Trump held a very long meeting where everyone said how great he was, then insisted he wasn’t a dictator while doing and saying lots of things a dictator might do. Here’s everything you need to know
Donald Trump’s big event yesterday was a televised cabinet meeting that lasted nearly three hours and 17 minutes.
And in case you were unsure, no, that’s not normal.
It’s enough time to watch the lengthy Adrien Brody film The Brutalist, if you skip the interval. It’s more than enough time to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that famously spans the dawn of man right up to human transcendence to a higher plane of being.
We didn’t get anything that profound during the meeting’s epic runtime. It was mostly a series of Trump’s most loyal sycophants telling him how great he is one after the other.
But in-between the gushing and fawning, there were some pretty wild nuggets of news. And one moment that was weird because it wasn’t actually all that weird.
READ MORE: Donald Trump shares his feelings about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce engagementREAD MORE: Donald Trump demands illegal executions in Washington DC in sinister escalation
Meanwhile, in Trumpworld:
- Trump demanded Washington DC carry out illegal executions
- He keeps protesting too much, methinks, about being a dictator
- He lashed out at a governor standing up to him over his threat to invade Chicago
- He had a deeply weird pop at the UK
- RFK Jr claimed windmills are killing whales
- We got more information about what Putin wants in return for peace
- Trump claimed the state owning part of Intel is not “state ownership”
- Sean Hannity revealed he left New York because everyone hates him
Here’s all that and more, as we round up everything that happened in the last 24 hours that you need to know about.
And no, there’s nothing in here about Cracker Barrel. Even for us, that’s just silly.
1. Trump demands illegal executions
During his marathon cabinet meeting, Trump made a point of saying any murders that take place in Washington DC will be punished by death.
“Anybody murders something in the capital – capital punishment,” he said.
“Capital? Capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in the capital – Washington DC – we’re going to be seeking the death penalty.”
This is illegal on two counts.
Firstly, DC got rid of the death penalty in the 80s.
There are a handful of federal crimes – including first degree murder and aggravated murder, where a federal execution is available – but these are exceptionally rare in practice, even under Trump, who is the only modern president to have presided over federal executions.
Second, the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that mandatory death sentences are unconstitutional.
2. He keeps takling about being a dictator
Trump keeps bringing up that people keep calling him a dictator – and saying that people might actually like having a dictator in charge.
Then quickly insisting he’s not one, almost as an afterthought.
He lashed out yesterday at JB Pritzker, the Governor of Illinois, who as we noted yesterday is strongly pushing back against his plan to invade Chicago under the pretext of a non-existent rise in crime.
“You have a guy in Illinois, the governor of Illinois, saying that crime has been much better in Chicago recently and Trump is a dictator,” Mr. Trump said, also referring to Pritzker as a “slob”.
“Most people are saying, ‘If you call him a dictator, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants’ – I am not a dictator, by the way.”
Methinks the President doth protest too much.
3. ‘I can do whatever I want, I’m the President’
Thing is, for a man who keeps insisting he’s not a dictator, he keeps saying and doing a lot of things a dictator would do.
Case in point, he said during the cabinet meeting that he can send the military to any city he wants, whenever he wants.
“Not that I don’t have – I would – the right to do anything I want to do,” Trump said.
“I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country is in danger – and it is in danger in these cities – I can do it.”
Strictly speaking, he’s kind of correct. He can deploy troops domestically if he declares a national emergency.
But for it to be legal, there would have to be an actual national emergency – not just a confected one.
Pritzker, responding on social media, said: “No, Donald. You can’t do whatever you want.”
4. Trump cancelled wind farm project to stop enemies ‘attacking US through windmills’
The Trump administration cancelled an almost completed wind farm project because it might allow enemies to use drones to attack the US, Interior Secretary Doug Bergum claimed last night.
This is, of course, nonsense. The Pentagon reviewed the project, off the coast of Rhode Island, in 2023 and found there to be no national security concerns.
But the dear leader hates windfarms – a vendetta dating back a decade, to when the Scottish government approved one right next to one of his golf courses. So a reason has been found.
“There’s concern about radar relative to undersea drones,” Bergum fumbled on CNN.
“People with bad ulterior motives to the US would launch a swarm drone attack through wind farms.”
Righto.
5. Trump had a weird pop at the UK…over wind farms
In a highly unusual broadside against an ally, Trump took a jab at the UK for building wind farms.
He claimed such windfarms were “ruining” the UK, and sending the cost of energy “through the roof.” None of which is true.
He said: “Windmills we’re not going to allow them. They’re ruining our country. They’re ruining every country.
“If you look at – I hate to mention countries but you look at the UK, what’s happened in the UK they have energy costs through the roof, it’s because of wind.”
6. RFK says Trump saved the whales
Of course, there was someone around the cabinet table to reinforce Trump’s weird views on wind, and yesterday that person was RFK Jr.
