Having Trump Derangement Syndrome is a Sign of Mental Sanity

When people accuse you of Trump Derangement Syndrome, you should not take it as a criticism. Take it as a compliment and know it shows you are healthy and normal. 

Turn around and accuse them of suffering from the Trump Cult Syndrome. Just like all cults and cult leaders before MAGA and Trump, cult members are blinded and no longer able to see reality. Fabrications, lies, halluncinations, false perceptions...overwhelm the person's critical reasoning abilities.

When the unmentionable Great American Moron accuses critics of suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, he is pulling a stupid Roy Cohn tactic: You know you are the asshole, but just accuse your opponent of being the asshole, and this childish not-very-smart tactic equalizes the two sides. It works with dumb Americans, and the asshole becomes, at the very least, an acceptable asshole, just like Trump. That is why 77 million idiots voted for the idiot: They were raised to give an equal chance to any jackass who can prove himself to be the best asshole America has ever produced. 

Why is Trump an Idiot?

"If you Google the word 'idiot', a picture of Donald Trump comes up ...

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The Real Reason Trump Talks Like an Idiot: Author
Catherine Bouris, The Daily Beast Podcast
Tue, March 24, 2026 

Acclaimed journalist and author Kurt Andersen has unlocked the secret behind Donald Trump’s appeal to his own voters.

Speaking to The Daily Beast Podcast’s Joanna Coles about the president’s actions overseas, including most recently in Iran, Andersen claimed Trump has “no clue” about the history of Iran and the Middle East.

“He’s an idiot. He’s always been stupid. And his stupidity has been an under-remarked-upon, unheralded part of his—along with the lying, along with the mental disorders—the stupidity is important.”

The Daily Beast has meticulously documented the president’s visible decline since his return to the White House, including interviewing medical experts who believe his obvious cognitive decline is the result of a serious medical event like a stroke. More than 60 percent of Americans believe that Trump has become increasingly erratic with age.

Andersen argues that the president’s stupidity, which predates his recent decline, is a feature that appeals to a broad swath of the voting public.

Discussing his 2017 book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire; A 500-Year History, which he notes was written prior to Trump’s election, Andersen claims America has a weakness “for being conned.”

He points to the religious history of the U.S. and its role in shaping the country’s national character, highlighting the foundational belief of, “I can believe what I want because it’s the truth and it feels right.”

“All that stuff, which is not uniquely American, but it is definingly American,” Andersen explained. “America has always been the world leader in that kind of weak-mindedness and slippery sense of the difference between reality and fiction.” [Hence, Hollywood's role is shaping the American mind].

Coles mentioned infamous con artist and showman P.T. Barnum, whom Andersen discusses in his book and whom she describes as succeeding at “having people in on the con,” referencing an instance where people lined up to see a woman he claimed was 161 years old.

Barnum is famous for co-founding the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and promoting numerous hoaxes before later entering politics.

“I mean, his first freak show was a 161-year-old woman,” Coles said. “Obviously not true. Who was the nurse to George Washington. Obviously not true. And yet people lined up to see this thing, which they knew wasn’t true. And that’s the sort of sophisticated nature of P.T. Barnum: having the audience in on the con and yet still paying to see her.”

“He didn’t hide it,” Andersen agreed. “He didn’t pretend it was true. He said, ‘How do you know it’s not?’ [That] was basically his response to people. If you can’t prove it’s not and people enjoy it, then that’s entertainment.”

Engraved portrait of Phineas T Barnum, an American showman, politician, author, publisher, and philanthropist from Bethel, Connecticut, 1870. From the New York Public Library. / Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Andersen labels the question of whether Trump believes his tales as “the operative question with all of them. All of the great ones.” ”In the end, I think his deep animating feature as a person is the most horrible, unpleasant, miserable, wretched, cynicism about human behavior,” he says, but adds, “It’s a good bet that he believes more of it than he did in the past.”

Barnum’s understanding, as Andersen explains in his book, was that attention is what matters, not the truth. This approach would later be adopted by Trump and those who elevated him to national prominence.

“It’s just such an American story,” Andersen said of Trump’s ascendancy. “This combination of religiosity, I guess sincere, and this kind of hucksterism. And that’s part of the story of America and how Trump came to be, even though he is irreligious and a nonbeliever, I think, pretty clearly.”

“But his most devoted supporters are evangelical Christians, because once you get a country in which so much belief in any old thing you want and hear and disbelief in things that are true, anything goes.”

“That wasn’t always the case,” Andersen notes. “It always tended to be the case in America a little bit, but then it got out of control in the last 60 years and, along with the internet, gave us Donald Trump.”

Even Anti-Trump Americans are Earning a Bad Reputation

Why is that? Because Americans are brainwashed from the day they're born into some kind of pathological patriotism (like, for example, making children sing the pledge of allegiance every day in school, something only totalitarian societies require of their children) that makes them afraid of speaking their conscience and mind. 

Despite stated principles of liberty and democracy, Americans don't even realize they live in a totalitarian Gulag of intellectual conformity. America is in a way not a city on a hill, as is often claimed, but more like a village of indentured peasants who live in clusters of mutually hostile neighborhoods and who hate all the other villages around them.

I've known self-declared left-wing, anti-Trump, liberal Americans who would say to an immigrant to "go back if they don't like it here" when said immigrant dares express a criticism. It's OK for an American to say they hate other Americans, but it is not OK for an immigrant to say the same thing. I think growing up in America involves getting a deep scar of xenophobia and perceived superiority over other people with such fantasies as freedoms that are unequaled, a granite-strong democracy, and other genocidal ideas like Manifest Destiny, the destruction of native nations and the acquisition by force of new territories. I think Americans have inherited English racism and colonialism to the bone. After all, the American revolution, though dressed up in sublime ideals, is no more than the refusal by English subjects to pay taxes to their English King. It's always about money in America and the worship of wealth whose contemporary symptom is none else but Trump. 

In reality, the liberties that Americans think they have are very relative and do not rise to the level of a truly free people: Any feeling of freedom is tainted with built-in arrogance against other cultures and peoples. Which is why Americans, by and large, including the liberal ones, tolerate what Trump is doing to their country. They will stand up to Trump on gasoline and groceries, but the vast majority couldn't care less for the persecution of people, including Americans, with dark skin.

As an American who occasionally flew back to the old country, I'd be anxious landing at the airport, what with all the received perceptions and stereotypes engrained in me by the American media and culture. Then, upon returning home to the US, I felt a sense of relief, knowing that at least the system protected me. Now, suddenly, in the Trump era, I am discovering it was all fake. It is America that feels unsafe and dangerous; the system is broken; there is fear and anxiety everywhere. I now feel dread returning to the US while I feel a sense of relief upon traveling overseas. Strangely enough, I feel more free, less chained there than I am in the US. The world has become the mythical America, and America has become the Gulag. Like Belgian singer Jacques Brel said despondently in one of his songs, "Il n'y a plus d'Amérique" [The American myth no longer exists]. Trump has exposed the fallacies of a New World where, we were brainwashed to believe, one could escape the injustices of a world run by despots, tyrants, potentates, kings and dictators.

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Non-Americans Are Sharing Their Thoughts On Americans Who Don't Support Trump
Haein Jung
Tue, March 24, 2026

To put it mildly, US politics has become quite the global fodder these days. It might even be a cause for apology to the rest of the world. In r/greenland, a Redditor shared their views on how some Americans have been pleading their mea culpas on behalf of the president, his antics and threats, and the global citizens have had it. Unfortunately, even for those whose views don't align with the current administration, the rest of the world might as well still see us as the same. It makes you wonder... are the criticisms valid, or harsh? Here's what people said:

1. "Trump is not the disease, rather the symptom."

2. "Americans are figuring it out the hard way: 'Not all men, but enough men' applies to international politics, too. We know not everyone supported this, but enough did."

—Mechakoopa
3. "For some reason, there is this idea that Trump is some kind of isolated phenomenon. He is not. He is the leader of a strong ideology with 100 million supporters. Without those 100 million Americans (and another 100 million passive more), he is powerless. So yeah, it is not one single American — it’s Americans."

