Trump Admits He Has No Leverage Over Putin in Ukraine

As the Russians predicted, the U.S. president’s “fire” has amounted to nothing.

Speaking with reporters in the White House Wednesday, Donald Trump was unable to pinpoint one consequence that Russia would face for continuing to attack Ukraine.

“Well, I’m not going to tell you exactly,” Trump said when asked. “The words speak pretty loud. We’re not happy about that situation.

“I think we’re going to see something very sensible, because there are only two outcomes,” he continued, completely evading specifics. “There’s a smart outcome and a violent outcome, and I don’t think anybody wants to see the second.… They still have to agree to the final stages of a document.”

On Tuesday, Russian state media effectively called Trump’s bluff, predicting that he wouldn’t have any follow-through on a social media–posted threat that Russia was “playing with fire” by refusing to negotiate toward an achievable peace deal with Ukraine.

Trump’s heavy hand on Ukraine and his repeated concessions toward Russia’s enduring violence have been interpreted by Kremlin propagandists as a massive win for Russian President Vladimir Putin, resulting in televised laughter at the downfall of American power. In the months since he took office, Trump has claimed that Russia has come ready and willing to reach a peace deal, even though many of their demands—such as staking a Russian flag in Crimea—reverse long-standing U.S. policy.

Following a deadly airstrike on Kyiv over the weekend, European leaders urged Western countries to enact sanctions on Moscow as a way to reel Putin back to the negotiating table. But when pressed Wednesday as to why America was still wringing its hands, Trump claimed that applying pressure would “hurt” a deal.

“If I think I’m close to getting a deal, I don’t want to screw it up by getting that,” Trump said, before attempting to redirect blame for the ongoing conflict. “This isn’t my war, this is Biden’s war, Zelenskiy’s war, and Putin’s war. This isn’t Trump’s war. I’m only here for one thing, to see if I can end it.”

But it’s unclear exactly how or when Trump will accomplish that. The president—who campaigned on a pledge to end the war within days of returning to the White House—told reporters Wednesday that he would circle back within two weeks with an answer as to whether Putin is even interested in ending the conflict.

Just about everyone in the U.S.—including Trump’s own party—wants the White House to act. Earlier this week, Senate Republicans resorted to begging Trump to take a stand against Russia while they mulled over the possibility of going over his head to enact the internationally recommended sanctions.

“The sanctions bill has 82 co-sponsors,” Senator Lindsey Graham wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Tuesday. “As [Senator John] Thune said last week, if Mr. Putin continues to play games, the Senate will act. I’m hoping for the best, but when it comes to the thug in Moscow, we should all prepare for more of the same.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced some bizarre new visa rules Wednesday against foreign officials curtailing the rights of Americans.

“For too long, Americans have been fined, harassed, and even charged by foreign authorities for exercising their free speech rights,” Rubio announced on X. “Today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy that will apply to foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans. Free speech is essential to the American way of life—a birthright over which foreign governments have no authority.”

In a follow-up post, Rubio said, “Foreigners who work to undermine the rights of Americans should not enjoy the privilege of traveling to our country. Whether in Latin America, Europe, or elsewhere, the days of passive treatment for those who work to undermine the rights of Americans are over.”

It’s not clear what prompted these new rules, or if there’s a particular case of an American being punished by a foreign government that Rubio is referring to. However, Elon Musk is facing legal issues in a number of countries over incendiary posts on X, such as Brazil, which briefly banned the platform last year amid rampant disinformation about the country’s 2022 election.

Musk also pushed disinformation last summer over far-right riots in the United Kingdom and continues to attack the country’s Labour government, earning a rebuke from Prime Minister Keir Starmer in January. Last month, European Union regulators were reportedly considering fines for the X platform and demanding product changes for breaking EU laws against illicit content and disinformation.

Is Rubio’s move designed to protect Musk, a major benefactor of Trump and the Republican Party? It’s ironic for the country’s top diplomat to complain about the free speech of Americans overseas when Rubio himself is targeting immigrants in the U.S., particularly international students, for exercising their own free speech rights, revoking their visas and trying to deport them.

