Trump Left JD Vance Out of Key Iran Meeting—but Invited Jared Kushner

As President Donald Trump drags the U.S. deeper into a war with Iran that has caused horrific civilian casualties and decimated the global oil market, it’s worth looking back at how the country got here.

New reporting from The New York Times on Tuesday provided key insight into what convinced Trump to go to war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally attended a meeting at the White House on February 11, the Times reported, along with most top members of Trump’s Cabinet. The head of Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, David Barnea, attended virtually.

Also present was the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the slimy businessman who has been a key negotiator in the Middle East since Trump’s reelection, despite not holding an official staff position in the White House.

Conspicuously absent was JD Vance, who was in Azerbaijan for a diplomatic visit. The Times reported that the meeting “had been scheduled on such short notice that he was unable to make it back in time.” But it’s interesting that the most supposedly antiwar figure inside Trump’s Cabinet wasn’t invited to the meeting that convinced the president to kickstart the conflict.

Netanyahu gave an hour-long presentation arguing that Iran’s missile program was weak and could be toppled by U.S. munitions, leading to an easy victory in the region, according to the Times. From there, the prime minister said, a new government could be installed by the U.S. and Israel.

Netanyahu’s speech reportedly worked in convincing the president that war was desirable—and Trump’s underlings, while they would raise a few objections in the coming weeks, fell in line.

“Even the more skeptical members of Mr. Trump’s war cabinet—with the stark exception of Mr. Vance, the figure inside the White House most opposed to a full-scale war—deferred to the president’s instincts, including his abundant confidence that the war would be quick and decisive,” the Times reported.

But since the U.S. entered the conflict on February 28, Iran has been anything but a pushover. The Strait of Hormuz has been shut off, crippling global trade, and America’s most expensive munitions are being wasted with little effect. Bombing around the Middle East is still ongoing, and Trump made his most worrying threat just this morning, writing that “a whole civilization will die” if the Iranian regime does not make a deal. If only any member of Trump’s Cabinet had a spine, maybe this bloody conflict could have been avoided.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s relentless claims of an unqualified success in Iran has only put American defenses in jeopardy.

The weekend rescue of a downed F-15 crew member stands as proof that America does not have “complete control of Iranian skies,” despite what Hegseth pledged last month. Nonetheless, Donald Trump has unquestioningly regurgitated Hegseth’s militaristic optimism to the nation, fueling concerns that the White House is knowingly feeding misinformation to the American people, reported The Washington Post Tuesday.

“Pete is not speaking truth to the president,” one administration official told the newspaper. “As a result, the president is out there repeating misleading information.”

On Monday, Trump acknowledged that the fighter jet had been struck by a heat-seeking missile. It was a “lucky hit,” according to the president’s assessment.

But the F-15 wasn’t the only U.S. aircraft that got hit last week. Iran also shot down an A-10 attack plane on Friday, though the craft was able to fly back to friendly airspace before its pilots evacuated the vehicle.

Kelly Grieco, a military analyst at the Stimson Center, explained to the Post that the loss of the fighter jet is what happens “when you have air superiority but don’t have air supremacy.”

“Our air superiority is limited geographically to the west and to south but also in terms of altitude,” Grieco said.

Last month, Hegseth claimed that Iran’s missile and drone programs were “overwhelmingly destroyed.” Iranian officials have since disagreed: The country’s new leadership told Pakistan Tuesday that not only did Tehran believe that it was winning, but the country still had tens of thousands more drones and missiles at its disposal.

That could boil down to a money and munitions problem for the U.S., which has so far struggled to combat Iran’s Shahed attack drones (which are very cheap and easy to produce) with anything other than the most expensive interceptor systems, such as Patriot interceptor missiles. (The military has so far requested to purchase 3,200 Patriot missiles for the 2027 fiscal year, costing just under $14 billion. The Navy requested hundreds more on Monday.)

Nonetheless, the Trump administration has lashed out at any attempt to hold Hegseth accountable for his unfounded comments on the war. In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell referred to criticism of Hegseth’s messaging as little more than “lies and propaganda.”

“Secretary Hegseth has provided the Commander-in-Chief with decisive military options to achieve our clear, scoped objectives: destroy Iran’s missile arsenal, annihilate their Navy, destroy their terrorist proxies, and ensure Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon,” Parnell told the Post. “The Washington Post is pushing a fake story of failure.”

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly also insisted that Trump “always had the full picture of the conflict.”

“Nothing has surprised him or our military planners, who were prepared for any possible contingency,” she said.

