And forget any serious focus on countering China. The leaders of NATO’s would-be Asia partners – South Korea and Japan – bailed to deal with the economic fallout of Trump bombing the Middle East and spiking their oil prices.
And so NATO stumbles on, proving that when Trump cracks the whip, Europe says, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”
Fresh off dropping an “F bomb” on both Iran and Israel for blowing up the only ceasefire in history ever announced exclusively on his social media feed , US President Donald Trump hopped on his jet and headed straight to the NATO summit. Everyone wondered what mood he’d land in after crossing the Atlantic.
Hard to believe this guy was once the prime minister of the Netherlands. Oh, President Trump, way to really stick it to Europe! What a wonderful thing you’ve just done to make almost all of Europe subsidize the American military industrial complex to the tune of 5% of their GDP!
Trump initially wanted them all on a 2.5% spending target. But heaven forbid American arms dealers hog all the action. Europe’s military industrial complex needs a piece too. Hence, 5% for everyone and a double-dip dinner at the weapons buffet.
Trump showed up straight from showcasing US bombs on Iranian soil – one giant demo reel for his European customers. When he landed, Rutte practically faceplanted directly into Trump’s backside.
Way to thank an arsonist for putting out his own fire. What’s next: nominating him for Fireman of the Year? Even the press did a double-take, basically asking Rutte, Bro, you sure you want him reading your fan mail on live TV? Answer: Absolutely. “Not embarrassed,” Rutte replied.
Between remarks like that and all the gushing about how Trump was making Europe pay for the privilege of being extorted for a protection racket that Trump says isn’t even sure that he would honor, it all sounded so sadomasochistic that I started to feel like maybe I should be paying for this kind of kinky TV content. Or I guess you could say that European taxpayers already are – to the tune of 5% of GDP.
And as for Europe being taken to the cleaners, Rutte had this to say about those who might struggle to pay up, like Spain, which opted to stick to 2%:
“Countries have to find the money.”
Easy to say as the former Dutch Prime Minister – and now, unelected NATO chief – safely off the electoral hook.
Sounds like those school spirit rallies where the star quarterback expects everyone to cheer for the big game, then everyone just goes home and does their own thing afterwards.
Speaking of which, Ukraine apparently isn’t the center of the universe anymore. “The fact that Zelensky will not participate in any official form at the NATO summit clearly indicates that the previous chapter is over,” Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán suggested. “The Americans, Turks, Slovaks and we have made it clear we do not want to sit at the same table with him.” Zelensky even swapped the pizza delivery look for undertaker chic. Perhaps a better match for the current state of his country. Or maybe just his ego. . .
Read more > RT.com
The White House failed to see the artistic value of a mysterious installation of a gold “television” erected in front of the Capitol that plays a video of Donald Trump dancing shoulder-to-shoulder with child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The installation, which was created by unknown artists and is permitted to stay through Sunday, sits where last week’s anti-Trump statue “Dictator Approved” drew similar outrage.
Press aide Abigail Jackson...
To call the administration’s “worst of the worst” claims a ruse is to give this administration too much credit. It’s not clever enough to run a con. Going after criminals was never the point during Trump’s first term. And mass deportation was the platform Trump ran on to get back to the Oval Office for this term.
Given the expectations, ICE was always going to fall short of arrest quotas if it restricted itself to actual lawbreakers. That’s why it’s casting a wider net, one that not only removes anyone looking vaguely Hispanic, but also people who happen to disagree with Trump or his policies.
And that’s why most of ICE’s high-profile raids have targeted businesses. This administration is creating a labor crisis with its shotgun approach to deportation, something that’s only going to aggravate current financial problems created by the administration’s shotgun approach to perceived trade deficits.
Who are we ejecting from this country at the rate of dozens of people per day? Hardworking, law-abiding migrants who’ve done nothing more than seek jobs, pay taxes, and carve out a better life for their loved ones. The government knows what it’s doing. After all, it already has all the evidence it needs to show its mass deportation program has nothing to do with making this nation safer or more secure.
David Blier has dug into the data for Cato, and here’s the upshot of this mass forced exodus.
As of June 14, ICE had booked into detention 204,297 individuals (since October 1, 2024, the start of fiscal year 2025). Of those book-ins, 65 percent, or 133,687 individuals, had no criminal convictions. Moreover, more than 93 percent of ICE book-ins were never convicted of any violent offenses. About nine in ten had no convictions for violent or property offenses. Most convictions (53 percent) fell into three main categories: immigration, traffic, or nonviolent vice crimes.
The pretense of making America safer has been discarded. America won’t get any safer, just as surely as it won’t get any greater under this president. For years, it’s been known that migrants commit fewer crimes than natural-born citizens. But with arrest numbers flagging after an initial, more-targeted surge, the administration made it clear it was time to hit the streets and round up any foreigners ICE might come across.
This shift in policy resulted from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s meeting at the end of May, when he ordered ICE to start arresting more non-criminals. “What do you mean you’re going after criminals?” he said. “Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7‑Eleven?”
ICE did indeed go to Home Depot. And for that, it’s now dealing with multiple weeks of unending protests, with the focal point being the Home Deport raid that occurred in Los Angeles.
