Trump Short-Circuits When Asked if U.S. Policy Is Aligning With Russia

Donald Trump buffered while trying desperately to talk around a direct question Monday about aligning U.S. foreign policy with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s designs for Ukraine. 

During a press conference, Trump was asked whether he was “considering canceling military aid to Ukraine” after his disastrous meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy Friday. 

Trump and Vice President JD Vance put on an outrageous display berating the wartime president for failing to prostrate before them as they demanded he pay the U.S. back for aid, imploding negotiations with Ukraine to the delight of the Kremlin.  

The president was also asked to respond to concerns that he was moving the “U.S. worldview in alignment with Moscow.”

In response, Trump rattled off a list of everything that “would have never happened” if he’d won the presidential election four years ago. 

Trump’s nonanswer, which veered further and further off-topic, included the October 7 massacre, “Israel,” inflation, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, and China possessing the Bagram Air Base (the Taliban has denied that China controls the former U.S. base). Finally, he circled back to Ukraine—but only to complain, not to actually answer the question. 

“I wanna see it end fast. I don’t want to see this go on for years and years. Now, President Zelenskiy supposedly made a statement today in AP—I’m not a big fan of AP, so maybe it was an incorrect statement—but he said he thinks the war is gonna go on for a long time, uh and he better not be right about that, that’s all I’m saying,” Trump said.

Zelenskiy was quoted Monday saying that peace with Russia “is still very, very far away,” following his talk with the U.S. president. Trump called the quote “the worst statement that could have been made,” in a post on Truth Social.

Trump was also asked whether Americans should be disturbed that Kremlin officials said his foreign policy was “largely in line” with Russia’s vision.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, I think it takes two to tango,” Trump replied. “And you’re gonna have to make a deal with Russia, and you’re gonna have to make a deal with Ukraine. You’re gonna have to have the, uhhhh, assent and you’re gonna have to have the consent from the European nations, ’cause I think that’s important—and from us. I think everybody has to get into a room, so to speak, and we have to make a deal. And the deal could be made very fast. It should not be that hard a deal to make. It could be made very fast.” 

Trump previously claimed that he could resolve the war within 24 hours of entering the White House. 

Then the president pivoted to continue whining about Zelenskiy: “Now maybe somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, and if somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, I think that person won’t be around very long. That person will not be listened to very long. Because I believe that Russia wants to make a deal. I believe certainly the people of Ukraine want to make a deal—they’ve suffered more than anybody else. We talk about suffering, they suffered.”

“But if you think about it, under President Bush they got Georgia, right? Russia got Georgia. Under President Obama they got a nice big submarine base, a nice big chunk of land where they have their submarines. You know that, right? Crimea,” Trump said, inhaling heavily. 

It’s worth remembering that Trump had been a cheerleader for Putin following Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, claiming that Crimeans “would rather be with Russia.” 

“Under President Trump they got nothing. And under President O’Biden they tried to get the whole thing,” Trump said, garbling his predecessor’s name. “They tried to get the whole big, uh, big Ukraine. The whole thing. If I didn’t get in here, they would have gotten the whole thing.”

Trump’s support for the foreign dictator emboldened Russia, and his lack of support for Zelenskiy weakened the country, making way for Russia to launch its ground offensive in 2022.

With Trump in office, Russia wouldn’t walk away empty-handed. 

The White House instructed the State and Treasury departments Monday to draft a plan lifting U.S. sanctions on Russian individuals and entities, including oligarchs, who Trump recently claimed “are very nice people.” It wasn’t immediately clear what the U.S. would receive in return for sanctions relief. And earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth suggested that Kyiv should abandon hopes of restoring its illegally seized territory from Russia.

A leading spokesperson in the Department of Health and Human Services announced his resignation Monday after stark disagreements with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over how to manage the growing measles outbreak.

Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Thomas Corry resigned effective immediately on Friday only two weeks after starting the job, he posted on LinkedIn, wishing his colleagues in the department “the best and great success.” Corry reportedly butted heads with Kennedy and Kennedy’s principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, over how to manage the department, according to Politico.