Andrew Thomas / Getty Images

4. "The worst part is that it was all televised and broadcast on every social media platform that exists! When someone shows you they're a piece of ****, believe them! It truly makes you wonder whether the misinformation in the US is worse than we think and actually worrisome. Nobody should have been blindsided by the actions of the felonious fool running the joint; he's basically doing exactly what he said he was going to, but why didn't ENOUGH people listen?"

5. "I’ve said it before and will say it again. The world, and especially Greenland, would like to see fewer apologies from individual Americans and more posts like, 'I’m American, and I’m doing these three things to prevent Trump from acquiring Greenland.'"

6. "How many American protests have been held specifically opposing Trump's threats to take over Canada? I count zero. That makes every American complicit as far as this Canadian is concerned."

—outremonty
7. "Also Canadian. I also understand that you’re individuals, and I know how hard it must be for you to live in such a place at this very moment, but we have to see your country as an entity. I live right on the border, near Duluth, and the Americans that come up here, it’s so hard to know which ones are actually wanting to be nice or not. It’s nothing against you as individuals."

—enableclutch
8. "The most infuriating part is that the other 200 million 'sane ones' are just sitting there, clenching their fists in their pockets, and begging for someone else to come save them from the 100 million idiots because they're powerless to do anything about it. From a European perspective, my view of Americans in general is that they've grown spineless. They have none of the fighting spirit left that was exhibited by The Greatest Generation. Americans don't have any fight left in them."

9. "Right on. Where are the Democrats and their leaders? They need to get loud and in their opponents' faces every minute of every day. Where are your mass protests and general strikes? What about petitions or protesting the offices of elected officials, especially those of vile Republicans? What about internal product boycotts, not paying taxes, and withdrawing from organizations that support the current administration? Voting seems to be a failed exercise in your country — vote for God’s sake. Where are the 'I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore' rants? Why does the rest of the world have to clean up your ****? We have had it — a note from another frozen place."

10. "Sometimes I feel like in New Zealand, we're the little sister that just toddles along, aware of the drama but just doing our own thing. I hope that our country has been scared enough to vote our current government out. But even our right-wing parties are super left compared to America."

—Pale-Attorney7474
11. "Americans are not even willing to close their Facebook or X accounts to stop being subjects of propaganda. They could be hurting the oligarchs where it hurt$, but buying **** from Amazon is more important than democracy. They could be dropping their Tesla investments, they could be cancelling streaming services, and stop buying iPhones, they could be putting their money where their mouth is, but it is inconvenient, so they will not even do those basic actions."

Nurphoto / Getty Images

12. "Decadence will do that to a population."

—Blacksmith_Several
13. "I understand that Americans feel like apologizing on behalf of their country because of this Orange idiot, but right now I think it doesn't help because of how we in Europe, and especially the people in the Northern countries, feel threatened. I don't hold a grudge or hate against those who didn't vote for him. I hate those who voted for him and those who didn't vote at all. What you can do is remember to vote in the midterm elections, maybe it will get a little better. But the relationship Europe has with the US now, it could be generations before it gets better again. Just look at how long it took for Germany after World War II."

—deleted
14. "Dutchie here — I feel skeptical towards posts that try to sow division, and I don't agree. Everyone who is not blind knows that a lot of Americans know that what is happening is not ok. A lot of them do protest even though they often feel just as powerless as the rest of us. This could happen to any country. And unfortunately, eventually it probably will, because encouraging xenophobia and influencing a certain group of people through (social) media has proven to be very effective and profitable for the billionaires without ethics."

15. "As a Chinese American, I never thought I’d see the day that I’d rather tell foreigners that I’m Chinese instead of American."

—DiskBusiness7212
16. "What’s frustrating is that for decades, people have pointed out flaws in the US system, and yet the US arrogantly preached how only they were truly free and democratic. The excessive patriotism, with traditions like flags on many homes, is a breeding ground for fascism. This has been a long time coming, and it won't be fixed easily. I just hope the US doesn’t take the rest of us down with them."

—britjumper
17. And finally, "Correct. Let me be clear: I appreciate that there are Americans who are genuinely ashamed. It takes courage to come here and admit culpability. It must feel terrible to watch a government you didn't want turn your country into a global pariah. I feel sympathy for that. I would argue that it does help a little to know you're out there and on our side. Here's the problem: the rest of the world has been watching your country dominate in every way you can find. Our cultures are being suppressed by yours. Even more or less rational Americans will stand there and chant 'USA!' over and over again, saying it's the best country in the world. You're all participants in a diseased and broken system that allowed this to happen. It's an inevitable outcome."

Trump Regime's Blatant Corruption

Murphy on ‘$1.5BILLION’ stock trade before Trump Iran announcement: ‘Mind blowing corruption’

Ashleigh Fields

Tue, March 24, 2026

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Monday drew attention to an unusually large oil stock trade that occurred moments before President Trump announced a five-day pause on previously threatened energy infrastructure strikes in Iran, indicating it appeared be a case of insider trading.

In an X post highlighted by Murphy, a stock market watcher said, “In one move, $1.5 billion in S&P 500 (ES) futures was bought while $192 million in oil (CL) futures was sold.”

“$1.5 BILLION. Let me say it again – a $1.5 BILLION BET. Bigger than any futures purchases made at the time. 5 minutes before Trump’s post,” Murphy wrote in his own post.

“Who was it? Trump? A family member? A White House staffer? This is corruption. Mind blowing corruption,” he added.

At least 6 million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate were sold between 6:49 a.m. and 6:51 a.m. on Monday, according to Bloomberg.

Trump’s post was made at 7:05 a.m.

International markets including Germany’s DAX Index Futures and the Euro Stoxx 50 Index Futures also saw an unusual spike in trades, Bloomberg reported.

Oil and gasoline prices had been rising globally since the U.S. and Israel began their strikes on Iran, but they dropped quickly in the wake of Trump’s Monday announcement.

Murphy’s post draws attention to a broader concern among lawmakers about politicians and their families using their access to to make more informed trades.

Earlier this year, House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) introduced a bill seeking to ban members of Congress from buying new stock but allow them to keep what they already own.

It would also require lawmakers to file a public notice with the clerk of the House at least seven days before they choose to sell an existing stock.

Last year, Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.) introduced a bill that would prohibit lawmakers, their spouses, dependent children and trustees from owning, buying or selling individual stocks.

Democrats have also pushed specifically for legislation that would prevent the president and vice president from insider trading.

President Trump urged Congress to pass legislation on the matter during his State of the Union address.

On Monday, Kalshi and Polymarket said they will roll new insider trading restrictions that preemptively “block politicians, athletes, and other relevant people from trading in certain politics and sports markets.”

 

Trump Finally Admits He is a Full-Blown White Supremacist Racist

The US is THE country of immigration. No American can claim a pure-breed genetic background. We are, each and every one of us, a nation of genetic bastards, the famous Melting Pot.

For Donald Trump, Project 2025, the Republican Party, the MAGA movement and the racist white moron supremacists, their fight to keep America "white" is a futile exercise based on ignorance. Ignorance of science (which is why they hate science). As I have often said, racism - the misconception of difference between people based solely on skin color - is very very stupid.

Each one of us carries millions of traits, a tiny fraction of which are visible to the naked eye, essentially eye color, skin color, hair color, the shape of ears and noses, and more if you want to focus on every puny little detail like skull shape, which the imbeciles of 19th century England used to "prove" that whites are superior to non-whites. [https://theconversation.com/how-the-racist-study-of-skulls-gripped-victorian-britains-scientists-262280].

Those millions of traits that are beneath the skin are invisible. They are in every molecule that make up our cells and tissues, that make our systems function... We don't see them, so we are blind to them, and so we can't use them to distinguish between a white person and a black person. In other words, a black person from West Africa, for example, may share 99.99% of their traits with a person from northern Finland without knowing it (hence ignorance) because those traits are invisible to the naked eye, but racists want you to believe that the 0.01% visible traits (skin, eye, hair colors...) constitute ALL the differences between those two people, and can thus be used to idiotically decide that a white person is "better" (closer to God, in fact) than a black person.

