Old Man Trump Fumbles Country’s Name in Front of Its Leader

Donald Trump badly botched the pronunciation of Kazakhstan, a decades-long U.S. ally, while seated right next to the country’s president during a White House dinner with Central Asian leaders Thursday evening.

Like some unaired scene out of Sacha Baron Cohen’s 2006 flick Borat, Trump slipped that “Ka-ZACK-a-stan” had joined the Abraham Accords, adding a syllable and stressing the wrong one in the country’s name while announcing supposedly new diplomatic ties between Kazakhstan (which is actually pronounced Kahz-uck-stan) and Israel.

“This evening, I’m also delighted to report that Ka-ZACK-a-stan has officially agreed, and that’s official now, as of about 15 minutes ago. A tremendous country with a tremendous leader, has officially joined the Abraham Accords,” Trump said, mere feet away from President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. “And I just want to thank you, Mr. President. It’s a great honor. It’s a tremendous honor to have you. Really great.”

The pronunciation was, in part, a win for the White House. In September, Trump managed to mispronounce the “Abraham” in Abraham Accords, insisting during a White House meeting with  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Jews—or “the real people”—pronounce it as “Abraaaham.” The misstep was so awkward that Netanyahu jumped to correct him, clarifying that the name is actually pronounced in Hebrew as “Avraham.”

Just how much Kazakhstan’s new status will materially change its relationship with Israel is unclear, however, since the countries have had “full ties” since 1992, including shared embassies in their respective capitals, according to The Times of Israel. 

It does, however, give Trump some new material to prattle about. Trump created the series of agreements at the end of his first term as a method to thwart Iran’s nuclear program. The Abraham Accords have since been signed by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. 

The Atlantic Council, an American think tank focused on international affairs, said in a statement that Kazakhstan’s inclusion on the Abraham Accords was “no great breakthrough” but rather a “failed attempt” to revive the Abraham Accords “brand.”

“It is clear that the Trump administration is trying to kill two birds with one stone with this statement—to prove that the Abraham Accords ‘brand’ is still alive (especially in preparation for the visit of the Saudi crown prince to Washington) and to poke a finger in the eye of Chinese ambitions in the Eurasian space,” argued Danny Citrinowicz, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council with 25 years of experience with Israel Defense Intelligence.

“But the truth is that without significant progress on the political track between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Saudi Arabia will not join the Abraham Accords, regardless of the accession of other countries,” Citrinowicz continued. “And without Saudi Arabia, it is very unlikely that additional Muslim countries will join these agreements.”

Tokayev appeared unbothered by the massive flub. Making direct eye contact with Trump, the Kazakhstani leader lathered praise on the U.S. president, claiming he was a “statesman sent by heaven,” while reiterating the administration’s propaganda that Trump had solved eight wars (some of which never even happened).

If President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance really want to fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, why are they both kicking and screaming at a federal judge’s latest order to do just that?

The Department of Justice rushed Thursday evening to appeal a ruling that would require the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP benefits for November amid the government shutdown. Meanwhile, Trump and Vance complained about the order to reporters in the East Room at the White House.

The vice president seemed particularly disturbed by the notion that a federal judge could force the Trump administration’s hand.

“It’s an absurd ruling because you have a federal judge effectively telling us what we have to do in the midst of a Democrat government shutdown,” Vance said. “Which, what we’d like to do is for the Democrats to open up the government, and, of course, then we can fund SNAP and we could also do a lot of other good things for the American people. But in the midst of a shutdown, we can’t have the federal court telling the president how he has to triage the situation.

“We’re trying to keep as much turned on, we’re trying to keep as much going as possible,” Vance said. “The president and the entire administration are working on that, but we’re not going to do it under the orders of a federal judge.”

Trump also weighed in with a confusing answer about the country needing to remain “very liquid.”

“We can’t give everything away based on a number,” Trump said, ostensibly talking about the number of SNAP recipients (42 million), though what number he was referring to was unclear.

“Biden went totally crazy, gave it to anybody that would ask. Gave it to people that were able-bodied, had no problem. Anybody who would ask would get the number,” Trump said.

