It’s Not Just Matching Shoes. Trump Team Has Matching Rolexes Too.

Custom Rolex watches have become the ultimate symbol of status for President Donald Trump’s White House staff, Vanity Fair reported Friday.

The so-called “White House Rolex” watches come in two styles: a gold Day-Date Presidential and a GMT Pepsi. The two designs have blue faces and a gold presidential seal on the dial. At the 45- and 47-second marks sits a blue star. On the back is an engraving of the White House. Rolex doesn’t technically make custom watches, so the ones Trump staffers wear are purchased and then modified by a bespoke business in London.

Sounds expensive, right? “There’s no one fucking rich enough in the West Wing to actually buy the watch!” one insider joked to Vanity Fair. But in an administration made up of wealthy lobbyists and former real estate investors, that’s not always true.

Unlike the ugly dress shoes Trump scared all his Cabinet members into wearing, these aren’t a gift—White House staff are shelling out thousands and thousands of dollars to own a Trumpian timepiece. Those in possession of such a grotesque display of both wealth and sycophancy include Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy fumbling peace negotiations across the world; Susie Wiles, the chief of staff who trashed her entire team; and Will Scharf, the White House counsel who’s begged the administration not to violate the Constitution.

Several members of Vice President’s JD Vance staff also wear these watches, including Nick Luna, his chief of staff, and Cliff Sims, his national security adviser. Those with White House Rolexes outside of the actual White House include Chris LaCivita, Trump’s former campaign manager, and Tony Fabrizio, the president’s personal pollster.

FBI Director Kash Patel temporarily paused cooperation with the FBI’s counterpart in Canada earlier this month over how the country’s national public broadcaster referred to the September 11 attacks.

The New York Times reports that after the Canadian Broadcasting Company reminded its journalists not to refer to 9/11 as “terrorism” if not citing an expert (a long-standing policy for coverage of all attacks), Patel halted some cooperation with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The pause apparently didn’t last long, and wasn’t a total shutdown. Other agencies in the U.S. government continued working with the Canadian government normally.

But the FBI works closely with the RCMP on everything from terrorism to cybersecurity, and Patel’s pettiness threatens to jeopardize the already shaky relationship between the U.S. and Canada. During the pause, bureau officials canceled meetings with their Canadian opposites and said they would not be in contact for a while. This, coupled with Patel attacking the CBC’s editorial decision in multiple posts on X last month, wasn’t a positive step for the bureau’s relationship with the RCMP.

“Any agency in Canada that doesn’t publicly reject this bastardization of history, and an insult to the souls lost during our largest terrorist attack in US history will no longer have friend in this FBI.… Not to mention our heroes that responded in the aftermath 🇺🇸,” Patel posted at least twice on August 28, in replies to articles and video clips about the policy. “WE WILL NEVER FORGET 9-11.”

Later that day, CBC’s head of standards adjusted the network’s guidance, saying that terrorism now could be used to describe the attacks without attribution. The pause in cooperation still happened days later, with things reportedly going back to normal around the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attacks. According to the Times, FBI officials wanted some kind of apology, and it’s not known if they got one.

Canadian Culture Minister Marc Miller said that the new editorial guidance brought a “welcome change to what was a piece of pedantic and foolish guidance that caused legitimate anger.” Why Patel chose to raise a stink over this is anyone’s guess, but he has a history of slavish loyalty to Trump, and dramatic indignation over anything related to 9/11 is a conservative tradition at this point.

The demise of the Kennedy Center began with Donald Trump.

Tax documents obtained by Zeteo Friday disprove the president’s repeated claims that he “saved” the revered arts center from financial collapse, and instead illustrate that Trump’s intimate involvement in the building’s affairs last year triggered the beginning of its rapid decline.

Mere weeks after Inauguration Day 2025, Trump announced that he would remove multiple Kennedy Center trustees and install himself as board chairman—the first time in the nonprofit’s history that it would be helmed by a sitting president rather than a private citizen. In the following months, Trump worked to replace the center’s board with a group of MAGA loyalists, change its programming, and alter its internal organization.

But the Kennedy Center was not losing “hundreds of millions” or “sometimes hundreds of billions,” as Trump claimed on Wednesday, after a federal judge dealt his Kennedy Center plans another blow.

In 2024, the Kennedy Center reported more than $306 million in revenue and $558 million in net assets, according to that year’s tax return.