Specifically, Corry was not happy with Kennedy’s initial response to Texas’s growing measles outbreak, which has infected at least 146 people and caused the first measles death in the United States in 10 years. Last week, Kennedy said during a Cabinet meeting that measles outbreaks were not unusual, despite the fact that measles had been declared eliminated in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Since then, Kennedy said that HHS was helping health officials in Texas respond to the outbreak and spoke approvingly of the measles vaccine, but has still stopped short of calling for everyone to get vaccinated, writing Sunday in a Fox News op-ed that “the decision to vaccinate is a personal one.”

“Parents play a pivotal role in safeguarding their children’s health,” he wrote. “All parents should consult with their healthcare providers to understand their options to get the [measles, mumps, and rubella] vaccine.

Corry is a Trump administration veteran, having served during the president’s first term as senior adviser and communications director at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, so his resignation so soon into Trump’s second term is sure to arouse suspicion. Kennedy has long had a reputation for being anti-vaccine, although he tried to deny his previous comments during his confirmation hearings.

Since his confirmation to lead HHS, Kennedy’s actions have not been reassuring. He has paused multiple vaccine developments in the department and on his first day fired critical employees, including members of the CDC who respond to outbreaks. Only a couple of years after a global Covid-19 pandemic, Kennedy is applying the wrong lessons and is not proving himself to be up to managing the country’s public health.

In a move to further castigate the Ukrainian president, Trump reportedly wants Volodymyr Zelenskiy to formally apologize for his behavior before any rare earths deal goes forward.

“I have been told by a senior official here that nothing’s gonna happen with this minerals deal until Zelenskiy goes in front of cameras and makes an explicit public apology for the way that he behaved himself in the Oval Office,” said Fox’s Peter Doocy on Monday.

This is more fallout from the disastrous meeting that Zelenskiy, Trump, and Vice President JD Vance had on Friday, in which the president and his sidekick berated the weary Zelenskiy to his face, chiding the Ukrainian president for not respecting them enough and not appearing gracious enough while he deals with Russia’s unprompted assault—which Trump also blames him for. Trump later kicked him out.

Trump has been particularly obsessed with these minerals in the past weeks, making a deal a prerequisite for any further aid to Ukraine. Now it’s looking like the U.S. will waltz in and seize control—with the Kremlin’s help.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is once again reorganizing its wall of hunting trophies from supposedly slain government contracts. This time, it has quietly removed five of its seven largest kills from last week, erasing $4 billion in supposed savings.

The New York Times reported Monday that the night before, DOGE erased or altered 1,000 claimed savings, or roughly 40 percent of entries into its “wall of receipts,” which has previously proven to be exaggerated or fraudulent. That appears to have been the case with the contracts that were removed Sunday.

The removals included the site’s biggest trophy, a canceled contract with Centennial Technologies for technical support for the IRS, which was supposedly worth $1.9 billion. Although DOGE had bragged about the “incredible job” the U.S. Treasury had done in identifying the waste, the Times reported earlier last month that the contract had actually been canceled in November, during the Biden administration. On Sunday, it disappeared from the wall.

Another vanished entry claimed $133 million in savings from canceling a contract between USAID and development firm Chemonics International in Libya, but a LinkedIn post revealed that the contract had ended last year.

In some cases, it seems that DOGE didn’t even earn its biggest hunting trophies. Other entries were removed due to obvious accounting mistakes that appeared to be the product of human error.

One claimed $149 million in savings from a canceled contract to provide administrative support to the Department of Health and Human Services. But DOGE’s website linked to the wrong contract, which didn’t list the correct company, purpose, or value.

Even after the latest round of deletions, errors still persisted on the site. DOGE still claimed that it had saved $106 million by canceling two contracts for administrative support to the U.S. Coast Guard—but in reality, those contracts were completed during the Bush administration.

This isn’t the first time that this has happened. DOGE’s website, which was once meant to showcase the organization’s major victories, has turned into a hall of humiliation, subject to constant reorganization and worthy of extreme doubt. The latest massive deletion has yet to be acknowledged by DOGE.

Just last week, DOGE deleted the top five highest savings from its website, after various news outlets documented the multiple errors in its accounting, including a $232 million cut to the Social Security Administration that was actually only $560,000, an $8 billion cut at Immigration and Customs Enforcement that was worth about $8 million, and three supposedly $655 million cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development that amounted to only $18 million.

