Trump’s Plan to Sell F-35s to Turkey Becomes an Even Greater Disaster

President Trump said in a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Tuesday that he plans to lift sanctions to allow the country to buy F-35 fighter jets. 

“We’re going to be taking the sanctions off, OK? I don’t want him to waste his time answering that question,” Trump said to reporters while gesturing to Erdoğan at a NATO summit in the country’s capital, Ankara.

The move would end a ban that was imposed on Turkey in Trump’s first term after the country accepted a Russian S-400 air and missile defense system against U.S. warnings. Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act in 2017 to punish any country that does business with Russia’s defense and intelligence agencies, and reinforced that restriction in the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.  

That bill contains a prohibition on transferring the fighter jets to Turkey unless it “no longer possesses” the Russian missile system, its materials, or anything associated with it. Trump didn’t make clear whether the sanctions would be lifted only on Turkey, or on all countries that possess Russian military articles.

Regardless, Trump’s plan faces opposition from Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Last week, six Republican and four Democratic members of Congress wrote a letter to Trump opposing the sale of F-35s to Turkey. 

“With President Erdoğan’s continued aggression toward our greatest partners along with his troubling defense partnerships with our adversaries, it is not in the best interest of our country to sell them F-35s,” wrote Republican Representatives Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis, Gus Bilirakis, Jeff Hurd, Max Miller, and Young Kim, in addition to Democratic Representatives Stephen Lynch, Gabe Amo, Jared Moskowitz, and Brad Sherman.

Israel also opposes the sale of F-35s to Turkey amid worsening ties with the country and Turkish criticism of Israel following its massacre of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News on Monday that he didn’t think Turkey should get the jets or F110 jet engines “because that’ll upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority, and also by, I think … America’s posture in the Middle East.”

Under Trump, the U.S. has already said it would allow the sale of F110 fighter jet engines to Turkey for use in developing its own fighter jet. The administration also wrapped up a lawsuit against Turkish bank Halkbank for failing to comply with U.S. sanctions against Iran, weakening punishments against the financial institution. Now it seems that Trump wants to appease the country and Erdoğan at the expense of U.S. national security. 

President Trump was on Truth Social at 12:58 a.m. on Tuesday morning demanding that Congress gift the military another $350 billion in defense spending in addition to passing his controversial SAVE America Act.

“The United States Military has never been stronger, or more powerful. No other Nation can do what we do (It’s not even close!). This year we set even more Historic Recruiting Records, months ahead of schedule. Morale has never been higher. Our Military’s unmatched POWER was on full display during our Celebration of 250 Years of American Independence and, like our Country, the WAR DEPARTMENT has never been ‘HOTTER,’” Trump wrote. “We need to keep it that way, which is why, when Congress returns, we must pass Reconciliation 3.0, with 350 Billion Dollars for Defense, plus THE SAVE AMERICA ACT!

“I am calling on House and Senate Leadership to make this their Number One Priority, and ensure that 350 Billion Dollars in Recon 3.0 moves out of the Budget Committee as soon as Congress is back in session. The SAVE AMERICA ACT, which everyone is asking for, paired with the full funding of our Great Department of War, can be passed very quickly, ensuring that the United States of America stays FREE for Generations to come.”

The only person, Democrat or Republican, “asking for” the SAVE America Act may be Speaker Mike Johnson. The blatant voter suppression bill still lacks the votes in the Senate, putting Trump’s third massive spending package of his second term in jeopardy. Trump had originally requested $67 billion for the Pentagon be added to the supplemental appropriations bill.

To add hundreds of billions more to that and force through voter ID requirements and mail-in ballot bans is a gargantuan task, regardless of how much the president posts.

The United States spent over $900 billion on defense last year alone.

Is President Donald Trump a sports jinx or just a corrupt fool?

Trump is once again an international laughingstock after the U.S. Men’s National Team crashed out of the World Cup despite the president’s meddling.

Trump had urged FIFA president Gianni Infantino over the weekend to overturn a red card that would’ve kept the U.S. team’s top scorer from playing against Belgium Monday night. For the first time in half a century, FIFA overturned the decision, but even that couldn’t save the U.S. Men’s Soccer team from being handily defeated 4-1. (And the player in question, Folarin Balogun, didn’t even score America’s lone goal of the night.)

“Overturn this,” the Belgian Red Devils, Belgium’s national team, wrote in a post on X after the game.

As if losing wasn’t humiliating enough, a handful of players on the Belgian team were spotted doing Trump’s iconic dance to celebrate one of their goals.

