Damning Audio Exposes Andrew Cuomo Is Ready to Play Ball With Trump

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo needs a little push to regain his Cuo-mentum—and he’s hoping Donald Trump will give it to him, Politico’s New York Playbook reported Tuesday.

Speaking at a fundraiser in the Hamptons Saturday, the former New York governor said that he anticipates Trump and other top Republicans will direct support his way in an effort to stop New York assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who trounced Cuomo’s Democratic primary efforts by double digits.

“We can minimize (the Sliwa) vote, because he’ll never be a serious candidate,” Cuomo said, referring to Curtis Sliwa, the 71-year-old, ever-beret’d GOP candidate. “And Trump himself, as well as top Republicans, will say the goal is to stop Mamdani. And you’ll be wasting your vote on Sliwa. So I feel good about that.”

When asked by an attendee whether he or his team was in conversation with the White House, Cuomo was vague, but not dismissive when he said, “Let’s put it this way: I knew the president very well.”

“I believe there’s a big piece of him that actually wants redemption in New York. He feels that he was rejected by New York. We voted for Hillary Clinton. Bill de Blasio took his name off things. So I believe there will be opportunities to actually cooperate with him,” Cuomo continued.

“I also believe that he’s not going to want to fight with me in New York if he can avoid it.”

But it was Cuomo who said that he was not “personally” looking to do battle with Trump, and compared their relationship to a “dysfunctional marriage,” according to The New York Times.

Earlier this month, the Times reported that Cuomo had spoken with Trump about New York City’s mayoral race. Mamdani excoriated the reported call as a “betrayal” to the entire city. Cuomo denied that the conversation had taken place.

He also claimed that he would decline the president’s endorsement. But while rubbing elbows with the Hamptons’ wealthy donors, Cuomo seemed markedly less opposed to working with Trump—and even open to being part of his “redemption,” whatever that would mean.

Mamdani slammed Cuomo for courting Trump’s support. “At (another) Hampton’s fundraiser with Republican donors on Saturday, Andrew Cuomo said it plainly: he’s expecting Trump’s help to defeat us in November. ‘I feel good about that,’ Cuomo said. New Yorkers won’t,” Mamdani wrote Tuesday on X.

On Fox and Friends Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump somewhat clarified his murky plans for the Russia-Ukraine war, giving his word—notoriously fickle as it is— that there will be no U.S. troops on the ground.

Earlier in the week, the president met with EU leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Trump had also met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska a few days before.

Trump on Monday couldn’t be pinned down on whether U.S. troops would be sent to aid Ukraine, merely stating that European countries would provide the “first line of defense” and “take a lot of the burden,” whereas the U.S. will “be involved” and provide “a lot of help.”

In his Tuesday morning Fox News appearance, he promised that there will be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine.

“Well, you have my assurance, you know, I’m president,” Trump said.

However, he added that European nations such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are willing to put “boots on the ground”—and claimed that they would not be acting as “a part of” NATO. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, to be honest with you,” the president said.

Trump also mentioned the possibility of providing U.S. air support to such European ground troops, saying, “We’re willing to help them with things, especially, probably, if you could talk about, by air.” He repeated that he doesn’t think this would “be a problem.”

It seems that, for now, Trump remains committed only to putting American boots on the ground in Democratic-run cities.

Representative Elise Stefanik was not well received when she returned to her district in upstate New York.

The congresswoman received a particularly hostile reception from her constituents during a ceremony in Plattsburg Monday evening. More than half of the attendees at the event, intended to mark the renaming of the Clinton County Government Center, were actually protesters, according to the local NBC affiliate NBC 5.

The crowd jeered at Stefanik both times she approached the podium, calling the staunch MAGA supporter a “traitor,” while others chanted “shame.”

“You sold us out,” cried one protester.

“You’re a Nazi,” shouted another.

Yet another protester yelled on repeat that Stefanik needed to “unseal the Epstein files.”

Stefanik chided the protesters, claiming that the renaming ceremony for her “dear friend” was the wrong time and place to attack her—but her constituents disagreed. Instead, they argued that Stefanik had been so absent in their district that they were left with no other choice.

“Well, Elise has not shown up in our district for months and months,” protester Mavis Agnew told NBC 5. “She won’t hold a town hall, she won’t take questions. She’s never in her office. People show up at her office constantly, door’s closed. Her representatives, her employees won’t talk to her.... So this was her first appearance, the first opportunity we had to let her know we’re unhappy.”

But Stefanik wasn’t willing to recognize that her support for Donald Trump’s agenda was the basis for her hometown hatred.

“It is a disgusting disgrace that this is what the far left does, rather than understanding that his family has been through a tremendous amount. It was about honoring his legacy,” Stefanik told NBC5 after the event, referring to John Zurlo, for whom the center was renamed.

Stefanik isn’t the only Trumpian legislator who has gotten scorched during the summer recess for voting against the needs of their constituents. Earlier this month, Nebraska Representative Mike Flood was excoriated during a town hall for failing to protect SNAP benefits, veterans’ programs, and health care access, which combined with voters’ simmering resentment for Flood’s lagging on the release of the Epstein files.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his meeting with Donald Trump Monday may have been their “best” yet—not a particularly high bar—but that doesn’t mean that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to play ball.