One such student, Rümeysa Öztürk, was arrested after writing an opinion piece about Israel’s war on Gaza in her school newspaper, and Rubio even seemed to confirm last week that her detention and visa revocation were for that reason. Whatever is behind these new visa rules, it’s highly likely that they’re for something other than free speech because Rubio is clearly a hypocrite.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon is threatening to withhold federal funding from universities that don’t align themselves with Donald Trump’s administration.

During an interview on CNBC Wednesday, McMahon discussed whether other universities had to fear federal funding for academic research being ripped away, following the news that Trump planned to gut roughly $100 million in government contracts to Harvard.

“Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they’re abiding by the laws and are in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish—but primarily, abiding by the laws,” McMahon said.

The Department of Homeland Security has alleged that Harvard did not do enough to counter antisemitism on campus and baselessly claimed that the school had collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party.

Earlier this month, Trump signaled plans to have the university’s tax-exempt status revoked, and most recently tried to strip Harvard’s ability to enroll international students. A judge temporarily blocked the administration’s effort after the university immediately sued, calling the move an “unlawful and unwarranted action.”

“We had conversations with President [Alan] Garber, and I expected that we would have more, but Harvard’s answer was a lawsuit so that’s where we are now,” McMahon said.

Republican Representative and House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green wants the federal government to “listen” to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Russians don’t seem to be taking President Trump very seriously, it’s a sort of schizophrenic message coming out of them. I wouldn’t take what [Dmitry] Medvedev says very seriously, though. If you read his Twitter feed it’s … clearly absurd,” Green said, referring to the former Russian president, who recently alluded to the risk of World War III on X.

“I think we really just need to listen to Trump, Putin, the Kremlin, and our [National Security Council] folks. That’s who we need to be listening to,” the Tennessee congressman added.

A Republican congressman suggesting that we defer to the intelligence of the Kremlin is yet another example of just how far the party has departed from its long-held stance on Russia.

And exactly what NSC folks is Green talking about? Trump fired over 100 of them via email just before Memorial Day weekend. The NSC has been in disarray for months, as Signalgate saw the removal of Director Mike Waltz. Now, rife with internal turnover, it enters another crucial moment in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

A State Department spokesperson attacked Cindy McCain and the U.N. World Food Programme in a confused response to a question about aid reaching people in Gaza. 

Tammy Bruce was asked by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell about the resumption of aid trucks carrying food, water, and medicine into the territory following a three-month blockade by Israel, and seemed to be completely unaware of what was going on, saying that McCain, the head of the aid organization, should have “spoken up.”  

“This is, however, the first delivery of major aid, if not the only aid we’ve been hearing for months. I wish that Cindy McCain had spoken up that they had found a way to move food into Gaza because that certainly hadn’t been conveyed to us,” said Bruce on Tuesday. “But now—which, if that’s the case, that’s great.”

McCain said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday that claims by the U.S. and Israel that Hamas was looting aid trucks in Gaza were unfounded, saying that the territory’s residents were so desperate for aid that they were mobbing the trucks. 

“Listen, these people are desperate. They see a World Food Programme truck coming in, and they run for it,” McCain said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Hamas or any kind of organized crime, or anything.”

Bruce’s comments completely missed the fact that getting aid into Gaza was only difficult due to Israel closing all of Gaza’s crossings to aid trucks. Mitchell had to correct Bruce, telling her that until now, “there has been a blockade, a blockade by Israel of the food, so no one has been able to get through those crossings.” 

“Well, I thought you just said Cindy McCain said that she was able to do that. But I would also say that this process managed to overcome that dynamic, and the dynamic has changed,” Bruce said.

“Israel was blocking it,” Mitchell repeated.

“It clearly needs to expand. I don’t speak for this foundation, but clearly we’ve got to welcome any dynamic that allows getting aid and food into the region, which is happening right now. And that’s the story,” Bruce replied. 

Bruce, like many other Trump appointees, is a veteran of TV, in her case Fox News, and this isn’t the first time she has been caught off-guard by a basic question from a reporter. Last month, Bruce threw a tantrum over CNN’s Pamela Brown asking basic questions about Ukraine and Russia, and earlier this month, Bruce was taken aback when a reporter asked her about her boss, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, taking over as national security adviser. 

“It is clear that I just heard this from you,” a clearly flustered Bruce responded at the time. Clearly, she’s still out of her depth.

Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan bragged Tuesday that Democratic lawmakers haven’t done anything to stop the prosecution of one of their colleagues.

Fox News host Laura Ingraham asked Homan to respond to the “caterwauling” from the left over the outrageous charges against New Jersey Representative LaMonica McIver. Homan seemed pleased that by targeting McIver, he could push the buttons of another congressperson: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“Well remember, just a couple weeks ago AOC went on social media saying if we put a finger on any of her co-workers, uh congresspeople, that were at our York facility there would be consequences. Well guess what? We did it. I’m waiting on the consequences,” he replied smugly.

McIver was charged with “assaulting, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement,” after she and other lawmakers visited an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility to serve a summons over code violations discovered during an inspection. Instead, the group was barraged by federal agents and McIver was charged over allegedly attempting to stop the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.

Ocasio-Cortez had warned in an Instagram video, “If anyone’s breaking the law in this situation, it’s not members of Congress, it’s the Department of Homeland Security. It’s people like Tom Homan and Secretary Kristi Noem.”

“You lay a finger on someone, on Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman … or any of the representatives that were there, you lay a finger on them, we are going to have a problem,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Because the people who are breaking the law are the people not abiding by it.”

Homan has repeatedly antagonized the New York Democrat, threatening her with prosecution because she’d tried to educate immigrants about their legal rights and claiming she was teaching them to evade arrest. Ocasio-Cortez responded by calling Homan a “coward.”

Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t the only one who tried to talk tough about targeting Democratic lawmakers. “It’s a red line,” said Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries earlier this month. “They know better than to go down that road.”

Neither Jeffries nor Ocasio-Cortez has publicly taken any action, but the case against McIver is already falling apart. New York Representative Dan Goldman, a former prosecutor, told The Hill that the first document filed by the government was so ridiculously flawed that it was “one of the most embarrassing publicly filed charging documents from a U.S. attorney’s office that I’ve ever seen.”

The president’s attack on Big Law is so outrageous that it’s made at least one judge raise his voice, even on paper.

U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia Richard Leon struck down Donald Trump’s executive order targeting law firm WilmerHale Tuesday, describing the entire directive as “unconstitutional.” In a 73-page opinion, Leon took the time to explain the principles of democracy to the president, illustrating how his political retribution campaign is quintessentially antithetical to the foundational principles of the U.S. government.

“The cornerstone of the American system of justice is an independent judiciary and an independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting. The Founding Fathers knew this!” Leon wrote. “Accordingly, they took pains to enshrine in the Constitution certain rights that would serve as the foundation for that independence. Little wonder that in the nearly 250 years since the Constitution was adopted no Executive Order has been issued challenging these fundamental rights.

“Now, however, several Executive Orders have been issued directly challenging these rights and that independence,” Leon continued. “One of these Orders is the subject of this case. For the reasons set forth below, I have concluded that this Order must be struck down in its entirety as unconstitutional. Indeed, to rule otherwise would be unfaithful to the judgment and vision of the Founding Fathers!”

It’s highly unusual for judges to use even one exclamation point in their rulings. Leon used a total of 26.

The decision blocks Trump’s March 27 order, which instructed federal agencies to throw out WilmerHale’s government contracts and nix the firm’s federal building access along with their security clearances. WilmerHale was just one of many law firms targeted by the Trump administration for representing individuals that Trump has categorized as his political enemies, or for refusing to represent him during his monumental legal struggles last year. WilmerHale’s supposed crime—per the White House—was the fact that it “rewarded” Robert Mueller by keeping him on payroll after he investigated Trump’s ties to Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

But not every law firm was willing to ride out the wave of Trump’s encroaching federal directives. Several major law firms had caved to Trump by April, committing to provide the convicted felon with up to $600 million in “pro bono” legal services. But the original deal, as written, may not shake out for the famed deal-maker the way he’d hoped: Earlier this month, several firms argued that the capitulation had only stipulated “specified areas” that they needed to provide legal services for, effectively giving them free range to pick their own clients.

Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are giving ICE new ramped-up immigrant arrest quotas, demanding that the agency detain 3,000 people per day, sources told Axios. That number is three times the arrest rate at the beginning of Trump’s term.

