Jared Kushner Got Secretary of State Fired After Dictator Paid Him Off

Jared Kushner was allegedly paid $50 million by a foreign government to get former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson fired.

In the new book Princes and Thieves: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East, author Matthew Cole reported that the United Arab Emirates paid Kushner millions to oust Tillerson, who had allegedly become extremely cozy with the Qataris.

Tillerson, who served as secretary of state from 2017 to 2018, had publicly opposed a blockade on Qatar, and the Saudis and Emiratis urged Donald Trump’s White House to fire him. When Tillerson was finally fired via tweet, Kushner apparently had been secretly pushing for his exit for months.

“In Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, Tillerson’s removal proved once again Kushner’s influence with his father-in-law,” Cole wrote.

A source with knowledge of the UAE’s secret arrangement with Kushner told Cole that the president’s son-in-law had even pressed UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, referred to as MBZ, to speed up their agreed-upon payment. A month later, the UAE sent $50 million via Azerbaijan into a bank account in Cyprus for Kushner.

Kushner’s lawyer has denied that he had an account in Cyprus, and denied that he asked for or received any money from MBZ.

Tillerson’s manufactured ousting caused a panic in Qatar—but the problem also presented its own solution: It could simply pay off Kushner too. In late March or early April of 2018, the Qatari government quietly informed Kushner they intended to help him secure his property at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. After that, Trump appeared to soften his hardline stance against the Qataris, but it’s unclear what, if anything, he knew about the foreign government’s deal with Kushner.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decided to slander an entire ethnic group in a speech Monday.

Kennedy told the Kent County GOP in Grand Rapids, Michigan, “There’s 500 million Arabs in the world. And yet they don’t produce science. They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Prize. They don’t win the Wolf Prize. They don’t produce literature.

“They were the first to make books and they, in the thirteenth century, typical Muslim princes had more books in their libraries than in all of Europe. Oh, and all of that tradition has been destroyed by the Muslim Brotherhood. They’ve created stagnant societies that do one or two things: hatred and war and victimization,” Kennedy said.

The remarks are not only offensive, they are inaccurate. Three Arabs have won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, four Arab people and one Arab organization have won the Nobel Peace Prize, one Arab has won the Nobel Prize in literature, and two Arabs won the Wolf Prize for achievements in chemistry.

Kennedy immediately faced a massive backlash on social media.

“Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel in Literature in 1988. Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel in Chemistry in 1999, after winning the Wolf Prize. Omar Yaghi won the Nobel in Chemistry in 2025,” user Jordan Guy pointed out. “Algebra is an Arabic word. So is algorithm. The math on this claim doesn’t work.”

Journalist Mehdi Hasan said, “One of the men who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry last year was a Palestinian-American, Omar Yaghi. Racist POS.”

Saudi Arabian influencer Eyad Al-Hamoud called out Kennedy in Arabic, citing four recent Nobel winners. “The strongest part is that in the responses, they remind the secretary that under Arab rule, the greatest sciences emerged—ones we’re still living off to this day:

“Algebra and algorithms, development of trigonometry and equations, observatories, surgery and anesthesia, the hospital system, modern optics with Ibn al-Haytham, experimental chemistry and distillation, preparation of acids and water clocks (and much more besides),” Hamoud said.

Even Kennedy’s claim about the Muslim Brotherhood is inaccurate, as it doesn’t even have political power in the country where it was founded. But Kennedy’s speech (which comes close to violating laws against federal employees engaging in political campaigns) was meant to denigrate the Michigan Senate candidacy of Egyptian American Abdul El-Sayed, whom conservatives continue to brand as supporting the Muslim Brotherhood despite his repeated disavowals. Never mind that he also has a medical degree as well as a doctorate in public health from Oxford University.

Even MAGA rally attendees are sick and tired of hearing about Donald Trump’s ballroom.

The president visited Corinth, Mississippi, on Monday night to support the midterm efforts of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, an incumbent Republican in an increasingly tight race against Democratic nominee Scott Colom. Trump was in the middle of rambling about the condition of the White House when he was heckled about his $600 million ballroom project.

“Shove that ballroom up your fat ass!” a man shouted from the crowd.

It was at least the third time that night Trump was interrupted by a dissenting voice, but he didn’t appear too bothered by the intrusion. “Go home. Go home,” Trump responded, laughing.

The crowd, however, went bananas. Thousands of people began to boo. Then they stood up, threw their fists in the air, and chanted, “USA, USA.”

The president, in turn, claimed that the protester was “paid $250 by [George] Soros,” and lamented that he was interrupted “just at the punchline” of his story.

