Trump Just Responded to Middle East Conflict. You’ll Wish He Hadn’t.

Iran launched a missile attack on Israel Tuesday, plunging the war-torn region into another layer of conflict. But one American politician was quick to make the violence about himself.

Moments after the strike, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to soak up any social credit available from the Middle Eastern provocation.

“Look at the World today—Look at the missiles flying right now in the Middle East, look at what’s happening with Russia/Ukraine, look at Inflation destroying the World,” Trump wrote in one post. “NONE OF THIS HAPPENED WHILE I WAS PRESIDENT!”

In another post, Trump decried the conflict as “TOTALLY PREVENTABLE.”

“IT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED,” Trump said. “IF I WERE PRESIDENT, IT WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED!”

While it’s impossible to say exactly how a Trump presidency would have handled the rolling, devastating fallout from the October 7 attack in Israel, Trump has not exactly been on the side of peace. Instead, he has claimed that Israel will face “total annihilation” if he isn’t elected in November, has openly questioned the faith of Jewish Americans if they don’t support him over Vice President Kamala Harris, and has encouraged the Jewish state to “finish what they started.”

Meanwhile, some members of Trump’s inner circle, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, have been extremely vocal about the multipronged conflict, urging Israel to continue escalating violence against its neighbors.

“Anyone who has been calling for a ceasefire in the north is wrong. There is no going back for Israel. They cannot afford now to not finish the job and completely dismantle the arsenal that has been aimed at them. They will never get another chance,” Kushner posted on X Saturday.

The Republican presidential nominee also caught flak from some of his supporters last month when he hosted Qatari leaders at his Palm Beach resort, with some potential MAGA voters decrying the Middle Eastern leaders as antisemitic for their country’s role in moderating cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.

To date, the Health Ministry in Gaza has recorded more than 41,500 deaths from the cataclysmic conflict in which Israel has weaponized mass starvation as well as blocked or destroyed access to critical resources such as water, food, fuel, electricity, and medical aid.

J.D. Vance keeps claiming that he hasn’t done much—if anything—to prepare for Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate. 

During an interview on CNBC Tuesday, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who has been standing in for Minnesota Governor Tim Walz during Vance’s practice sessions, was asked whether fact-checking Walz was part of Vance’s strategy.

“I think J.D. Vance is going to concentrate on the issues that Americans care about the most,” Emmer replied. 

“Rather than getting into some high school debate, I think he’s going to be talking to the American people about what Donald Trump did in his first term with the economy, and the border, and safety and security around the world, what Harris and Biden have broken in the last four years, and how he and Trump are going to fix it,” Emmer said.

Here, Emmer perfectly demonstrated what is likely to be Vance’s strategy: to completely ignore the questions and instead deliver a dry stump speech. 

Emmer also had trouble responding to questions about Vance polling historically low for a vice presidential candidate.

In what seems like an attempt to appear cool under pressure, the Ohio senator—who breathlessly repeated debunked claims of Haitian immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets—has separately said that his platform is so bulletproof he doesn’t even need to practice arguing it. 

“We have well developed views on public policy so we don’t have to prepare that much,” Vance said during a Teamsters press call Wednesday morning, according to Politico. “We feel a lot more confident, and frankly, you don’t have to prepare if you don’t have to hide what you say.”

During a rally in North Carolina on Monday, Vance said that he was taking a page out of Donald Trump’s playbook by … not really doing anything at all. 

“What me and Donald Trump are going to keep on doing is going everywhere and talking to everybody,” Vance said. “We talk to the hostile media, we talk to the friendly media, we talk to the national media, we talk to the local media, and we do it because we think the American people deserve leaders who try to earn their vote instead of expecting it to be given to them.”

Trump had made a similar comment ahead of his first presidential debate against Joe Biden.  “People say, ‘How are you preparing?’ I’m preparing by taking questions from you and others, if you think about it,” said Trump, while speaking to a conservative radio talk show host so friendly that he changed his profile picture to an image of himself and the former president after they spoke. 

J.D. Vance’s unpopularity has left Republicans scrambling to defend their vice presidential nominee ahead of Tuesday night’s debate with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Representative Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, has been helping Vance by standing in for Walz during debate preparation. But Emmer had trouble responding to questions on CNBC about Vance polling historically low for a vice presidential candidate.