Despite the rescission of some of the group’s largest cuts, the website now boasts to have saved $105 billion, as a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.”

The Department of Government Efficiency’s wide-ranging and haphazard cuts to the federal government have reached the nation’s nuclear safety programs.

Just before Valentine’s Day, at the direction of Elon Musk, the Trump administration nixed 17 percent of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s workforce despite the objections of senior officials, The Washington Post reported Monday.

“The president said workers critical to national security would be exempt from the firings. But then there was an active decision to say these positions are not critical to national security,” one unidentified official at the agency told the Post. “It is so absurd I don’t even know what to say.”

Previous reporting had revealed that the staff reductions at the nuclear agency were part of a larger layoff by DOGE directed at the Department of Energy that sought to ax up to 2,000 employees. DOGE pledged that the mass firing only affected noncritical employees who “held primarily administrative and clerical roles,” but that was little more than a bold-faced lie.

One of the staffers forced out of his position included acting Chief of Defense Nuclear Safety James Todd, a senior executive official and the “top authority for all nuclear-safety matters in the agency,” The Bulwark reported last month.

Other critical employees dismissed in the purge included staffers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is responsible for maintaining and minimizing radiation and potential damage from accidents at the nuclear site. The cut workers included an emergency preparedness manager, a radiation protection manager, the security manager, the fire protection engineer, and two facility representatives.

The losses were considered so ill-advised and extreme that the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration reversed course on the hatchet job, welcoming the affected employees back to their jobs. The White House also walked back the decision after it received a “stream of panicked calls” from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who demanded the immediate reinstatement of some 314 nuclear staff workers, including engineers, technicians, and managers, according to the Post.

“These are jobs directly tied to keeping bad things from happening at facilities in places like Tennessee, Texas, New Mexico, Nebraska, and Kansas City, Missouri,” another anonymous official who recently left their job told the newspaper. “A lot of them are in red states. These lawmakers are not thrilled by the potential for bad things happening in their communities.”

But the process wasn’t as simple as an invite back to the office. Instead, dejected and “shell shocked” employees at the NNSA are considering early retirement or looking for work in more stable sectors, unsure of if or when the Trump administration might try to dismiss them again, according to The Bulwark.

Musk’s rapid-fire cuts at the NNSA serve as another monstrous example that Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” philosophy can’t be easily adopted or translated into a federal bureaucracy providing critical services. The tech billionaire has similarly had to walk back cuts that his juvenile team made to the nation’s disease-prevention programs, as well as Food and Drug Administration teams responsible for reviewing AI-assisted surgery protocols and food safety, among other layoffs.

Further still, DOGE has not lived up to its promises. The organization has had to rescind claims that it saved the government billions of dollars, deleting details from the group’s “wall of receipts” after journalists fact-checked that the programs they slashed never actually tallied up to the bold savings.

Trump issued an ominous message to American farmers as he announced his planned kneecapping of their most profitable market: foreign exports.

“To the Great Farmers of the United States: Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun!”

This will have a massive, direct impact on how much money farmers—many of whom are still reeling from the tariffs (and subsequent bailout) from Trump’s first term—will make from the products they grow. Agricultural exports like soybeans, grains, fruit, vegetables, and livestock products provided U.S. farmers with about $180 billion in annual revenue in the 2023 fiscal year.

It’s unlikely that the farmers will see the “fun” in having to radically readjust their processes for less revenue. This coincides with Trump’s tariff war, as he plans to levy massive 25 percent tariffs on imported goods from Canada and Mexico and 10 percent on goods from China. Chinese state media over the weekend reported that China planned to retaliate with tariffs on U.S. agriculture—perhaps leading Trump to decide to destroy American farmers himself.

Donald Trump is celebrating his administration’s move to ignore a law that targeted money laundering.

On Sunday, the Treasury Department announced that it would stop enforcing “any penalties or fines associated with the beneficial ownership information reporting rule under the existing regulatory deadlines, but it will further not enforce any penalties or fines against U.S. citizens or domestic reporting companies or their beneficial owners after the forthcoming rule changes take effect either.”