All the pseudo-scientific garbage of "eugenics" was promoted by the religious, political and economic establishments to justify colonialism: since white people are better than black people, then white people are justified in invading, colonizing and mistreating black people. All of this is based on religious garbage of even more dubious biblical vintage written by smelly nomadic goat-herders in the Arabian deserts of the Bronze and Stone Ages. God made this and that. God favored Abel over Cain. God chose one smelly tribe over others as his favorite pet people.... How can anyone in our time still believe this crap is a mystery unveiled by how ignorant most people still are. Literacy is no longer just about writing, reading and counting to ten. It is understanding our material world, who we really are, what we're made of, where do we come from and how we have evolved over millions of years.

When you have an illiterate ignorant white-trash imbecile like Trump at the helm, racism becomes normal because he has created a cult of like-minded ignoramuses who perpetuate the racist bullshit as if it were "revealed from high above".

When I question religious (say, Christian) people about their fantasmagoric beliefs, they often ask me in return, "But can 2.6 billion Christian believers be all wrong?" My answer is, "If I am to accept that the sheer number of imbeciles who believe the christian faith is sufficient evidence that all its bullshit is true, then I have to apply the same criterion (two billion imbecile Muslim believers) to the Muslim faith and admit that they too are right, or that the 1.2 billion Hindus with their thousands of gods are also right... simply because they are so numerous.

Mass blindness is very common among the human species. Our brain is a dangerous enemy to itself and to the species: It cares not for the truth, it cares only for survival, even at the expense of the truth. Our brain requires answers to every little thing in our environment, including answers to our existence and our mortality. Our brain is constantly evaluating everything around us, and demanding answers. When there are no facts or evidence to provide a coherent answer, our brain fools itself and us by making up and inventing answers that have no basis in reality or fact. That is what religion is: Bullshit answers to questions our brain asks because we have no reliable factual answers.

When the plague hit Europe during the Middle Ages, people did not know that invisible (to the naked eye) bacteria, viruses and other unicellular organisms are everywhere in us, on us and around us. Since they had no idea why there is such a horrible thing such as the plague, they made up an answer to quench their brains' thirst for answers: God must be punishing us. The plague is caused by God. There's your answer. Now, 500 years later, the plague rarely makes an appearance (because sience has not only found the answer but it also found a cure), and when it does, we know for a fact that the bacteria Yersinia pestis causes the plague. Hence, God is out, and Yersinia is in: We have a more reliable answer to the plague question.

This simple example can be extrapolated to all our interactions between our brain and the environment. Everything we do, say and believe requires us to have answers, regardless of whether the answers are factual or bullshit: Why are we here? Why do we die? In fact, our brain is such a treacherous entity that it makes us believe in fake immortality because it refuses to accept our mortality. Most, if not all, religions offer a "beyond death existence": it could be eternal life in some fancy resort somewhere up in the sky. Or we (our so-called "souls") are beamed into some other form of existence on this earth such as the transmutation, transmigration, resurrection or reincarnation. None of it is, of course, real. It is all imagined by our brain to calm itself from its chronic anxiety about death. Our brain is like a drug dealer, handing us sedatives and imaginary mind-altering drugs to keep us going, to survive in our environment, because those ignorant among us refuse to accept death as the end of it all.

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Trump tells white Fox News host that immigrants who should be barred from US don’t have 'your genetics'
Ryan General
Mon, March 23, 2026


President Donald Trump told “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade, who is white, that immigrants do not have “your genetics” during a Friday phone interview on immigration. He paired the statement with claims that migrants entering the U.S. are criminals and should be barred. By linking criminal behavior to biology, Trump's comments suggested a fundamental racial distinction between migrants and white Americans.

Trump’s eugenics language

Trump made the remarks while responding to questions about violent incidents involving individuals identified as Muslim, arguing that some “shouldn’t have been let in” while others “go bad.” He said, “They’re sick people, and a lot of them were let in here. They shouldn’t have been let in,” before adding, “Others are just bad. They go bad. Something wrong — there’s something wrong there.”

He then attributed that behavior to biology, saying, “Their genetics are not exactly your genetics, it’s one of those problems, Brian. It’s a terrible thing, and it happens, it happens too often,” linking criminality to inherited traits rather than individual actions or circumstances.

The language reflects a core idea associated with eugenics, the long-debunked belief that social outcomes such as crime or behavior are determined by genetics and differ across groups. That framework has historically informed exclusionary immigration policies and was a defining feature of Nazi racial ideology under Adolf Hitler, where hereditary difference was used to justify hierarchy and exclusion.

Not hiding white supremacism

Trump’s comments drew criticism from policy analysts and journalists, many of whom focused on his use of genetics to describe immigrants and its historical implications.

David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, wrote that the language reflects ideas that have shaped past U.S. immigration restrictions, stating, “Trump is an old-school eugenicist nativist. He actually is fine with immigrants as long as they have the right 'genes.'”

Journalist Alex Cole pointed to what he described as a contradiction in Trump’s framing, writing on X, “Imagine being the grandson of immigrants, who dyes his hair, paints his face orange, and wears lifts, lecturing the country about 'genetics.' The irony writes itself.”

Journalist Mehdi Hasan offered a more direct characterization: “He's a white supremacist. He doesn't hide it.”

History of rhetoric invoking “blood,” genetics

Trump’s reference to “genetics” builds on years of rhetoric in which he has described immigrants as threats defined by identity and, more recently, by genes.

At the launch of his first presidential campaign in 2015, Trump framed immigration in terms of crime, describing Mexican immigrants as “rapists” bringing “drugs” and “crime” into the U.S. That framing established a baseline argument centered on behavior and threat. As president in 2020, he repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus,” a label that researchers and scholars later linked to a documented rise in anti-Asian hate incidents.

By 2023, his rhetoric had shifted more explicitly toward heredity. At multiple campaign events, Trump said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” invoking language that historians and analysts have noted parallels earlier exclusionary ideologies. The phrasing closely mirrors passages in Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which originally warned of national decline through “blood poisoning.”

While some Trump supporters have dismissed comparisons to the Nazi leader as exaggerated, the overlap extends beyond rhetoric, as his use of biological language has been paired with policies, including restrictions and bans on immigration from Muslim-majority countries, sweeping limits on asylum at the southern border, large-scale deportation operations, aggressive ICE enforcement actions, immigrant detention facilities that have faced criticism over conditions and efforts to strip citizenship from certain naturalized Americans, among others.

We Told You: Trump's ICE has Depleted American Companies of Workers

 

Like they didn't know. They knew, but racism and stupidity made them go ahead with Trump's racist policies. He lied to them and the morons believed him. Migrants make up the backbone of America's workforce in those sectors that high-brow Americans despise: Agriculture, construction, landscaping....

Workers gone, deported or in hiding.... MAGA business voters, many of them Hispanic Americans, are now complaining. I'd say to them: F - - - You. You deserve it. May you go bankrupt. The imbecile below says he didn't think "this" would affect him. By "this" he means Trump's racism hellbent on "bleaching" America of all non-white non-aryan non-anglo-saxon people so it looks whiter than it is. 

Who do you think the moron below will be voting for in November? He's a moron, wha'd ya expect?
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3-Time Trump Voter Complains ICE ‘Taking All Our Workers’ — We ‘Never Thought This Would Affect Us’
Tommy Christopher
Sat, March 21, 2026 




A business owner named Mario Guerrero — who supported President Donald Trump in all three elections — now says ICE raids are gutting his workforce. lamenting to The New York Times that “We just never thought that this would come and affect us in the construction industry.”

Trump’s ICE crackdown has been under fire after several killings and has prompted a DHS shutdown by Democrats demanding reform.

But even supporters of the president’s policies are becoming dissatisfied. In a New York Times report by Jeremy Raff, Ivan Narez Hurtado, and Ben Laffin, Guerrero said “Deporting the criminals is a great policy” — but not when they “show up to our job sites with no warrants, taking all our workers, even the workers with proper documentation”:

TRUMP VOTER MARIO GUERRERO: I did vote for Mr. Trump. Deporting the criminals is a great policy. His foundations are poured ready to go and we can’t even start the construction on them. But we voted for the American dream and unfortunately right now we’re not seeing that.

NARRATOR: For months, federal agents have been sweeping up workers at construction sites in South Texas.

MARCO SANTIVANES: ICE has raided us anywhere between 10 to 15 times throughout different subdivisions.

NARRATOR: Now, work sites across the Rio Grande Valley have ground to a halt. And that’s got some Trump supporters in this midterm battleground changing their minds.

