Trump Celebrates as Meta Names His Former Adviser as President

Donald Trump was glad to hear the news that one of his former advisers, Dina Powell McCormick, was named as Meta’s president and vice chair on Monday.

“Congratulations to DINA POWELL MCCORMICK, WHO HAS JUST BEEN NAMED THE NEW PRESIDENT OF META. A great choice by Mark Z!!” Trump posted on Truth Social, referring to Meta’s founder Mark Zuckerberg. “She is a fantastic, and very talented, person, who served the Trump Administration with strength and distinction. President DJT.”

McCormick, who served as deputy national security adviser in Trump’s first term, is now joining the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp. Last year, McCormick briefly joined Meta’s board of directors before leaving in December. McCormick is married to Senator David McCormick of Pennsylvania, who was elected as a Republican to the Senate last year.

“She’ll be involved in all of Meta’s work, with a particular focus on partnering with governments and sovereigns to build, deploy, invest in, and finance Meta’s AI and infrastructure,” Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads Monday.

Zuckerberg and other tech CEOs used to have a frosty relationship with Trump, with Trump being banned from Facebook after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. But in Trump’s second term, Zuckerberg is on much better terms with the president, getting a front-row seat at Trump’s inauguration after donating $1 million to his inaugural fund.

Trump also threatened to raise tariffs against countries that levy taxes on digital services after Zuckerberg raised the issue at a White House meeting. For his part, Zuckerberg has changed the rules on Facebook to discourage fact-checking and ignore derogatory comments about immigrants, even taking down a popular Facebook page tracking ICE agents. Now it seems Trump will have another ally at the helm of Zuckerberg’s company.

CNN’s Jake Tapper torpedoed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s flimsy defense of the ICE agent who killed Renee Good.

During an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, Noem could only proffer a mealy-mouthed response after being bombarded by footage of rioters violently attacking law enforcement officers at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Donald Trump had claimed earlier Sunday that the use of deadly force was justified because Good was “disrespectful” of law enforcement.

“Would any of those officers have been justified in shooting and killing the people causing them physical harm?” Tapper pressed, referring to the January 6 footage.

“Every single situation is going to, um, rely on the situation those officers are on,” Noem replied. “That they know that when people are putting hands on them, when they are using weapons against them, when they are physically harming them, that they have the authority to arrest those individuals.”

Tapper pointed out that Trump had pardoned every single one of those rioters.

“And every single one of these investigations comes in the full context of the situation on the ground,” Noem said. “That’s one thing that President Trump has been so focused on. Is making sure that when we’re out there, we don’t pick and choose which situations are, and which laws are enforced, and which ones aren’t.”

The exasperated host then had to point out that the footage he’d just shown proved the opposite.

“I just showed you video of people attacking law enforcement officers, undisputed proof, undisputed evidence, and I just said President Trump pardoned all of them. And you just said, ‘President Trump is enforcing all the laws equally.’ It’s just not true,” Tapper said. “There’s a different standard for law enforcement officials being attacked if they’re being attacked by Trump supporters. We just saw that.”

Noem could only offer up word salad. “This individual, and these instances, and these investigations all have to be taken, and done, and done correctly in context of every situation that is happening on the ground,” she said.

It’s genuinely difficult to believe she was picked for this job because someone thought she would be good on TV.

Noem claimed that immigration officers were focused on ensuring that they were “targeting the worst of the worst, and that we’re talking factually about each situation, and making sure that we’re bringing those perpetrators of violence back to justice.”

Of course, the killing of Renee Good demonstrates that they’re doing the exact opposite.

Good was not the “worst of the worst,” but a mother of three who Noem leapt to claim was a so-called “domestic terrorist.” The only person who “perpetrated” violence was Jonathan Ross, the trigger-happy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot a U.S. civilian three times, but there is no evidence he will face any consequences for his actions.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem apparently has found some morsel of humor in Renee Nicole Good’s death.

Noem flashed a small smile while speaking about Good’s killing during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday morning, apparently undisturbed by the fact that one of her agents called the 37-year-old mother a “fucking bitch” immediately after an agent shot her in the face several times.

“Is that Agent [Jonathan] Ross’s voice calling Renee Good a ‘fucking bitch’?” Tapper asked after playing cell phone footage of the incident that clearly captured the phrase.

“I can’t determine which one it is, but it could be, sir,” Noem replied, pulling her lips into a quick smirk as she finished her sentence.

The footage Tapper showed of the shooting last week depicts a masked federal agent’s vantage point of the lethal encounter and offered an additional perspective of the extrajudicial killing.

The exchange, as captured in the video, begins with a 360-degree shot of Good’s red Honda Pilot, and ends after multiple gunshots ring out, when her SUV careens into a utility pole and several parked vehicles.