In effect, the government will no longer require shell companies to disclose their owners and beneficiaries, allowing wealthy corporations and individuals to hide their profits from the public. The rule was part of the Corporate Transparency Act, or CTA, passed in 2021, which required some businesses to report information on people who own or control a company, indirectly or directly, to the department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Trump quickly took to Truth Social after the Treasury announcement, posting, “Exciting News!”

“This Biden rule has been an absolute disaster for Small Businesses Nationwide,” Trump’s post read. “Furthermore, the Treasury is now finalizing an Emergency Regulation to formally suspend this rule for American businesses. The economic menace of [Beneficial Ownership Information] reporting will soon be no more.”

Republicans have long opposed the CTA, claiming that the requirements are too steep for small businesses and companies to fulfill. The rule on beneficial ownership was supposed to go into effect in January, but a federal court order froze enforcement of the rule. The CTA was passed by the Biden administration to tackle tax evasion and corporate cronyism, which, unsurprisingly, is at odds with the Trump administration.

Since his inauguration, Trump has gone after financial regulation as well as government agencies that seek to curb corporate power, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Earlier this month, the president also issued an executive order freezing enforcement of the 48-year-old Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits any person or company tied to the United States from paying money or offering gifts to foreign officials to help their business.

It seems that Trump wants his friends in the corporate world, as well as his own businesses, to be able to rake in profits with much less restrictions, and if they so choose, hide them from the public. It will now be easier for a business with unpopular practices, or a president with shady business interests, to avoid scrutiny.

The Democratic National Committee has decided to double down on the same losing strategies that lost it the last election.

Newly elected DNC Chair Ken Martin on Monday named Roger Lau as executive director of the committee. Lau has been serving as the DNC’s deputy executive director since 2021, joining the committee after running Elizabeth Warren’s unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign.

Politico’s Lisa Kashinsky noted that Lau’s appointment was a sign that the party is “taking a stay-the-course approach to staffing despite the party’s losses in November.… Their selections reflect the DNC’s post-election preference for experienced operatives over shaking up the party apparatus on South Capitol Street.”

Former DNC chief of staff Libby Schneider will become deputy executive director, after previously serving as a senior adviser and national rural political director. Jessica Wright, who worked most recently as Biden’s State Department chief of staff for operations, will also join the DNC as deputy executive director as well as the new chief of staff to the chair. Ohio Representative Joyce Beatty, Washington State Democrats Chair Shasti Conrad, and union chief Stuart Appelbaum will be associate chairs.

The party faces a crossroads between business-as-usual moderate liberalism and a more aggressive attempt at large, progressive policy. It seems clear that it’s chosen the former, as centrists gather behind closed doors to blame identity politics for their loss and the party picks Senator Elissa Slotkin to respond to Trump’s joint congressional address on Tuesday. Only time will tell how far this 2016-esque approach to politics will get the party. Right now, it’s mostly just resulted in political failure.

Unable to acknowledge that Americans might actually be upset with his agenda, Donald Trump has cooked up a bizarre theory to explain the mass protests taking place in Republican lawmakers’ town halls across the country. But the rationale behind the idea sounds awfully familiar to his presidential election conspiracy.

“Paid ‘troublemakers’ are attending Republican Town Hall Meetings,” Trump posted on Truth Social Monday morning. “It is all part of the game for the Democrats, but just like our big LANDSLIDE ELECTION, it’s not going to work for them!”

Republican lawmakers were met with fire and fury over the weekend as their constituents hounded them for failing to intervene in a budget resolution that will result in billions in cuts to Medicaid, as well as refusing to speak out against Elon Musk’s unchecked dissolution of federal agencies and, with it, thousands of federal jobs and popular social programs.

On Saturday, Kansas Senator Roger Marshall ended his town hall early, walking out to a cacophony of boos after a couple of attendees brought up concerns over DOGE’s decision to fire some 6,000 veterans.

In Tennessee, a crowd before Representative Diana Harshbarger screamed “No!” when the Republican lawmaker asked if there had been a “mandate to the president from the American people,” who she claimed “overwhelmingly” voted Trump in.