On Squawk Box Tuesday, Becky Quick mentioned Vance having “some of the worst polling numbers,” and asked Emmer if Vance taking a “prosecutorial” or “lawyerly” approach would help the Ohio senator during the debate.

“I think the polling that you’re talking about is because people have not been introduced to Tim Walz,” Emmer said, before Quick corrected him and noted she was talking about Vance’s numbers.

“But hear me out. Nobody had Tim Walz on their bingo card, and he shows up. All of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Oh look at this guy, he’s got all kinds of energy, whatever.’ Nobody’s talking about issues. Again, as people get to know Tim Walz, they do not like him,” Emmer said, noting that the debate is Vance’s chance to introduce himself to the American people.

It’s pretty clear that Emmer had to deflect the question because he had no good response to why Vance is polling lower than any other vice presidential candidate of the twenty-first century, even lower than Sarah Palin. As of Tuesday afternoon, 40 percent of Americans view Walz favorably compared to 34.8 percent for Vance, according to 538.

Vance has hurt his own standing thanks to his comments about childless adults, and women in particular, saying that they should not hold positions of power and calling leaders of the Democratic Party “childless cat ladies.” He has made disturbing comments disparaging immigrants and egged on a debunked racist conspiracy that Haitian immigrants are capturing and eating pets even after knowing he had no proof.

Meanwhile, Walz has been receiving positive attention even before Kamala Harris chose him as her running mate. His background as a military veteran and high school football coach, as well as his down-to-earth manner, have endeared him to the Democratic base. And unlike Vance, Walz knows how to order donuts like a normal person. At Tuesday night’s debate, Vance will have a tall order to make himself appear more likable and less weird.

Donald Trump is taking credit for getting Appalachians connected to Elon Musk’s Starlink before President Joe Biden, and Musk—still hoping for a job in a Trump Cabinet—is helping him with the lie.

“I just spoke to Elon. I’m getting him—we want to get Starlink hooked up because they have no communication whatsoever. And Elon will always come through. We know that,” Trump said  Monday during a visit to Georgia, while mischaracterizing the federal response to Hurricane Helene. “And so we’re working on that, getting them hooked up.”

Musk backed Trump’s claim on Tuesday morning, asserting that Trump alerted him “to additional people who need Starlink Internet in North Carolina.”

There’s just one problem with Trump taking all the credit though. According to White House spokesperson Andrew Bates, this was “already happening.”

A Monday press release from the Federal Emergency Management Agency showed that 40 Starlink satellite systems are available” in the region for emergency communications, with another 140 satellites “being shipped to assist with communications infrastructure restoration.”

Jaclyn Rothenberg, director of public affairs for FEMA, told Business Insider that Trump wasn’t involved in sending satellites to disaster areas and that the federal government made the decision on Sunday.

In Trump’s speech, it wasn’t clear if he was calling for more Starlink satellites to be deployed, but given his general lies about the federal government’s hurricane response, it’s likely he was ignoring the Biden administration’s efforts altogether. And now, Musk is helping him push the narrative that Biden is “sleeping” through the hurricane damage.

Also on Monday, Trump claimed that North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper was ignoring Republican hit areas (not true) and that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was “having a hard time getting the president on the phone,” despite Biden having spoken with Kemp the day before.

It’s clear that Trump, and his billionaire friends, will do anything to make this natural disaster a publicity stunt.

Fox and its business affiliates have apparently shed any pretense of relying on verifiable sources of information for their on-air claims.

During Tuesday’s episode of Mornings with Maria, host Maria Bartiromo cited a news source that isn’t just controversial—it’s actually not news whatsoever.

“I want to get your take on whether you’ve got confidence there, in Arizona, because apparently The Gateway Pundit reported that the GOP chairwoman provided an update to allegations that there’s not going to be a fair election there,” Bartiromo said to RNC Co-Chair Michael Whatley, basing the information on a conspiracy site well known for publishing hoaxes.

The Gateway Pundit filed for bankruptcy in April amid several defamation suits, including one brought by a pair of 2020 Georgia election workers, mother-daughter duo Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who won a nearly $150 million suit against ex-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani on similar claims.

The site is also under the gun for another lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, which accused Gateway Pundit of publishing defamatory stories about its voting machines during the last presidential election.

