Marco Rubio Fumbles When Asked About Trump’s “Day One” Promise

Faced on Tuesday with President Donald Trump’s broken campaign promises on the Russia-Ukraine war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio trotted out a convenient excuse.

When Today host Craig Melvin reminded Rubio of Trump’s long-broken vow to end the conflict within 24 hours, the secretary of state (falsely) claimed that the president had not been speaking literally on the campaign trail.

“The president repeatedly though did say that he would end the war in Ukraine on day one, and we are some 250 days into the administration,” noted Melvin.

“Yeah, but that’s not up to us to end the war,” Rubio cut in. “The Russians have to stop the war, and the Ukrainians have to agree to a peace deal. What the president expressed is that it would be a priority of his.”

In reality, Trump harped incessantly on the 2024 campaign trail about how he would achieve peace in Ukraine in 24 hours. This was not a figurative way to describe the war as a priority; he repeated a version of the statement over 50 times, often making a point to note that he was serious, and that it would be relatively easy to accomplish.

“I’ll have it done in 24 hours. I say that, and I would do that. That’s easy compared to some of the things,” he said in June 2023. A few days later, he said that “it won’t even be a tough one by comparison to other things.”

The following month, he emphasized his seriousness, despite naysayers. “I’ll get that done within 24 hours. Everyone says, ‘Oh, no, you can’t.’ Absolutely I can. Absolutely I can,” he said at one event, adding at another that “it’ll be done within 24 hours, you watch. They all say, ‘That’s such a boast.’ It will be done very quickly.”

During an August 2024 podcast appearance, Trump said, “I will have that war settled when I’m president-elect, meaning before I get to office on January 20.” When another podcaster in October expressed amazement at his vow to end the war before taking office, Trump said he would fulfill it because “you need that credibility.”

As his inauguration drew near, Trump walked back his statement in his December 2024 Time Person of the Year story, acknowledging ending the conflict wasn’t as easy as he made it out to be. About three months into his presidency, he told Time, “Well, I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point.”

Rubio seems to be taking that same convenient, but untrue, tack now.

Last week, the president came the closest he’s capable of getting to an admission of failure, saying that he’d thought Russia-Ukraine “would be easiest” to solve, but Russian President Vladimir Putin “really let me down.”

President Donald Trump dedicated a portion of his Tuesday address before the United Nations General Assembly to settle a decades-old score from his days as a real estate developer. In a lengthy digression, he complained that he didn’t get the job to renovate and rebuild U.N. headquarters.

Trump in 2001 offered to renovate the complex for $400 million—“more quickly, much better, and much less expensively” than existing offers, he claimed. He was ultimately turned down, and the refurbishment was completed for $2.3 billion, per the Associated Press. Apparently, he’s never forgotten it—even as a president on the world stage.

“Many years ago, a very successful real estate developer in New York, known as Donald J. Trump, I bid on the renovation and rebuilding of this very United Nations complex,” Trump told the roomful of world leaders on Tuesday. “I remember it so well. I said at the time that I would do it for $500 million, rebuilding everything. It would be beautiful. I used to talk about, ‘I’m going to give you marble floors; they’re going to give you terrazzo. I’m going to give you the best of everything. You’re going to have mahogany walls; they’re going to give you plastic.’

“But they decided to go in another direction,” Trump lamented, “which was much more expensive at the time, and which actually produced a far inferior product. And I realized that they did not know what they were doing when it came to construction, and that their building concepts were so wrong and the product they were proposing to build was so bad and so costly. It was going to cost them a fortune. And I said, ‘And wait till you see the overruns.’

“Well, I turned out to be right,” the president said. “They had massive cost overruns and spent between $2 and $4 billion on the building, and did not even get the marble floors that I promised them.

“You walk on terrazzo, do you notice that?”

President Donald Trump just taught everyone how important teleprompters are.

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, Trump immediately assured the audience he would be just fine delivering remarks off the cuff, “because the teleprompter is not working.”

“I feel very happy to be up here nevertheless, and that way you speak more from the heart. I can only say that whoever is operating this teleprompter is in big trouble,” the U.S. president joked.