“These people are sick,” Trump said. “For $250 he broke up my punchline, and it was a beautiful—we have to have a beautiful, well kept, White House.”

Trump knocked down the historic White House East Wing last year to make way for his enormous ballroom. He did so without obtaining permission from Congress or the requisite agencies. And he has been practically obsessed with its construction ever since.

An analysis by The Washington Post in April found that, by that time, Trump had invoked his ballroom in roughly a third of his public remarks, far outpacing any mentions of his supposed policy priorities.

The president has repeatedly claimed that the 90,000-square-foot expansion would be free of charge to the American public and entirely funded by private donors, but that is far from the truth. Earlier this year, Trump pushed Congress to sign a $400 million check for the ballroom’s construction. Several Republicans backed the strategy, arguing that the cost could be offset to taxpayers by reallocating on national park funds and custom fees.

President Trump loudly announced his plans to ignore and appeal a judge’s order blocking his planned takeover of a public golf course in Washington, D.C., calling the decision “time-consuming, unnecessary, expensive, and unconstitutional.”

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes extended the order barring the Trump administration and the National Parks Service from cutting down more trees at the golf course while the lawsuit remains active. The order also requires the administration to give 10 days’ notice before making any “irreparable modification” to any “forms or features” on the property.

This got Trump ranting and raving on Truth Social late Monday night.

“JUDGE ASKS FOR NOTIFICATION AS PUBLIC GOLF COURSE PROJECT, IN WASHINGTON, D.C., IS BUILT. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR TO APPEAL THIS UNCONSTITUTIONAL REQUEST,” he wrote. “We believe this Project is totally ‘as of right,’ and that the judge does not have the Constitutional Right to ‘ask for or receive notices,’ which are time-consuming, unnecessary, expensive, and unconstitutional. We will immediately appeal this decision.”

He went on to claim he must ignore the court ruling due to “wayward” balls on the golf course.

“To have to give advanced notices to a judge who has no expertise in Golf, Architecture, Landscaping, Construction, or anything else having to do with building such a World Class Project, is not fair, appropriate, or Constitutional,” he continued. “In its current form, the Course is extremely dangerous to play, in that the narrow and nondescript fairways are far too close together, leading to a constant barrage of people being hit with wayward shots, and the echoing throughout the air of the word, ‘FORE!’ The judge has absolutely no right to hold up this very important and beautiful Project.”

This latest crashout comes just over a week after Trump called Reyes a “crazed lunatic” after she lambasted the Trump administration for giving her last-minute notice that it would start cutting down trees in the park. When Justice Department attorney Marissa Piropato argued the government’s actions over the weekend were “not a renovation,” Reyes called her excuse “preposterous,” “doublespeak,” and “completely beyond the pale.”

While East Potomac Golf Links was already slated for renovations, Trump’s federal takeover of the project—which aims to turn the once beautiful and accessible course into a massive property to host championship golf tournaments—has been a complete legal mess.

Donald Trump Jr. went on a remote hunting trip in Mongolia with Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.

President Donald Trump’s oldest son spent two days traveling with Kremlev in August. A guide told the outlet that during the trip, Trump Jr. killed one Altai argali, an endangered sheep valued for its large horns. News of the hunting trip follows a bombshell report that Kremlev dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars on Trump Jr.’s wedding in May.

Kremlev is president of the International Boxing Association, which is financed by Gazprom, a Russian state–owned energy company. Kremlev has extensive ties to Putin: The Russian president has positioned Kremlev as a central figure in the sports betting industry and chosen one of his companies to run the national lottery. In 2023, Putin nationalized Russia’s largest car dealership company—and Kremlev promptly became its owner. Kremlev is also involved in a sports education organization called Healthy Fatherland, which has been sanctioned by Ukraine for allegedly abducting and relocating Ukrainian children.

After the trip concluded, Trump attended dinner with Mongolia’s President Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh. A government spokesperson posted on social media that the two had discussed relations between the United States and Mongolia, as well as potential business opportunities. The post was removed soon after, and Trump’s spokesperson claimed it was an informal meeting where they discussed the outdoors. Khürelsükh’s spokesperson said, “They did not discuss politics or official visits.”

Trump’s spokesperson separately stated that the first son has “a personal friendship, not a business relationship,” with Kremlev. But intelligence experts warned the Financial Times that the relationship still posed a major risk.

“It really doesn’t matter if people have the most above board intentions,” Holden Triplett, who served as counter-intelligence director on the National Security Council during Donald Trump’s first administration, told the outlet. “The moment the Russian security and intelligence services figure out someone has a relationship with anyone of high value, they will try to weaponize that.”