Iran Says JD Vance & Co. Blew Up Ceasefire Talks at Last Minute

Donald Trump’s negotiators scuttled talks with Iran at the last minute, according to Iran.

In a post on X Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that his country “engaged with U.S in good faith to end war.”

“But when just inches away from ‘Islamabad MoU’, we encountered maximalism, shifting goalposts, and blockade,” Araghchi posted. “Zero lessons earned. Good will begets good will. Enmity begets enmity.”

Trump claimed in an angry Truth Social post earlier that day that “IRAN IS UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS NUCLEAR AMBITIONS!”

“In many ways, the points that were agreed to are better than us continuing our Military Operations to conclusion, but all of those points don’t matter compared to allowing Nuclear Power to be in the hands of such volatile, difficult, unpredictable people,” Trump posted.

“My three Representatives, as all of this time went by, became, not surprisingly, very friendly and respectful of Iran’s Representatives, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, Abbas Araghchi, and Ali Bagheri, but that doesn’t matter because they were very unyielding as to the single most important issue and, as I have always said, right from the beginning, and many years ago, IRAN WILL NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!” Trump continued.

Iran has been a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty since 1968, and its terms require them not to seek nuclear weapons. Since the Iran war broke out this year, though, Iranian lawmakers have pushed for the country to pull out of the agreement, citing the war and Trump’s decision to scrap the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by President Barack Obama.

Iran’s former supreme leaders, the late Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, each made religious rulings against developing and using nuclear weapons. But facing a relentless bombing campaign from the U.S. and Israel, as well as broken deals and failed negotiations, Iran’s new clerical leadership might rule differently.

Boos and jeers erupted at New York Representative Mike Lawler’s town hall as he faced constituents frustrated with the Trump administration—and with his support for the chaotic, expensive U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Lawler, who claims to be a moderate but legislates as a MAGA Zionist, remained firm in his support for Trump and the war, stating that “we need to do everything we can to ensure that this regime never gets a nuclear weapon.” The crowd was unconvinced.

One man was escorted out of the Sunday night town hall after shouting that the Republican Party is “morally bankrupt” and led by “spineless liars” while the crowd cheered him on. “You must impeach. He’s a fraud, he’s corrupt, he’s an incompetent psychopath,” the man yelled, referring to Trump. “The Republican Party and you are enabling him.... He makes genocidal threats against millions of innocent Iranian civilians.... Don’t be spineless, impeach him!”

“Respectfully, you have abdicated your responsibility to the majority of the constituents in District 17,” another constituent who identified as a “military mother” told Lawler. “You have in fact endangered our young people, our service members of our country and killed civilians by not standing up to Trump on this unjustified war.”

This is just one of many rough town halls that Lawler has held, as his constituents grow tired of deference to an administration that they—and much of the country—are fed up with. The midterms can’t come soon enough.

MAGA treated Donald Trump like a messiah. Now they’re mad he’s comparing himself to Jesus Christ.

Trump leapt into hot water with his Christian fans Sunday, when he posted an AI-generated image of himself as literal Jesus on Truth Social. In the image, Trump appeared dressed as a biblical figure, healing a sick man in a hospital bed, surrounded by bald eagles, soldiers, fighter jets, and whatever this winged creature is floating in the background behind him.

After enduring a few hours of the firestorm, Trump removed the post Monday morning. A statement blaming the post on some imaginary staffer shouldn’t be far behind.

Former MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene decried the implication he was “replacing Jesus.”

“It’s more than blasphemy. It’s an Antichrist spirit,” Greene wrote in a separate post. (Greene directly compared Trump to Jesus during his hush-money trial in April 2023.)

Riley Gaines, an anti-trans activist, struggled to make sense of the president’s post.

“Why? Seriously, I cannot understand why he’d post this. Is he looking for a response? Does he actually think this?” she wrote on X Monday. “Either way, two things are true. 1) a little humility would serve him well 2) God shall not be mocked.”

Megan Bashem, a culture reporter for the conservative outlet Daily Wire, also seemed confused.

“I don’t know if the President thought he was being funny or if he is under the influence of some substance or what possible explanation he could have for this OUTRAGEOUS blasphemy. But he needs to take this down immediately and ask for forgiveness from the American people and then from God,” she wrote on X Sunday night.

Mandy Arthur, a Christian influencer, made a plea directly to the creator. “God, we might have made a mistake and accidently elected the Antichrist. Send help,” she wrote on X Monday morning.

Sean Feucht, a Christian activist in Trump’s MAGA coalition who has performed worship music services at the White House and Mar-a-Lago, also condemned the post. “This should be deleted immediately,” he wrote on X Monday. “There is no context where this is acceptable.”

In a separate post, Feucht tried and failed to justify the president’s blasphemy. “Does Trump legitimately think he’s Jesus to America? No. Is he trolling the Pope with the AI image? Maybe,” he wrote. “ Is the Pope a woke Communist (like most recent prior Pope’s have been)? Yes. Should Trump have posted that image even as a joke? No.”

