JD Vance Escalates Conflict With Europe in Fever Speech

Vice President JD Vance ripped European leaders in a speech at the Munich Security Conference Friday, extolling nativism and far-right politics while downplaying Russia as nothing to worry about compared to “the threat from within.”

Vance told the stunned audience composed of foreign leaders, business executives, and others connected with international security that “the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor.

“What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America,” he added.

He went on to accuse European courts and officials of “canceling elections,” in a reference to Romania’s recent election and Germany’s upcoming election. Vance didn’t seem to notice the irony in any of his words, given his boss’s attempt to overthrow democracy on January 6, 2021.

The vice president criticized European leaders for being afraid of their own voters, in a nod to European far-right parties, such as the AfD in Germany, seeming to threaten a chilling of relations with governments whose ideologies differ from his and Trump’s.

“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump,” Vance said.

Hanging over the conference was Thursday’s attack in the German city, where a car driven by an Afghan immigrant ran into a crowd of people, injuring at least 28. Vance used the incident to bolster a nativist argument for restricting immigration.

“How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?” Vance asked.

“If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk,” Vance said, downplaying a man currently threatening America’s democracy, as well as that of Germany, and drawing a false equivalence between a climate activist and the world’s richest man.

The vice president may think he struck a blow for the Trump administration’s worldview in Munich Friday, but he’s missing the hypocrisy of his own words. The Trump administration has so far rammed through executive orders instead of passing laws, gutted the federal workforce, undermined the right to a free press, and ignored the outcry from all Americans outside of the MAGA bubble.

The president of the United States is roping the nation’s humanitarian aid–focused agency into his election conspiracy.

During a joint Oval Office appearance Thursday with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one particularly sycophantic individual identifying as press asked the U.S. commander in chief if he believed that USAID, which provides humanitarian assistance and funding for infrastructure and developmental tech in developing nations, had interfered in the 2020 and 2024 elections, the latter of which Trump won.

“President Trump, first of all, congratulations for a fantastic 24 days of your presidency. Historic and unprecedented decisions that you’ve made—” the reporter said before Trump interrupted: “I like her.”

“I’m particularly impressed by the exposé on USAID,” she continued. “And I would like you to share with us, if you think USAID had a role in election interference in the U.S. in 2020, and in the elections in 2024.”

To that, Trump said, “It could have had a role.”

“There were a lot of bad things that happened in 2020,” Trump said. “I think bad things happened in 2024, but it was too big. We won by a tremendous margin. And we want every swing state. We won the popular vote by millions of votes. So it was too big to rig.

“But yeah, I think they probably tried,” he continued. “We’re looking to go to a system now, much different, where one-day voting, voter ID, and just, we have to do that. And paper ballots, we want paper ballots. And when they do that, we’re gonna clean it up very, very well.”

Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him has been roundly and thoroughly debunked. Ex–special counsel Jack Smith wrote in a January letter to former Attorney General Merrick Garland that he believed there was enough evidence to convict Trump should the January 6 case have gone to trial.

Meanwhile, Trump’s continued attacks on USAID have only served to weaken America’s soft power on the international stage.

The information obtained through the agency’s work immediately aids and shields American citizens. Data aggregated from aid missions around the world inform U.S. policy on issues ranging from public health to diplomacy. Earlier this month, news that there was an Ebola outbreak in Kampala, Uganda, was reported via a USAID mission, for example. Choosing to nix the agency would force the U.S. into an information dark age that could see the country caught off guard in future health crises.

Regardless, Trump’s right hand, Elon Musk, has made it a personal mission to dismantle USAID. In a string of recent tweets, Musk has slammed USAID—which distributed more than $40 billion in congressionally appropriated foreign aid in 2023 and has closed $86 billion in private-sector deals—as a “criminal organization” that is an “arm of the radical-left globalists.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth thought it’d be nice to have white supremacist conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec by his side on his first overseas trip, according to The Washington Post.

Trump’s new defense secretary invited Posobiec ahead of his high-stakes trips to Europe this week, asking the far-right conspiracy theorist to join the “media” pool. It was unclear whether Posobiec accepted the invitation as Hegseth landed in Poland on Friday, but he has been documenting Hegseth’s activities on X every day.

