Trump Skips Visit to Soldiers Injured in Iran War at Walter Reed

President Trump visited soldiers Tuesday at Walter Reed Military Medical Center, but chose not to meet with 14 who were injured in the war in Iran.

CBS reports that Trump made time to meet service members while he was at the medical center for his six-month physical, but did not meet any of the ones who were recovering from the recent war, and the White House refused to discuss the matter.

“President Trump was honored to meet with our amazing service members and medical staff while at Walter Reed Medical Center,” a White House spokesperson said.

In a speech at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, Trump mentioned the 13 soldiers who have died during the Iran war, calling them “wonderful souls” who “gave their lives” to ensure that Iran would not get a nuclear weapon. On Wednesday, he again said those 13 were “great people” and that losing them “is a terrible thing.”

“We want to lose very few, we want very few to be injured. We’re very careful, but war is war. War is dangerous,” Trump said.

When it comes to living, wounded soldiers, Trump doesn’t have a good track record. While trying to plan a big military parade in his first term, Trump said to his chief of staff, retired Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, “Look, I don’t want any wounded guys in the parade. This doesn’t look good for me.”

In 2019, at a welcome ceremony for Gen. Mark Milley being named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Trump was upset that an Army captain severely wounded in action in Afghanistan, Luis Avila, was brought to sing “God Bless America.” After Avila sang, Trump congratulated him, but afterward he told Milley, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”

The Justice Department is trying to obtain the names, addresses, financial data, and other personal information of Reddit and X users who criticize ICE’s violent immigration tactics.

Bloomberg reported that U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and former Fox News host Jeanine Pirro has subpoenaed the massive social media platforms for the information of two anonymous users who made negative comments toward ICE. They are now part of a criminal investigation, even as Pirro’s office has yet to alert them of the charges. Attorneys for the users believe the investigations could be focused on officer endangerment regarding revealing the location of an ICE agent but dispute that their clients committed any crimes.

This is a clear attempt at intimidation of dissent and muzzling free speech, and it isn’t the first time. In February, the Department of Homeland Security sent out dozens of subpoenas to Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), demanding they divulge the personal information of users who have criticized or helped locate ICE agents.

The Trump administration is paying close attention to every Reddit thread and Instagram comment that opposes its massively unpopular deportation units—and is trying to take legal action against them. This insecure authoritarianism is a real low, even for this administration, especially as Trump moves to pay his own supporters who actually committed real crimes from a $1.8 billion slush fund.

The Trump administration has doubled down on Donald Trump’s threats against Oman.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned Thursday that Washington “will not tolerate any effort to impose a tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz.”

“Oman, in particular, should know the U.S. Treasury will aggressively target any actors involved—directly or indirectly—in facilitating tolls for the strait and any willing partners will be penalized,” Bessent wrote in a statement posted to X.

“All nations should reject outright any efforts by Iran to disrupt the free flow of commerce,” he continued. “Tehran’s days of terrorizing the region and the world are over.”

Trump shocked attendees of a Cabinet meeting Wednesday when he casually threatened Oman, promising to blow the country up if it tried to take control of the strait, which Oman borders.

“It’s international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ’em up,” Trump said. “They understand that, they’ll be fine.”

The president insisted that “nobody” would control the Strait of Hormuz, and that the U.S. would instead “watch over” the passage.

But Bessent’s toll ban would actually undermine Trump’s plan to make a buck off the vital trade route: The president pitched the idea of imposing a toll on ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz back in April, although it was not immediately clear how the U.S. would obtain control of the foreign waterway, let alone toll it.

Approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments funnel through the strait, which is situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Most of that oil is moved toward China or India. In 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the strait, accounting for about 7 percent of total U.S. crude imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Nonetheless, the shuttered strait has caused a crisis of global proportions. The average cost of gas in the U.S. is $4.42 per gallon, with large swaths of the country pushing $5 a gallon, according to the AAA’s price tracker. That’s about 50 percent higher than prices were before the war started. Costs have also gone up for the rest of the world, a reality that has only aggravated U.S. alliances.

President Trump on Tuesday again refiled a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal over a July 2025 report that he submitted a letter and explicit drawing to a birthday album for Jeffrey Epstein.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit last month, ruling he couldn’t claim the paper published the story with actual malice. Then Trump refiled and ran into another stumbling block on May 13, when U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles ruled that he couldn’t use the discovery process in his claims that the newspaper defamed him. In the new lawsuit, Trump’s lawyers wrote that the Journal’s reporters tried to “falsely pass off as fact that President Trump, in 2003, wrote, drew, and signed this letter” but “failed to show proof.”

Trump’s reasoning for the lawsuit is hollow, especially considering that the House Oversight Committee included the birthday book, complete with the drawing from Trump, in a September release of Epstein materials from his estate. It’s more likely that Trump is trying to shake down the Journal for a big settlement and intimidate its owners, the Murdoch family, into favorable coverage.

It’s a pattern that Trump has followed against other media companies, which ended up forking over money that supposedly is going to Trump’s presidential library. Trump also has pending defamation lawsuits against The New York Times for $15 billion and the BBC for $10 billion. It seems that he won’t stop until he’s made them pay for reporting that he doesn’t like.

The Trump administration is giving Venezuela’s new leadership a free pass.

The White House has instructed federal prosecutors in Miami to avoid criminal investigations into acting President Delcy Rodríguez, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Rodríguez has been on the Drug Enforcement Administration’s radar since at least 2018, and has been tied to all sorts of criminal activity ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling. But all of that is apparently being brushed under the rug, as the Trump administration shows blatant favoritism toward the leader it installed earlier this year.

It is not clear if prosecutors were working toward charging Rodríguez with a crime. A Justice Department spokesperson told the AP in an email that “there was never an investigation into her to shut down.”

U.S. officials told the AP that the directive was intended to ease Rodríguez’s transition into power in Venezuela, and to avoid further destabilizing the oil-rich nation.

Donald Trump ordered U.S. forces to invade Venezuela in early January, sending hundreds of troops through its capital city, Caracas, to capture the country’s 13-year ruler, Nicolás Maduro. Maduro and his wife were transported to New York to face federal narcotics charges, to which they both have pleaded not guilty.

Trump failed to notify Congress before doing so, but he didn’t forget to tip off his friends at America’s biggest oil companies, which stand to gain the most from America’s newfound control over Venezuela’s oil supply—the largest in the world.

Rodríguez, who was Maduro’s vice president, was the major political benefactor of his sudden abduction. Despite her criminal affiliations, the Trump administration has opened the door for her to do business with the U.S., lifting sanctions (that were placed during Trump’s first term after she undermined Venezuelan democracy by supporting Maduro’s authoritarian rule) and allowing her to reestablish ties with U.S. banks, according to the Associated Press.

Beyond that, Trump has uplifted her name in an effort to sanitize her character, describing her as a “terrific person.”