TRUMP VOTER MARIO GUERRERO: These people would just show up to our job sites with no warrants, taking all our workers, even the workers with proper documentation.

NARRATOR: Many who work in the construction industry here told us they largely rely on immigrant workers, some of whom are undocumented. DHS did not respond to the Times’ request for comment, but in a previous statement, it said these raids protect the nation’s workforce.

TRUMP VOTER MARIO GUERRERO: I’ve supported Mr. Trump in every election that he’s been a part of. We just never thought that this would come and affect us in the construction industry, but most importantly affect our economy here in South Texas.

ELIUD CAVAZOS: We are seeing a reduction of almost 60% of our volume on the residential side of our business. We applied for bankruptcy in December. We saw a drop in sales of about $5.3 million. For 40 years we had never laid anybody off and until this happened we were forced to.

NARRATOR: And beyond construction, local businesses say fear is keeping shoppers at home.

JEANETTE HERNANDEZ: And there’s been a lot of loss of sales because of that. It killed us this year.

TRUMP VOTER MARIO GUERRERO: Construction is one of the main pillars to the economy here. Everybody’s hurting.

NARRATOR: In the Rio Grande Valley, two of President Trump’s top priorities, the economy and mass deportation are colliding as ice raids upend the construction industry.

War on-War off: Trump's Yoyo War Pronouncements Aimed at Playing the Markets

 

When the jackass says he's bent on destroying Iran, the stock market drops on fears of rising oil prices. He, his GOP goons in Congress, his MAGA cronies and his family rush to buy stocks. 

Two days later, the jackass says he's having "good productive negotiations" with Iran. The stock market rebounds and the Trump MAGA Mafia-GOP conglomerate sells the stocks they bought two days earlier, making millions in profit.

This is in essence what is exclusively on the jackass's mind: Money. FOR THE DEMENTED CRIMINAL, THE PRESIDENCY IS A MONEY-MAKING CASH MACHINE WHILE BULLSHITTING HIS MAGA MORONS ABOUT MAKING AMERICA GREAT.

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Trump has TACO’d again, this time in Iran, sparking a $1.7 trillion stock market rally in minutes, even as peace talks are in question
Eva Roytburg
Updated Mon, March 23, 2026 

In the time it takes to walk from your car to your desk, President Donald Trump added $1.7 trillion to stocks and pushed the price of oil down by $17, or approximately 15%. By the time you got your coffee, Iran had reportedly called him a liar, and half those gains vanished.

This is the average Monday morning for a very market-oriented executive in the fourth week of war.

At approximately 7 a.m. ET, Trump posted in all-caps on Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran held “very good and productive conversations” over the weekend toward “a complete and total resolution” of hostilities in the Middle East. He ordered the Pentagon to pause all strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days.

Washington had kept Israel informed of the talks, Reuters reported, and Israel is expected to follow the U.S. in suspending strikes on Iranian power plants.

That came after Trump issued an ultimatum to Iran Saturday night, calling on the regime to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face bombardment of its power grid. Now, it appears he’s buying time for the workweek, and leaving the weekend as a buffer before any next move.

S&P 500 futures swung nearly 4% off their lows, Brent crude collapsed from $109 to a low of $92 before partially recovering, and West Texas Intermediate touched $88.70, its lowest point since the war began.

Iran’s state media reported that the talks never happened, citing an unnamed “senior security official” in a post on Telegram. The official called it a ploy to manipulate markets and said there’s no communication lines between the two countries. As of time of writing, no official from Iran has publicly confirmed or denied Trump’s claim.

Trump told Fox Business that talks did occur Sunday night, involving special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, facilitated by Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey. Iran wants a deal “badly,” he said.

“We have major points of agreement—I would say almost all points of agreement. Perhaps that hasn’t been conveyed,” he added, also joking that Iran needs “better public relations people.”

Wall Street has a word for all of it, coined by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong last May: TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out. The acronym describes Trump’s habit of making catastrophic threats that cause market panic, then reversing course before economic pain can set in. The trade has minted money for investors who bought every dip, confident that Trump’s tolerance for damage had a ceiling.

The pattern was seen in his trade war last year as he announced prohibitively high tariffs only to reach a deal later. It played out in Greenland too early this year, when Trump spent weeks threatening to seize the island only to settle for a vague base agreement.

The Iran war is, theoretically, supposed to function differently: after all, it takes “two to TACO,” since Trump cannot just unilaterally end the war the same way he could unilaterally pull back sanctions.

Oil analyst Rory Johnston wrote on Monday that though the “base case” was that Trump would try to back out and declare victory, it won’t be that simple to bring down oil prices.

“Hormuz flow still hasn’t resumed and every day we’re shedding more oil from the system,” he wrote on X. “That’ll catch up—can’t jawbone 10 to 15 million barrels per day stock draws.”

It is unclear who Trump is even negotiating with on Iran’s side. He told Fox Business he’s dealing with the man who’s “most respected” in Iran, though “It’s a little tough — we’ve wiped out everybody.”

U.S.-Israeli forces have killed most of Iran’s top brass, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, security chief Ali Larijani, and other senior leaders. When asked a few weeks ago whom Trump wanted to see replace the ayatollah, Trump said “everyone we had in mind is dead.”

The Jerusalem Post has reported that Trump’s actual interlocutor is Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

Trump also said on Fox Business Monday that he and new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei—son of the late Ali Khamenei—would together be in charge of the Strait of Hormuz.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Iran Denies ‘Productive’ Talks Hyped By Trump—Accuses Him Of Manipulating Markets

Siladitya Ray, Forbes Staff

Updated Mon, March 23, 2026 

Topline

After President Donald Trump on Monday said the U.S. and Iran held “productive” conversations that could lead to a “complete and total resolution” to their war—lowering oil prices and boosting markets—Iranian officials denied anything ever happened, claiming Trump was trying to reduce energy prices and “buy time.”

Key Facts

In a post on Truth Social, the president wrote that “VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST” had taken place over the previous two days.

Trump said he ordered the Pentagon to postpone military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days.

Trump’s post did not specify who was negotiating on Iran’s behalf, and it is not immediately clear whether Israel is part of the negotiations.

Within hours, Iran’s foreign ministry denied having held talks with the U.S., claiming Trump’s remarks were “part of efforts to reduce energy prices and buy time to implement his military plans,” the Associated Press reported, citing an Iranian state-owned outlet.

“While there have been initiatives by regional countries to de-escalate tensions, Iran’s response has been clear: It did not start the war and all such requests should be directed to Washington,” the ministry said.

How Did Trump’s Post Impact Markets?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which soared in premarket trading by more than 1,100 points, rose 1.7% after markets opened Monday morning. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq jumped 1.5% and 1.6%, respectively, with Monday’s positive swing marking a rebound for each index after they posted a fourth-straight losing week. The Dow and Nasdaq last week approached correction territory, or when the market is down 10% from its recent high, with the Dow down 8.6% and the Nasdaq down 8.7%. Brent Crude, the international oil benchmark, dropped by nearly 7% to below $100 after rising as high as $112 last week. The U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate similarly fell by 7% to just under $91, after earlier falling below $85.

What Do We Know About Trump’s Earlier Ultimatum?

In a Truth Social post on Saturday evening, Trump wrote that if Iran does not “FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT,” the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, the U.S. military would “hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!” The deadline was set to expire on Monday evening and Iran had warned it would retaliate against such an attack by targeting the energy and water desalination facilities of neighboring Gulf countries aligned with the U.S.

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NEW YORK TIMES ANALYSIS: 

The New York Times editorial board delivered a damning assessment of Donald Trump’s false claims about the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran in a weekend opinion piece — and warned how they could ultimately backfire on him.

Trump’s “stream of falsehoods” about the conflict is nothing new, the board said. “Lying is standard behavior for Mr. Trump, of course,” it wrote, noting just some of his many, many falsehoods over the years. (Trump made more than 30,000 misleading or untruthful claims during his first term, per a Washington Post analysis).

“Yet lying about war is uniquely corrosive,” the Times’ board continued, arguing it “creates a culture in which deadly mistakes and even war crimes can become more common” and ultimately “undermines American values and interests.”