During CNN’s News Night Monday, Josh Rogin, lead global security analyst for CNN, said that it had certainly been a “much better meeting than the last time.”

“But I think it’d be going too far to say that Putin has agreed to a meeting with Zelenskiy,” Rogin added. “In fact, the Kremlin put out a statement right after this meeting and they said, ‘No, we’ll have meetings at a high level,’ but they didn’t say with Putin and Zelenskiy.”

Trump reportedly called Putin in the middle of his meeting with several European leaders to begin making arrangements for a trilateral summit between himself, Zelenskiy, and Putin. But as Rogin pointed out, Russia hasn’t actually agreed to such a meeting. In a statement, Moscow said only that the leaders had discussed “the idea of raising the level of Russian and Ukrainian representation in the negotiations.”

Rogin continued, “And then they said, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re totally against NATO troops in Ukraine.’ So, the two big deliverables out of this meeting, Russia has already rejected, which kind of gets to the core of the issue, which is President Trump said 50 times today that he believes Putin wants peace. And I don’t know, call me skeptical. I don’t think that’s true. I just don’t buy it.

“And I’m basing that on all the evidence. Everything Putin says. Everything Putin does. Everything we know. And that’s what you see those European leaders doing. They’re testing that. They’re saying to President Trump, ‘If he gives you a ceasefire, he’s gonna stop killing Ukrainians at least for a couple days, then maybe he’s serious. And if he doesn’t, then he’s not serious.”

At the end of the day, the clearest signal that Putin could give that he wants to end the killing is, well, to stop killing. But he hasn’t done that.

Trump already appears to have agreed with Putin’s demands to permanently seize Crimea, and to block Ukraine from its long-awaited NATO membership. Moscow has demanded even more territory from Ukraine, while Zelenskiy has insisted that his country will not cede land to Russia.

Donald Trump believes he’s added yet another peace agreement to his roster.

Speaking with Fox & Friends Tuesday morning about his efforts to negotiate a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, the president claimed that he had settled seven wars.

“I’ve solved seven wars. We ended seven wars,” Trump said. “I thought this would be one of the easier ones, and this has turned out to be the toughest one.”

“India, Pakistan, these were big ones, also. All big ones. And some going for 31, 32 years. One for 35 years,” he continued. “I got them all done. But this one is the one that is the most difficult, and I thought it would be an easy one. I hope President [Vladimir] Putin is gonna be good, and if he’s not it’s going to be a rough situation. And I hope that President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy will do what he has to do. He has to show some flexibility also. The thing is a mess.”

Trump has so far claimed responsibility for peace in several international conflicts, including between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Rwanda, between India and Pakistan, between Serbia and Kosovo, between Egypt and Ethiopia, and for “doing the Abraham Accords.”

But his sudden claim to have ended seven wars is especially remarkable, considering it’s up a digit from Monday, when he boasted on Truth Social that his actions had settled “6 wars in 6 months,” including “a possible Nuclear disaster.”

“I’m only here to stop it, not to prosecute it any further,” Trump said, blaming the Ukraine-Russia war on former President Joe Biden. “It would have NEVER happened if I was president.”

What’s more incredible: Trump posted Monday that his self-fulfilled accomplishments would be done without people who had long-term knowledge or expertise of Russia and Ukraine’s history, referring to such individuals as “STUPID.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t need the advice of people who have been working on all of these conflicts for years, and were never able to do a thing to stop them,” Trump wrote. “They are ‘STUPID’ people, with no common sense, intelligence, or understanding, and they only make the current R/U disaster more difficult to FIX. Despite all of my lightweight and very jealous critics, I’ll get it done—I always do!!!”

President Donald Trump thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has operated with impunity since he invaded Ukraine, is somehow now ready to come to the table.

A hot mic caught Trump suggesting under his breath that Putin was willing to negotiate after the two leaders met in Alaska for a summit.

“I think he wants to make a deal for me. Do you understand?” he said before his press conference with Zelenskiy. “As crazy as it sounds.”

It does sound crazy. Trump and Putin haven’t been able to make a deal for six months, and they certainly didn’t reach one last Friday.

Any “deal” that could come about would be without a ceasefire, something that has been a huge priority for Zelenskiy. It would also involve Ukraine ceding Crimea and promising to never join NATO, which would be more capitulation than agreement.

Putin has been lying outright to Trump, but one face-to-face meeting, likely accompanied by some surface-level flattery, has the president twirling his hair and hoping that Putin thinks fondly of him, all while the Russian president continues his assault on Ukrainian sovereignty.

Before his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, President Donald Trump made his goal clear: “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire,” he told Fox News. The president also warned Putin of “very severe consequences” if one wasn’t reached.

With the summit past and no ceasefire in sight, that objective doesn’t seem so important to Trump anymore.

