Marco Rubio Forced to Admit Trump’s Iran Deal Is Trash

Peace negotiations between the U.S. and Iran are once again inching along, days after the two countries exchanged strikes. But even top Trump officials aren’t confident in the burgeoning truce.

State Secretary Marco Rubio reportedly told lawmakers during a briefing Monday that the new peace deal wasn’t of the same caliber as the Obama administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

California Representative Sydney Kamlager-Dove recounted Rubio’s admission while speaking with MeidasTouch’s Pablo Manríquez outside of the Capitol, claiming that Rubio had said the Obama administration’s set-up was a “real agreement with criteria and benchmarks and thresholds.”

“This [memorandum of understanding] is just a signed piece of paper saying we’re going to continue to talk about talking,” Kamlager-Dove said. “So you should ask yourself, a hundred-and-something billion dollars later, ‘What are these people doing with our money and our national security?’”

The unpopular war has so far cost American taxpayers more than $1 billion per day (the current total is estimated at more than $113.3 billion). It has also sparked a political rejection of MAGA ideology across the U.S. as the American public becomes more and more disillusioned with its increasingly infirm, unstable, and volatile president.

The country’s strained economy has also become a political talking point ahead of a contentious midterm season. The projected military expenses don’t encompass the heightened day-to-day costs for the average American. Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi told CBS News Monday that it’s likely every American household has spent roughly $1,000 more in heightened fuel and food costs since the war began in late February.

But those additional expenses have apparently not affected the White House.

Donald Trump has been remarkably cavalier about the peace negotiations. As the U.S. and Iran prepared Monday to send delegations to Qatar, the president said that the meeting in Doha would be “perhaps important, perhaps not.”

“We’re going to find out, but we’re winning militarily. It’s almost won militarily, I would say,” Trump said.

The envoys include special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. Vice President JD Vance is leading the operation, though he is not expected to attend the upcoming talks.

President Trump is once again building something at the White House without any warning.

Trump is building a new helipad on the White House’s South Lawn, The Washington Post reports, with construction crews already working on the project Monday. The helipad is being built on the lawn’s south portico, near where the presidential helicopter, Marine One, is traditionally kept. A large fence is now blocking off the construction.

The project has not been officially announced. It is meant to solve the problem of new Sikorsky helicopters built by Lockheed Martin burning the White House lawn due to their exhaust vents. The defense company is reportedly donating $5 million to help pay for the helipad.

Other administrations have refrained from building a permanent helipad on the White House grounds due to concerns of historical preservation, as well as ruining the classical image of presidents boarding Marine One on the grass near the White House.

In his second term, Trump has shown that he has no regard for history or tradition where the White House is concerned, unceremoniously demolishing its East Wing to build a massive ballroom, paving over the Rose Garden and replacing it with a stone patio, and holding a UFC fight on the South Lawn.

Trump can at least argue that this project is operationally necessary. But he’s already done so much damage to the White House in order to push his own gaudy design aesthetic, and because he’s kept his helipad plans under the radar, nobody knows what it’s going to look like.

Trump has repeatedly shown in his second term that if he wants something built a certain way, he won’t listen to any criticism or preserve any history, no matter how tacky his designs. Just look at the hideous mock-ups of his “triumphal arch.”

The Trump administration has awarded Clark Construction a $500 million no-bid contract to build the president’s ballroom—even as he has promised multiple times that it would be privately funded and built at no cost to taxpayers, according to The Washington Post. Records show that the president was personally involved in the contract negotiations.

Competitive bidding is generally required for all federal contracts. However, the Trump administration filed this contract through the Executive Residence, which is exempt from competitive contract rules.

The White House justified the move by stating that under federal law, the president can spend however much on the “care, maintenance, repair, alteration, refurnishing, improvement, air-conditioning, heating, and lighting” of the White House grounds. The Trump administration tried to cite the same law as authority to build the ballroom, but a federal judge rejected it in March. The administration’s no-bid contract, however, has yet to become a legal matter.

White House Office of Administration Director Joshua Fisher noted on the contract that it skipped the typical bidding process because “the disclosure of the executive agency’s needs would compromise the national security.”

Trump has repeatedly said that private donors would foot the whole bill for the ballroom construction, but now it’s clearer than ever that’s not true. “They said: ‘Sir, we’ll do it for nothing. This is the greatest honor,” Trump claimed earlier this year.

The White House’s July 4 celebration is about to blow the ceiling off of Washington—and not in a good way.

Government workers were spotted by independent journalist Amanda Moore on Monday using forklifts to move pallets full of fireworks around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool ahead of America’s semiquincentennial.

The location was not an oddity, as the federal government has traditionally chosen the Reflecting Pool as its primary launch site. What is exceptionally unusual is the amount of firepower behind the 250th celebration.

Donald Trump promised earlier this month that he would launch “the LARGEST FIREWORKS SHOW IN HISTORY” on Independence Day 2026. By the numbers, it’s not even close: A typical July 4 show in the nation’s capital uses roughly 17,000 to 20,000 shells for a 17-minute show, according to figures collected by The Washington Post.

This year, the Freedom 250 celebration has proposed a record-shattering 40-minute display beginning at 10:30 p.m. that will use more than 860,000 explosives. They’ll be set off along the Reflecting Pool, as well as in West Potomac Park and on eight barges on the Potomac River.

Pyrotecnico, the Pennsylvania-based vendor responsible for the show, told the Post that it would “not only” be a “once-in-a-generation patriotic spectacle but a landmark moment in fireworks history.”

The previous record was held by Manila in the Philippines, which earned the Guinness World Record title in 2016 for lighting 809,000 fireworks during a New Year’s Eve event.

But rules around Washington’s celebration are likely to make the spectacle an unpleasant evening for local spectators. The Department of Homeland Security has classified the ceremony as a National Special Security Event, the same security classification used for presidential inaugurations, since Trump is expected to deliver remarks in person ahead of the display.

That will forbid a long list of typical July 4 accoutrements, such as chairs, coolers, balls, frisbees, aerosols, metal or glass containers, lighters, vapes, and even spray sunscreen, reported WTOP News.

Beyond that, federal workers will also be fighting Mother Nature, which is expected to shatter weather records by bringing triple-digit temperatures to Washington amid a historic heat wave this weekend.

President Donald Trump launched into a rant about communism as the biggest threat to the United States, after being triggered by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Speaking to reporters in the White House, Trump was asked whether he was concerned by Mamdani assenting to be made the “poster child” for socialism.

“I think it’s a big threat to our nation, actually, because it’s not socialism, it’s really communism,” Trump said.

“I think it’s the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding. That includes World War I, World War II, September 11th. It includes the, uh, Pearl Harbor attack. I think this is the biggest threat,” Trump said. “People will smile when I say that, but the smart people are gonna say, ‘You know, he’s probably right.’ It’s basically introducing communism into the United States of America.”

Clearly, Trump needs a bit of a history lesson. “Who’s gonna tell him about World War Two?” historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat wrote on X.

Does Trump honestly think communism is the biggest threat to the U.S.? The president is obviously rattled by all of Mamdani’s recent victories in New York City—and his growing popularity with voters.

Last week, Trump had a meltdown after a slate of democratic socialist candidates endorsed by Mamdani won their primary elections in New York.

The president also fumed after the city’s Rent Guidelines Board passed a rent freeze, enabling Mamdani to make good on one of his key campaign promises, help tenants living in the city’s nearly one million rent-stabilized apartments, and get under the skin of a former NYC slumlord.