The board acknowledged “there is a reasonable debate to have about the wisdom of this war,” which has so far killed 13 U.S. service members, given what it described as Iran’s “murderous” government and its threats to people at home and abroad.

But Trump is “not making” that case, said the Times, and is just lying “about the reasons for the war and about its progress, in an apparent attempt to disguise his poor planning and the war’s questionable basis.”

Trump and MAGA world have given various different answers on various different aspects of the war, such as what its actual objectives are, how long it will last and more.

The Times’ board also pointed to past conflicts — including the Vietnam War and the 2003 invasion of Iraq — where presidents “learned that falsehoods can boomerang on the leaders who tell them.”

“Whatever short-term gain Mr. Trump thinks he is getting by lying about the war in Iran is far exceeded by the cost, for him, the country and the world,” it concluded. 

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Why Trump’s ‘Psychosis’ Has Insiders Terrified
Laura Esposito, The Daily Beast Podcast
Sun, March 22, 2026

The war in Iran has ripple effects across the globe. But its next steps come down to the nonsensical whims of just one man, warned veteran political analyst David Rothkopf.

“This is so different from any other war that we have ever seen, because it is being driven by the psychosis of one individual,” Rothkopf told host Joanna Coles on The Daily Beast Podcast.

The Daily Beast columnist warned that President Donald Trump has surrounded himself with yes-men, giving him the freedom to act as erratically as he pleases amid the surprise war with Iran he began in coordination with Israel on Feb. 28.

“Trump doesn’t listen to advisers. As he says, he relies on his gut,” Rothkopf said. The president, 79, has repeatedly reversed course as his war with Iran enters its fourth week. On Saturday, Trump claimed he had wiped Iran “off the map” in a social media post, then threatened new military strikes just an hour later.

“We don’t have people around the president who will say no. And even if we did, he wouldn’t listen to that,” the foreign policy analyst continued.

“And everybody in Washington knows that. All the guardrails, all the processes, all the systems that have evolved over time to avoid just this kind of catastrophe have been shut down, broken down, run around, and we’re left with a decaying, elderly, ignorant, paranoid, vainglorious, deluded commander in chief making it up as he goes along.”

Trump and Israel’s war on Iran has killed 13 U.S. service members at the time of publication, and the ongoing economic and political fallout is becoming harder for the administration to ignore.

Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz—a waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil passes—has rattled markets and pushed up prices. Meanwhile, NATO allies have largely avoided stepping in—despite Trump’s constant barrage of public threats against them.

“[The] Trump administration’s foreign policy is sort of following the footsteps of a drunk out of the bar,” Rothkopf, the CEO and editor-in-chief of The DSR Network, said. “We go to the left, we go to the right, we’re doing this, we’re doing that. I’m on my knees. I’m standing up, you know, shouting at the heavens.”

To make matters worse, Rothkopf pointed to reports that the State Department fired its oil and gas experts just six months before Trump’s attacks—officials who would be central to the current conflict.

He also cited reporting that FBI Director Kash Patel’s revenge-fueled firing spree resulted in several key specialists on the threat posed by Iran losing their jobs just days before the war.

Patel’s revenge strike on the FBI decimated the bureau’s global espionage unit known as CI-12. / MediaNews Group/Inland Valley Da / MediaNews Group via Getty Images

Patel terminated 12 FBI employees after discovering he and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’ phones had been under subpoena as part of a probe into the illegal storage of documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property.

“The problem is there has been no planning,” Rothkopf said. “There is no sense of consequences.”

Trump has also repeatedly changed his mind about what constitutes victory over Iran. In the early days of the assault, the president demanded the country’s “unconditional surrender.” Since then, Trump has shifted his stance to preventing nuclear weapons and has signaled that he may “wind down” operations.
 

[Trump's Iran War is like a Spring break golf party at Mar-a-Lago]:

Trump launched his war from a hastily constructed space in Mar-a-Lago with (left) John Ratcliffe, the Director of the CIA, (fourth from right) Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and (second from right), Dan Scavino, his golf caddy turned aide. / White House / X

“There’s no metric by which you can assess what’s going on in this misbegotten war and which is the success,” Rothkopf said. “There’s none.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

Zionists Hate the Press: It Tells the Sordid Truth They Desperately Hide

Foreign jounalists barred from Gaza. Local journalists are the only ones left to tell the facts of the Zionist genocide in Palestine. Still, the Zionist radical terrorists have killed these Palestinian journalists by the hundreds, targeting them individually and in groups. Mostly sniper shots aimed at the face and neck of clearly-marked "PRESS" journalists protected with helmets and bulletproof vests. This is nothing short of a campaign of assassinations to prevent the truth of the horrific destruction and mass-killings perpetrated by a colonial regime against the colonized indigenous population of Palestine.

There was no October 7 in the West Bank. Yet, the Zionist fascist militia and its foreign terrorist settlers are committing untold barbarity against innocent Palestinian villagers there. October 7, despite its own barbarity against innocent Israeli civilians, is only a pretext used by Zionist terrorists for their long-standing ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Absolutely nothing can, morally and legally, justify the tragedy unfolding in Palestine.

Ever since the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the Zionists set out to replace the indigenous Palestinian population (then some 600,000 strong) with a foreign horde of armed racist fundamentalist East European Jewish invading settlers. Before 1917, there were a couple of thousand Jews in Palestine, essentially visiting Jewish pilgrims, not residents. The English crooks, who were granted temporary custody of Palestine (by virtue of an authorization by the League of Nations) cheated and lied their way into selling Palestine to wealthy Jewish bankers who dreamed of their own "me-too" colony somewhere where they can rape, steal, pilfer and kill. And that is exactly what the history of Palestine for the past 100 years has been.

Israel is no Jewish "homeland". For one thing, despite the horrendous 100-year-long culling of the indigenous Palestinian population by foreign Zionist settlers, the land of Palestine-Israel remains 50% Jewish and 50% Palestinian. And the Jewish 50% are trying by sordid criminal means to keep culling the Palestinian population in order to create the oxymoronic "Democracy-for-Jews-only".

There are many more millions of Jews who live safe lives around the world in almost every country and who do not accquiesce to the rape of Palestine. If they did, they'd all be moving to settle there. But they don't, for the most part because they don't acccept the barbarity of the colonial rape of Palestine, and they understand that Israel is no more than a western colonial beachhead on the eastern mediterranean whose genesis and raison d'etre were, at the end of World War I and the discovery of oil in the Arabian peninsula, to serve as a militia to protect western access to the oil fields. Do you really believe that the ongoing war against Iran is about terrorism and Islamism? It's not. It's about oil and gas.

The West is on friendly terms with the radical Islamist regimes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, who are fundamentally anti-western and anti-Christian. All the mosques and madrassas built since the late 1970s in Europe and the Americas and everywhere in between were funded by the Wahhabi regime in Saudi Arabia and its radical Sunni vassals in the Gulf (Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain...). If there has been any threat to the West from Islamists, it has come for the most part from these fundamentalist Sunni Muslims who are the West's best friends only because they have not cut out the oil supply. The West is like a prostitute: It sleeps with its enemy as long as the latter pumps oil.

When the Arabs Islamist dictatorships did cut off the oil supply in 1973, the West rushed to their feet and begged them. In exchange for resuming pumping oil, the West allowed them to dispatch their preachers and radical terrorists to settle in Europe and the West. These in turn have been responsible for most terrorist attacks in the West and for the massive Muslim migrations into Europe and the Americas, and for creating and funding the radical Islamist terror organizations we have seen unfolding over the past several decades, from the Saudi Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda (responsible for the 9-11 attacks) to the Islamic State (ISIS), the Caliphate and their subsidiaries across Asia and Africa.

There are many more Muslims around the world than in the Arabian Guld region - Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan.... - They lead mostly peaceful lives and don't have "terrorists" against whom the West pretends to fight. Why? Because they don't have oil. The Near East has been in a state of war since World War I simply because of the oil fields, and Israel is the product of that policy of controlling the oil.

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Israeli police attack journalists in Jerusalem, fracturing wrist of CNN producer

Oren Liebermann, CNN
Sat, March 21, 2026

Israeli security forces violently disperse Muslim worshippers who were performing the nightly Tarawih prayers outside the old city walls of Jerusalem on March 17, 2026. - John Wessels/AFP via Getty Images

Israeli police attacked a group of journalists outside the Old City of Jerusalem on Tuesday evening, including a CNN producer who suffered a fractured wrist in the violent incident.

