Trump Walks Away Rather Than Answer Key Question on Iran

President Donald Trump is dodging questions on his humiliating stalemate with Iran.

Speaking to reporters on the tarmac outside Air Force One in Chippewa, Wisconsin, on Friday, Trump kept his remarks about Iran brief.

“We’re doing quite well. The situation with Iran seems to be going quite well,” Trump announced, before turning to leave.

“When was the last time you had discussions?” a reporter asked after him, but Trump had already started walking off to his car.

Where exactly did the president have to jet off to? A roundtable discussion with Wisconsin farmers. At the time of publishing, he had only just appeared onstage, more than an hour after the event was scheduled to start.

Crucially, contrary to Trump’s statement: The situation with Iran does not seem to be going well.

As of Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi reported that there had been “no tangible progress” in negotiations to end the ongoing war in the Middle East, but the line was still open to resume negotiations. On Friday, Araghchi warned that U.S. bases used to mount aggression toward Iran would be considered “legitimate targets.”

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi suggested Friday that negotiations were approaching a preliminary nuclear framework, but the outcomes of such a deal remain unclear as experts are still unable to verify Iran’s remaining nuclear stockpile.

It seems the phrase “approaching a preliminary framework” should go right up there with “concepts of a plan,” in terms of being absolutely meaningless.

The Trump administration says it’s looking at election fraud in California.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said Friday that his office is investigating multiple instances of election fraud in the state as it continues to count votes from Tuesday’s primary elections, but he didn’t give any specifics.

“Protecting the integrity of California’s elections is a top priority for my office,” Essayli wrote on X. “We will follow the evidence wherever it leads and prosecute any violations of federal election law to the fullest extent.”

The day before, President Trump complained on Truth Social about “big cheating by the Democrats in California” and announced that federal prosecutors were investigating California’s gubernatorial election.

“The Dumocrats are at it again! They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS,” Trump also posted.

Trump hasn’t provided any proof for his claims, but it appears he has enlisted Essayli to try to find it, even though the prosecutor was reprimanded in October for staying as acting U.S. attorney for too long.

California, the most populous state in the U.S., with a strong Democratic voter majority, has an election system with all of the things Trump and Republicans rail against: universal vote-by-mail, no voter ID laws, and late deadlines for mail-in ballots. State officials aren’t paying heed to Trump’s attacks, and note that state law allows counties up to 30 days to count eligible ballots.

“Accuracy comes before speed,” California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a statement. “California is the nation’s largest voting state, with millions of ballots to process and count. Taking the time to do this work correctly protects voters’ rights and ensures the integrity of our elections.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press office had more blunt words for the president on election night, posting on X, “Trump is lying about California again—time to take the phone away from grandpa and put him to sleep.”

President Donald Trump doesn’t care that Americans are struggling to pay the surging costs to see their favorite sports teams.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One Friday, Trump defended his planned trip to New York City’s Madison Square Garden to watch the third game of the NBA playoffs, where tickets are prohibitively expensive.

“They could watch it on television. It’s sort of semi-free to watch it on television. That’s the way life goes,” Trump said.

The president may as well have said: “Sucks to be poor! Knicks in 4!”—at least that would’ve been a little bit more festive.

Last month, Trump complained that FIFA World Cup tickets were too expensive—without actually doing anything to bring the prices down. At the same time, the Trump administration posted a chart bragging about a 10 percent decrease in the cost of admission to sporting events, but that was after the prices of tickets exploded, climbing twice as fast as the price of goods for nearly two decades.

It’s not clear just how expensive the tickets are for the upcoming game Monday. ABC News reported that the cheapest tickets for the playoffs were just under $1,000, while courtside seats went for $42,000, and that tickets on the secondary market for the first game in New York hovered around $4,000. Ticketmaster’s website simply said: “On sale date and time are in the works—please check back.”

As the president pointed out, it’s also not free to watch from home: An ESPN membership can cost $11.99 or $29.99 per month, when not bundled with other services. God forbid basketball fans want to go to a bar to watch, as buying alcohol and dining out have only become more expensive in the last year.