Online, people speculated that Trump might even be a sports curse.

Last month, Trump made an appearance at Madison Square Garden for the NBA Finals. The president was loudly booed, fell asleep—and the Knicks broke their winning steak.

In 2025, Trump attended the Super Bowl, fled the stadium during a very political halftime performance by Kendrick Lamar, and backed the Kansas City Chiefs—who lost. Trump skipped this year’s Super Bowl after being warned that he’d be drowned in a sea of 69,000 boos, and the New England Patriots, his friend Robert Kraft’s team, still lost.

Trump also attended the 2025 Ryder Cup, where team Europe beat the United States.

MAGA world is not satisfied with the excuses from Senator Mitch McConnell’s office over his sudden disappearance, and are now demanding proof that the former Senate majority leader is still alive.

McConnell was admitted to the hospital last month, sparking grave concerns about the Kentucky Republican’s health. The worries were only stoked by vague and repetitive statements from McConnell’s aides that failed to elaborate on the senator’s condition or why he was receiving care.

But rumors about McConnell’s health spiked late Monday, when far-right influencer Laura Loomer claimed on X that an unnamed “high level source close to the White House” told her that “Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead.” In a separate post, Loomer elaborated that “McConnell is in organ failure,” and that the White House had been told “McConnell isn’t ever coming back.”

Shortly afterward, the reporter that first broke the story about McConnell’s cardiac arrest—Desirée Townsend—said that her sources had shared the same information.

By Tuesday morning, a slew of MAGA-aligned figures were demanding answers from McConnell’s office.

“McConnell’s staff should produce proof of the senator’s condition one way or another right now,” posted Matthew Boyle, the Washington bureau chief for the far-right commentary website Breitbart.

MAGA influencer Catturd posed the obvious question to his 4 million followers on X: “It’s really easy for Mitch McConnell’s team to prove he’s still alive and well. Just do a video from the hospital. Why won’t they do it?”

Steve Bannon has also speculated about McConnell’s condition, promoting claims online that the senator’s office is trying to “avoid triggering a special election that could allow Thomas Massie to run as an independent.”

The 84-year-old Republican has represented Kentucky in the U.S. Senate since 1985. He also served as the majority leader of the upper chamber from 2015 to 2021.

These are supposed to be McConnell’s final months in office—he is currently set to retire in January, at the end of his seventh term.

But his determination to remain in play on Capitol Hill has also forced him into the limelight due to several critical health scares since 2023. In March of that year, McConnell fell at a dinner event at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, fracturing his rib and suffering a concussion in the process. He fell again that July. He also froze mid-sentence twice that year, dissociating for 20 to 30 seconds each time, sparking concerns that the aging lawmaker had suffered a stroke.

In December 2024, McConnell fell for a third time in a public setting, and again in October 2025 while on his way to vote in the Capitol. He has since been transported via wheelchair by his aides as a health precaution.

In February, McConnell’s staffers shared that the lawmaker had spent roughly eight days in the hospital for “flu-like symptoms.”

A federal judge in Ohio ruled against the Trump administration Monday, citing bigoted comments President Trump and Vice President JD Vance made about immigrants. 

U.S. District Judge Algenon Marbley ordered the White House to unfreeze immigrants’ benefit applications, citing Trump and Vance’s “outright hostility towards immigrants, both before and after the 2024 presidential election.” These applications include filings for work authorization and green cards from people in the U.S. from countries including Burma, Canada, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Tanzania, and Venezuela.

“Their ire appears focused on immigrants from countries in the Caribbean, South America, Africa, and Asia,” Marbley, nominated to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1997, wrote.  

The judge quoted many of Trump’s comments against immigrants of color, including the time he railed against people coming to the U.S. from “shithole countries” or when he claimed Haitians are “poisoning the blood” of our country. In his second term as president, Trump attacked Somali Americans and accused them of adding “nothing” to the country, and oversaw violent immigration crackdowns across the country, particularly in Minnesota.

Marbley also highlighted Trump and Vance’s made-up accusation that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pet cats and dogs. 

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said in 2024, which Marbley quoted directly.

“This general hostility to immigration contrasts with an apparent interest in and preference for the migration of white people,” Marbley added.

Now, the Trump administration’s racism has come back to bite Trump and Vance, and at least some immigrants can have a chance to establish some stability in the U.S. The administration’s attempt to shut them out and penalize them for where they come from, for reasons born of prejudice, was temporarily blocked Monday.