Trump then embarked on one of his most nonsensical addresses to date, ranting against Europe for embracing the “double-tailed monster” of immigration and green energy. But his criticisms were little more than anti-science claims and racist drivel attacking immigrants.

“I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell,” Trump ranted.

Trump complained about London Mayor Sadiq Khan, falsely claiming that the city’s first Muslim leader hoped to install Islamic code. “I look at London where you have a terrible mayor, terrible, terrible mayor, and it has been so changed. So changed,” Trump said. “Now they want to go to sharia law, but you’re in a different country, you can’t do that.”

Trump’s remarks about Europe welcoming immigrants were so explicitly racist that they quickly bypassed dog-whistle politics and went straight to barking commands not to dilute European culture. “You’re doing it because you want to be politically correct, and you’re destroying your heritage,” he warned.

He then turned his attention to green energy, appearing to laud Germany for scrapping subsidies for renewable energy projects. “They were going all green. All green is all bankrupt. That’s what it represents,” Trump said. “And it’s not politically correct, I’ll be very badly criticized for saying it, but I’m here to tell the truth. I don’t care, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Trump slammed countries for embracing green energy in an attempt to reduce their carbon footprints, calling climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion.”

The president criticized past speakers at the United Nations for predicting that global warming would result in catastrophic climate disasters. Those predictions were “made by stupid people who have cost their countries fortunes and given their countries no chance for success,” Trump said.

Trump even used his diatribe against green energy to plug his own merchandise. “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail. And I’m really good at predicting things, you know?” he said. “They actually said during the campaign, they had a hat: the best-selling hat, ‘Trump was right about everything.’ And I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true. I’ve been right about everything.”

The supposed leader of the free world has offered a new rallying cry for the United Nations: “Your countries are going to hell.”

Speaking before the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday, Trump instructed representatives from the 193 member states that they all needed to stop allowing immigration into their respective nations.

“It’s time to end the failed experiment of open borders,” Trump said from the lectern. “You have to end it now. See, I can tell you. I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.”

He continued that the United States had taken “bold” actions of its own to crack down on “uncontrolled migration.”

“Once we started detaining and deporting everyone who crossed the border and removing illegal aliens from the United States, they simply stopped coming,” he said. “They’re not coming anymore.”

Beyond Trump’s rose-colored glasses, the administration’s approach to handling immigration has not been glamorous. Rather, it has strayed into murky legal waters. Over the last nine months, federal immigration officials have been tasked by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to arrest 3,000 undocumented immigrants per day. The administration has also hastily constructed concentration camps in order to accommodate the startling number of detainees.

But actually doing so has forced the agency to seek out immigrants that the administration did not originally advertise targeting, such as noncriminals and even lawful temporary residents possessing visas or green cards.

As a result, interest in U.S. tourism has plummeted: On Monday, The Irish Times reported that the price of a one-way ticket from Dublin to New York City had dropped to just 50 cents (before taxes and fees).

The radical and xenophobic policies have also made it far less attractive for people to work in the U.S. On Friday, Trump announced that the popular H-1B work visa would come with a new $100,000 price tag, practically eradicating corporate interest in sponsoring international talent while sending immigrants and the U.S. companies they work for into a panic.

Trump, who was jeered and mocked by his U.N. colleagues during his first term, has taken decisive action to peel the U.S. and its influence away from the international caucus. So far this year, the Trump administration has refused to make any payments to the U.N., throwing the assembly into an unprecedented cash crunch. (The United States has historically been the single largest funder of the global alliance.)

The president also withdrew the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council, cut funding for foreign humanitarian aid, and ended U.S. participation in Unesco on the basis that the world heritage organization “supports woke, divisive cultural and social causes.” The White House also pulled out of the World Health Organization—another U.N. entity—over disagreements on how the global organization handled the pandemic.

Left-wing Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, used his Tuesday speech at the United Nations to openly rebuke Trump’s retaliatory pro-Bolsonaro tariffs, his brazen attack on the sovereignty of Brazil and other South American states, and his entire strongman authoritarian ideology—all without saying his name.

