Trump Gets Revenge on John Bolton and Mike Pompeo in Pettiest Way

Donald Trump has revoked the security detail for Mike Pompeo, despite the fact that the former secretary of state is reportedly facing threats for actions he took under the president’s direction.

Pompeo and former aide Brian Hook both lost their security details Tuesday, The New York Times reported, despite warnings from the Biden administration that both men had received threats from Iran.

Pompeo and Hook had been involved in America’s aggressive stance toward Iran during the first Trump administration, and Pompeo was reportedly a driving force behind convincing Trump to have Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, killed.

This change, which the Times reported Thursday, came one day after Trump decided to revoke the security detail of John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser. Bolton has been an outspoken critic of the president.

When Bolton’s security detail was removed, it seemed like a petty jab at someone on Trump’s list of political enemies (it’s really Kash Patel’s list), which could potentially have dangerous consequences. Bolton has also received death threats from Iran and was the target of a murder plot by a member of the Revolutionary Guards Corps in 2022.

Pompeo has done a few small things that could have incurred Trump’s wrath. During his first administration, Pompeo once undermined Trump’s claim that Iran wasn’t funding terrorist groups while Trump was president. In 2023, Pompeo warned that the GOP should shift away from “celebrity leaders” with “fragile egos.” He also was honest about the administration’s financial failures, saying that “the Trump administration spent $6 trillion more than it took in, adding to the deficit,” a truth Trump would rather ignore as he begins his second term.

Trump previously said that Pompeo would not have a place in his forthcoming administration, and said he doesn’t want anyone who worked under Pompeo to join his administration either.

Biden administration officials had stressed to members of the Trump administration the need for security details for all three men, someone with knowledge of the matter told the Times.

The rampant, vile horniness of Republican lawmakers may stop them from getting a key witness on the stand in their sham “reinvestigation” of the January 6 insurrection. 

One of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s aides warned Republicans not to subpoena former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson  because doing so would likely reveal all of the sexually explicit text messages Republicans have been sending Hutchinson since 2018, according to The Washington Post. 

Hutchinson is known for delivering an explosive testimony about the events of January 6, 2021, exposing President Trump as the power-crazed man he is. She told Congress that Trump grabbed the wheel of a moving limousine, jumped at a Secret Service agent, and threw a plate of food at the wall in the days leading up to January 6. 

The idea to subpoena Hutchinson was first raised by Representative Barry Loudermilk, who led the first Republican-only investigation into January 6. He was seeking testimony and electronic messages from Hutchinson in regard to her communications with former Representative Liz Cheney, the Republican leader of the House select committee investigating January 6.

But Loudermilk was dissuaded from this by the Johnson aide, who stated that such a subpoena could add “sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors” to public record and “potentially reveal embarrassing information.”

One can only speculate the horrors Hutchinson was sent by our own public officials.

Donald Trump has outright admitted to profiling immigrants.

Speaking with Fox News’s Sean Hannity Wednesday night in his first Oval Office interview since being inaugurated, Trump insisted that you could tell how much “trouble” immigrants are going to be for the country based on the “look” of them.

“Open borders with people pouring in. Some of whom, I won’t get into it, but you can look at them and you can say, ‘Could be trouble, could be trouble,’” Trump told the network.

The forty-seventh president has effectively promised a full-throttle immigration crackdown for the next four years. It includes attacking birthright citizenship and ordering high-profile ICE raids around the country against undocumented immigrants, decisions that could keep the backbone of the nation’s agricultural workforce inside.

Just two days into the administration, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would roll back an Obama-era directive, suddenly allowing the immigration agency to detain people in sensitive areas such as hospitals, places of worship, courtrooms, funerals, and weddings.

“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” a spokesperson for the agency said in a statement Tuesday. “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”

And those aren’t the only aggressive policies that Trump’s new administration is cozying up to. In an interview with Fox News last week, Vice President JD Vance promised to resume Trump’s “family separation” program, claiming that the system—under which more than 4,600 children were separated from their parents—was being “dishonestly” brandished by its critics. (As of December, 1,360 children remain unaccounted for because of the Trump-era policy, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, which said the practice met the definition for “enforced disappearance,” amounted to “torture,” and was a “crime under international law.”)

“If you come into this country illegally, you need to go back home,” Vance told Fox. “And what the Democrats are going to do is they’re going to hide behind this. They’re going to say this is all about compassion for families.”

The Senate on Thursday confirmed former QAnon doomscroller John Ratcliffe to serve as Trump’s CIA director, 74–25. 

Ratcliffe, who served in Trump’s first administration as director of national intelligence, is a hard-line Trump loyalist with a penchant for conspiracy theories. 