“What SecDef Hegseth accomplished on this trip is historic. He delivered hard truths that are necessary to set conditions for peace,” Posobeic commented over a picture of Hegseth meeting with NATO on Thursday. “And he showed his true concern for the American soldier.”

“Just a photo of @PeteHegseth doing proper pushups in the snow in Poland in winter with the troops,” he posted again on Friday.

This decision has led defense officials to once again question Hegseth’s judgment, given that he has the conspiracy theorist behind “Pizzagate” tailing him on a diplomatic trip. This trip is yet another early example of the Trump administration’s willingness to go to war with the media. The only outlets traveling with Hegseth on his trip were Axios and three conservative outlets: Fox News, Newsmax, and Breitbart. Everyone else was sidelined.

Donald Trump’s administration is already holding the threat of prosecution over its newest puppet: New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

As Donald Trump’s so-called border czar Tom Homan sat on the couch next to Adams on Fox & Friends Friday morning, he joked that if Adams failed to carry out the administration’s crackdown on immigrants, the two would meet under much less friendly circumstances.

“If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on the couch, I’ll be in his office, I’ll be up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’” Homan said, laughing.

“I want ICE to deliver. I want ICE to deliver,” Adams interjected, briefly inventing a world in which he has any leverage over the administration.

“We are gonna deliver for the safety of this city,” Adams continued enthusiastically. Ultimately, Adams is something much worse than a puppet: He’s a shill, and a smiling one, who’s happily sold out his own constituents for a shot at not going to jail.

The immigration squad’s creepy duo act is especially eerie considering that acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon resigned Thursday, two days after acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop the charges against Adams, in return for Adams’s compliance in enforcing Trump’s immigration policies.

Bove claimed that the prosecution would hinder the mayor’s ability to target immigrants at Trump’s behest, but Sassoon, a Trump appointee with a strong conservative record, disagreed and said that Adams’s efforts were an “improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case.”

In a letter, Sassoon wrote that Adams’s lawyers had specifically sought a quid pro quo from the Department of Justice, one which he clearly received. In the days after Trump’s election, Adams traveled to Mar-a-Lago, presumably to make a similar case for how he could be useful to the president’s agenda, in return for being spared from his five damning public corruption charges alleging that he’d sought out and taken bribes from the Turkish government.

Sassoon also wrote that her office had planned to file a superseding indictment against Adams that would add an obstruction conspiracy count, based on evidence Adams had destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence.

Donald Trump may have given his defense secretary a pass on spelling out America’s negotiating position on Ukraine, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the Republican conference has been equally forgiving.

Senate Armed Services Chair Senator Roger Wicker torched Pete Hegseth’s speeches at the NATO conference in Munich this week, calling it a “rookie mistake” to tell the summit—and the world—that it would be “unrealistic” for Ukraine to return to its prewar borders.

Wicker said that the ex–Fox News co-host’s speech was akin to a Tucker Carlson monologue, whom he called a “fool.”

“Hegseth is going to be a great defense secretary, although he wasn’t my choice for the job,” Wicker, who nonetheless voted to confirm Hegseth, told Politico at the Munich Security Conference Thursday.

He slammed Hegseth’s decision to cede Ukraine’s border: “But he made a rookie mistake in Brussels and he’s walked back some of what he said but not that line.”

The staunch Ukraine supporter also said that he was “puzzled” and “disturbed” by Hegseth’s comments.

“Everybody knows … and people in the administration know you don’t say before your first meeting what you will agree to and what you won’t agree to,” Wicker said.

The editor of the conservative National Review also trashed Hegseth’s “disappointing” performance. Even though Hegseth (sort of) walked back his Ukraine claims, Mark Antonio Wright noted in an editorial that that “doesn’t excuse Hegseth and his staff for the amateur-hour bungling of yesterday’s speech and policy declaration.”

NATO allies were left reeling Wednesday after Hegseth pitched that America would effectively end its role as the steward of European security. He revealed that the administration’s peace talks with Russia had taken several chips “off the table,” including Ukraine’s possible NATO membership (something the military alliance had promised in 2008), the possibility of a U.S. presence in Ukraine to enforce postwar security guarantees, and the end of NATO missions to Ukraine.