Lula’s speech was right before Trump’s, and it’s very likely that Trump heard every word.

“Attacks on sovereignty, arbitrary sanctions, and unilateral interventions are becoming the rule. There is a clear parallel between the multilateralism crisis and the weakening of democracy,” Lula said. “Authoritarianism is strengthened when we fail to act in the face of arbitrary acts; when the international society falters in defending peace, sovereignty, and the rule of law. The consequences are tragic.”

Lula then turned to Trump’s support for Javier Bolsonaro, who Trump viewed as an understudy of sorts. Earlier this month, Brazil’s Supreme Court sentenced the far-right leader to 27 years in prison for plotting a military coup resembling January 6, sending his supporters to raid Brazil’s presidential palace, the Supreme Court, and Congress after his election loss to Lula. Trump has heavily tariffed Brazil and sanctioned top officials over the “witch hunt” against Bolsonaro.

“There is no justification for unilateral and arbitrary measures against our institutions and our economy. The aggression against the independence of the judiciary branch of power is unacceptable,” Lula continued. “Peace cannot be achieved with impunity. A few days ago … a former head of state was convicted of attacking the democratic rule of law. He was investigated, indicted, trialed, and held accountable for his actions in a meticulous process.… Brazil sent a message to all aspiring autocrats and those who support them: Our democracy, our sovereignty, are nonnegotiable.”

Lula went on to call for the end to inequality and food insecurity, equal rights and protections for women, a reduction in arms spending, and more taxes on the wealthiest, noting that “poverty is as much an enemy of democracy as extremism.”

He also criticized the Trump administration’s unilateral, extrajudicial bombing of boats in the Caribbean sea that it believes to be Venezuelan drug boats.

“The comparison between crime and terrorism is worrying. The most effective way to combat drug trafficking is to cooperate to suppress money laundering and limit arms trade,” Lula said. “Using lethal force in situations that do not constitute armed conflict is tantamount to executing people without trial.… The path to dialogue must not be closed in Venezuela.”

He also stated that while Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel was “indefensible,” there was “nothing, absolutely nothing,” that justified the “ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

Trump seemed to have taken little from Lula’s impassioned, principled speech, as he vamped, blamed the previous administration for everything, and essentially told everyone they were going to hell.

Jimmy Kimmel is headed back to late-night—and MAGA isn’t happy.

The late-night host was indefinitely suspended last week for a comment he made criticizing the response of President Donald Trump’s political base to Charlie Kirk’s death, noting their desperation to “characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

In fact, Republicans started doing that the same day Kirk was shot, casting blame on the left and the transgender community before the shooter was even identified. Kimmel’s remark about MAGA comments wasn’t a claim about the identity of the shooter; it was a well-documented fact.

Now MAGA is fuming at the news that he’ll return to his desk so soon.

“Must be nice to be a leftist. ‘Cancellation’ lasts 5 nights and you’re right back under klieg lights. On the right you’re underground,” Megyn Kelly wrote on X.

NBC permanently canceled Kelly’s show in 2018 after she made remarks defending the use of blackface in Halloween costumes. Now she’s been banished to the underground: a daily radio show on SiriusXM.

“Worst fascism ever,” right-wing commentator Stephen L. Miller wrote on X.

RawStory reported that several MAGA commenters were angry at the left’s outrage over Kimmel’s apparently temporary cancellation.

“Jimmy Kimmel is going back on air tomorrow night. Is fascism over? LOL,” wrote Chris Barron, president of Right Turn Strategies, on X.

“Trump isn’t fascisting that well. But the left would have you believe Kimmel has been thrown in prison,” wrote an account called Liju Kurian on X.

But Kimmel’s censorship isn’t over.

Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns 38 ABC-affiliate stations, wasn’t too pleased either. The company said it would replace Kimmel’s show with news programming until “formal discussions are held with ABC regarding the network’s commitment to professionalism and accountability.”

Sinclair had demanded that Kimmel make a sizable donation to Turning Point USA. David Smith, the company’s executive chairman, donated $250,000 to the right-wing organization last year, according to independent journalist Judd Legum.