But the conflict is far from a success. The administration widely advertised that it planned for the war to last four to six weeks at maximum, but recent escalations have sparked concerns that the situation will devolve into yet another endless conflict in the Middle East. The war is currently in its sixth week.

Trump suddenly expressed a renewed interest in ending the war over the weekend, after fears emerged that the oil and gas crisis sparked by the fighting could hurt Republicans at the ballot box come November.

The president has demanded that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz—a vital tradeway for the region’s oil and gas—by Tuesday at 8 p.m., or face total annihilation. In a Truth Social post, Trump promised to commit war crimes, pledging that a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” should Iran fail to reopen the waterway for trade. The country has so far rejected potential peace deals.

Donald Trump is asking for millions of taxpayer dollars for his proposed 250-foot-tall arch in Washington, D.C.

The White House is seeking $15 million from the National Endowment for the Arts to build the massive archway across from the Lincoln Memorial, NOTUS reports, citing a spending plan shared in the Office of Management and Budget database Tuesday. The plan contradicts Trump’s earlier promises that the arch, which is intended to commemorate the U.S.’s 250th anniversary, was going to be completely privately funded with leftover donations from his ballroom project.

At the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House Monday, Trump was carrying a picture of the proposed arch with him, and on Sunday, his motorcade drove slowly around the location where he wants the arch, Memorial Circle in Washington. Meanwhile, he skipped the Easter services he was slated to attend.

Even as a war he started rages on and the economy struggles as a result, Trump seems preoccupied with building monuments to himself. The construction of his beloved ballroom will dwarf the existing executive estate, has resulted in the razing of the White House’s East Wing, and will cost at least $400 million. And while he claims that it will be completely funded by donations, it, like the arch, could end up requiring government funds.

A federal judge ruled last month that construction on Trump’s ballroom “has to stop,” as the president acted beyond his authority to raze the East Wing. A group of veterans has also filed a lawsuit against construction of the arch, arguing that it not only requires congressional approval and an environmental review but would increase traffic and obstruct views of Arlington National Cemetery. But if Trump gets his way, by the time 2028 is here, he will have left permanent tributes to himself across Washington.

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche proudly admitted his deference to Donald Trump regarding using the Department of Justice to attack the president’s political enemies.

“President Trump has made no secret of the fact that he wants to see his perceived political enemies prosecuted,” a reporter asked Blanche at a Tuesday press conference. “So now that you’re in this position, how are you going to balance that relentless pressure with this administration’s promise to end the weaponization of this department?”

“First of all we have thousands of ongoing investigations and prosecutions going on in this country right now. And it is true that some of them involve men, women, and entities that the president in the past has had issues with, and believes should be investigated,” Blanche replied, offering zero pushback to the notion that Trump is controlling the DOJ. “That is his right, and indeed it is his duty to do that, meaning to lead this country.”

Under former Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Trump administration has used the DOJ to go after former FBI Director James Comey, Democratic Senators Adam Schiff and Mark Kelly, former national security adviser John Bolton, New York Attorney General Letitia James, every Democratic leader in Minnesota, and more. Each one of those people criticized Trump in some way, and nearly all of the DOJ’s attacks against them failed. And while DOJ criminal investigations are supposed to be free of White House influence, it seems clear that Blanche, who previously served as Trump’s lawyer in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, will continue to dutifully carry out Trump’s revenge.

“At his first press conference, Trump’s Acting AG says it out loud: The DOJ is there to target Trump’s political enemies,” the press office of California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote. “A disgusting abuse of power!”

It looks as if Donald Trump’s new attorney general is ready to pick up right where Pam Bondi left off: declining to investigate fraud committed by Republicans.

Todd Blanche, Trump’s pick for acting head of the Department of Justice, was asked by a reporter Tuesday whether he would investigate the Strategy Group, a firm associated with Kristi Noem that received over $200 million in taxpayer money for an anti-immigrant ad campaign featuring the former homeland security secretary.

First reported by ProPublica, the Strategy Group is run by the husband of Tricia McLaughlin, a former spokesperson for DHS and underling of Noem. Instead of listing the name of the firm on the contracts, officials within the Trump administration covered their tracks by employing a subcontractor called Safe America Media, which had been founded eight days before it was granted the nine-figure contract.

The reporter noted that there have “been a lot of questions” around the firm.

“When you say a lot of questions, you mean you all have decided to write about it hoping that it generates something,” Blanche replied. He went on to call the proposed investigation a “speculative idea.”

It seems Noem, like other Trump-affiliated fraudsters, will escape scot-free.

Deflecting away from serious issues to attack the media is hardly a new strategy among Trump and his disciples, but Blanche doing it is particularly ironic given his boss’s insistence that his administration will deliver the biggest crackdown on fraud in American history.