Police officers also damaged photographic equipment and confiscated memory cards from journalists who were outside the Lion’s Gate of the Old City covering Ramadan prayers.

On Tuesday, Muslim worshippers, barred from praying at the Al-Aqsa mosque because of wartime restrictions, gathered outside the walls of the Old City to perform the Tarawih prayers of Ramadan. But police prevented them from praying and pushed them away. The worshippers relocated to a street inside the nearby Wadi Al Joz neighborhood.

Police then relocated the worshippers one more time to a spot near the Old City walls when, moments later, officers threw stun grenades at the group. Two journalists were detained at the scene as officers assaulted them and damaged their equipment. Several other journalists at the scene who were documenting the unfolding incident, including CNN’s senior producer Abeer Salman, attempted to intervene but were pushed away.

After the two journalists were released, Salman and other journalists went to check on their colleagues. Police ordered the journalists back. Footage shows the group acquiescing to the police instructions when an officer in plain clothes – possibly indicating a special police unit – grabbed Salman’s hand, twisting it and causing a fracture in the wrist.

Israeli security forces disperse Muslim worshippers who were performing the nightly Tarawih prayers outside the old city walls of Jerusalem on Tuesday. - John Wessels/AFP via Getty Images

In a police statement issued to Israeli reporters on Tuesday and shared with CNN, the police accused journalists at the scene of refusing to follow orders, claiming they were “part of the disturbances.” The police statement went on to claim that “only after they were detained by police did they identify themselves as journalists and were subsequently released.”

The Union of Journalists in Israel ripped the police statement as “factually incorrect.” The union called for the police commissioner to immediately suspend the officers involved and launch an internal investigation.

“Police officers attacked several journalists without provocation, including foreign press,” the group said. “The officers damaged professional equipment, confiscated memory cards documenting their illicit actions, and inflicted a bone fracture on a CNN producer.”

Nir Gontarz, a member of the union who deals with violence against journalists, said police intentionally targeted the journalists, fully aware they were at the scene.

“Sometimes journalists are accidentally hit, including by police officers, while doing their job. In this incident, it was not a mistake. The police marked the journalists as targets, and attacked them,” Gontarz said. “It wasn’t a by product, it wasn’t coincidental, it was an intentional attack on journalists.”

The Foreign Press Association (FPA) also condemned the “unprovoked assault” on journalists. “The FPA calls on the Israel Police to immediately take action against the officers involved in this unprovoked assault and to act in the future to safeguard press freedoms, rather than trample upon them,” the organization said. (CNN Jerusalem Correspondent Jeremy Diamond is a board member of the FPA.)

“None of this is acceptable,” the FPA said.

CNN has sought comment about the incident from police but has not received a response.

Following the attack on journalists, CNN issued the following statement: “On Tuesday evening, a CNN producer was among a group of journalists covering Muslim worshippers praying outside the Old City of Jerusalem during Ramadan. Police officers at the scene violently dispersed the crowd, which included many journalists. During this incident, an officer grabbed our producer causing a fractured wrist that required hospital treatment. We demand an explanation and accountability for this unprovoked assault and are pursuing this matter with the relevant authorities. As journalists, we abide by Home Front Command regulations during wartime, but those regulations do not under any circumstances permit officers to assault journalists.”

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com

FIFA Canceling Reservations for World Cup Games. Why? Trump is the Problem

Are we about to witness the worst ever World Cup because of the Moron?

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FIFA Cancels Thousands Of Hotel Rooms In World Cup Host Cities
Rick Ellis, Contributor
Updated Sat, March 21, 2026

There are growing concerns among World Cup fans that the ongoing immigration crackdown in the United States will seriously impact the ability of international athletes and fans to enter the country for the upcoming World Cup games.

Of the 104 World Cup matches this summer, 78 will be held in the U.S. with 13 each in Canada and Mexico.

The immigration concerns are serious enough that New Jersey congresswoman Rep. Nellie Pou has introduced a bill requesting that no federal funding should be used to carry out immigration enforcement activity within one mile of any FIFA World Cup match or Fan Festival during the tournament in the United States this summer.

Which is why news that FIFA has canceled thousands of previously reserved hotel rooms in at least three host cities is concerning.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that FIFA canceled 2,000 of their 10,000 hotel room reservations in Philadelphia last week, and that similar moves have also taken place in at least two additional U.S. host cities.

That comes on top of news that FIFA reportedly canceled 40% of its hotel bookings in Mexico City earlier this month.

A person familiar with FIFA’s hotel contracts, but who was not authorized to speak on the record, said the soccer governing body exercised a standard contractual provision consistent with large-scale global events, and confirmed the hotel room rollback was happening in other host cities.

These rooms are set aside for FIFA staff, media organizations, and attendees. And while it’s not unusual for FIFA to adjust the number of rooms it requires ahead of the World Cup, the size and timing of this year’s decisions are yet another challenge for U.S. host cities. A delay in federal funding to help offset security costs has led many U.S. host cities scale back plans for large-scale fan festivals, including in New Jersey, Boston, Miami, and San Francisco. Those festivals are extremely popular with fans unable to afford tickets to the actual games and the festival changes add another layer of concern for hotel owners and restaurants in the host cities.

Acosta: Trump is Seeking Dictatorial State Control of the Media

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“The News Is Broken”: Ex-CNN Host Warns Of Potential Pro-Trump State Media With Paramount-WBD Merger; Noah Wyle, IATSE Chief & Others Push For Federal Film-TV Tax Credit

Dominic Patten
Fri, March 20, 2026

“The news is broken, we may not be able to put the pieces back together,” former CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta told a packed Burbank City Hall on Friday, warning of the rise of entertainment industry oligarchs and “media domination.”

“We need to talk about busting up big media,” Acosta insisted. “This is not America what we’re seeing now.”

Citing a “danger to our democracy,” Acosta called Donald Trump’s attacks on the media “an assault on our freedom of speech … taking us down the road of Putin and China to state-controlled media.” An old and constant thorn in Trump’s paw, Acosta certainly had something to say about David Ellison’s pending $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros Discovery – the owners of CNN.

Taking a swing at “partisan hacks” running CBS News and the probability of more job losses like we saw today, and “self-censoring,” the journalist was speaking Friday at Sen. Adam Schiff’s “Lights, Camera, Competition”: Promoting American Film Production event in the former home of the Tonight Show. With an event lineup that included The Pitt’s Noah Wyle, IATSE president Matthew Loeb, Jax Deluca, Executive Director of Future Film Coalition, longtime production incentive proponent Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA) and HBO alum Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA) in attendance, the gathering toggled its split focus. California Attorney General Rob Bonta (who is investigating the Paramount-WBD deal & leading the multi-state suit against the Nexstar-Tegna merger) didn’t speak during the session, but was sitting in the front room with a smile on his face. At one point, as the benefits of a federal tax incentive were debated, Acosta threw in the idea of a tax credit for “independent journalism” to turn the consolidation and ideological tide.

With that, while there are few things on which Trump and Schiff agree, both are on the same page when it comes to keeping Hollywood production in the U.S. However, at the same time, the MAGA kingpin and the Democrat who reps Hollywood are in different places it seems when it comes to Paramount merging with Warner Bros Discovery.

Ellison has promised editorial independence for CNN, but with the direction CBS has gone under its news editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, those pledges strike many as the Paramount CEO saying what he needs to say to get his deal approved. Warning about the potential consequences of Skydance founder Ellison and his father, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, owning both CBS and CNN, Acosta’s remarks picked up on a placard quoting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last week criticizing the media over its Iran war coverage.


“The public can sniff out what’s going on here,” Acosta proclaimed, pointing to a recent media hit list from Trump last week and payouts and other moves seemingly undertaken to placate the White House. They are “a shakedown to a wannabe dictator,” Acosta added, gathering a round of applause in the room.

Turning to the desire for a federal program though never letting the merger out of his sight, Schiff declared that the harsh decline in U.S. production “is not a Hollywood backlot story, it’s a Main Street story.”