It sounds like Trump no longer thinks it would be an “honor” to fund SNAP should a court order him to do so, as he claimed on Truth Social less than a week ago.

It was Trump’s own blatant unwillingness to fund SNAP that got him into this situation in the first place. In issuing his new, stricter ruling Thursday evening, U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. cited Trump’s rageful Truth Social Post claiming that benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government” as evidence of the president’s “intent to defy” a previous order that required him to pay for only some benefits.

Donald Trump bizarrely claimed that the United States has to remain “very liquid” because the country could be hit by unforeseen problems at any time. 

Speaking from the White House’s East Room Thursday night, Trump told reporters that “our country has to remain very liquid because problems, catastrophes, wars—could be anything. We have to remain liquid. We can’t give everything away,” claiming that President Biden gave money away to “anybody who would ask,” including the “able-bodied.” 

Trump gave the answer after being asked about a court ruling requiring his administration to fully fund the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, which 42 million low-income Americans depend on.

Trump seems to have no idea how the U.S. economy works, given that the country could just print more money if being “liquid” is really the main concern (it shouldn’t be). His jab at Biden seems to be based on right-wing complaints about “tax and spend” Democrats, and an attempt to evade criticism over his administration defying court rulings on SNAP.  

Under the current administration, the national debt is experiencing its highest rate of growth since the Covid-19 pandemic. This has only been compounded by the government shutdown, which is costing the country billions of dollars each week. Trump has no room to criticize his predecessor about spending, as his presidency is costing the country dearly. 

As inflation rises, layoffs surge, and SNAP benefits stop, President Trump told Americans point-blank that he does not want to hear about their affordability issues. 

“Talk about the cost of Thanksgiving, and the cost of living through Thanksgiving.… Our energy costs are way down, our groceries are way down, everything is way down. And the press doesn’t report it,” the president said last evening while taking questions from reporters. “You know, I call the Democrats conmen and women, they make up numbers. But when you look at the 25 percent reduction in costs for Thanksgiving between Biden and me … it’s the biggest reduction in cost in the history of that chart or whatever it is they do.”

The Thanksgiving cost numbers Trump is touting come directly from Walmart, which is selling a $40 Thanksgiving basket compared to a $55 one last year. But this year’s meal has less food in it too.  

“So I don’t wanna hear about the affordability,” Trump continued. “We’re getting close to $2 a gallon gasoline. With Biden it was $4.50, $5. Another thing, inflation. We had the worst inflation in the history of our country. Now we have virtually no inflation at all … so the affordability is much better with the Republicans.”

This short rant was ridden with lies. Everything is not “way down.” 

Inflation is still going up. This summer, Americans saw the biggest grocery price jump in over three years. Average grocery prices in September were around 2.7 percent higher than they were the year before and around 1.4 percent higher than they were when Trump got back into office in January. 

It’s truly a travesty that this man who campaigned on affordability, and on remembering the forgotten working class, is now telling those very same people to shut up and be happy while outright lying about the state of affordability in this country. It was already bad, and Trump has unquestionably made it worse. But he’d rather lie and finger-point than admit that and work to fix it.   

It appears that President Donald Trump’s angry social media posts have once again landed him in hot water in the courts: A judge ordered him Thursday to pay for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in full.

U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island delivered a scathing rebuke of Trump’s Truth Social post from Tuesday, when the president claimed that money for SNAP benefits “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government.” The White House later clarified that the administration still intended to pay half of the benefits for November.

McConnell said that the president’s post was essentially an admission of his “intent to defy” his prior court order, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney on X. The judge’s order last week had required officials to obey the law and use the USDA’s contingency funds to pay for at least some SNAP benefits.

The judge said that Trump and his allies had openly admitted they were withholding funding for SNAP benefits for “political reasons.” Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted that feeding the hungry would mess up his political game because it would “deviate from the goal of reopening the entire government.”

McConnell ordered the Department of Agriculture to pay for November’s SNAP benefits in full by Friday, warning that if the government wavered, “people will go hungry, food pantries will be burdened and … suffering will occur.” He added: “It’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here.”