Just four years ago, the “Following” list on his official Twitter account was rife with alt-right QAnon accounts. He followed often graphic accounts like Hobbit Frog and Political Madness, which to this day continue to advance right-wing conspiracy theories on X. While Ratcliffe has since made a new account on X that no longer follows them, his ideological alignment with them very likely remains unchanged. 

Ratcliffe’s nomination didn’t get much objection from Republicans or Democrats, perhaps thanks to the long list of unqualified people Trump has picked for his Cabinet. But Ratcliffe leading the CIA is still cause for concern. In 2019, his initial nomination for director of national intelligence was scuttled after he was caught exaggerating his involvement in counterterrorism efforts. After he was finally confirmed the second time he was nominated, he refused to seriously investigate the murder of Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi, impeding the release of a report on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s role in the killing. He also called the FBI investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference a deep state, anti-Trump plot.  

Democrats contested Ratcliffe’s CIA confirmation much less than they did his 2020 DNI nomination, which passed by just a slim 49–44 vote.

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski announced Thursday that she will vote against Pete Hegseth’s confirmation for secretary of defense because he’s inexperienced and undisciplined.

Murkowski’s decision about Hegseth’s nomination comes just days after his former sister-in-law accused him of making his second wife fear for her safety with his “volatile and threatening conduct.” The Alaska Republican announced her decision in a post on X, in which she cited her “significant concerns.”

“After thorough evaluation, I must conclude that I cannot in good conscience support his nomination for Secretary of Defense,” Murkowski wrote. “I did not make this decision lightly; I take my constitutional responsibility to provide advice and consent with the utmost seriousness.

“Managing the Department of Defense requires vast experience and expertise as the department is one of the most complex and powerful organizations in the world, and Mr. Hegseth’s prior roles in his career do not demonstrate to me that he is prepared for such immense responsibility,” Murkowski wrote, adding that Hegseth was facing allegations of “financial mismanagement and problems with the workplace culture he fostered.”

Hegseth has been accused of regularly abusing alcohol, according to some of his colleagues at Fox News and his family members.

Murkowski wrote that she was concerned what message it would send to women in the armed services, or those hoping to join, if Hegseth was appointed, considering his past statements about how women were not fit for combat.

The senator also addressed the allegations of sexual misconduct against Hegseth, including those in a shocking 2017 police report accusing him of raping an attendee at a Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California.

While he has vehemently denied these allegations, Hegseth has admitted to several other scandals, including five affairs that he had during his first marriage. It seems that his apparent lack of character became just too much for Murkowski to support.

“While the allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking do nothing to quiet my concerns, the past behaviors Mr. Hegseth has admitted to, including infidelity on multiple occasions, demonstrate a lack of judgment that is unbecoming of someone who would lead our armed forces,” Murkowski wrote. “These behaviors starkly contrast the values and discipline expected of servicemembers. Men and women in uniform are held accountable for such actions, and they deserve leaders who uphold these same standards.”

A federal district court judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Trump’s revocation of birthright citizenship, striking the first blow against the president’s sweeping, aggressive executive orders.

Senior U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour listened to 25 minutes of arguments before rejecting the order, halting the policy from coming into effect for 14 days. There will be an injunction for a permanent block once the initial period is up.

Coughenour agreed with Arizona, Illinois, Oregon, and Washington—the four states that sued Trump—that the executive order was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades,” Coughenour said, according to NBC. “I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”

Trump signed an executive order ending birthright citizenship on Monday, and has long pledged to end one of the bedrock principles of American identity. “The federal government will not recognize automatic birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens born in the United States,” a Trump official announced on Monday. The order would also ban birthright citizenship for children of parents temporarily in the United States, including those on student and work visas.

This was only one of six lawsuits filed against the Trump administration by Democratic attorney generals in 22 states and immigrants rights organizations across the country. More legal challenges are likely to come.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Thursday that every international business needs to make their products in the United States, or face tariffs.

“My message to every business in the world is very simple: Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth,” Trump said in a speech livestreamed from Washington, D.C. “But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then, very simply, you will have to pay a tariff.”

Trump’s tariff threats have not been welcomed by world leaders, especially countries such as Canada and Mexico. The president on Thursday again floated annexing Canada as the fifty-first U.S. state by using tariffs as leverage. He has previously threatened to enact tariffs against Mexico unless the country stops sending “Crime and Drugs” across the border.

On Tuesday, Trump threatened a 10 percent tariff against China “based on the fact that they’re sending fentanyl to Mexico and Canada,” and said he was considering tariffs against the European Union over a $350 billion trade deficit. But at Davos, these threats did not go over well.

“Tariffs against friends and allies is a crazy idea,” Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told The Wall Street Journal. Likewise, the head of the World Trade Organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said tariffs would hurt global growth and could result in retaliatory tariffs, with devastating results.