Now Americans are struggling to pay for anything at all, as Trump’s war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have kept energy prices high and disrupted global trade. A recent jobs report found that the economy added 172,000 jobs in May—a potentially positive sign but one that could prevent the Fed from cutting interest rates to bring inflation down.

President Trump is incensed by outgoing Republican Senator Thom Tillis’s refusal to support Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general until he disavows January 6 insurrectionists.

“Tillis said he won’t support Todd Blanche’s confirmation unless Todd Blanche condemns January 6,” a reporter asked President Trump in the Air Force One press gaggle Friday. “Do you have a reaction to that?”

“Senator Tillis is a loser,” Trump replied bluntly. “That’s why he didn’t run. He didn’t run because I wouldn’t support him. And he’s just an angry man because he’s not gonna be a senator any longer. He wasn’t respected in the Senate. He fought a lot of people, he fought Pete Hegseth, Pete Hegseth turned out to be a gem. Senator Tillis is a loser. Stone cold.… He was forced to leave the Senate because I wouldn’t support him, and he quit. So now he’s trying to make trouble.

“Todd Blanche is a brilliant guy who everybody likes, everybody respects,” Trump said of his former personal lawyer. “[Tillis is] not qualified, he’s not good for the position.”

Tillis is one of three Republicans who have publicly expressed their disapproval of Blanche’s nomination for attorney general.

“He’s got good credentials—people are going to hammer him because he was the president’s personal attorney, but I’m just more about getting through the J6 stuff,” Tillis told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “It’s not a gray area for me. Either he equivocated and said harming these Capitol police officers was an OK thing, or he didn’t, and we’ll find that in the due diligence.”

Blanche’s nomination is in real jeopardy due to his J6 support, the Epstein files disaster, and the “anti-weaponization” slush fund. Only four GOP “no” votes are needed to sink Blanche’s nomination without a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance.

On Tuesday, NPR’s Bobby Allyn reported that the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission were investigating George Santos for allegedly making fishy bets on the prediction market Kalshi. Three days later, Allyn said he received a call from Santos in which the former congressman and convicted fraudster threatened him.

“This story is going to get you a gun in your face,” Allyn claims Santos said.

Allyn used three sources to report out his Tuesday piece, which revealed that Santos had bet that he would not attend the State of the Union address in February, after posting a video where he expressed excitement at attending.

Kalshi officials informed federal authorities in the Southern District of New York and Washington, D.C., of Santos’s bets at the time, and an investigation is ongoing.

Santos had a paid partnership with Polymarket, a prediction market seen as Kalshi’s largest rival, but the company cut him off after the NPR story broke.

Santos called Allyn the day after the report was published and argued that the story was incorrect. “My lawyers have been calling the Department of Justice all day, and they can’t find any investigation,” he said. (Allyn said he typed out quotes from the call after Santos told him he could not record it.)

After Santos declined to divulge the names of his lawyers, Allyn asked whether Santos really did have attorneys. “I’m George fucking Santos, of course I have a legal team,” Santos reportedly replied, adding, “This story is going to get you a gun in your face.”

When Allyn texted Santos to confirm his phone number, Santos immediately denied the threat. “I NEVER SAID ‘this story would get a gun in your face, I said ‘it’d blow up in your face,’” Santos texted.

Santos took the initiative the next day, posting on X that Allyn “was now making things up.” (Allyn had not yet revealed what was said during the call.) Santos also claimed he would never act “aggressive and threatening” toward the press.

“He’s now demanding I disclose the names of my lawyers ‘or else,’” Santos added of Allyn. Allyn said he simply asked who Santos’s lawyers were and never used the words “or else.”

Santos’s history of peddling lies and fraud became something of a joke in his home state of New York during his time in office. That history came to a head when he was convicted of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in April 2025 and sentenced to seven years in jail. President Donald Trump, perhaps seeing something of himself in Santos, commuted the Republican’s sentence in October.