The defense secretary’s “unrealistic” comment also drew the ire of defense experts, who saw the admission as another lost chip that effectively forces Ukraine to cede territory to Russia.

It was a stunning show of inexperience for the former Fox News host, who apparently needed to walk back some of those brazen settlement terms while speaking before NATO on Thursday. Hegseth insisted that, despite his having already shown America’s hand, “everything is on the table” when it comes to arranging peace between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

“What he decides to allow or not allow is at the purview of the leader of the free world, of President Trump,” Hegseth said Thursday. “I’m not going to stand at this podium and declare what President Trump will do or won’t do.”

During an Oval Office press conference Thursday unveiling his new “reciprocal tariff” plan, Trump denied telling Hegseth to walk back his comments, describing them as “pretty accurate.”

Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, have been making deals and raking in money ever since Trump won the election, including a cool $40 million to license Melania’s documentary about returning to the White House as first lady.

That’s just one of Trump’s numerous moneymaking schemes since his return to office, which have netted him and his family nearly $80 million so far, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. That includes donations to his future presidential library and a hefty $10 million settlement with Elon Musk’s X. That sum doesn’t include the millions the president and first lady have each netted from “meme coin” cryptocurrency ventures, a blatant means of scamming MAGA supporters.

Melania’s upcoming Amazon documentary may be one of the most obviously corrupt deals. The Journal reports that the first lady, the president, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, all had dinner at Mar-a-Lago in December, where Melania sold Bezos on her movie. Two weeks after that dinner, Amazon agreed to shell out the $40 million, nearly three times as much as the next best offer and the most the company has ever spent on a documentary.

The first lady is reportedly getting over 70 percent of the $40 million, and her agent is trying to sell “sponsorships” to executives and billionaires for the movie, with $10 million as the starting price. In return, these sponsors would get thanked in the credits and be invited to the premiere.

Some of Amazon’s competitors weren’t even interested in the film. Netflix and Apple declined to field offers, while Paramount only bid $4 million on distribution rights. The only other company that showed some interest was Disney, but their offer was just $14 million.

According to an Amazon spokesperson, “We licensed the upcoming Melania Trump documentary film and series for one reason and one reason only—because we think customers are going to love it.”

That seems hard to believe. Amazon and Bezos are shelling out money not because they love the documentary but because they are cozying up to the president to stay on his good side and hopefully get some favorable decisions from the Republican-controlled government. In Trump’s second term, it’s all about cash for favors, with no concern about appearing corrupt.

The DOGE website is wide open and vulnerable to hackers, according to reporting from 404 Media. Two coders had already infiltrated the site and left their own messages on it at the time of 404’s reporting on Thursday evening: “THis is a joke of a .gov site,” said one, and “THESE ‘EXPERTS’ LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN -roro” said another. 

This will be unsurprising to anyone who has visited the DOGE.gov website since its inception—it looks like a high schooler could’ve made it. 404’s Jason Koebler previously referred to it as “just a Wordpress theme placeholder page.”  

Anonymous experts told 404 Media that the DOGE.gov website is supported by a Cloudflare page outside of government servers, making it easily accessible to third-party hackers. 

“Feels like it was completely slapped together,” one of the sources said. “Tons of errors and details leaked in the page source code.”

Musk has yet to comment on the hacks as he continues promising “transparency.”

It seems like New York Mayor Eric Adams got exactly what he wanted from Donald Trump’s Department of Justice—and then some.

Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon resigned Thursday, two days after acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop the charges against Adams. Bove claimed that they hindered the mayor’s ability to target immigrants at Trump’s behest.

In a scathing eight-page letter announcing her resignation, Sassoon revealed that her office was preparing to hit Adams with a superseding indictment from a new grand jury.

“We have proposed a superseding indictment that would add an obstruction conspiracy count based on evidence that Adams destroyed and instructed others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI, and that would add further factual allegations regarding his participation in a fraudulent straw donor scheme,” Sassoon wrote.