But if she’s still keen to rely on such a site for hard evidence, perhaps that’s the sort of company Bartiromo keeps. The Fox anchor and her insipid theories about the authenticity of the last election took center stage in the conservative media behemoth’s own defamation suit with Dominion, in which the network was accused of launching baseless attacks on the efficacy of Dominion’s voting equipment. That lawsuit amounted to Fox paying a whopping $787 million settlement in 2023, averting a high-profile trial that would have embroiled some of the nation’s highest grossing media talent and the media executives of the country’s largest media machine.

Fox News’s Laura Ingraham has started pushing a wild conspiracy theory about the federal response to Hurricane Helene that seems copy-pasted from another natural disaster.

Ingraham hosted a segment speculating Monday night about what a strong leader Donald Trump would have been during the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, and criticizing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for their disaster response in North Carolina.

Ingraham also reignited an old conspiracy theory when criticizing Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttegieg, who, she remarked, “loves to go on TV campaigning for Kamala every five minutes.”

“But when will he go on TV to tell us when I-40 is gonna open? Or how many bridges are going to have to be totally rebuilt?” Ingraham sneered.

“Will they drop all their DEI regulations—any that still exist—to ensure that people get the help they need as fast as possibly, as possible?” Ingraham said.

Here, Ingraham’s claim seems to come out of nowhere, and it’s unclear what “DEI regulations” she imagines would prevent the distribution of aid or the rebuilding of vital infrastructure. Of course, DEI is something of a right-wing catch-all for any perceived institutional failure.

Seconds later, Ingraham ironically noted that a “delayed show of concern by our president and vice president has bred its own conspiracy theories.”

If blaming a natural disaster response on wokeness sounds familiar, that’s because it is.

In August 2023, voices on the far-right, including then-presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, tried to spread a conspiracy theory that the local response to the wildfires in Maui had been weakened by the “DEI agenda.”

This comparison seems to have been exactly what Ingraham was going for, because during the same program Monday, Ingraham was joined by former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who has taken a sharp rightward turn since her Democratic run for president in 2020 to become a member of Trump’s campaign team.

Ingraham and Gabbard both likened the severe flooding in North Carolina to the devastating wildfires in Maui in August of 2023, and criticized the federal response based on… what exactly?

Gabbard claimed that some of her friends in Asheville and the surrounding areas said they had been experiencing the “same thing that happened to our communities in West Maui.” She said her friends “did not see a single federal official on the ground, not even a FEMA orange-vest wearing person.” Gabbard also insisted that the federal government was “focusing on bureaucracy.”

But shaky, sourceless reporting like Gabbard’s secondhand accounts is par for the course for Fox News. In August, host Maria Bartiromo repeatedly claimed that Democrats have been pushing to register “massive lines of illegals” to vote in Texas, but she never did any actual reporting to confirm that topic.

FEMA reported Monday that it had delivered about one million liters of water and more than 600,000 meals across North Carolina, according to NBC News. Residents and local officials have criticized the government for not being adequately prepared to deal with the severity of the destruction in Asheville, which was recently dubbed a “climate haven.”

The first—and probably only—vice presidential debate between Tim Walz and J.D. Vance is taking place Tuesday evening.

It’s sure to be entertaining, given both candidates’ unique tendency to be turned into memes, whether willing or not.

This may also be the last debate at all before the November election, as Donald Trump is thus far chickening out of a second debate with Kamala Harris. That makes it an important one, especially as early voting is already underway in much of the country.

If you are watching the debate, join The New Republic in a game of Bingo. (You can also throw our key terms into a Bingo card generator if you’d like to play with friends.)

The vice presidential debate will begin at 9 p.m. EST.  The debate will air in full on CBS News and its YouTube channel. Other outlets including C-Span and PBS News will also broadcast the event.

Despite President Biden’s public comments stating the opposite, the U.S. government actually backed Israel’s attacks and bombing of Lebanon.

Citing Israeli and U.S. officials, Politico reported Monday that White House officials told Israel that the U.S. would support its decision to bomb Hezbollah targets, despite the fact that publicly, Biden was urging a cease-fire.

Specifically, presidential adviser Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East, told Israeli officials that the U.S. supported Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy to launch military attacks on Lebanon in order to convince Hezbollah to engage in diplomatic talks.