Pushing for Congress to act on a federal program, Schiff wasn’t alone in pushing for greater initiative from DC to complement tax credit programs that exist in states like California, New York and Georgia. “Without a comprehensive federal policy response, the U.S. risks turning its back on a signature American industry,” IATSE chief Loeb said, with The Pitt’s Wyle by his side.

“Federal policymakers must act to level the playing field and make the U.S. film and television industry more competitive on the global stage,” Loeb added (read L his full remarks below). “A globally competitive, labor-based incentive for U.S. production that supplements state incentives is essential to return and maintain film and television jobs in America.

“We must ensure that the American film industry is not sacrificed for corporate scale and control,” the Future Film Coalition’s Deluca said to the assembled politicians and onlookers. “A stronger Hollywood is built not through consolidation, but through competition, fair markets, and policies that sustain independent storytelling.”

As various speakers differed over whether it was too late to turn things around, as well as the prospects of AI, Schiff noted the recent loss of more than 41,000 industry jobs in L.A. County and how 45% of American TV and film production was shot outside the country in 2025.

Looking at the importance of state programs and a proposed 15%-19% federal program, Emmy winner Wyle added: “It is vital to the strength of our industry and our city to support these incentives. It’s an investment on our city’s most precious commodity and biggest asset. It’s an investment in our people.” (Read his full remarks below.)

“It’s going to be all about the dollars,” Loeb said, cutting to the chase of a federal film/TV incentive program. “It’s all about money at the end of the day.”

Here are Wyle’s full remarks:

I’m grateful to Senator Schiff for extending the invitation to speak with you today and support him in his effort to enact a Federal tax incentive for U.S based film and television production.

As an Angelino with generational roots to this city and a “seasoned” member of its creative community – advocacy for Los Angeles based production is something close to my heart. Over the last 6 years the aggregate effect of projects leaving the state in search of tax credits, the pandemic, and last year’s fires- has been a near cratering of our once thriving industry. We lost 42,000 film and tv jobs in LA county between 2022 and 2024. And As of last year high-budget productions are down 43% .

Admittedly, It’s really hard to shoot a tv show in LA. And it’s really expensive. Prohibitively so.

Unless… you adopt an economic model – which takes full advantage of the CA tax incentive – and in our case asks personnel to accept reductions in rates in the hopes that the speculation will pay off.

I was asked to participate in today’s hearing – to tell a success story. The Pitt has blessedly become proof of that speculative concept and I’m happy to report- will commence shooting season 3 this summer – A rising tide has lifted all boats.

In season 1, under the 3.0 tax program, our show received a 20% tax rebate on many non-Above-the-line costs. Our pattern budget per episode was approximately $6,659,221. Based on that gross number we got a rebate of $767, 751 per episode.

Our total season 1 spend was approximately $99, 888, 000. After the rebate our adjusted spend was $88, 372, 050. We were able to save over 11 million dollars, roughly the cost of two full episodes.

How did we spend the money?

72% went to labor. Local cast and crew compensation. That’s roughly $62, 000,000. We had 590 full time and part time crew jobs.

The remaining 28% was spent with local vendors on goods and services. That’s about $24,000,000 spent on local businesses. $4.6 million went to background performers. Another million and a half on food services. That’s direct impact.

Then there’s the indirect impact- the ripple effect of that money- which in turn stimulates additional economic activity. It’s estimated that the procurement associated with The Pitt season one stimulated a $22.6 million contribution to the State’s GDP along the domestic supply chain. The show’s expenditure on inputs of goods and services from locally based suppliers also stimulated 150 full time jobs across California.

The induced impact of our cast and crew spending along with the workers along the supply chain in turn stimulated even more economic growth. It’s estimated that the wage-financed spending of local production crews and workers at locally based suppliers stimulated $40.3 million toward California’s GDP during the period of production.

The bottom line is that the estimated total impact of the first season of The Pitt contributed around $125 million towards the State’s GDP during our production period.

That’s proof of concept. It is vital to the strength of our industry and our city to support these incentives. It’s an investment on our city’s most precious commodity and biggest asset. It’s an investment in our people.

Here are Loeb’s remarks:

Good morning Senator Schiff & Representatives. I want to thank you for the invitation to participate in this important hearing on behalf of the over 170,000 behind-the-scenes entertainment workers of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE).

Film and television production creates good-paying, family-sustaining union jobs, and it’s critical that Paramount Skydance’s proposed purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery be evaluated from the perspective of American workers.

The loss of any independently operating producer and distributor of film and television content could have profound impacts for entertainment workers. Over the last decade, we have seen American studios offshoring production at alarming rates. As regulators and elected officials consider the Paramount-Warner combination, we are asking that particular attention be paid to ensuring that domestic production does not suffer further.

When major companies merge, workers often pay the price first. IATSE’s position is that regulators should consider the effect of consolidation on labor markets, not only on consumer prices. In 2023, IATSE and the Directors Guild of America (DGA) issued joint comments in support of revised FTC-DOJ Merger Guidelines – an important course correction that restored the federal government’s ability to review the impact of consolidation and vertical integration in the entertainment industry on our members and other workers in the film and television industry.

Past studio mergers have meant fewer jobs and disruptions to production. Redundancies following the Warner Bros.-Discovery and Disney-Fox mergers led to reductions in workforce that have the potential to occur downstream from a Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger.

If Paramount Skydance is successful in their proposed acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery, our primary interest is holding them accountable to the commitments they have made to Californian and American workers. CEO David Ellison has made a public commitment that Paramount Studios and Warner Bros. Studios will each produce a minimum of 15 high-quality feature films per year, for a total of at least 30 feature films annually. That level of production is needed in the United States if IATSE members are to continue to be able to make a living in the industry.

Work in the entertainment industry is precarious. It is primarily project, or “gig” based, meaning most IATSE workers perform freelance work outside of what is considered “regular employment.” We’ve been in the “gig” economy since 1893. Project-based work in film and television production can be as short as a day for a commercial shoot, multiple months for a film production, or a couple years for a recurring television series. Entertainment workers can have multiple, if not dozens, of employers each year and those workers rely on project-based job opportunities to support themselves and their families.

Employment for below-the-line workers in Hollywood is down some 45 million hours per year since 2022. According to the January 2026 ProdPro report, the U.S. share of global production has dropped from 52% to 38% during the same period.

The American film and television industry faces an urgent threat from international competition. Foreign governments have successfully lured film and television productions, and the multitude of jobs they create, away from the United States with aggressive tax incentives and subsidies. Films intended for initial release in the U.S. are increasingly being shot overseas — and American workers are paying the price.

In just a few years, IATSE members have lost tens of thousands of jobs across the United States. That’s thousands of families, small businesses, and communities across the country feeling the economic hardship of a shrinking industry.

Movies and television shows created primarily for U.S. audiences are being produced abroad — not because of better talent or technology, but because other countries recognize the value of these productions and are offering robust financial incentives that the U.S. simply doesn’t match. While U.S. states have offered tax credits for production, in recent years state incentives have not been enough to prevent productions from moving overseas.

Without a comprehensive federal policy response, the U.S. risks turning its back on a signature American industry. Federal policymakers must act to level the playing field and make the U.S. film and television industry more competitive on the global stage. A globally competitive, labor-based incentive for U.S. production that supplements state incentives is essential to return and maintain film and television jobs in America.

IATSE is incredibly grateful to have champions like Senator Schiff and Representative Friedman working to solve this issue. Their strategic efforts have built momentum towards the introduction of a federal film and television production tax incentive and IATSE will continue its tireless advocacy with Congress and the White House to achieve that goal.

Suckers and Losers Who Didn't Die: Trump's "Unnecessary War" Lies

At some level, veterans should be happy: Trump's war in Iran will swell their ranks. But they know better. In past wars, they honorably served their country, not the presidents who waged them. They know the difference: Trump is lying - as he always does - and his war is a whimsical unnecessary war that he is waging only for two objectives: 1- to please his Zionist masters and his criminal buddy Netanyahu, and 2- to make money stealing other countries' resources. 

The bulk of those who are sent to fight these typically failed wars are Americans of Native Indian Nations, African, Hispanic, and Asian descent. The white MAGA morons who are cheering the war do it from behind their stupid screens on their couches, just like Lady Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Remember: Trump evaded the Vietnam draft FIVE TIMES by having his rich dad make up a lie that the poor Donald had bone spurs. Now he wants to send men and women struggling to survive his failing economy to be killed so he can rake billions off Iran's oil and gas. 