Liberals across America suddenly found themselves agreeing with Donald Trump Monday evening.

“We have a lot of stupid people in this country running things,” Trump said during a press conference.

The comment came as a dig at pharmaceutical companies and economists across the country, who Trump claimed were abetting a scheme in which the United States is “subsidizing” the cheaper cost of drugs in other nations. (Fact check: That’s not true.)

But the president’s words nonetheless rattled and surprised Democratic commentators, who were shocked by Trump’s sudden—if limited—self-awareness. Across social media, they applauded Trump for so very nearly chastising his own administration.

“Every so often, like a stuck clock, he says something accurate,” said attorney George Conway, the ex-husband of first-term Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.

“Such self-awareness is commendable,” wrote author Maxwell Black.

“Truer words were never spoken,” commented California State University Fullerton philosophy Professor Amy Coplan. “And irony is now on its third death.

Incredibly, Trump’s verbiage also derides his own appointments, considering that he was the one who instated the people who are currently running things in the U.S. Some X users pointed out that Trump would be the last in line to receive his own backhand, since he’s atop the pyramid of—in his words—“stupid people in this country running things.”

“DONALD BLAMES EVERYTHING ON STUPID PEOPLE RUNNING THIS COUNTRY,” posted a parody account of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office. “WE DON’T KNOW WHY HE’S TALKING IN THIRD PERSON AND IN PLURAL, BUT THE FIRST STEP IS ADMITTING THAT YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. BRAVO.”

The rest of Trump’s press conference was a hodgepodge of lies and half-truths in which Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attempted to connect (without providing any evidence) pregnant women’s Tylenol use to rising autism rates, advised that children stop receiving the medical marvel that is the combo MMR vaccine, and claimed that babies should not receive multiple vaccines at the same time on the basis that it’s “too much liquid.”

White House border czar Tom Homan did everything but deny reports that he accepted a Cava bag full of $50,000 cash from federal undercover agents.

“[MSNBC] said you took 50,000 dollars in cash in a bag from an undercover FBI agent to help them win government contracts in Trump’s second term,” Fox News’s Laura Ingraham asked Homan Monday evening. “The DOJ said they concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing, but nevertheless that story is out there, and I imagine you wanna respond to that.” 

“Look I did nothing criminal, I did nothing illegal. And ya know there’s hit piece after hit piece after hit piece. And I’m glad the FBI and DOJ said that nothing illegal happened, no criminal activity,” Homan replied, not actually confirming or denying what he was reportedly caught on camera doing. 

“I left a very successful business that I ran to come back and work for our government again, I’m back on a government paycheck. Not only did I sacrifice, my family sacrifices. I make sacrifices every day, I get more death threats than anybody.… But guess what? My kids don’t. My wife don’t. I haven’t lived with my wife in months, because I don’t want her to be here right now with all the threats,” Homan continued. “So after all the sacrifices … from all these years, they wanna come out and dirty me up.… But keep coming, because Tom Homan isn’t going anywhere.” 

Ingraham could have interrupted Homan’s sob story with one simple question: “Where’s the $50,000?” At no point in this appearance did Homan deny accepting the money, he only said that he didn’t do anything illegal, as the DOJ confirmed. And of course they would—the agents who caught Homan with the bribe last September were reportedly waiting to see if Homan would act on the bribe as a member of the administration, but Trump’s DOJ closed the case. 

What’s the truth here? If the Trump administration was as transparent as it likes to say it is, it would release the FBI files related to the bribe. But it isn’t, and it won’t. We can only wonder what someone like Homan does with $50,000.  

As southern Arizona voters in the state’s 7th congressional district head to the polls Tuesday to fill a vacancy in the U.S. House, they are poised to revive a major headache for House Speaker Mike Johnson and the Trump administration.

Both the Democratic front-runner, Adelita Grijalva, and her Republican challenger, Daniel Butierez, have publicly expressed their intent to provide the deciding signature on the discharge petition to circumvent Johnson and force a House vote on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files.