But Trump’s behavior should not come as a surprise. The president’s apparent God complex is the inevitable result of MAGA’s unwavering support and outright idolatry. These are some of the same people who insisted that Trump was saved from assassination by divine intervention for the purpose of saving the nation. Now they’re disgusted that he’s taken them seriously?

Trump’s blasphemous post comes amid a veritable fall from grace, as the president continues to plummet in the polls amid his increasingly unpopular war in Iran.

Monday’s post, made on Orthodox Easter, was only slightly more ridiculous than his actual Easter post: a threat to Iran proclaiming, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

This story has been updated.

The Holy See will continue to speak out against war, despite challenges from Donald Trump.

Pope Leo XIV brushed off the U.S. president’s verbal attacks Monday, telling journalists aboard a papal flight to Algiers that he’s not afraid of the Trump administration and uninterested in getting into a “debate” with the U.S. president.

“I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the Church is here to do,” Leo said in English. “We are not politicians. We don’t deal with foreign policy with the same perspective he might understand it, but I do believe in the message of the Gospel, as a peacemaker.”

Separately, the Chicago-born pontiff told Reuters, “I don’t ‌think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in ‌the way that some people are doing.

“I will continue to speak out loudly against war, looking to promote peace, ⁠promoting dialogue and multilateral ​relationships among the states to look ​for just solutions to problems.

“Too many people are suffering in the world today. Too many innocent ‌people ⁠are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say there’s a better way to do this.”

Leo’s remarks follow several direct challenges from the president, as well as reports that emerged last week about a meeting between Pentagon officials and a U.S. Vatican ambassador in January that included suggestive threats and a mention of the Avignon papacy.

In a lengthy rant on Truth Social Sunday, Trump claimed that the leader of the Catholic Church was “WEAK on crime” and “terrible for foreign policy.”

“I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela,” Trump wrote. “And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History.”

He added that Leo should be “thankful,” claiming responsibility for the pope’s appointment by suggesting that the religious order only put an American atop the Vatican in order to “deal with” Trump.

“Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician,” the president added. “It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church!”

Trump continued to vent in front of reporters on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews minutes later, repeating that he’s “not a big fan of Pope Leo.”

“I don’t think he’s doing a very good job. He likes crime, I guess,” Trump said.

The president also suggested that Leo was inappropriately “worried about fear,” claiming that the Catholic Church arrested ministers and priests and “all those great people” during the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, Leo was only installed in 2025, and Trump himself was in charge of the U.S. at the height of the pandemic.

The Catholic Church has 1.42 billion baptized members around the world, with more than 70 million in the U.S. Roughly 20 percent of Americans identify as Catholic, making it the second-most-popular religion in the country behind Protestantism.

House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin on Friday demanded that Donald Trump get his brain tested in light of the president’s recent comments on Iran.

The Maryland lawmaker sent a letter to White House physician Sean Barbabella, imploring the doctor to administer a cognitive test to the president. Raskin cited remarks Trump made earlier this week as justification for the exam, including Truth Social statements in which Trump threatened to annihilate Iran’s “whole civilization.”

“Experts have repeatedly warned that the President has been exhibiting signs consistent with dementia and cognitive decline. And, in recent days, the country has watched President Trump’s public statements and outbursts turn increasingly incoherent, volatile, profane, deranged, and threatening,” wrote Raskin.

“His apparently deteriorating condition has caused tremendous alarm across the nation (and political spectrum) about the President’s cognitive function and continuing mental fitness for the office of President, and prompted concerns about the President’s wellbeing,” Raskin noted.

Trump’s escalatory threats haven’t just alarmed his usual critics—they’ve also driven a wedge into the MAGA movement. Some of Trump’s longest and most fervent supporters denounced his warmongering behavior this week, including former Fox News titans Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, as well as far-right influencers such as Alex Jones and Candace Owens.

The president then smeared his conservative acolytes in turn, claiming that they were losers with “low IQs.” That didn’t sit well with his voting base, who turned against the president en masse on his historically sycophantic social media platform Truth Social Friday. Many were shocked and appalled by the president’s brazen display of disloyalty to his own cause, announcing their sudden withdrawal from the MAGA movement.

“At a time when our country is at war—especially when the war was initiated by the President without congressional declaration or consent—the American people must be able to trust that the Commander-in-Chief has the mental capacity to discharge the essential duties of his office,” Raskin wrote.

Nonetheless, Trump’s White House staff brushed off Raskin’s message with an unserious smattering of insults.

“Lightweight Jamie Raskin is a stupid person’s idea of a smart person,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told The Hill in an emailed statement. “President Trump’s sharpness, unmatched energy, and historic accessibility stand in stark contrast to what we saw during the past four years when Democrats like Raskin intentionally covered up Joe Biden’s serious mental and physical decline from the American people.”

Raskin had anticipated the Biden remark, claiming in his letter that Republicans’ fervent interest in Biden’s wellness was a good reason for them to take interest in Trump’s mental acuity.

The ranking member also demanded that the test be conducted before April 25, the results be made public, and that Barbabella testify before Congress regarding the findings.