Trump Chief of Staff Admits Real Reason Behind “Drug Boat” Strikes

White House chief of staff Susie Wiles may have given up the game, admitting that the Trump administration’s strike on alleged “drug boats” in the Caribbean Sea is an effort to bring about regime change in Venezuela, rather than a war on drug trafficking as the administration has said.

Wiles spilled this tidbit—and various others—during a series of surprisingly candid interviews with Vanity Fair, which were published on Tuesday.

“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” Wiles told Vanity Fair’s Chris Whipple over lunch in November. “And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.”

What exactly does Maduro crying “uncle” entail? That verbiage offers itself more to a U.S.-backed coup rather than the new war on drugs that the administration claims (without proof) to be fighting.

“The president believes in harsh penalties for drug dealers, as he’s said many, many times.… These are not fishing boats, as some would like to allege,” Wiles continued. “We’re very sure we know who we’re blowing up.… One of the great untold stories of the U.S. government is the talents of the CIA. And there may be an interest in going inside territorial waters, which we have permission [to do] because they’re skirting the coastline to avoid getting [caught].”

It seems clear that Trump is using any excuse he can find to justify the continued violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty up to the point of possible invasion. If it really was just about drugs, Trump would never have pardoned former Honduran president and convicted drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez, and he would have never seized a Venezuelan oil tanker. Wiles’s comments confirm what many already suspect: Trump couldn’t care less about the narco-trafficking. He just wants an in for their oil.

Somehow, Joe Biden is responsible for one of the most horrific shootings in Australian history.

At least, that’s the narrative that Senator Lindsey Graham is pushing. In an interview with Fox News Monday night, the South Carolina lawmaker claimed that former Presidents Barack “Obama and Biden have a lot to do with this.”

“I blame the terrorist, but Obama allowed ISIS to come about when he withdrew from Iraq,” Graham continued. “Donald Trump destroyed the caliphate, killed [Iranian military officer Qassem] Soleimani, and got out of the Iran nuclear deal, and the dumbass Biden—the biggest dumbass on the planet—withdrew from Afghanistan, obliterated our borders, and rejoined the Iran nuclear agreement, making the Ayatollah flush with cash.”

At least 15 people were killed Sunday in a horrific attack at Bondi Beach, one of Sydney’s most popular locations. Two men—a father-son duo—allegedly opened fire on a crowd of Jewish Australians on the first night of Hanukkah. The country’s leadership has declared the incident a terrorist attack.

The suspects have been identified by authorities as 50-year-old Sajid Akram and his son, 24-year-old Naveed Akram. Indian police reported that the elder Akram was originally from the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. He moved to Australia in 1998, and his son was born in the country. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said that the attack was “inspired by Islamic State.”

“You’re wondering what we’re dealing with. Trump had them in a box,” Graham barked. “And dumbass Biden comes along and tears it all up. And now we’re fighting these bastards again.”

Mere hours after the attack, the American right gripped the incident to advocate for the mass deportation of Muslims, even as Australian leadership insisted that Islamophobia and hatred were not appropriate reactions—underscoring that it was a member of the local Muslim community who intervened and stopped the violence.

President Trump’s spiteful defamation suit against the Pulitzer Prize Board may backfire, as the latter is now demanding Trump’s psychological records, prescription medication records, and tax returns in the discovery process. 

Trump filed the lawsuit in 2022 after the board refused to revoke 2018 Pulitzer awards from The New York Times and The Washington Post for “perpetuating the absurdly false and defamatory narrative contrived by the President’s political opponents: that he and his campaign somehow colluded with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government to gain advantage in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and thereafter maintained some nefarious connection with Russian elements during the presidential transition and Trump administration (the ‘Russia Collusion Hoax’).”

“This case has always been about correcting the record, revealing the truth, and vindicating the president and his supporters against the lies told to the American people by the Democrats and their PR machine known as ‘legacy media,’” a Trump spokesperson told Fox News just last week.  

But the Board stood its ground, clarifying that “no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”

Nevertheless, the lawsuit has dragged on deep into 2025. And the board is still fighting back, demanding Trump’s tax returns from the last decade—which he has yet to release since winning his second term. 

“To the extent You seek damages for any physical ailment or mental or emotional injury arising from Counts I-IV of Your Complaint, all Documents (whether held by You or by third parties under Your control or who could produce them at your direction) concerning Your medical and/or psychological health from January 1, 2015, to present, including any prescription medications you have been prescribed or have taken,” the board wrote in their filing. “For the avoidance of doubt, this includes all Documents Concerning Your annual physical examination. To the extent you do not seek such damages in this action, please confirm so in writing.”

As with the tax returns, Trump has been deliberately coy and unspecific about his health. He always claims to be in good health, bragging about acing dementia tests while his ankles swell, his hand bruises, and he falls asleep in televised meetings. If anything does come to light in discovery, his attack on the Pulitzer Board could very well blow up in his face. 

Not surprisingly, House Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t have anything to say about President Trump’s unhinged response to the tragic death of Hollywood icon Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. 