In a paltry attempt to defend the agents’ deadly actions, Trump officials have claimed that Good was trying to kill an ICE agent by moving her vehicle—an allegation that is readily disputed by other video footage of the incident, which shows that Ross sidesteps the front bumper as it begins to push forward.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the administration from branding Good as a domestic terrorist. In their repeated defense of her needless death, Trump officials have also suggested that defying the barked orders of masked individuals who evade identification is a crime punishable by death.

Hundreds of protests have since taken place in cities across America, protesting Good’s death and the needless violence employed by ICE—an agency that has apparently morphed into Donald Trump’s personal gestapo—as well as the administration’s harrowing response to the killing.

Donald Trump is pushing for the United States to take over Greenland, telling reporters on Air Force One Sunday that “one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.”

Trump has been eager to take over the Danish territory, located in the north Atlantic Ocean, since his first term in office. Now, emboldened by U.S. military action to depose Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and a lack of pushback from Republicans in Congress, Trump thinks the time is right for this ill-advised venture.

“If we don’t take Greenland, Russia or China will, and I’m not letting that happen,” Trump said, adding that he would love to make a deal with Denmark to prevent military action because “it’s easier,” but refusing to back down from taking the territory by force.

A military seizure of Greenland would threaten the existence of NATO, as Denmark is a signatory to the defense pact along with the U.S. Last week, the leaders of France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Denmark, all NATO members, issued a joint statement warning that any changes to the status quo aren’t up to the U.S.

“Greenland belongs to its people. It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland,” the statement read, with leaders from Canada and the Netherlands also backing it.

But that so far hasn’t deterred the Trump administration, nor has the fact that Greenland’s political parties, including the opposition, remain steadfastly against becoming a territory of the U.S.

“We do not want to be Americans, we do not want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” the parties said in their own statement Friday. “The future of Greenland must be decided by the Greenlandic people.”

After the senseless killing of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of ICE last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has promised to send even more federal agents to Minneapolis—all but ensuring that more separation, detainment, violence, and general suffering will ensue.

This comes as numerous videos of ICE officers breaking down doors, using excessive force, and terrorizing communities with no justification circulate the internet.

“As we uncover more of this criminal activity, we’re going to continue to surge resources to make sure this abuse of government funds and government power no longer continues in Minnesota,” Noem said Sunday.

There are already at least 2,400 federal agents in the state as part of “Operation Metro Surge.”

“We’re gonna have another large footprint coming here to ensure that we get that Title 8 mission under control and that we conduct very effective, unabated Title 8 immigration enforcement,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino said to CBS News.

With Minnesotans dead or detained and thousands of militarized agents in the street—with more on the way—it’s become clear that the Trump administration has no plans of stopping this crackdown and is encouraging its personal gestapo to keep their feet on the community’s neck.

Donald Trump’s “mandate from the people” apparently extends to foreign oil-rich nations.

The president informally declared himself “acting president” of Venezuela Sunday evening, sharing an edited variant of his Wikipedia profile to include the detail underneath his official 2025 portrait on Truth Social.

The line reads: “Acting President of Venezuela, incumbent, January 2026.”

The title addition also precedes details of his U.S. presidency.

The Truth Social post received more than 23,000 likes, and fielded replies suggesting that America should take over all of Latin America. “This is our hemisphere,” reads one response that included an image of a red, white, and blue map spanning from Greenland to Argentina.

U.S. forces invaded Venezuela earlier this month, bombing its capital, Caracas, as nearly 200 American troops infiltrated the city to capture its 13-year ruler, Nicolás Maduro. That’s left open questions about Venezuela’s political future and who will run it, especially as Trump and his officials tout that the military incursion was primarily to acquire the nation’s oil resources.

Trump has signaled that he would recognize Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as the face of the country. Rodríguez was recognized by Venezuela’s armed forces as its interim leader, and she was sworn into office shortly after Maduro was kidnapped.

In a press conference hours after Maduro’s abduction, Trump warned that Rodríguez would pay “a very high price” if she did not “do what’s right” with regard to helping American companies access Venezuela’s oil reserves.

On Tuesday, Trump announced that the U.S. would oversee the sale of some 50 million barrels of sanctioned Venezuelan oil, a sale that could be worth as much as $2.5 billion. The following day, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that America would continue to oversee and sell Venezuelan oil “indefinitely,” even after the government finishes chewing through the Latin American country’s stockpiled oil reserves.

In an interview with The New York Times published Thursday, Trump claimed that the U.S. will likely run Venezuela for years.

President Donald Trump suggested that being “disrespectful” toward law enforcement justifies the deadly use of force.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One Sunday, Trump offered a new excuse for why an ICE officer shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis: She wasn’t being very nice.

“We have to respect our law enforcement. At a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement,” he said. “And you heard the same noises, you saw the same crunch that I saw. You can’t do that with law enforcement, whether it’s police or ICE or Border Patrol or anybody else.”

When asked whether the use of deadly force was necessary, Trump replied: “It was highly disrespectful of law enforcement, the woman and her friend were highly disrespectful. You saw that.” He even suggested that Good and her wife (whom he incorrectly identified as her “friend”) were “professional agitators.”