“The days of turning a blind eye to Trump must end,” Grijalva told Politico. The government’s lack of transparency surrounding the late notorious sex criminal “has definitely come up” during the campaign, she told CNN, as voters say “they believe the survivors deserve justice, and Congress must fulfill its duty to check the executive branch and hold Trump accountable.”

Butierez would “absolutely” sign on to the petition too, he said earlier this month in the Arizona Daily Star, which first reported Grijalva’s commitment as well.

With the House’s current makeup, Representatives Thomas Massie, a Republican, and Ro Khanna, a Democrat, are just one signature shy on their bid to force a vote—which would likely go to the House floor and pass with Grijalva’s or Butierez’s signature. While Johnson can try to block it via the House Rules Committee, he and the committee chair, Virginia Foxx, have both reportedly said they wouldn’t do so.

Acetaminophen—better known by the brand name Tylenol—was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1951. But on Monday, the White House turned its back on that science-backed recommendation.

“Taking Tylenol is uh, not good,” Donald Trump said during a press conference, tying taking Tylenol during pregnancy to increased autism rates, despite a lack of evidence.

The president appeared to suggest that all Americans no longer consume Tylenol, though he emphasized that children and pregnant women should be especially wary of consuming the popular pain relief drug.

“If you can’t tough it out, if you can’t do it, that’s what you’re going to have to do,” Trump said, implying that pregnant women are more likely to have autistic babies if they can’t handle the pain of pregnancy—or even if they experience non–pregnancy related pain or fever while pregnant.

“You’ll take a Tylenol, but it’ll be very sparingly. Can be something that’s very dangerous to the woman’s health, in other words a fever that’s very, very dangerous and ideally a doctor’s decision because I think you shouldn’t take it.

“And you shouldn’t take it during the entire pregnancy,” he continued. “And you shouldn’t give the child a Tylenol every time … he goes and has a shot, you shouldn’t give a Tylenol to that child.”

At one point, Trump struggled to actually pronounce the word “acetaminophen,” the generic name for the drug in Tylenol.

More than any other over-the-counter drug, doctors have recommended Tylenol for pregnant women due to its wide availability and its researched safety. It is considered to be the safest fever reducer and painkiller on the market for pregnant women. Because of this, it’s also one of the few pain medications that pregnant women are allowed to consume, and they do consume it: Studies have found that two-thirds of pregnant women in the U.S. consume Tylenol during their pregnancies.

Dr. Zeyan Liew, an associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University, underscored that recent doubts have been cast on Tylenol’s reputation due to what appear to be rising autism rates across the nation.

Combating autism is the cornerstone of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s public health policy. Kennedy is a part of a growing movement of anti-vax parents who refuse to provide their children with the same public health advantages that they received in their youth, mostly in fear of thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories that, at one point, linked autism to the jab.

The researcher who sparked that myth with a fraudulent paper lost his medical license and eventually rescinded his opinion. Since then, dozens of studies have proven there’s no correlation between autism and vaccines, including one study that surveyed more than 660,000 children over the course of 11 years.

But confusion persists regarding the basic figures. A study published by the Autism Society of Texas found that one in 31 people is estimated to have autism—a disturbingly sharp uptick from figures released in 2006 that found about one in every 110 children was diagnosed with autism by age 8.

But behind those numbers is a different story, according to Liew, who noted that the definition of autism was broadened in that same time span. Increased research, social destigmatization, and improved mental health screening have also contributed to the inflated numbers.

But Trump chose to fearmonger about perfectly safe medications. “Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen,” he insisted Monday afternoon regarding America’s mass withdrawal from the pain reliever.

In the same presser, Trump claimed that doctors have been “pumping” babies—like a “horse”—with a “vat” of 80-something vaccines.

He also advised that instead of the MMR combo vaccine, children receive individual vaccines to ward off measles, mumps, and rubella separately, claiming that the scientifically safe combination was also contributing to autism rates. Later, the president said that children should not be given too many vaccines at once on the basis that it’s “too much liquid.”

“Too many different things are going into that baby at too big a number,” Trump said. “The size of this thing when you look at it. It’s like 80 different vaccines and beyond vaccines.”

This story has been updated.