“If we have tit-for-tat retaliation, whether it’s 25 percent tariff (or) 60 percent, and we go to where we were in the 1930s, we’re going to see double-digit global GDP losses. That’s catastrophic. Everyone will pay,” Okonjo-Iweala said at Davos Thursday.

Trump isn’t likely to listen to criticism over his tariff plans, even as economic experts say they will hurt the country, particularly areas that engage in cross-border trade like Texas. While he might engage in specific carve-outs for his corporate friends, for the most part, Trump plans to plow ahead with tariffs regardless of their devastating effects on the U.S. economy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to have successfully convinced Donald Trump that diminishing America’s nuclear weapons reserves would be a good thing.

Speaking before the World Economic Forum on Thursday, the forty-seventh president said that Putin had warmed to the idea of “denuclearization” between the two countries.

“We’d like to see denuclearization,” Trump told the conference. “I will tell you that President Putin really liked the idea of cutting way back on nuclear, and I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow.

“And China too, China liked it,” Trump added.

On Monday, Putin indicated that he was ready to discuss nuclear arms control, the war in Ukraine, and other security issues with Trump, reported Reuters.

The last and only remaining nuclear arms deal between the U.S. and Russia—the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, otherwise known as New START—is set to expire on February 5, 2026. The deal capped the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the two nations could deploy, as well as the number of land and water vehicles used to deliver them.

Legitimate international disarmament would, of course, be a good thing. But whether Putin would actually follow through on diminishing his nation’s nuclear stockpiles is unclear. For decades, Russia has spent millions working to replace and upgrade its strategic and nonstrategic nuclear systems.

As of early 2024, Russia possessed a total of 5,580 nuclear warheads, the most of any country in the world, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The nonprofit organization argued that the war in Ukraine had drastically depleted Russia’s “conventional forces,” pushing it to deepen its reliance on nuclear weapons for its national defense systems.

“Russia’s nuclear modernization programs—combined with frequent explicit nuclear threats against other countries in the context of its large conventional war in Ukraine—contribute to uncertainty about the country’s long-term intentions and have generated a growing international debate about the nature of its nuclear strategy,” read a Bulletin column.

The global security group further argued that the U.S. ballistic missile system could stand in the way of Russia’s eventual nuclear disarmament, claiming that the missile system “constitutes a real future risk to the credibility of Russia’s retaliatory capability.”

Some of Trump’s domestic decisions prior to entering the White House were reportedly “thrilling” to Russian mouthpieces. Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT, mocked American politicians in December for their stupidity while claiming that some of Trump’s more unqualified choices for his Cabinet—such as onetime DOGE co-chair nominee Vivek Ramaswamy and director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard—are friendly faces that bring the Kremlin “lots of joy.”

Donald Trump’s decision to press pause on communications from health organizations amid an escalating bird flu breakout could take America’s soaring egg prices and make them even worse.

The consumer price index found that egg prices have increased 36.8 percent from this time last year, and experts believe the increase in price is the result of avian influenza, which is rapidly depleting the supply of chickens.

If one bird is infected, farms are required by law to cull the entire flock. Axios reported Tuesday that in the previous 30 days, the bird flu affected nearly 12 million birds, according to data from USDA. If nothing changes, egg prices will only continue to rise. Trump, who brags that he won the presidency by promising to lower the prices of groceries, is obviously acting swiftly and effectively to address the issue, right?

Not quite. On Tuesday, the acting director of the Department of Health and Human Services paused the release of “regulations, guidance documents, and other public documents and communications” from all U.S. health and science agencies.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been planning to publish an issue of their “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” which contained several items pertaining to the bird flu outbreak and dairy and poultry farms. But as all communications have been put on hold, the issue was not released, according to The New York Times.

Meanwhile, the bird flu has already infected at least 67 people, resulting in its first human death last month.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump pardoned two Washington, D.C., police officers convicted of the 2020 killing of 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown, a young Black man.

Officers Terrence Sutton and Andrew Zabavsky were sentenced last September to 66 and 48 months in prison, respectively, for an “unauthorized police pursuit.” The two cops pursued Hylton-Brown after spotting him driving a moped without a helmet, and pursued him for 10 blocks, including going the wrong way down a one-way alley, until another vehicle hit and killed him.

Trump’s pardon came after Sutton and Zabavsky were unanimously found guilty by a federal grand jury in 2022 of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice over the incident, as well as second-degree murder in Sutton’s case. The D.C. Police Union asked for a pardon for the pair.

On Monday, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 of his supporters involved in the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, including violent criminals and people accused of attacking police officers. That drew a (delayed) condemnation Tuesday from the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, two police unions that endorsed Trump in the 2020 election.

The pardons to Sutton and Zabavsky indicate that the Trump administration is reviving its full-throated support of law enforcement, even when crimes are committed, with the lone exception for anything that goes against the right-wing culture war. Crimes committed by MAGA will also not be considered crimes, so long as they serve President Trump.