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, and X—are supposed to self-regulate while submitting reports on their platform’s compliance with the code.

But a 2024 study published in the Internet Policy Review found that, by and large, companies were “only partly compliant” with the EU code, with reports data lacking detail and offering “missing, incomplete, or not robust” data. The EU has since urged companies to convert the voluntary guidelines into an official policy under the union’s newer content moderation law, the Digital Services Act of 2022.

Google has never had a fact-checking department to oversee content on YouTube, where users reportedly upload more than 500 hours of video content every minute, and on average consume a collective one billion hours of content per day, according to YouTube’s blog. The law would require Google to build fact-checking into its search function, its ranking systems, and its algorithm, as well as adding fact-checked results alongside YouTube videos.

The search engine behemoth’s global affairs president Kent Walker rejected the mandatory new standards in a letter to deputy director general Renate Nikolay, claiming that the code “simply isn’t appropriate or effective for our services,” according to Axios. Walker instead pointed to a new feature that was implemented on YouTube in 2024, allowing users to communally verify information themselves, akin to X’s “Community Notes.”

Google will “pull out of all fact-checking commitments in the Code before it becomes a DSA Code of Conduct,” Walker wrote.

But Google isn’t the only company skirting its disinformation commitments. Meta and X have heavily reduced their content moderation policies, allowing disturbing language to circulate openly on their platforms.

Earlier this month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media company would rid itself of its third-party fact-checkers, opting instead to replace them with user-generated corrections.

“Fact-checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created,” Zuckerberg said in a video announcement posted to Facebook. “What started as a movement to be more inclusive has increasingly been used to shut down opinions and shut out people with different ideas, and it’s gone too far.”

In the background of their internal decisions, a cohort of Silicon Valley’s most successful figures have donated millions to Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, seemingly caving to the incoming forty-seventh president in an apparent bid to make Trump’s second term as friendly to their massive tech and AI corporations as possible.

Rudy Giuliani might’ve finally caught a break.

After being sued for everything he had—his watches, his diamond ring, his Mercedes-Benz, his home, and $148 million—by defamed Georgia poll workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, the former mayor has apparently come to a settlement.

“I have reached a resolution of the litigation with the Plaintiffs that will result in a satisfaction of the Plaintiffs’ judgment. This resolution does not involve an admission of liability or wrongdoing by any of the Parties,” Giuliani announced on X on Thursday. “I am satisfied with and have no grievances relating to the result we have reached. I have been able to retain my New York coop and Florida Condominium and all of my personal belongings. No one deserves to be subjected to threats, harassment, or intimidation. This litigation has taken its toll on all parties. This whole episode was unfortunate. I and the Plaintiffs have agreed not to ever talk about each other in any defamatory manner, and I urge others to do the same.”

Though the terms of the settlement are not yet public, a statement from the defamed mother-daughter duo confirmed the news.

“The past four years have been a living nightmare. We have fought to clear our names, restore our reputations, and prove that we did nothing wrong,” said Moss and Freeman in a joint statement. “We have agreed to allow Mr. Giuliani to retain his property in exchange for compensation and his promise not to ever defame us.”

The settlement comes after Giuliani failed to appear in court Thursday morning. Both parties are now asking the judge to adjourn the trial so that their settlement agreement can be executed.

Moss and Freeman testified that Guiliani’s claims that they’d engaged in election fraud in 2020 led to a wave of racist threats and hatred toward them.

Scott Bessent, Donald Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, made it clear during his confirmation hearing Thursday that he’s only interested in protecting the interests of the rich and powerful.

The hedge fund manager with a net worth of at least $500 million repeatedly spiked down questions about whether he would support working-class priorities. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders asked Bessent about his position on raising the minimum wage.

“Shamefully, the federal minimum wage, despite the efforts of myself and other people here, [has] not been raised since 2009, and remains an unbelievable $7.25 an hour,” said Sanders. “Will you work with those of us who want to raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage, to take millions of Americans out of poverty?”

“Senator, I believe that the minimum wage is more of a statewide and regional issue,” Bessent responded.

“So you don’t think we should change the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour?” Sanders pressed.

“Uh, no sir,” Bessent replied. Four years ago, Trump said he would consider raising the minimum wage to $15, if it didn’t hurt small businesses. More recently, he’s dodged the question altogether.

Later, Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock asked whether Bessent would be interested in ending tax cuts for the rich to help reduce the national deficit—but the two didn’t quite see eye to eye on the policy.

“Do you agree that ending the tax cuts for those making more than $400,000 would help close the deficit and reduce our national debt?” Warnock asked.

“Senator Warnock, I do not,” Bessent said. “I believe that you would capture an inordinate amount of small-business people who largely are in that cohort of $400,000 to $1 million—”

“So you wouldn’t cut it off at $400,000,” Warnock replied. “What about $1 million?”

“Again, I believe these are small-business pass-through owners. And I believe that we, as I said before, Wall Street’s done great, it is time for Main Street to do well. And small businesses need to drive what I call the reprivatization here away from this government spending.”

Warnock kept pressing him, and Bessent quickly revealed that was hoping to keep tax rates the same as in Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Warnock asked about those making more than $10 million.

Bessent insisted that it was more important “that we put in incentives for them to invest.”

“What about $1 billion?” Warnock asked.

Bessent replied, “Again, I think that these are the job creators.”

“So there’s no income level for which you would support raising taxes?” Warnock said.

Bessent replied that there was “no income level” for which he would support raising taxes.

While Trump has not said that he would raise taxes, his plan to enact sweeping tariffs on imported goods from Mexico, Canada, and China will function as a sort of sales tax, driving up prices on consumer goods.

On Thursday, Bessent also refused to specify where exactly he stood on the future of Medicaid, and claimed that he would leverage negotiations to maintain the critical health care program to “empower” states.