According to people close to the situation, Miller, who is President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, lit into ICE officials in a meeting last week, addressing them so aggressively that some felt they were at risk of being fired if they didn’t meet the new quota. Noem spoke after Miller and apparently did less yelling but also called for more arrests.

Border crossings are down, ICE has nearly 50,000 people in custody, and thanks to Republicans’ budget bill, Trump will likely dedicate $147 billion over the next decade to continuing his wanton, draconian immigration policies—all while giving the finger to any judge who dares to mention basic constitutional principles like due process. And yet it still isn’t enough for Noem and Miller, who seem particularly invested in making this crackdown as horrifying as possible.

“Keeping President Trump’s promise to deport illegal aliens is something the administration takes seriously,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Axios. “We are committed to aggressively and efficiently removing illegal aliens from the United States, and ensuring our law enforcement officers have the resources necessary to do so. The safety of the American people depends upon it.”

Karoline Leavitt is trying to claim Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard are justified because the U.S. needs more trade workers.

The White House press secretary made the wild defense to Sean Hannity on Fox News Tuesday night, telling the conservative pundit that Trump is more interested in giving Harvard’s government funding “to trade schools, and programs, and state schools where they are promoting American values, but most importantly, educating the next generation based on skills that we need in our economy and our society.

“Apprenticeships, electricians, plumbers—we need more of those in our country, and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University, and that’s what this administration’s position is,” Leavitt said.

It’s insane that Leavitt thinks that the grants and contracts Trump has yanked away from Harvard are going to “LGBTQ graduate majors.” In reality, Harvard is losing stuff like $1 billion for health research, which could save a lot of lives. The president also tried to stop Harvard from enrolling international students, only to be blocked by a federal judge.

On Tuesday, Trump announced on Truth Social that he was “considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land. What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!”

But what would such a program even look like? The all-encompassing budget bill Trump is pushing to get passed doesn’t contain any new programs in that vein. In fact, the bill will restrict access to financial aid for working-class students going into all fields, including trade schools.

Trump is attacking foreign student enrollment at Harvard (and everywhere else) by claiming that Americans can now get those slots. But how will more Americans be able to attend with less financial aid? Meanwhile, Trump is also trying to eliminate the Department of Education, which will further hurt lower-income students trying to attend any form of higher education. All of the administration’s talk about supporting American students is a smokescreen. In reality, Trump is trying to force universities like Harvard to bow to him and conservative America.

Wall Street is beginning to understand the president’s roller-coaster foreign trade decisions with the help of a trendy acronym: TACO—or “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

The TACO theory was coined earlier this month by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, adding a catchy name to the practice of loading up on stocks when Donald Trump first announces the tariffs and then selling when he ultimately backtracks on enforcing them.

In a Wednesday note obtained by Market Watch, Sevens Report Research founder Tom Essaye insisted that Trump does, in fact, always chicken out. So far, that’s been true for enacting additional tariffs on Mexico and Canada, postponing his “reciprocal” tariff plan on dozens of countries after his “Liberation Day” announcement went south, delaying a tariff on imports from the European Union, and smashing his plan to fine China, temporarily decreasing tariffs on Chinese products to 30 percent from 145 percent.

“So, the returns are somewhat conclusive: The TACO trade has worked and buying stocks on extreme tariff-related threats has worked,” Essaye wrote, noting that the known gambit’s growing popularity will translate to diminished returns.

But investors aren’t the only power players taking note of Trump’s transparent poker face. On Tuesday, Russian state propagandists mocked the U.S. president for lacking any follow through, predicting in a tweet that Trump’s “playing with fire” threat would be reversed by a social media post the following morning.

Trump’s tariff proposals haven’t won the U.S. too much negotiating ground. Instead, countries around the world began observing earlier this month that—rather than playing the waiting game to meet with the White House over potential trade relief—China’s tough negotiating strategy with the former real estate mogul had actually gotten the eastern powerhouse a significantly better deal.

The Trump administration is running out of time to secure what it had promised would be “90 deals in 90 days” on U.S. trade. In the end, Washington may be left holding the bag for Trump’s outsize tariff ideas as other countries gamble that the U.S. will be the first to feel the sting of Trump’s tariffs.