In a statement that includes a lie in every sentence, Bobby said: “Wind is the most expensive energy. They have killed 160 whales in the last two years. They’re wiping out the population. You are going to save the whales on the east coast because of this.”
Wind is not the most expensive energy, per kw, it’s roughly half the price of nuclear and a third of the price of nuclear, mainly because it doesn’t require fuel.
Windmills haven’t killed 160 whales in the last two years. There’s no evidence linking wind farms to whale deaths. Most deaths are cased by humans – with whales becoming entangled in fishing nets or colliding with boats travelling through their feeding grounds.
Scientists have also indicated warming oceans has contributed to the increase in whale strandings.
RFK Jr, on the other hand, can be linked to at least one dead whale.
In 2012, his daughter Kathleen gave an interview with Town and Country magazine, where she said her dad had gone to the beach with a chainsaw to cut off the head of a washed up whale carcass.
He reportedly tied it to the roof of their minivan with bungee cords and drive back to their home in New York, with the whale’s juices pouring down the windscreen.
7. Witkoff reveals more about what Putin asked Trump for
Steve Witkoff, who acted as Trump’s envoy to Putin ahead of the half-baked Alaska summit, appeared to confirm reports that Putin demanded Russia keep the Donetsk region of Ukraine in return for halting his illegal invasion.
He did, at least, acknowledge that Ukraine probably wouldn’t be happy with that.
“The Russians have put a peace proposal on the table,” he said in an interview with (who else?) Fox News last night.
“It involves Donetsk. It may not be, it may not be something that the Ukrainians can take, but no one’s ever made that kind of progress here, and it’s because of his [Trump’s] force of personality and his motivation to end the conflict and the death that we’re at this, this place where we think the end is in sight.”
8. Indiana could be next state to help Trump rig elections
Trump’s plan to rig next year’s mid-term elections won’t stop at Texas.
The Lone Star State redrew its constituency boundaries to effectively hand Republicans five more winnable seats – something California plans to cancel out by redrawing its own map.
So where next? Well, it looks like Indiana.
According to The Hill, Trump and JD Vance met with Indiana state Republicans, pushing them to do some map re-drawing of their own.
Dozens of Indiana Republicans met with White House officials in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, with Vance joining for part of those discussions, The Hill reported.
9. Trump claims the state owning part of Intel isn’t “state ownership”
A deeply weird thing happened over the last few weeks, that we haven’t really touched on yet.
Trump out of the blue demanded the CEO of chip makers Intel resign, claiming on Truth Social that he was “highly CONFLICTED”, after Tom Cotton, a Republican Senator, questioned his links to China.
A meeting took place between Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant and Tan, following which Trump announced the US Government had agreed to take a 10% stake in the company. For free.
The immediate response to this from US pundits was along the lines of ‘the state owning the means of production doesn’t seem particularly ‘free market’ from a Republican president’.
Arguably the more troubling aspect isn’t the fact of the state owning a stake in a company – it’s that it was apparently the price Intel was willing to pay in a shakedown from Trump. Some might even call it state extortion.
In any case, Trump argued at last night’s cabinet meeting that it was all very normal, nothing to see here. In fact, they’re going to be doing it a lot more.
“I said you know what you should do if you’re smart?” Trump said, recounting the meeting.
“Give the United States of America 10% of your company and he looked at me and he said …I’ll do that.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later suggested on CNBC that the US government would also be interested in taking free stakes in defence manufacturers like Lockheed Martin.
10. Miller compares Chicago to Cambodian Genocide
Stephen Miller, who is presumably Trump’s final horcrux, went on telly last night to compare the city of Chicago to the Cambodian Genocide.
“Look at Chicago, they’ve shut down the police department, they’ve handcuffed law enforcement, and as President Trump says, they have turned the streets of Chicago into a bloody killing field,” Miller said on (where else?) Fox News.
The phrase ‘killing fields” is most commonly used to describe sites in Cabmodia where more than 1.3 million people were killed and buried by the Communist Party of Kampuchea during the rule of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.
11. Tiny violins out for Sean Hannity
Finally, could we all take a moment to reflect on the hardships suffered by Fox News blowhard Sean Hannity.
Last year he moved from New York to Florida, a decision he explained in heartbreaking detail on his show last night – and have your tissues at the ready.
During a chat with former New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, he said: “You know why I left New York? High taxes, quality of life, crime… I had a hard time going to a restaurant in New York City because people would stare at me and hated me and had daggers in their eyes.
“You know what? I’m loved down here in Florida.”
Everybody? “1, 2, 3, ahhhhhhhhh”
12. He wished Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce luck
In a moment notable by how weird it wasn’t, Trump set aside his feud with Taylor Swift to wish her well in her forthcoming marriage to Travis Kelce.
“I wish them a lot of luck,” he said after being told of the engagement, which was announced during the marathon cabinet meeting.
“I think he’s a great player, he’s a great guy, and I think she’s a terrific person.”