President Trump Is Not Exactly Reassuring About the Russian Plague

President Trump’s reaction to the death of a lab worker in Russia due to a suspected plague is not reassuring.

Speaking to reporters Monday, Trump was asked if he was concerned, and he tried to explain the U.S. government’s response, saying that he was concerned about what he called “the pneumonia plague.”

“Well, I hate to see them having it, it’s a rough, it’s a rough disease, you know that’s a disease that we used to be able to control, but somehow those microbes have gotten stronger and smarter, they’re like an army. And we don’t have the same medical,” Trump said. “Even with great advancement, the germs have really become relatively stronger than they were, and things that used to work on pneumonia don’t work as well anymore, so, uh, but we’ll help. Anybody that has that kind of a problem, we’re always willing to help, we’ll help.”

Trump’s word salad evokes memories of his disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic during his first term, as well as his bizarre explanations. It’s pretty clear that the president was briefed on the suspected outbreak in Russia, which has led to a quarantine in the Siberian region of Irkutsk, but didn’t understand what he was told.

Unexplained pneumonia cases in Wuhan, China is also how news of the Covid-19 outbreak spread. That led to a pandemic that left about 2.05 million people worldwide dead of confirmed Covid-19 cases, with the U.S. making up 400,000 of those deaths, close to 20 percent of the total.

Trump’s claim that the U.S. is “always willing to help” belies the fact that his administration has cut funding to Ebola response in Africa, which has exacerbated the spread of the infectious disease on the continent. Hopefully, this outbreak in Russia is contained early, because Trump can’t be trusted to handle another pandemic.

The Democratic Party will refuse to approve any of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominations in the event it takes back control of the Senate, drawing perhaps the strongest line in the sand against the White House to date. 

“The bottom line is: One of the reasons we want to do everything we can to take back the Senate is not let Trump put such horrible justices—MAGA justices—on the Supreme Court and the lower courts,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told NBC News in a Monday report. 

The rest of the ranks echoed the sentiment. 

“No, we’ve got to do exactly what McConnell did to us,” said Senator Ruben Gallego, referring to Mitch McConnell’s 10-month obstruction of President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, a spite-fueled move that resulted in Justice Neil Gorsuch’s appointment to the court instead. “I don’t think, you know, you want to go down that road.… But clearly, you know, McConnell and Trump used ... their power, whatever you want to call it, to change the makeup of the courts. And I think we have to start moving it back.”

“Well, given the history of Trump nominees, I think it is slim to none that we would support a nominee from this administration,” Senator and senior Judiciary Committee member Richard Blumenthal said. “Because we’ve seen this movie, we know how it ends, which is a politician in robes who is following Trump’s orders on most major questions.”

This report comes just a day after conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito told CBS News he was considering retirement, saying it was “something I think that somebody at my age has to think about every term.” Alito is 76 years old, and fellow conservative Justice Clarence  Thomas is 78, leading both sides of the aisle to start thinking about their replacements. 

“A major reason why I’m running to serve South Carolina and why it’s so important to keep the Senate conservative this November. Should Justice Alito choose to retire next year, a Republican-majority Senate will be needed to vote and hopefully confirm a Supreme Court nominee from President Trump,” Senator Darline Graham wrote on X last Friday. “If Democrats control the Senate, they will not even allow a vote. And if they allow a vote, they will defeat a Trump-nominated candidate regardless of their qualifications.”

The White House continued its press ban Monday, blocking the news outlet Politico from traveling on Air Force One with President Trump.

Politico was scheduled to be the White House print pool representative, and Trump administration officials offered its spot on the plane to other news organizations who are part of the pool. In solidarity, several print organizations said no, CNN reports.

The night before, the White House’s email to the press corps offering guidance on Trump’s trip did not mention any news outlets who were traveling on Air Force One, which is not normal, and could be a sign that media organizations are trying to send a message to the president. Last month, Trump banned MS NOW, Politico, and CNN from the White House, only to be rebuked by U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly, who ordered the ban immediately lifted while the outlets’ court challenge received a full hearing.

