Trump Manages to Make Gaza Ceasefire All About Himself

Israel and Hamas have brokered a ceasefire agreement, marking a pause to the violence that has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians and wounded 109,000 more since the conflict began 15 months ago.

But on Wednesday, an American leader who was never in office during the war jumped to take credit for the historic deal.

“WE HAVE A DEAL FOR THE HOSTAGES IN THE MIDDLE EAST,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “THEY WILL BE RELEASED SHORTLY. THANK YOU!”

“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signaled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” Trump continued in a separate post. “I am thrilled American and Israeli hostages will be returning home to be reunited with their families and loved ones.

“With this deal in place, my National Security team, through the efforts of Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, will continue to work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven,” Trump said, promising to expand the Abraham Accords.

“We have achieved so much without even being in the White House. Just imagine all of the wonderful things that will happen when I return to the White House, and my Administration is fully confirmed, so they can secure more Victories for the United States!”

The Biden administration had yet to make an announcement by the time Trump made his posts.

Trump warned last week that “all hell” would break loose if the two nations did not reach a ceasefire agreement by the time he returned to the White House on January 20.

“It will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago, remarking that there “should have never been” the October 7 attack that obtained the hostages.

Trump’s remarks were well received by his allies, who claimed that it was singularly Trump and his threats that were responsible for expediting the hostage release.

“We’re hopeful there’s going to be a deal that is struck toward the very end of (Joe) Biden’s administration—maybe the last day or two,” Vice President-elect JD Vance said in an interview with Fox News Sunday.

“It’s very clear that President Trump threatening Hamas and making it clear that there is going to be hell to pay, is part of the reason why we’ve made progress on getting some hostages out,” Vance said.

Journalists at The Washington Post are sounding the alarm over a crisis at the newspaper.

More than 400 reporters and editors on Tuesday evening sent a petition to the outlet’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, urging him to intervene and make changes.

“We are deeply alarmed by recent leadership decisions that have led readers to question the integrity of this institution, broken with a tradition of transparency, and prompted some of our most distinguished colleagues to leave,” the journalists wrote in the petition, which was first reported on by NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik.

The petition did not mention anyone by name, including the paper’s CEO, Will Lewis, who has faced criticism for his editorial decisions, as well as accusations of obstruction of justice from his time working more than a decade ago for Rupert Murdoch in England.

Since assuming the position in 2023, Lewis’s decisions have not been well received, including his choice of executive editor Robert Winnett, who ended up withdrawing from the position due to ethics concerns. Then, in October of last year, Lewis announced that the newspaper’s editorial board would not be making an endorsement in the presidential election.

This caused an immediate backlash, with the newspaper losing more than 250,000 subscribers days after Lewis’s announcement. The decision was seen as the paper trying to soften its coverage of Donald Trump, under the influence of Bezos. When a cartoonist for the Post, Ann Telnaes, decided to satirize Bezos and other tech leaders’ approach to Trump, her cartoon was spiked by an editor, leading to her resignation.

Shortly after the election, Lewis announced that remote work for Post employees was over and that staffers must return to working in the office five days a week, which couldn’t have earned him any deference at the newsroom.

In recent weeks, several high-profile editors and writers have departed the paper. Two political reporters, Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, left for The Atlantic, while reporter Tyler Pager moved to The New York Times. Former managing editor Matea Gold, once considered a contender for executive editor, also left for the Times last month. And last week, the Post laid off 4 percent of its staff, comprising close to 100 people on the business side of the paper.

“We understand the need for change and we are eager to deliver the news in innovative ways. But we need a clear vision we can believe in,” the Post’s journalists wrote in their petition. It’s hard to see what Bezos will do, considering Lewis was his choice to take over as publisher and that he is likely the reason behind many of their grievances.

After Trump took office the first time, the Post adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Now that Trump is taking office again, and Bezos is cozying up to him, it seems that the Post’s journalists are making a last-ditch effort to live up to that slogan. The question is whether Bezos will listen.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. failed to report making hundreds of thousands of dollars off his anti-vaccine nonprofit, which he claimed he never took a cent from, The Daily Beast reported Wednesday.

The failed presidential candidate and Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services owned up to an “inadvertent error” in his financial disclosure forms that concealed the actual amount he was raking in from the Children’s Health Fund, a 501 nonprofit founded in 2007 under the name World Mercury Project. The group pushes long-debunked misinformation linking vaccines to autism.