“The Congressional Budget Office—do you know what it’s going to be by 2035?” Harshbarger asked the crowd, referring to the federal deficit. “It’s going to be $59 trillion.”

“We’re giving the billionaires tax cuts!” shouted a man in response.

The seismic cuts to the federal government—which include a $880 billion slash to Medicare—are a trade-off for conservatives who were tasked by Trump to extend his 2017 tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.

In Texas, more than 100 attendees at Representative Keith Self’s town hall in deep-red Collins County shouted at the Republican for so long that it was difficult for Self to get a word in. At one point, the crowd stood up and chanted and clapped to “vote him out!”

The venomous protests are a warning sign for the Trump administration that public patience is already wearing thin for his aggressive agenda. Last month, Missouri Representative Mark Alford was practically shut down at his own town hall after he expressed support for Musk’s massive layoff plan. At one point, while suggesting to the crowd that they could vote for someone else in the next election if they didn’t approve of Musk’s appointment, one person shouted back, “We didn’t elect Elon!”

Alford seemed to take a page out of Trump’s own playbook in the immediate aftermath, refusing to chalk up the local frustration to his own inaction. In an interview with CNN, Alford referred to his own constituents as “outside agitators.”

Donald Trump’s recent spate of crackdowns and reshuffling at the Voice of America reveal the administration’s plan to transform the award-winning newsroom into a MAGA propaganda machine.

VOA’s chief national correspondent, Steve Herman, was placed under investigation last week, for allegedly expressing political bias against the Trump administration in his social media posts, according to The New York Times.

A memo sent to Herman listed a swath of reasons he’d come under scrutiny. One of the reasons cited is Trump’s executive order titled “One Voice for America’s Foreign Relations,” which includes the provision that “failure to faithfully implement the President’s policy is grounds for professional discipline, including separation.”

Herman said he has been placed under a paid “excused absence” and expects to lose his job, according to NPR.

This isn’t the first time Herman has been the subject of this kind of investigation: He was the subject of a probe about the same supposed issue during the last year of Trump’s first administration. That time, leadership at the U.S. Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, which oversees VOA, had claimed that Herman’s posts relaying criticism of Trump betrayed a political bias. A federal judge found that former USAGM CEO Michael Pack had violated journalists’ First Amendment rights by interfering with VOA.

By comparison, this probe is coming directly from VOA’s acting senior program director, John Featherly, with the approval of VOA’s director, Michael Abramowitz, a Biden-era figure. But again, the probe specifically cites Herman’s engagement with social media posts regarding the second Trump administration’s trove of controversies.

Crucially, Herman himself is not expressing any attitudes, only sharing perspectives critical of the Trump administration—not atypical for a journalist.

At the same time, VOA moved its White House bureau chief, Patsy Widakuswara, who has 27 years of experience, to another beat. Journalists at VOA told NPR that no rationale was given for the reshuffling.

That wasn’t the only shakeup at VOA last week.

Former TV anchor turned failed MAGA Senate candidate Kari Lake was made a special adviser at VOA, pending her confirmation to run the agency. Trump’s pick to head USAGM, Brent Bozell III, needs to be confirmed before Lake can formally take the reins from Abramowitz.

Lake has alleged liberal bias at VOA but promised that the agency “won’t become Trump TV.”

In an email announcing her appointment, USAGM’s chief, Roman Napoli, wrote that Lake’s experience “will be invaluable as we continue our mission to clearly and effectively present the policies of the Trump Administration around the world.”

As Brian Stelter, CNN’s chief media analyst, pointed out in a series of posts on X Monday, “That is NOT the assignment that Congress gave USAGM.” Rather, the mission statement of USAGM, which is codified into U.S. law, is to “inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy.”

Herman’s likely dismissal and Widakuswara’s reassignment are “having a chilling effect on the entire institution,” one VOA staffer said, according to Stelter.

Some staffers believe that the changes are part of management’s efforts to obey in advance of true scrutiny from the Trump administration, Stelter reported. And apparently, it’s been going on for a while. “Four sources told CNN on condition of anonymity that multiple Trump-related stories have been watered down in recent months,” Stelter wrote.