“I don’t think you need a ceasefire,” he told reporters Monday, sitting beside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “You know, if you look at the six deals that I settled this year, they were all at war. I didn’t do any ceasefires.”

This is a curious argument. For one, it relies on a dubious talking point about the president having ended “six wars in six months.” It’s also misleading, in part, because it includes temporary ceasefires—which Trump has indeed described, explicitly, as “ceasefires,” confusing them with lasting settlements.

When more European leaders came to the White House Monday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz pushed back against Trump’s newfound dismissiveness toward a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire.

“I can’t imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire,” Merz said, adding that peace efforts depend on “at least a ceasefire from the beginning of the serious negotiations, from next step on, so I would like to emphasize this aspect and would like to see a ceasefire [by] the next meeting.”

Trump refused to budge, repeating his earlier argument.

“In the six wars that I’ve settled, I haven’t had a ceasefire. We just got into negotiations,” the president said. “If we can do the ceasefire, great,” he continued, before beginning a sentence that trailed off in quintessential Trump fashion: “And if we don’t do a ceasefire—because many other points were given to us. Many, many points were given to us. Great points.”

President Donald Trump wanted his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska last week to be a grand display of power in an attempt to pressure the Russian autocrat into a ceasefire. 

Instead, for some, it came off as an act of fealty to one of the world’s most detested leaders.  

“Look at what happened on Friday. U.S. military personnel, in uniform, literally were on their hands and knees rolling out a red carpet for the most murderous dictator of the twenty-first century,” Democratic Representative and former Army Ranger Jason Crow told Face the Nation on Sunday. “Somebody who has kidnapped and is holding prisoner tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. Somebody who started this whole war.…  This is a historic embarrassment and defeat for U.S. foreign policy,” he concluded. 

Those on the center-right reacted similarly. 

“I think Trump may have thought that having a B-2 flyover accompanied by F-22s, the aircraft that, of course, were involved in Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran, was somehow suggesting a show of force to Putin,” former ambassador and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman told The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol. “I don’t think that’s how Putin saw it. I think he saw it as a mark of respect, actually.… What it did was resuscitate him both domestically and internationally as a respected player on the international stage.” 

Russian politicians and media cast a celebratory light on the summit. 

“Putin gave Trump nothing, but still got everything he wanted. Trump finally listened to his demands,” an anonymous Russian foreign policy official told The Guardian.

“Western media are on the verge of completely losing it,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova declared, prior to the summit. “For three years they told everyone Russia was isolated and today they saw a beautiful red carpet laid out for the Russian president in the U.S.” 

The contradictory reactions to Putin’s visit—dismay from liberals and conservatives alike, rejoicing from pro-Putin Russians—only reaffirms that the Russian president has the leverage here, not Trump. 

President Donald Trump openly admitted Monday that he wants to end mail-in voting to keep Democrats out of office.

During a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the U.S. president readily gave up the game on his latest plot to rig the midterm elections.

“We got to stop mail-in voting, and the Republicans have to lead the charge. The Democrats want it because they have horrible policy,” Trump said. “If you [don’t] have mail-in voting, you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected. That’s bigger than anything having to do with redistricting, believe me.”

Trump pledged that he would sign an executive order ending mail-in voting, falsely claiming that the United States was one of the only countries that still kept the practice. Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Switzerland are among the more than 30 countries that allow mail-in voting.

Trump’s newfound “movement” is predicated on claims of widespread voter fraud that are also false. Notably, Trump made no complaints about alleged mail-in voter fraud when he won in 2024, but he had a lot to say about mail-in ballots before and after losing the 2020 presidential election.

While the president does not have the power to strip states of their rights to oversee elections, Trump is clearly hoping to create a pretext for discounting mail-in votes during the upcoming midterm elections.

Trump also referred to his controversial redistricting gambit in Texas, which he hopes will gerrymander the state in Republicans’ favor.

In a brazen show of disdain for the First Amendment, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a video Sunday of eight masked agents tearing down a sign protesting the agency’s presence in Washington, D.C.

The video, which Alex Koma of Washington’s NPR member station posted about on Friday, shows the agents surrounding the banner in the District’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood—which reads “Chinga la migra (‘Fuck ICE’).” Mount Pleasant melts ICE”—before ripping it off a fence.

A masked agent then tells the camera, “We’re taking America back, baby”—a process that apparently entails disregarding D.C. residents’ rights—and, continuing in Spanish, “This is for America. The United States is number one.”

Bizarrely, the video also indicates that the agents, in removing the sign, revealed a dildo that had been perched behind it. The sex toy is blurred in ICE’s video, but it can be clearly seen in photos shared online by Koma, who reported that, according to residents, the gaggle of agents had actually left the dildo at the scene of their free speech violation.

Within hours of the banner’s removal, another sign was reportedly put in its place, which states, “No deportations in Mount Pleasant,” and “No a la migra (‘No to ICE’).” Another sign that was hung up since then reads: “They are fascists. We are artists. We melt ICE.”

ICE captioned its video: “Make D.C. Safe Again!” But it seems like the only thing federal troops accomplished was violating the First Amendment and unveiling a dildo.