Trump Picks Bonkers Time to Talk About Nuking Foreign Cities

Donald Trump compared his strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities to a war-ending nuclear attack, while his own government has given an early assessment that the mission wasn’t the success he’s claimed.

During a press conference Wednesday at the NATO summit in The Hague, Trump desperately defended his military strike in Iran, following the leak of an intelligence report from the Pentagon that said that the sites had not been completely destroyed.

“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use the example of Nagasaki. But that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war, this ended the war,” Trump said. “If we didn’t take that out, they would be fighting right now.”

While Trump may desire the grandeur of his own nuclear attack—he really should not, but obviously, it’s on his mind—it seems he may be a lot closer to former President George W. Bush’s infamous “mission accomplished” blunder.

Within hours of the strike on Iran, Trump claimed that U.S. forces had “completely and fully obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. But an early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency found that the attack had only delayed Iran’s nuclear program by a few months, according to multiple outlets.

When pressed on the report, Trump said the intelligence had been “very inconclusive,” but that because the report had said that “it could have been very severe,” he understood it to mean “obliteration.”

Just months ago, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified that Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon” when presenting the U.S. Annual Threat Assessment. Trump has repeatedly dismissed that finding, opting instead to believe Israeli intelligence. While speaking at The Hague, the president claimed that Israel’s nascent report would find that they had achieved “total obliteration.”

A progressive won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary Tuesday, sending the far-right media sphere into a tailspin.

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign platform was practically the opposite of the president’s, arguing for higher taxes on corporations and the ultrawealthy, pitching new green initiatives for public facilities, making the city an LGBTQIA+ sanctuary, and advocating for raising the city’s minimum wage. It also planned for “Trump-proofing NYC,” lobbying for countermeasures against Donald Trump’s ICE raids, skyrocketing prices under his tariff proposal, and saving vital social services for working New Yorkers.

So Trump’s allies did not take kindly to the news.

New York Representative Elise Stefanik derided Mamdani as a “radical, Defund-the-Police, Communist, raging Antisemite,” arguing that New York Governor Kathy Hochul and state Democrats had “fully embraced Marxism, antisemitism, anti-capitalism, and sheer insanity.”

“New Yorkers understand that Kathy Hochul and Far Left Socialist Democrats are destroying our great state with sanctuary state and defund the police policies, high taxes, and raging antisemitism combined with failed, ineffective, and bloated government paid for by hardworking New Yorkers,” Stefanik wrote on X.

“Voters will say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH next year,” Stefanik continued, threatening Hochul’s seat. “And mark my words Kathy Hochul, we are going to fire you in 2026 to SAVE NEW YORK.”

In a fundraising email sent prior to the primary results, Stefanik had accused Mamdani of being a “terrorist sympathizer.” Mamdani has caught heavy flak from conservatives and Zionists for supporting a nonviolent, Palestinian-led movement known as boycott, divestment, and sanctions, or BDS, that advocates for economic sanctions against Israel. During the mayoral debates, Mamdani’s connection to New York City’s Jewish community was thrown a bizarre curveball when he was asked, as a hypothetical mayor of New York City, if he would visit Israel.

In the wake of Mamdani’s win, far-right influencer Laura Loomer said that “there will be another 9/11 in NYC” and that Mamdani “will be to blame.” Charlie Kirk insinuated that Muslims shouldn’t hold public office because of the terrorist attack.

And conservative YouTuber Benny Johnson circulated an image of the burning Twin Towers, while baselessly accusing Mamdani of being a “Muslim jihadist.”

Donald Trump furiously pushed back Wednesday against reports that his surprise strike on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities hadn’t “completely and fully obliterated” them as he’s previously claimed.

While attending a NATO summit in The Hague, Trump attacked multiple news outlets that had reported the day before on a damning early assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency, which found his strike on Iran hadn’t completely destroyed the country’s nuclear capabilities and instead only delayed it a few months. Once the president got going, he couldn’t stop.

“This was an unbelievable hit by genius pilots and genius people in the military, and they’re not being given credit for it because we have scum,” Trump said, referring to some reporters in the room. “CNN is scum. MSDNC is scum. The New York Times is scum. They’re bad people. They’re sick. And what they’ve done is they’re trying to make this unbelievable victory into something less.”

Trump, who regularly rails against the press, claimed he was only doing so on behalf of the service members who’d executed the strike.

“Very unfair to the pilots that risk their lives for our country, and then they get fake news New York Times and CNN make up a phony story to get some hits. That’s the only reason I care about it, because those pilots were so brave, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said. “They flew into the hornets’ nest and then they got hurt so badly by what the fake news wrote, and it was CNN, it was The New York Times, and they’re both disgusting, disgusting, really horrible groups of people.”

Trump then outright denied the findings of his own government’s report, once again opting for intelligence from a foreign government: Israel.