“Mr. Speaker, do you condemn Trump’s post about Rob Reiner?” CNN’s Manu Raju asked Johnson in the Capitol Monday night.

“I don’t do ongoing commentary about everything that’s said by everybody in government every day,” Johnson said, ignoring Raju when he brought up that they were talking about the president every day. 

“We are trying to bring down health care costs for the American people. They’re very important votes, very important issues, and that’s what we’re focused on,” Johnson added. Raju pointed out that a lot of other House Republicans were not happy with Trump’s comments, to which Johnson was dismissive. 

“I gave commentary this morning, and you all heard it,” Johnson said as he sought to get away from reporters. 

Usually, when confronted with one of Trump’s deranged remarks, Johnson feigns ignorance. This time, it seems he’s trying a new tack to try and get reporters off his back so he doesn’t have to take responsibility for Trump’s clearly reprehensible comments. But all Johnson is proving is that he knows that Trump was insensitive and still refuses to hold him accountable. 

It sounds like President Donald Trump’s administration is looking for a repeat of America’s disastrous invasion of Iraq—no, seriously.

Trump announced Monday that he planned to sign an order classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, practically paving the way for an invasion of Venezuela.

This announcement comes amid mounting tensions with Caracas, following multiple U.S. strikes on boats the Trump administration claims—but won’t prove—are smuggling drugs and the recent seizure of an Venezuelan oil tanker by the U.S. military. Trump himself has repeatedly threatened to take his strikes on alleged drug boats to dry land.

One might hear the echoes of the U.S. government’s lie that Sadam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction as justification for its invasion of Iraq. It seems that history is repeating itself, as there is reason to believe that America’s growing interest in Venezuela is not about drugs at all: It’s actually about oil.

It’s worth noting that the Associated Press reported in November that the boats targeted by U.S. strikes appeared to be carrying cocaine—not the synthetic opioids responsible for thousands of deaths each year.

But just last week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth described so-called narco-terrorists as the “Al Qaeda of our hemisphere,” responsible for spreading “narcotics so lethal they’re tantamount to chemical weapons.”

In November, The Wall Street Journal reported that a classified legal brief justified the Trump administration’s extrajudicial execution of alleged drug smugglers by referring to fentanyl as a potential chemical weapon.

The editor-at-large of Christianity Today magazine on Monday sharply condemned Donald Trump’s deranged post about the murders of Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele.

Russell Moore, formerly the magazine’s editor in chief, called out Trump’s post blaming Reiner for the murders “through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” Moore called Trump’s comments “vile, disgusting, and immoral behavior.”

“How this vile, disgusting, and immoral behavior has become normalized in the United States is something our descendants will study in school, to the shame of our generation,” Moore’s post read in full.

Though Moore has been a longtime open critic of Trump, he wasn’t alone this time. Even some right-wing supporters of the president took issue with his insensitive post, including commentators Raheem Kassam, Robby Starbuck, and Rod Dreher. Trump’s former lawyer Jenna Ellis also criticized Trump’s comments, writing, “This is NOT the appropriate response” on X.

Moore resigned from the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021, after breaking with other evangelicals on Trump. He has criticized the rise of the Christian right, alarmed at the fact that some evangelicals think of Jesus Christ’s teachings as “liberal” and “weak.” To Moore, Trump’s behavior just shows increasing moral rot, especially from those of his supporters who call themselves Christian.

Jared Kushner, private equity firm manager and son-in-law to President Trump, has ended his efforts to redevelop a Serbian historical monument into a luxury hotel complex after weeks of protest and controversy. 

“Because meaningful projects should unite rather than divide, and out of respect for the people of Serbia and the City of Belgrade, we are withdrawing our application and stepping aside at this time,” a spokesman for Kushner’s private-equity firm, Affinity Partners, said in a statement on Monday. 

The land in question is the site of the 78-day NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999. The attack by NATO was part of an effort to end then-President Slobodan Milosevic’s violent ethnic cleansing of Albanians living in Kosovo, which resulted in the death of 13,000 people (mostly ethnic Albanians). NATO bombed bridges, military buildings, and government buildings. 

Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 528 civilians were killed in the bombings, and many Serbians view the ruins as a point of cultural and architectural pride today. 

In May, Kushner’s company and the Serbian government signed a deal for a 99-year lease of the land under the bombed-out buildings, promising “revitalization”—meaning a high-rise hotel, office space, and stores. It was set to be a $500 million project, with Kushner’s company building a separate memorial for the bombing elsewhere.  

“The economic progress in Serbia over the past decade has been impressive,” Kushner said then. “This development will further elevate Belgrade into the premier international destination it is becoming.”

The decision was met with widespread protest, coupled with indictment of three Serbian government officials—including Minister of Culture Nikola Selaković—for abuse of power and falsifying documents related to Kushner’s redevelopment. Serbians who were against the plans accused their government of shirking public opinion and the law to streamline the effort for Kushner in an effort to curry favor with the Trump administration. 

“You call it an investment, we call it high treason,” Serbian Assemblymember Marinika Tepić told Parliament.