Sassoon, who has a strong conservative record and clerked for late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, warned that dismissing the case against Adams would amplify—rather than abate—concerns about weaponization in the Department of Justice.

Adams was previously hit with a 57-page indictment, including five damning public corruption charges, alleging that he’d sought out and taken bribes from the Turkish government. The indictment refers to “a senior official in the Turkish diplomatic establishment” who “facilitated many straw donations” to Adams on behalf of foreign nationals and businesses.

Sassoon’s letter revealed that Adams’s attorneys were up to a similar gambit during his negotiations with the Justice Department. During a meeting on January 31 with Bove, Adams’s lawyers, and members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, “Adams’s attorneys repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the Department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed,” Sassoon wrote, in a footnote of her letter.

“Mr. Bove admonished a member of my team who took notes during that meeting and directed the collection of those notes at the meeting’s conclusion,” Sassoon said, indicating that Bove didn’t wish for a record of Adams’s request to exist. It seems that Adams got exactly what he wanted from Trump’s DOJ.

In her letter, Sassoon criticized the rationale behind dismissing the charges, arguing that Bove and the DOJ had “reached this conclusion without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which this case is based.” Instead, Bove argued that dismissal was necessary on policy grounds because the “pending prosecution has unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior administration.”

Sassoon pointed out that “Adams has already seized on the memo to publicly assert that he is innocent and that the accusations against him were unsupported by the evidence and based only on ‘fanfare and sensational claims.’”

“Confidence in the Department would best be restored by means well short of a dismissal,” she added.

Three senior Justice Department officials resigned Thursday rather than drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. 

On Monday, acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop the charges against Adams, claiming that they limited Adams’s ability to help President Trump’s crackdown on immigrants. Apparently, that did not sit well with the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, who opted to resign instead.   

After her office refused to drop the charges against Adams, the DOJ then sought to move the case over to the agency’s Public Integrity Section in Washington, D.C., which handles all federal public corruption cases. But then, the section’s acting head, John Keller, left his position rather than drop the charges. 

As a result, Adams’s case went to the DOJ’s criminal division, which oversees every federal criminal case in the country. Kevin Driscoll, the division’s acting head, didn’t want to drop the charges either, and he then resigned. 

Of all three, Sassoon’s resignation is the most surprising, considering that she has a strong conservative resume. A member of the influential Federalist Society, she once clerked for Supreme Court Justice and conservative stalwart Antonin Scalia. More recently, she captured the national spotlight for prosecuting cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

The stunning sequence of events evokes memories of the “Saturday Night Massacre” of 1973, when President Nixon tried to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was tasked with investigating the infamous Watergate scandal, causing the top two officials in the DOJ to resign instead. It was only the third ranking DOJ official at the time, conservative Robert Bork, who finally agreed to carry out the firing. 

The Trump administration appears to be doing Adams a favor for cozying up to the president, ignoring the multiple counts of fraud and bribery against Adams for actions going back to 2014, when he was Brooklyn borough president. It seems that some of the DOJ’s prosecutors can see the corruption coming from on high, even those with right-wing backgrounds.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum threatened Thursday to sue Google after it changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico in its maps, in compliance with Donald Trump’s superficial executive order.

Google announced Tuesday that it had updated the name of the body of water on its maps system, keeping with the standards set by the federal Geographic Names Information System. In the U.S., the name would appear as the inane “Gulf of America”; in Mexico, the “Gulf of Mexico”; and everywhere else would see a monstrous “Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America).”

During a press conference Thursday, Sheinbaum said that her government had exchanged letters with Google about the issue but that the company had not resolved the complaints.

“Who we have a dispute with is Google,” Sheinbaum said, according to Bloomberg. “If they keep insisting, we’ll consider a lawsuit.”

Sheinbaum argued that Trump’s vanity project could remain but that it needed to be limited to a small section of the gulf, saying that “the only place it was effective was where [the U.S.] has sovereignty, or up to 22 nautical miles from the coast,” according to Reuters.

It’s worth noting that Google CEO Sundar Pichai was among those invited to flank Trump at the inauguration, cementing just how important the administration’s ties to Silicon Valley are and just how much these pitiable tech bros hope to stay in the pocket of the president.