By September 30, 2025, the center recorded $517 million in revenue and $778 million in net assets, though its position was aided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which extended $257 million to buoy the institution. Behind the scenes, program revenue had declined by $16 million, and pledges and grants declined by $30 million, according to the center’s 2025 return obtained by Zeteo.

Three months later, Trump slapped his name on the building’s facade, an illegal decision that tanked ticket sales and donations at the performing arts center. Nonetheless, Trump’s revised Kennedy Center board asserted that adding Trump’s name to the building was the only way to ensure the space could avoid “certain fiscal collapse.”

Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the Kennedy Center could not be renamed to include “Donald J. Trump” on its exterior. He noted that Congress singularly arbitrates the name of the Kennedy Center, which was erected to memorialize the assassinated President John F. Kennedy.

Cooper issued another directive Thursday, ordering the Trump administration to provide 30 days’ notice ahead of any construction at the Kennedy Center, “including but not limited to any ‘demolition’ of the Center’s main building.” The mandate came after Trump was spotted aboard Air Force One looking at a posterboard that read: “Kennedy Center DEMOLISH” above a picture of a demolition site.

A wildly inaccurate U.S. military intelligence report produced with artificial intelligence almost started World War III, CNN reported Friday.

In the spring, U.S. military officials launched an operation to intercept a Chinese ship they believed was transporting nuclear weapons materials in the Middle East. Service members prepared to board ships, and military aircraft were already in the air, multiple sources told CNN.

That’s when officials realized that the threat wasn’t real. It was AI-generated.

The claim had stemmed from a report that was produced with the help of a chatbot, but the AI program had inaccurately identified the materials the ship was carrying. CNN was unable to identify what the ship was actually carrying. It was not clear whether the chatbot was commercially available or the government’s own knock-off version.

One of the sources told CNN that the report was “entirely false” and had “almost started a war.”

The Trump administration has been eager to embrace the AI industry—a risky bet considering the technology’s tendencies to hallucinate answers to queries.

In July 2025, the government awarded Google a massive $200 million contract to support AI solutions at the Defense Department. Six months later, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rolled out GenAi.Mil, the new “American-made” AI platform that will allow military members to “conduct deep research, format documents, and even analyze video or imagery at unprecedented speed”—and all without using their brains. It’s not clear whether this is the tool that falsely identified materials to make nuclear weapons.

In January 2026, Hegseth doubled down on the technology with an “AI Acceleration Strategy” at the DOD. A few months later, he promised that the U.S. military was using “every tool of AI” in the war against Iran.

Midterm-bound Republicans have opted to separate themselves from the president’s sinking ship, but MAGA world isn’t letting them off so easily.

A spate of far-right influencers flamed Florida Representative Maria Elvira Salazar after her campaign aired an advert denouncing Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar said in the ad. “In July, 50 percent of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record.”

“Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy,” she continued. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”

Florida County Commissioner Anthony Sabatini, a MAGA activist in his own right, wrote online that the White House should “deport her ASAP,” apparently forgetting that Salazar was born in Miami and is therefore a U.S. citizen.

Former Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino derided Salazar as “anti-American.”

“Republicans, which side are YOU on—the side of the taxpayer or the side of those who wish to destroy our republic? Now’s your shot at making a difference,” he posted on social media.

Christian Ziegler, a GOP strategist, argued that Salazar “shouldn’t be allowed back into the White House” due to the ad.

“No meetings with the President. No meetings with WH staff. No Oval Office. No Congressional picnic. No Christmas parties or Egg Rolls,” Ziegler commented, insinuating that only loyalist MAGA drones should be allowed to interact with the president.

“Salazar has put the President in a position where he has to pick between being impeached—or—helping a pro-amnesty Republican get elected,” Ziegler added.

Self-described proud Islamophobe Laura Loomer extended her ire for Salazar’s messaging toward the president’s entourage, rhetorically asking, “Which political genius who works for our President did the vetting on Salazar?”

“To be honest, it is hard not to feel black pilled by so many of the incompetent people who work for the President,” Loomer continued in a post on X, using a nihilistic metaphor that originated in the incel community. “They go out of their way to sabotage, gatekeep and they seem to love giving access and endorsements to horrible candidates who hate the President and don’t even support his policies.

“They better hope Republicans show up this November or they will have made President Trump a lame duck President in his second term,” she wrote.