Tax filings for the group initially showed that Kennedy had made $510,000 in 2022, and $326,000 for his 15 weeks of work in 2023. But in a corrected filing last month, he revealed he’d actually made $836,571.25 in 2022.

In the filing, Kennedy claimed he’d mistakenly reported the net pay received, as opposed to gross wages.

When the Beast asked Trump’s transition team about the filing, an official said, “Bobby’s (personal financial disclosure) amounts were reported incorrectly.”

Trump transition spokeswoman Katie Miller confirmed that there had been an “oversight in the preparation of the PFD.”

Kennedy repeatedly claimed that he wasn’t making money off the group—in fact, he called it the “opposite of a profit motive” during an appearance on InfoWars in 2021, adding that his involvement with the group had damaged relationships with those in his family. In 2017, he told Tucker Carlson, “I’m getting unpaid for this.”

However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Between 2017 and 2023, Kennedy earned $2.2 million, according to the group’s federal tax filings.

Kennedy had served as chairman and chief litigation counsel for the Children’s Health Fund since 2015, and in April 2023, he announced that he was going “on leave” to conduct his ultimately unsuccessful run as an independent candidate for president.

Pam Bondi tried to weasel her way out of admitting that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, during her confirmation hearing for U.S. attorney general Wednesday.

Bondi, who received the nomination only after Matt Gaetz was canned for being a sexual predator, faced some questioning from Senator Dick Durbin regarding her past loyalty to the president-elect.

“Ms Bondi, you are one of four Trump personal lawyers that he has already selected for top positions in the Department of Justice. You joined Mr. Trump in working to overturn the 2020 election. You repeatedly described investigations and prosecutions of Mr. Trump as ‘witch hunts,’” Durbin told Bondi.

“To my knowledge Donald Trump has never acknowledged the legal results of the 2020 election,” he continued. “Are you prepared to say under oath without reservation that Donald Trump lost the presidential contest to Joe Biden in 2020?”

“Ranking member Durbin, President Biden is the president of the United States. He was duly sworn in, and he is the president of the United States,” Bondi replied, avoiding a straightforward answer. “There was a peaceful transition of power; President Trump left office and was overwhelmingly elected in 2024.”

Durbin then reframed the question, asking Bondi if she “had any doubts” that Joe Biden won the Electoral College in 2020.

“All I can tell you as a prosecutor is from my first-hand experience.… When I went to Pennsylvania as an advocate for the [Trump] campaign … I saw many things there. But do I accept the results? Of course I do. Do I agree with what happened? I saw so much,” Bondi rambled. “No one on either side of the aisle should want there to be any issues with election integrity in our country. We should all want our elections to be free and fair, and the rules and the laws to be followed.”

“I think that question deserved a yes or no,” Durbin bluntly replied. “And I think the length of your answer is an indication that you weren’t prepared to answer yes.”

Durbin continued. “Have you heard the recording of President Trump on January 2, 2021, when he urged the secretary of state of Georgia to quote ‘find 11,780 votes’ and declare him the winner of that state?”

“No, I’ve heard about it through clips, but no, Senator …” said Bondi.

“What was your reaction to President Trump making that call?”

Bondi stumbled a bit. “I would have to listen to the tape, Senator.”

“Well that quote that I give you is exact. He said to the Georgia secretary of state, ‘Find 11,780 votes.’

Bondi said that the call was long and the quote may have been taken out of context.

Bondi is a former lawyer for Trump, representing him during his first impeachment trial.

A second administration under Donald Trump apparently looks like a free-for-all for punishing liberal-minded states for their ideological differences.

On Tuesday, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan agreed that the incoming forty-seventh president should consider moving the 2028 Olympics, currently slated to be held in Los Angeles, to a deep red state.

“I’m wondering if you think the Trump administration should seriously look at moving the Olympics to a red city where you know things are gonna be run properly, like a city in Florida, maybe Miami, or maybe Dallas in Texas, or maybe a city in your home state of Ohio,” started Newsmax host Rob Finnerty. “I’m not convinced that California can manage the Olympics, the World Cup, and the Superbowl, all within a year of each other.”

The network then cut to footage of the Los Angeles wildfires, which so far have torched an area double the size of Manhattan, killed at least 25 people, and razed more than 12,000 structures and thousands of homes around the city.

“Yeah, especially when they’re spending time quote ‘Trump-proofing’ their state, looking for ways to set up barriers and obstacles to what the American people elected us to do, particularly I think when it comes to this whole immigration and repatriation issue,” Jordan said. “So we’ll see. I’ll leave that up to President Trump and his team.