In reality, Trump has no problem with fraud as long as it’s committed by the right people. Whether it’s Noem, FBI Director Kash Patel using government-owned jets as personal Ubers, Donald Trump Jr.’s work from within the suspiciously unregulated Kalshi and Polymarket, Eric Trump’s crypto company secretly receiving $500 million from the UAE in exchange for political capital, or Trump himself ripping off the American people for literally billions of dollars, the amount of fraud in America right now is indeed enormous. But its main perpetrators sit in the White House.

The United Nations is warning Donald Trump against further escalation in the Iran war after he threatened Tuesday that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

“Even wars have rules,” the U.N.’s official X account posted along with a link to its human rights office. “The Geneva Conventions protect civilians in conflict and help ensure assistance reaches those in need, without discrimination.”

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk issued a statement against “incendiary rhetoric” and warned that anyone who commits war crimes should face legal justice, strongly hinting at Trump without mentioning him by name.

“I deplore the tirade of incendiary rhetoric being used in the Middle East war over the last couple of weeks by all parties, including the latest threats to annihilate a whole civilisation and to target civilian infrastructure. This is sickening. Carrying through on such threats amounts to the most serious international crimes,” Türk said. “Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Anyone responsible for international crimes must be held to account by a competent court.”

Will any of this get through to Trump or his inner circle? Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has already made clear his disdain for any restraint and his love for violence, calling for “no quarter” and “no mercy for our enemies.” Trump doesn’t have a problem with this, as evidenced by his outrageous threat and the fact that he seems to get his war news from a staff-prepared daily highlight reel of bombings in Iran.

If Trump sticks to his 8 p.m. E.T. deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and decides to follow through on his threat to bomb the country’s power plants, bridges, and other civilian infrastructure, the results could be catastrophic. That would no doubt be a war crime resulting in a humanitarian nightmare, in the eyes of not just the U.N. but many in the U.S. and around the world. The question is whether the White House or Republicans in Washington actually care.

While President Trump threatens complete annihilation in Iran, congressional Republicans are in complete disarray at home.

On Tuesday, the House Freedom Caucus announced that they actually opposed the Trump-approved two-pronged plan to end the partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. The plan, which House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader John Thune announced together last week, splits funding for DHS agencies like TSA from the more controversial funding for ICE and Border Patrol. They would later fund immigration enforcement through a reconciliation bill.

This was a notable concession to Democrats, and apparently has infuriated the most conservative Republicans in the House.

“We cannot leave ICE and CBP hanging with nothing but hopes and prayers that reconciliation 2.0 comes together,” the House Freedom Caucus wrote on X Tuesday. “That’s why we must use reconciliation to fully fund ALL of the Department of Homeland Security! We can tightly control this process with strict instructions to the various committees involved, so no one can sneak in unrelated garbage and distract us from our mission.

“We must provide robust funding for ICE and CBP, and it should be done with all of DHS in reconciliation 2.0. We can fund DHS for the rest of the President’s term to ensure Democrats can never again take our nation’s security hostage,” the statement continued. “We will never hand Democrats their ultimate prize: A defunded ICE, handcuffed CBP, and criminal aliens terrorizing our communities.”

“I will not fold on ICE or CPB,” said Freedom Caucus member Andy Ogles on X.

This internal revolt comes as Trump has demanded that DHS be funded by June 1.

The White House’s plans to completely annihilate Iran are so haphazard that even the vice president can’t keep up with them.

JD Vance was apparently caught off guard Tuesday when a journalist informed him that Donald Trump had threatened to obliterate the entire Iranian civilization by 8 p.m. Vance was onstage in Budapest at the time, feet away from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

The exchange began when a Washington Post reporter asked Vance if there had been any recent developments in the war that could inform a peace deal, reported The Daily Beast.

“I don’t—unless I have a text message from Steve Witkoff,” Vance said, referring to Trump’s Middle East envoy.

But as Vance pulled out his phone to check his notifications, it became clear that he did have an urgent notification from Witkoff.

“I do have a message from Steve Witkoff,” Vance acknowledged awkwardly.

“Wouldn’t you like to know the subject of this message?” Vance continued. “But no, uh, I need to read it first before I talk about it. But here’s, here’s … uh, what time is it in the United States right now?”

The uncomfortable lapse became even more unsettling when a Reuters reporter urged Vance to properly read up before speaking with the press about his apparently misinformed analysis of the war.