He says "the war should be winding down" and "Iran has been obliterated". But then Americans discover he is sending troops for a land invasion of Iran, more specifically Kargh Island. Why? Because he can then control the oil and gas and make more billions for himself and his cronies and family. I bet you if he succeeds in controlling Kargh Island, he will levy tariffs on oil tankers of "allied" countries that refused to help him seize the island to punish them. Meanwhile, US soldiers will be dying for no vital reason of national security. 

Check: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2026-03-20/iran-war-oil-prices

Also check how Netanyahu is literally telling Trump what to do in Iran: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/netanyahu-says-revolution-iran-require-153945320.html 

In other words, the US military is the "Mafia Boss"'s personal militia which he uses to steal from other countries. He is willing to endanger the lives of the men (Hegseth: am I allowed to add "and women"?) who serve for his own personal gain. The man doesn't give a s - - - about your average American Joe who, seemingly, voted for his lies. 

Why would the man, who pretended to make peace between warring nations just to make lucrative deals on their back end, be any different when it comes to waging wars? He is waging this war to please the Zionists AND to make lucrative deals (via real estate agent Witkoff, and oily-Arab asskisser Jared Kushner) with the leftovers of the war.  
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U.S. Combat Veterans Tear Into Trump’s ‘Unnecessary’ War ‘Lies’
Leigh Kimmins
Sat, March 21, 2026



Anadolu via Getty Images

Angry war veterans slammed President Donald Trump’s “unnecessary” war in Iran, which, they say, is propped up by “lies.”

The president teamed up with Israel to launch the conflict on Feb. 28. Since then, thousands of people have died, including at least 13 U.S. service members, and a spiralling energy crisis has erupted. The conflict echoes the Iraq War, which began on March 20, 2003.

The Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane, remains blocked, and other countries in the region are being drawn into the conflict. Worst of all, the Trump administration seems to be running out of ideas, with the promised early exit looking increasingly unlikely.

Trump launched the war alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. / Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

“The lack of a clear strategy or end state only undermines U.S. credibility globally,” Jason Dozier, Atlanta City Council Member and Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, told the Daily Beast. “As an Iraq War veteran, I’ve seen firsthand the costs of conflicts like this, and I had hoped those lessons would guide future decisions. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case.”

John Kamin, who served in Iraq, recalled how he felt during the conflict.

Kamin told the Beast: “One of the daydreams I had in Iraq as a 21-year-old, and it was so grotesque I could only hold it for a brief moment, was imagining a future where the next generation would be fighting the same battles that we did. As we aged out and got fat, our children would take our place. It was a thought I could not hold... just too hard to imagine that our blood and sacrifice would not make America wise enough to spare those that followed. This hurts us all.”

According to Defense Department statistics, the Iraq war killed 4,492 U.S. soldiers and injured an additional 32,292. An estimated 200,000 Iraqi civilians died.

Naveed Shah, political director for Common Defense and an Army veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, said he sees through the facade of Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and General Dan Caine, the main architects of the operation. “I deployed to Iraq 2009. I watched this country sell us a war on lies, and I watched my fellow soldiers pay the price for it,” he told the Beast.

He said Trump, Hegseth, and Caine are “running the same play by manufacturing urgency, failing to establish a clear objective, no exit strategy, and putting our service members in harm’s way.”

Invoking the messy and protracted Iraq War, Shah added, “History repeats itself because power-hungry leaders never learn and regular people pay the price. Veterans across this country see exactly what’s happening, and we’re not going to stay quiet while another generation is handed a war that politicians and their children won’t have to fight.”

Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona is a former Navy SEAL who left college to enlist the week after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. He was an early GOP critic of the war that has caused a schism between “America First” Republicans and MAGA loyalists.

“As somebody who knows a lot of friends that didn’t come home and a lot of Gold Star families, that’s why the week before the attack, I was actually one of the ones that was talking about caution and why we needed to avoid at all costs getting into another long, drawn-out Middle Eastern war,” he said earlier this month.

However, Crane voted against a war powers resolution that would have halted attacks on Iran unless Trump got congressional approval. That came a day after the Senate blocked a similar war powers resolution.

It was spearheaded by Trump’s top critics, Republican Reps. Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, and Democrat Ro Khanna of California. Massie predicted the support for Trump’s conflict would waver quickly: “A war is never more popular than it is on the first day. And I think enthusiasm for this will decline.”

Indeed, support is in the gutter outside of his MAGA base. They are clinging to the president’s insistence that it is a “short-term” conflict, according to a fresh Politico poll. Trump predicted an exit after a maximum of five weeks, but three weeks in, there is no end in sight.

Crane’s comments came a day after an Iranian attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia killed American Sergeant Benjamin Pennington, 26. Since then, six more U.S. service members have been killed, taking the total to 13. Officials in Iran say that almost 1,500 people, mostly civilians, have been killed during “Operation Epic Fury.”

Chris Purdy is the CEO and Founder of The Chamberlain Network, a non-profit veteran-led organization that aims to safeguard democracy. Chris served for eight years in the Army National Guard, where he was deployed to Iraq in 2011.

He told the Daily Beast that Trump has got the country into another war in the Middle East on “fictional” pretenses.

Almost 1,500 Iranian civilians and at least 13 U.S. service members have died since the war broke out on Feb. 28. / Majid Asgaripour / Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters via Reuters

“The Iraq war was sold to the American public as a necessary to stop Saddam from using nuclear weapons, even though there’s no evidence he had them. Now, 23 years later, the U.S. is once again drawn into a war over fictional nuclear weapons in Iran,” Purdy said.

The Iraq war began in the spring of 2003, with a U.S.-led coalition invasion to remove Saddam Hussein. Officials justified that war by claiming that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and was actively pursuing nuclear capability.

Trump has continually justified his war by saying that Iran was close to producing nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. “The major thing is that they cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump told MS NOW on Friday morning.

Experts and his own administration have contradicted the president on this point. In an assessment from May last year, a month before Trump’s first strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) said it would actually take nearly a decade for Iran to produce such weaponry. “The American people are tired of the forever wars and the [Republican] politicians who continually drag us into them,” Purdy continued.

Dr. Maggie Seymour joined the Marine Corps in 2007 after her cousin, also a Marine, was killed in Iraq. She deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and then Kuwait as an intelligence officer.

She is worried about the long-term effects of Trump’s war. “Not only is this war unnecessary, there is a strong possibility that it causes more harm than good,” she told the Beast. She said politicians have a bad habit of “using” service members, veterans, and their families as “political props.”

“This is an aggravated and dangerous extension of that,” she said. “It’s an egregious disregard for the life and livelihoods of our military community, not to mention the lives of thousands across the Middle East. Our military exists to protect the people of our country, and to uphold the constitution that governs us, not the whims of its politicians and political appointees.”

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Politico on Friday that Trump “campaigned proudly on his promise to deny the Iranian regime the ability to develop a nuclear weapon, which is what this noble operation is seeking to accomplish.”

Ingle failed to mention that Trump also promised to “expel the warmongers” from government and branded himself as the “peace” candidate.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the war was meticulously planned, rather than haphazard. “Thanks to a detailed planning process, the entire administration is and was prepared for any potential action taken by the terrorist Iranian regime,” she told the Daily Beast.

She added that Trump knew that Iran would respond to his war by choking the world’s energy supply. “President Trump knew full well that Iran would try to stop the freedom of navigation and free flow of energy, and he has already taken action to destroy over 40 minelaying vessels,” she said.


Trump wore a baseball hat to the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base in March after six soldiers were killed in his unauthorized war. The hat is available to buy on Trump’s merchandise website. / Kevin Lamarque / Kevin Lamarque/REUTERS

And despite muddled messaging on the war, she said the president has always been “clear” in his communication.

“President Trump has been clear about the goals of this operation: destroy the Iranian regime’s ballistic missile and production capacity, annihilate the Iranian regime’s navy, end their ability to arm proxies, and guarantee that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon,” Kelly said.

“Unlike the years-long foreign entanglements of the past that lacked clear objectives, President Trump remains confident that these goals will be accomplished in swift fashion,” she explained.