“But I do think the American people rightly see how poorly that state is being run,” Jordan added.

Republicans have transformed the national disaster into a political game, floating ideas of conditioning aid to California to force it to bend its ideological knee to conservative preferences. That could include atoning for “bad behavior” related to their land management and “broken tax policy” under a “liberal administration,” according to Iowa Representative Zach Nunn.

California operates as the single largest economy in the nation (and the fifth-largest in the world, according to the Public Policy Institute of California), contributing to 14 percent of America’s national gross domestic product.

An analysis from the Rockefeller Institute of Government showed that in 2022, California was just one of a small handful of states that gave more than it got to the federal government, contributing $83 million more in taxes to the federal government than it received back.

Corporations and rich donors are lining up to donate money to Donald Trump, even though he can’t run for president again.

Axios reports that Trump’s team expects the president-elect to raise about $500 million by the summer—unprecendented for a president entering their second term in office. What will the president-elect do with all of the cash? Lord it over people, of course.

“The money is just pouring in at Mar-a-Lago. Trump doesn’t have to lift a finger. Everyone’s coming to him,” one anonymous Trump adviser told the publication. According to Axios, donors are sending money to Trump’s inauguration account, the MAGA Inc. super PAC, the pro-Trump nonprofit Securing American Greatness, the Republican National Committee ,and Trump’s presidential library fund.

Donors from the cryptocurrency industry are giving as much as $10 million to $20 million, according to the adviser, causing other wealthy individuals to increase their donations.

“If the tech guys are giving big, it makes everyone give,” said another Trump adviser.

Four years ago, many corporations and wealthy donors pledged to stop donating because of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. While many of them eventually resumed their donations, Trump made a list of those who didn’t and is reminding these donors that he still won the election without their help.

“You guys made this amount of money last year and you’re gonna make so much more now because of me,” Trump said to one company’s representatives, according to one source. “But when I needed you, where the f**k were you? You weren’t with me and maybe you were with [Kamala Harris].”

With the windfall of cash, and the ability to keep raking it in, Trump can help his allies, punish his foes, and help keep Republicans in power in Congress. He can position himself as kingmaker, not only for his four years in office, but long afterward if he so chooses. He can also keep businesses and industries from going against his agenda.

Trump having the ability to use money as leverage against anything he doesn’t want doesn’t bode well for the country. He already has escaped accountability from the legal system, and now he can further create an atmosphere where people are afraid of crossing him. Do Democrats have a plan to deal with an emboldened, wealthy Trump?

Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth warned that in addition to being radically unqualified, Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, might potentially be “vulnerable to blackmail.”

During an interview on MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes Tuesday, Duckworth explained why she still doesn’t believe Hegseth is suited to be the secretary of defense after his confirmation hearing earlier that day.

“If Donald Trump said to Hegseth, you know, on January 20, ‘I want you to prepare a plan to uh, you know, invade Greenland.’ Could he lead that mission? My answer is no, he’s not qualified! He wouldn’t know what was a good mission or what was a bad mission. He wouldn’t know who to put in the room to come up with the plans!” Duckworth said. Duckworth is a combat veteran who lost both her legs during a mission in Iraq.

“And you know, more importantly, I think he personally is a compromised individual whom our adversaries are watching and digging the dirt on, and this makes him somebody who is vulnerable to our adversaries, and we don’t need that person in charge.”

Duckworth went on to describe how Hegseth’s shady dealings with a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017 demonstrated a huge liability to the security of the United States.

“Here’s what I’m afraid of,” Duckworth said later. “He’s already had to pay off a woman who accused him of sexual assault in order to keep his last job at Fox News, right? What is he going to be willing to do to pay off the next accuser who might show up after he becomes secretary of defense and has access to the nuclear codes, and the location of U.S. troops around the world?

“What happens when he wants to keep that job and somebody comes forward? He’s already told us that he’s willing to pay off somebody.”

Hegseth’s attorney, Tim Parlatore, revealed in November that his client had paid his accuser in exchange for her signing a nondisclosure agreement in order to stop her from filing a lawsuit and to protect his position at Fox News. Duckworth argued that Hegseth “potentially is vulnerable to blackmail.”