When asked whether he would attack Iran again if they rebuilt their facilities, Trump replied, “I’m not gonna have to worry about that. It’s gone for years.” The president claimed that Israel’s nascent report would find that they had achieved “total obliteration.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has opted to trust Israeli intelligence over U.S. intelligence. He repeatedly ignored the annual threat assessment produced by his own intelligence community, which found that Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon,” opting to trust Israel instead.

Trump also tore into the outlets in a post on Truth Social Tuesday night. “FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY. THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC,” he wrote.

But the Trump administration has been reluctant to meet the president’s absolute confidence of a successful strike. While Trump patted himself on the back for a mission accomplished, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine said Sunday it was “way too early” to say whether the strike had actually been successful. That same day, Vice President JD Vance declined to confirm that Iran’s nuclear sites had been completely destroyed.

Money can’t buy everything: New York City Democrats elected Zohran Mamdani in the citywide primaries.

Mamdani was ranked first Tuesday in the Democratic mayoral primary by 43.5 percent of the city’s eligible voters with 90 percent of the votes counted, beating out a wide field of rivals in the city’s second mayoral election process to use ranked-choice voting.

The 33-year-old is the first democratic socialist to win the coveted candidacy, marking a seismic shift in the party’s national standing. Mamdani won Democratic voters over on a platform focused on taxing the rich and addressing the rising cost of living. Chief among his ideas were plans to reform New York’s constricting housing crisis, which he said would involve incentives to develop more affordable housing, monitoring bad landlords who repeatedly violate rent laws, and freezing rates on rent stabilized apartments.

Since Mamdani did not win 50 percent of the vote, he initially was going to have to wait a week until all of the ranked votes were counted. But in a shocking turn of events, ex–New York Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded the race.

“Tonight was not our night,” said Cuomo, who had just 36.3 percent of first-rank votes. “Tonight was Assemblyman Mamdani’s night.”

Cuomo congratulated Mamdani on a strong campaign, saying his opponent “inspired [New Yorkers] and moved them and got them to come out and vote. He really ran a highly impactful campaign.

“Tonight is his night. He deserved it. He won,” Cuomo added.

Mamdani’s progressive agenda did not come without its detractors. Critics argued that Mamdani’s promises lacked available infrastructure, such as a plan to instate a network of city-owned grocery stores in order to tackle food insecurity, or promises to make bus rides free citywide.

The win shocked the Democratic establishment, which had sided with Cuomo in his bid for Gracie Mansion. Mamdani’s win also flies in the face of some of New York’s biggest corporate interests. Cuomo’s donors included a citywide landlord lobby, pro-MAGA billionaire Bill Ackman, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Doordash, and a $25 million super PAC that “shattered” outside spending records.

But his loss marks a brutal turn for Cuomo’s power in New York politics, as New Yorkers effectively nixed a city-based comeback for a man who was forced to resign from his leadership position in 2021 after he was deemed too corrupt for Albany. After his resignation, the Department of Justice determined Cuomo had sexually harassed 13 women over an eight-year period.

Mamdani, meanwhile, was backed by grassroots support and individual donors who helped him nearly reach the city’s $8 million campaign cap before he asked his supporters to “please stop sending us money.” Instead, the Ugandan-born Queens lawmaker’s team leaned into their ground game, banking that a volunteer army with 29,000 door-knockers would be able to make the difference.

By the final days of the primary race, Mamdani had received more out-of-state donations than his top two rivals combined, signaling a national appetite for his politics.

Mamdani previously served in the New York State Assembly representing the 36th District in Queens since 2021.

He was endorsed by New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and also won the support of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a figurehead for the nation’s progressive movement.

Republican Representative Maria Salazar spoke out against President Trump’s indiscriminate deportation of immigrants—many of them in her own district—during a hearing with Treasury Secretary Jerome Powell on Tuesday.

“We agree with [what] President Trump is doing, what the administration is doing in deporting illegals, criminal illegals. We do not want Tren de Aragua, we don’t really want people who have committed any type of crime, even more if they are illegals,” Salazar said to Powell. “But we do know that unfortunately what’s happening right now after six months of Mr. President being in office, that we’re losing thousands and thousands of workers [that] the ICE leadership has called ‘collateral damage.’ And most of those people are working in three main sectors: construction, hospitality, and agriculture.… We’re talking about 50 percent of the economy.”

Salazar also asked Powell to elaborate on the impacts of these deportations on the economy. He told her plainly that while he isn’t in charge of fully assessing the impact of immigration policies, Trump’s deportations have “reduced the amount of growth in the labor force,” which in turn would slow the economy.

Salazar is right to point out that the administration is locking up and deporting people with no criminal records who contribute significantly to the economy, but Trump obviously does not care to make the same distinction. This is a sadly ironic and extremely predictable turn of events for someone who endorsed the man who is now terrorizing her constituency.

This isn’t the first time Salazar has issued a plea to Trump. In February, she told CNN that “we have to make a differentiation between the Tren de Aragua and those Venezuelans who came in through [Temporary Protected Status].” The Supreme Court last month let Trump revoke TPS for about 350,000 Venezuelans living and working legally in the country.