CBS News just wouldn’t stop posting content of Bari Weiss’s weird photo op with Erika Kirk amid a weekend full of high-profile stories of bloodshed around the world.

Kirk, who now leads Turning Point USA, her late husband’s conservative youth organization, appeared on a CBS News Town Hall Saturday moderated by Weiss. Shortly before the town hall was set to air, another story broke: There was an active shooter at Brown University, CBS News posted on X.

Over the course of Saturday evening, CBS News’s X account posted 12 times about its town hall with Kirk, but only posted four updates about the deadly shooting in Rhode Island that killed two students and injured eight others.

By Sunday morning, there was a tab at the top of CBS News’s website providing readers with a quick way to access crucial information about the shooting at Brown University—but right in front of it was another tab leading them to more content from Kirk’s town hall.

That same day, a deadly mass shooting at a Jewish gathering at Bondi Beach in Australia claimed 15 lives. After CBS News posted about Kirk’s interview three times in a row, users on X began to notice that a major news company wasn’t actually, well, covering the news.

While the CBS News account posted on X 12 times about the shooting at Bondi Beach, it also continued to post about Kirk’s town hall six more times: the same number of times it provided updates on the investigation into the shooting at Brown University.

So, over the course of the weekend, CBS News managed to publish a whopping 18 posts about Kirk, 12 posts about the Bondi Beach shooting, and only 10 posts about Brown University.

By Monday morning, yet another major story had broken: the apparent murder of Rob Reiner and his wife. As of 3:30 Monday afternoon, CBS News posted about Reiner’s death 11 times. The network only posted once, however, about President Donald Trump’s heinous reaction, where he claimed that Reiner had caused his own death because his hatred of Trump angered those around him. CBS News’s X account wrote the president had merely “disparage[d] the political views” of the famous director. CBS News has continued to post about the Kirk town hall throughout the day, as well.

In her first memo to CBS News employees when she took over in October, Weiss had proclaimed that she planned to report “on the world as it actually is.” But it seems that her rather boring tendency to gravitate toward right-wing commentators to help us understand our world will always come first.

Donald Trump stood firm Monday on his disturbing comments about Rob Reiner hours after the famed Hollywood filmmaker’s murder.

Only a handful of loyal MAGA-ites (such as George Santos) have defended Trump’s claim earlier Monday that Reiner would not have been murdered if he had supported the MAGA movement. Instead, people across the nation have condemned Trump’s remarks, including Republican lawmakers and powerful Christians.

But the public backlash hasn’t bothered Trump one bit. Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office Monday afternoon, Trump emphasized that he was “not a fan of Rob Reiner at all.”

“He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned,” Trump said, referring to himself in the third person. “He said, he liked, he knew it was false. In fact it’s the exact opposite, that I was a friend of Russia, controlled by Russia. You know, it was the Russia hoax. He was one of the people behind it.”

Reiner was found stabbed to death in his Los Angeles home Sunday alongside his wife, producer Michele Singer Reiner. Their son, 32-year-old Nick Reiner, was taken into custody on homicide charges early Monday and is being held on $4 million bail.

“I think he hurt himself in career-wise. He became like a deranged person. Trump derangement syndrome,” Trump said. “So I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all, in any way, shape, or form. I thought he was very bad for our country.”

Reiner’s vast and varied trove of work made him a cinematic legend, with each film standing as a template of its respective genre. Reiner enthralled children and adults alike with The Princess Bride, created the blueprint for romantic comedies with When Harry Met Sally…, and practically invented the mockumentary with This Is Spinal Tap.

He was a longtime critic of the president’s agenda.

Stephen Miller made an odious threat on X Monday against “the violent fifth column of domestic terrorists” after the Department of Justice announced it had stopped a bombing plot in California.

“Following the issuance of NSPM-7 vast government resources have been unleashed to find and dismantle the violent fifth column of domestic terrorists clandestinely operating inside the United States,” Miller’s post read.

NSPM-7 refers to a memo issued by the Trump administration titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” in September that directs federal agencies to focus on domestic extremism. The document defines extremism in terms of common liberal and left-wing beliefs, such as anti-capitalism, as well as vague and subjective positions, for instance “extremism” on race, migration, and gender.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said on X that the DOJ foiled a New Year’s Eve bombing plot against targets in Orange County and Los Angeles. The plot was reportedly hatched by “The Turtle Island Liberation Front—a far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-government, and anti-capitalist group.” The group also planned to attack ICE agents and their vehicles, Bondi said.

This matches up with NSPM-7’s definition of domestic terrorism, and judging from Miller’s post, discovering and foiling the supposed plot is a product of that memo. Miller’s use of “fifth column” refers to a group of people within a country seeking to undermine it from within. It has been used by right-wing groups and governments to attack Muslims and other groups they deem subversive.

In Miller’s hands, the use of such language evokes racism and bigotry, especially considering his known efforts to use his position in the Trump administration to advance his anti-immigrant, xenophobic ideology. That, coupled with Trump and conservatives’ attacks on any dissenting views, suggests that the full force of the government can now be directed at anyone who disagrees with the people in power.