So, in Trump’s America, being disrespectful toward law enforcement is enough to get you killed.

The “crunch” sound that Trump was referring to was from the 47-second clip filmed from the perspective of Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Good. In the video, there is a loud sound as Good tries to pull away from the group of officers. But the crunch wasn’t Ross being hit—more likely, it was him shooting his service weapon through her windshield.

Even if what Trump was saying was true, that Good had been “disrespectful” to law enforcement, that wouldn’t justify her killing. But once again, the video evidence Trump was referencing quickly disproved his own claim.

The video taken by Ross as he stalked around her vehicle showed Good behind the driver’s seat, saying: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” The president’s version of events conveniently ignored other footage that showed Good wasn’t actually blocking traffic and had waved the agents past her car, urging them to “go around!”

Instead of pulling around, the ICE agents swarmed her vehicle, pulling on the doors and demanding she “get out of the fucking car!” One witness even said that another officer ordered her to leave. When she attempted to drive away, Ross, who was in front of the vehicle, shot her at least three times.

Trump had previously claimed that Good “ran [the officer] over,” before reporters had to brutally point out that video evidence did not actually support that claim.

President Trump declared on Sunday that Iran crossed a “red line” after the country’s violent crackdown on anti-government protest, before walking it back.

“On Iran, have they crossed your red line yet to trigger a response?” a reporter asked the president while aboard Air Force One.

“They’re starting to, it looks like. And there seem to be some people killed that aren’t supposed to be killed,” Trump said. “You can call ’em leaders; I don’t know if they’re leaders … they rule through violence. But we’re looking at it very seriously … we’re looking at some very strong options.”

But he then floated negotiating with the leaders ruling “through violence.”

“Iran called to negotiate [yesterday] … the leaders of Iran,” he told reporters. “I think they’re tired of being beat up by the United States.

“A meeting is being set up, but we may have to act because of what is happening before the meeting, but a meeting is being set up. Iran called, they want to negotiate.”

At least 544 protesters have been reported dead and 10,600 detained by the Islamic Republic of Iran as demonstrations enter their third week. Iranians are entering their fifth day without internet access.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell shot back at President Trump Sunday after the Department of Justice served the Fed’s board with grand jury subpoenas.

In a statement, Powell called the move a “threat of criminal charges,” saying it was a “consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.”

“I have deep respect for the rule of law and for accountability in our democracy. No one—certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve—is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure,” Powell noted. 

Trump has railed against Powell and his stewardship of the Fed for months, attacking the chairman whom he appointed during his first term on everything from his criticism of  tariffs to his refusal to cut interest rates as quickly or as much as Trump wants. This grand jury summons is ostensibly over the high cost of renovations to the Fed’s office buildings, which Trump has exaggerated as pretext to attack Powell. 

Powell warned  that the DOJ’s action is a pretext to coerce the Fed to do Trump’s bidding.

“This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation,” Powell said. 

By law, the Fed is supposed to be politically independent. That hasn’t stopped Trump from trying to fire one of the board’s governors, Lisa Cook, or from issuing this unheard-of subpoena. In reality, Trump is mad that his own policies are tanking the economy, but refuses to recognize that. Unfortunately for him, having yes-men at the Fed will not bring forth the economic renaissance Trump seems to think he’s capable of. 

Donald Trump humiliated himself Friday when Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to slyly pass him a note during a meeting with oil executives, and the president immediately read it aloud.

Trump was in the midst of promising “a very nice return” for executives from Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Halliburton, Valero, and Marathon—in exchange for a $100 billion investment in rebuilding Venezuela’s energy sector, when he was suddenly sidetracked by a scrap of paper from Rubio.   

“You’re all gonna do very well—Marco just gave me a note. ‘Go back to Chevron, they want to discuss something,’” Trump read, turning to look at Chevron Vice Chairman Mark Nelson. “Go ahead, I’m going back to Chevron, Mark.”

Rubio grimaced uncomfortably, as Trump patted him on the back. “Thank you, Marco,” he said.

“Was there a question, Mr. President?” Nelson asked.

“Yes, go ahead Marco, what are you saying here?” Trump asked, inspecting the note again.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright jumped in. “Mark, if you could update us on operations on the ground, appropriate approvals, what you might be able to achieve in the next 12 to 18 months—give us a little view from the ground,” he said. 

Nelson launched into a description of Chevron’s ground operations. Chevron is the only oil company currently operating in Venezuela, as part of a joint venture with Petróleos de Venezuela. Wright told CNBC Wednesday that the Trump administration was receiving “daily updates” from Chevron and working closely to “allow their model to grow even more.”

Trump’s gaffe was part of a larger trend of cognitive decline, as the aged president has spent the last year in office appearing to fall asleep during meetings and giving incoherent, confused rants.