“I do think you have to read that text because we have reporting that the United States is striking some targets in Kharg Island,” she said. “You did say that the military objectives of this war have been achieved. So could you help us understand why the president is still threatening to attack every bridge and every power plant in Iran?”

Kharg Island is an export hub off the Iranian coast that handles roughly 90 percent of the country’s crude oil exports. The U.S. struck Kharg Island in March, when U.S. Central Command claimed that 90 targets on the island had been hit, including “naval mine storage facilities, missile storage bunkers, and multiple other military sites.”

U.S. officials said that they had struck the island again Tuesday morning, though they claimed that the U.S. did not hit any of Kharg’s oil facilities.

The attack occurred moments after Trump pledged that a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” should Iran fail to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, another vital tradeway for the region. Iran has so far rejected potential peace deals. Iranian media responded just after 9 a.m. E.T., announcing through diplomatic channels that talks with the U.S. had stalled in the wake of Trump’s explicit threats. Shortly after, international paper the Tehran Times reported that “diplomatic and indirect channels” were not closed, after all.

Vance was supposed to be on “standby” and prepared to jump into peace talks with Iran should the moment arise, Politico reported Monday.

Nonetheless, Vance backed Trump’s explosive response to the rapidly devolving conflict Tuesday morning, telling the Budapest assembly that he hopes Iran makes the “right response” while emphasizing America’s need for free-flowing oil.

“The president of the United States is a man who recognizes leverage,” Vance said. “That if the Iranians want to exact a certain amount of pain, the United States has the ability to exact much, much greater pain.”

As President Donald Trump terrifies everyone around the world into thinking human civilization may end at 8 p.m. Tuesday, a growing number of political figures are calling for his removal, including a handful of slightly less spineless Republicans.

Drop Site News’s Julian Andreone compiled a list of the members of Congress calling to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, which would deem Trump unfit for office and transfer power to Vice President JD Vance. If Trump does not agree to cede power himself, Vance and a majority of Trump’s Cabinet would have to independently decide to wrest control from him. Considering how subservient Trump’s Cabinet is, this will likely never happen. Regardless, the Democrats calling to invoke the Amendment are:

• Arizona Representative Yassamin Ansari
• Colorado Representative Diana DeGette
• California Representative Ro Khanna
• California Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove
• Delaware Representative Sarah McBride
• Florida Representative Maxwell Frost
• Illinois Representative Delia Ramirez
• Maryland Representative Johnny Olszewski
• Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley
• Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton
• Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey
• Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar
• Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib
• Michigan Representative Shri Thanedar
• New Mexico Representative Melanie Stansbury
• Pennsylvania Representative Summer Lee
• Texas Representative Julie Johnson
• Wisconsin Representative Mark Pocan

The New Republic found a few more Democratic congress members not on Andreone’s list calling to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, who are:

• California Representative Doris Matsui
  
• Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy
• New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Washington Senator Patty Murray

The only congressionally affiliated Republican who has explicitly called for Trump’s ouster is Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned from her duties in January. Prominent right-wing pundits Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and Candace Owens have also suggested Trump is not fit for office.

This story has been updated.

After Donald Trump escalated his threats against Iran Tuesday by warning that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Republicans in Congress still came to his defense. 

Despite the fact that many of Trump’s former allies, as well as Democrats, think that he could be alluding to nuclear war or genocide, Republicans like Representative Jodey Arrington are saying, “Thank God we have a commander in chief that is not full of empty rhetoric, because we’ve delayed this inevitability for 50 years.”

“We’d have another North Korea,” the Texas representative told Fox Business only minutes after Trump made his genocidal threat, “save and except for President Trump, who is a man with a bias for action, and a man who presented with the facts that we have imminent threats, today and for our children’s future, is going to act even if it’s against his personal political interests. Thank God for President Trump and for the courage and political will to do what he’s doing.” 

Representative Mike Lawler tried to claim on CNN that Trump wasn’t “really talking about ending a civilization.” 

“He is talking about the energy and civilian infrastructure, that’s what he’s talking about,” Lawler said to CNN’s John Berman, who emphasized that Trump’s message stated “never to be brought back again.”  

“He just means the bridges and the infrastructure?” Berman asked. 

Lawler paused and blinked for a few seconds, before trying to claim that “we’re talking about taking decisive action against Iran’s energy and civilian infrastructure. That is what the president is talking about. He’s not talking about obliterating innocent people.” 

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson have not commented, as of this writing, on Trump’s threat of apocalyptic violence, either to reporters or on their social media accounts. As Trump’s arbitrary 8 p.m. E.T. deadline approaches and a U.N. Security Council resolution to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was vetoed, is there any chance of a sensible solution?