The U.S. government wasn’t united in this stance, however. Some officials in the State Department, the Department of Defense, and in the intelligence establishment warned Israel’s move could pull the U.S. further into another war in the Middle East. 

Israeli officials told their U.S. counterparts in mid-September of the change in military strategy, but didn’t mention any specifics. McGurk and Hochstein, while reportedly urging caution, replied that it was a good time to attack Lebanon as Hezbollah had suffered losses in previous months.

The report contradicts what the administration has said publicly. Biden was asked Monday if he was comfortable with an Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon, and replied, “I am comfortable with them stopping. We should have a cease-fire now.”

But, cease-fire talks are seemingly in limbo as Israel continues to bomb Lebanon, killing more than 700 people since September 23, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday. Israeli officials dropped multiple U.S.-provided 2,000-pound bombs on residential buildings in Beirut’s southern suburbs to kill Nasrallah. The U.S. government, led by Biden, appears unwilling to use its military support of Israel as leverage to stop the latest conflict, much as it refused to do in Gaza.

Ohio Senator J.D. Vance already has a major setback in his Tuesday matchup against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz: Nobody seems to like him.

Favorability ratings aggregated by CNN political analyst Harry Enten indicate that the country’s opinion of Vance is appallingly low, at -11 percentage points, lower than any other politician currently in the race for the White House.

That makes Vance the least liked vice presidential pick in modern U.S. history at this point in the race—that is, before he’s even had a proper face-off against his opponent. He’s also the second vice presidential pick with a net negative favorability, preceded only by Dan Quale in 1988, who actually had a stronger position than Vance before his first debate with a -3 percent favorability rating.

Walz, meanwhile, is soaring. The “Midwestern Dad” ranked head and shoulders above the favorability ratings of everyone else in the race, including Vice President Kamala Harris, with a +4 percent favorability rating.

Enten’s analysis also suggested that 72 percent of polled Americans believed that Walz has the upper hand in Tuesday night’s debate, making Vance an aggressive underdog with just 28 percent of the country thinking he stands a chance of winning.

Vance’s aggressive rhetoric, baseless conspiracies, and just plain weird comments have rubbed Americans the wrong way in the months since he was selected to be Donald Trump’s right-hand man. The Republican vice presidential pick has ardently defended his position that childless adults should not hold positions of power as they don’t have a “direct stake” in the future of the country, and derided Democratic Party leaders as “childless cat ladies.”

He also invented a lie about Haitian migrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, that has sparked at least 33 bomb threats to the sleepy city, forcing it to evacuate and temporarily shutter several of its schools, colleges, festivals, and a significant portion of its government facilities, including City Hall, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, the Ohio License Bureau, the Springfield Academy of Excellence, and Fulton Elementary School.

And Vance’s more general appearances out in public have done everything but humanize him to the country’s voting class. In August, the MAGA Republican’s quick stop for some glazed donuts in a Georgia shop ended up going viral when it became clear that the visit—and his general abrasiveness—was making a couple of people behind the counter painfully uncomfortable.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is really hoping to get his five-count federal corruption indictment thrown out.

Adams’s lawyer Alex Spiro filed a motion Tuesday seeking sanctions against the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, alleging that it had leaked sensitive grand jury materials to the press.

In the filing, Spiro wrote that the government had been facilitating a slow drip of information to the media, so that by the time Adams’s damning federal corruption indictment was unsealed on Friday, “most of the details of the indictment and evidence underpinning the government’s case (weak as it is) had already been widely reported in the national and local press.”

Spiro cited The New York Times, which reported Thursday evening that Adams had been indicted and announced that additional details would be released the next day. Spiro argued that only the prosecution would have been “privy to the government’s plan to announce additional details the next day,” and so it was “therefore clear that the prosecution team is behind the leak.”

Spiro requested an evidentiary hearing to “develop the record as to the scope of the prosecution team’s misconduct and the appropriate remedy, including dismissal of the indictment.”

At a press conference on Monday, Spiro claimed that the prosecution team had committed a “grave breach of the public’s trust” for leaking information.

Adams is accused of unlawfully receiving $10 million in public funds as part of a slew of public corruption charges, including one count of wire fraud, two counts of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national, and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals.

Adams has also been charged with one count of bribery, which his lawyer is also desperate to see tossed from his case. Spiro argued that the types of gratuities the federal government alleged Adams took don’t actually count as bribes at all.