At the time, the rest of the White House TV pool refused to cover Chinese President Xi Jinping’s arrival at the White House, leaving only Chinese state media to have video of Xi’s entrance September 24. At the state dinner for Xi that same night, a dumbfounded Trump asked where all of the cameras were.

In an interview with Time magazine published last week, Trump appeared to be confused about Kelly’s order and is still bent on punishing news outlets for coverage that he doesn’t like. The fact that other mainstream media outlets aren’t trying to take advantage of Trump’s ban to get increased access to the president is a good sign. Enabling Trump’s latest attacks on the press would result in watered-down, less critical news coverage of a president who thinks he is above any laws or checks on his power.

Rick Jackson, the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Georgia, is the latest MAGA candidate to delete mentions of President Donald Trump from his campaign website.

A version of Jackson’s website from June stated that he “will work with President Trump to protect Georgians from the consequences of Washington’s failures.” As of Monday, the mention had been removed, MeidasTouch reported.

This sudden deletion (read: defection) comes after Jackson spent months tirelessly tying himself to Trump. In February, his campaign aired a 30-second Super Bowl commercial comparing him to the president. “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything,” Jackson said. On the campaign trail, Jackson promised voters he’d be Trump’s “favorite governor,” and framed himself as similar to Trump, but with a “southern tone.”

All of this was done without Trump ever actually endorsing Jackson. The president reluctantly bestowed his endorsement to Jackson in July, after the businessman defeated Trump’s original pick, Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, in the Republican primary runoff in June.

Jackson’s sudden switch-up is part of a wider trend of Republicans toning down their ties to the president ahead of the midterm elections. Jackson is at least the second candidate to remove Trump from his campaign website, after Florida Representative and gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds. The shift appears to indicate that the Republicans’ leader has become the party’s biggest liability.

President Trump’s ill-advised, poorly executed war in Iran was foreshadowed months before.

The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration’s handling of Yemen’s Houthi militia attacking ships in the area in 2025 had Pentagon leaders raising concerns that would come to fruition during the Iran war the next year.

Specifically, Department of Defense officials Dan Caldwell and Alex Velez-Green were worried that an extended military campaign against the Houthis could deplete U.S. missile stocks, which ended up happening one year later. Last year, in March 2025, President Trump announced Operation Rough Rider, a bombing campaign in Yemen that would become infamous after the national security adviser at the time, Mike Waltz, mistakenly invited Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg into a group chat of senior administration officials discussing the early bombings.

The campaign resulted in 1,000 targets being bombed, with Houthi commanders and ammunition stocks being targeted, but also scores of civilians being killed. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called the operation a success, but others in the Pentagon, such as Caldwell and Hegseth’s first chief of staff, Joe Kasper, questioned whether the operation had clear and achievable objectives, again similar to the current Iran war.

A spokesperson for Hegseth, Kingsley Wilson, told the Post that the operation “achieved decisive success against Houthi forces,” resulting in “severely degraded radar networks, air-defense systems, ballistic-missile and drone launch sites, weapons depots, and production facilities while removing multiple mid- and senior-level commanders from the battlefield.” It also “substantially reduced immediate threats to vital international shipping lanes, compelled a clear tactical shift by the adversary, and helped create conditions for a ceasefire that strengthened freedom of navigation in the region.”

Those “successes” seem at best hollow now, as Houthi forces took over the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea last month. Last year’s operation ended in May 2025 with an Oman-brokered ceasefire and Trump declaring victory, claiming that the Houthis “don’t want to fight anymore.”

“They gave us their word that they wouldn’t be shooting at ships anymore, and we honor that,” Trump said.

In reality, the Houthis weathered the U.S. attacks. They shot down at least seven MQ-9 Reaper drones, and two F/A-18 fighter jets were lost at sea. Trump lost interest in Yemen shortly afterward, to the chagrin of some in U.S. Central Command. Some officials reportedly said at the time, “You ignore Yemen at your own peril.”

That seems all too apparent today, and the U.S. is stuck in a conflict with Iran and its Houthi allies with no clear end in sight. The war has stretched on and continues to hurt the U.S. and global economies, with Trump unwilling to acknowledge that the war should never been waged, was horribly executed, and now needs to end regardless of how bad he looks.