It’s nothing more than a racist purge — something that can be ascertained even with incomplete data. As Blier points out, it’s difficult to get a complete picture on deportation efforts, now that the job has been split up between ICE, CBP, and the Border Patrol. But just looking at ICE’s numbers, it’s easy to see this isn’t about ejecting criminals. It’s about getting rid of non-white people.
Since the beginning of this year, ICE book-ins based on ICE arrests have increased nearly sixfold, from a daily average of 215 to over 1,100 per day.
As that number has exponentially increased, so has the percentage of migrants without criminal convictions, who now make up nearly three-quarters of all ICE detainees. And yet, many of these people will be routed to whatever hellhole might take them, whether it’s being stacked up in repurposed shipping containers in South Sudan or forced into general population at El Salvador’s CECOT.
And we possibly haven’t even seen the worst of this.
The White House has ordered ICE to meet an unreasonable quota of 3,000 arrests per day, a target they were nowhere near achieving as of June 14.
Trump’s anger has been re-lit by incessant protests and an extremely low-energy birthday party. On top of all but declaring war on “Democrat” cities, Trump has ordered ICE to increase its deportations. At some point, the demands will outstrip the supply. That unavoidable fact — along with the administration’s blood lust for cruelty — increases the odds that actual citizens will be treated like disposable foreigners by people too busy to do the job right and too removed from any form of accountability to care.
Filed Under: cbp, dhs, donald trump, evil, ice, immigrants, mass deportation, migration
Last week we noted how the Trump administration had cooked up a half-assed wireless phone company. Even calling it a phone company is generous: It’s basically a licensing agreement and a lazy coat of paint on another, half-assed MVNO effort (Patriot Mobile), which in turn just resells T-Mobile service.
A cornerstone of the supposed company was a new $500 Trump T1 phone. To pitch the phone, the press release had a badly photoshopped rendition of what the so-far-nonexistent phone would look like (curiously missing a camera flash), peppered with claims the phone would be “proudly designed and built in the United States.”
As we noted at the time, it would likely be just weeks before people realized the “made in America” claims weren’t true. And it sounds like we didn’t even have to wait that long. The Verge noticed that all of the “made in America” claims have been stripped from the Trump website, replaced with far-more vague language about how the phone is ambiguously infused with American sentiment:
“The T1’s new tagline is “Premium Performance. Proudly American.” Its website says the device is “designed with American values in mind” and there are “American hands behind every device.” Under Key Features, the first thing listed is “American-Proud Design.” None of this indicates, well, anything. It certainly doesn’t say the device is made in the USA, or even designed in the USA. There are just… some hands. In America.”
Trump Mobile folks are still trying to claim the phone will be made in America. At least until press reports in another month or two indicating that’s clearly not true. Again. The Verge notes that the screen size has gotten smaller in the website description, and they eliminated listing RAM specifications for some reason.
Trump operates at a fourth-grade reading level and genuinely believes his ignorant tariff plan will somehow magically force all manufacturing back to the United States. But as countless journalists and analysts have dissected, it would be literally impossible to manufacture an affordable phone in the United States without resorting to slave labor and ignoring all labor and environmental law.
Which is to say the weird Trump zealots might actually believe (or have been told) this is a real thing that they’re capable of, but it’s simply never happening. Still, the Trump boys have been pouring it on thick, with Eric Trump going on TV to claim that not only will the Trump phone be made in the USA, but all company support would be USA based as well:
“You’re not calling up call centers in Bangladesh − do it right out of St. Louis, Missouri, and you’re going to have phones that are made right here in the United States of America,” [Eric said]. He added Trump Mobile is “going to revolutionize cell phones, mobile calling” as it will fully operate in the U.S.
“I really believe we’re gonna have one of the great kind of tech platforms as part of the Trump Organization of any company in the world,” he added.
This is really all just lazy performance art for very dim people.
In many ways a lazily branded mobile phone MVNO hyping a so-far-nonexistent phone pretending to be American made is a perfect encapsulation of the “Trump experience.” Just complete pointless artifice from start to finish, with a singular function: hollow grift in the golden age of corruption.
Filed Under: broadband, bullshit, china, donald trump, eric trump, made in america, t1, tariffs, telecom, trade war, wireless
Companies: trump mobile
A combination of weaker activity and stubborn inflation is the message from today's US data so far. Monthly growth for both personal income and spending was negative in May, and below the consensus forecasts. Core inflation was slightly above the consensus forecasts for both the monthly and annual measures. April inflation was revised higher across the board.
Economist Mohamed El-Erian expressed concern, as consumers and businesses pull back spending and investors appear to question the role of the U.S. dollar.
Thursday morning, we learned that gross domestic product for the first quarter of the year was lower than previously reported, in part because consumers pulled back on their spending. Tomorrow we’ll learn more about the state of the macroeconomy, with new data on consumer sentiment, as well as the latest measure of the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge.
In the meantime, “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with Mohamed El-Erian to make sense of where this economy stands right now. El-Erian is the president of Queens’ College, Cambridge, economic advisor at Allianz, and former CEO of PIMCO.
“We have a weakening, not a weak, a weakening economy, with inflation staying high,” El-Erian said. “We’re seeing both the ability and the willingness to spend under pressure.”