In one humiliating moment of Hegseth’s confirmation hearing Tuesday, Duckworth had asked him to speak about the political and strategic importance of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,or ASEAN, and he wasn’t able to conjure the name of a single member state.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries torched his Republican colleagues for considering conditions on aid to California amid a devastating wildfire season, arguing that the GOP was forgetting one obvious reason to support the economic powerhouse.

Speaking with MSNBC on Tuesday, Jeffries clarified that Democrats were not in favor of the conditions being floated by conservatives, which include atoning for “bad behavior” related to their land management and taxation system under a “liberal administration.”

“We had a discussion about this today in the House Democratic Caucus, and the consensus position, I think it’s fair to say, is that we do not support conditioning any aid to everyday Americans whose lives have been wiped out as a result of extreme weather events,” Jeffries told the network. “Homes have been destroyed, schools have been destroyed, small businesses have been destroyed.”

Further still, Jeffries argued that the idea of not supporting California—which statistically receives a fraction of the money it puts into the federal government as the single largest economy in the nation, contributing to 14 percent of the national gross domestic product—would be “unconscionable.”

“It is unconscionable that Republicans are suggesting imposing right-wing partisan conditions in order for California taxpayers to receive their tax dollars,” he continued. “California is one of those states, in fact, that sends about five times as much to the federal government every year than they get back in return.”

An analysis from the Rockefeller Institute of Government showed that in 2022, California was just one of a small handful of states that gave more than it got to the federal government, contributing $83 million more in taxes to the federal government than it received back. But that fact hasn’t stopped conservatives from pitching ways to make it harder for California to access its money to build back after the fires torched more than 38,000 acres around Los Angeles.

“We will certainly help those thousands of homes and families who’ve been devastated, but we also expect you to change bad behavior,” Iowa Representative Zach Nunn said Monday on Fox Business. “We should look at the same for these blue states who have run away with a broken tax policy. We want to be able to help our colleagues in New York, California, and New Jersey, but those governors need to change their tune now.”

Elon Musk is in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The government agency sued the tech mogul Tuesday for failing to disclose his purchase of 5 percent of Twitter shares in March 2022 in a timely manner, allowing him to buy the shares at artificially low prices. In its lawsuit, the SEC said that Musk underpaid for the stock and cheated investors by at least $150 million.

SEC rules require investors to disclose stock purchases above a 5 percent threshold within 10 days. The agency alleges that Musk did not disclose his purchase until April 4, 2022, 11 days after the deadline, at which point he owned over 10 percent of the social media company’s shares. It ended up being quite lucrative for Musk too: Twitter’s share price went up more than 27 percent after Musk’s allegedly late disclosure.

Musk, as expected, spent Tuesday night and Wednesday morning complaining about the SEC decision on his X (formerly Twitter) account, agreeing with his fans attacking the agency, calling the SEC a “totally broken organization,” and posting that the lawsuit is the “last gasp of Biden lawfare.”

With Donald Trump’s inauguration just five days away, one wonders if this lawsuit will continue under the new president, whom Musk helped get elected with hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money. Trump is probably going to aid his biggest benefactor and do his best to make the case disappear, as Musk can’t bear to be held accountable for any misdeed.

Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” project could very easily target the SEC for massive cuts to ensure that he and his fellow billionaires can continue to get away with these types of financial crimes. After all, what’s the point of having the president in your pocket if he doesn’t protect you from being held accountable under the law?

Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey on Tuesday hand-delivered Trump a personalized Diet Coke bottle honoring his upcoming inauguration—a huge about-face from a company that was condemning the “unlawful and violent events” of January 6 just four years ago.

Trump campaign spokesperson Margo Martin shared a photo of the present on X, calling it the first-ever “‘Presidential Commemorative Inaugural’ Diet Coke Bottle.” But in reality, this is far from the first time Coca-Cola has honored a president.

Still, the news is upsetting when considering how big businesses and billionaires have cozied up to the president-elect, either by supporting him publicly or reneging on so-called “woke” policies internally. Coca-Cola is only the latest, and maybe the corniest.

“As gratifying as it must be to sell out the inauguration, have Zuck & Bezos pony up (and show up), and generally be greeted with an air of legitimacy and mainstream validation he never had the first time, this gesture is probably the biggest next to the Time cover,” X user Liam Donovan quipped.

Trump is a known Diet Coke lover, and allegedly drank 12 Diet Cokes a day during his first term. But he’s also called it “garbage” and even called for the company to be boycotted in 2021 after it criticized Georgia’s restrictive and discriminatory voter laws.