Former US President Donald Trump is now richer than billionaire financier George Soros, after his social media company’s successful debut on Nasdaq this week added billions of dollars to his fortune.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Trump’s net worth has soared by more than $4 billion this year to an estimated $7.8 billion. Trump ranked 328th on the list at Wednesday’s market close, while the 93-year-old Soros was down in 375th with an estimated $7.2 billion net worth. A hedge fund manager, Soros shot to infamy for crashing the British pound in 1992. Meanwhile, Trump’s increased wealth also placed him above the likes of billionaire entrepreneur and ABC ‘Shark Tank’ star Mark Cuban ($7.3 billion), Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus ($6.9 billion), oil-dynasty heir Gordon Getty ($6.2 billion), and Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings ($5.9 billion). The former US president’s net worth more than doubled this year thanks to his 58% stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, which effectively went public this week after merging with Digital World Acquisition Corp. Trump Media stock, whose new ticker corresponds to the former president’s initials, has attracted significant attention, gaining nearly 60% in the first half hour of trading on Monday. This comes as Trump faces hundreds of millions of dollars in growing legal fees and penalties as a result of numerous lawsuits, which the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has denounced as spurious and politically motivated. As part of a process in which New York State Attorney General Letitia James accused Trump’s business of fraud, Judge Arthur Engoron last month demanded a $454 million bond for the former president to even file an appeal. James was preparing to seize Trump’s Manhattan properties when an appeals court announced on Monday that it would reduce the bond to $175 million and extend the filing deadline by ten more days. Earlier this month, Trump was forced to raise a bond of $91.6 million to appeal a defamation judgment against E. Jean Carroll. Trump is still appealing the $5 million judgment a jury awarded to Carroll last May after determining the former president had sexually abused her.
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Former US President Donald Trump has warned that Israel is “losing a lot of support” and must “finish up” its war in Gaza before its reputation declines any further. The comments represented a rare moment of criticism of the Jewish state by Trump.
In an interview with Israel Hayom partially published on Monday, Trump said that he would have acted “very much the same way as you did” if the US was attacked like Israel was by Hamas in October. “Only a fool would not do that,” Trump added. However, Trump called Israel’s wholesale destruction of civilian homes in Gaza “a very big mistake.” “It’s a very bad picture for the world. The world is seeing this…every night, I would watch buildings pour down on people,” Trump continued. “Go and do what you have to do. But you don’t do that,” he told the Israeli newspaper. “And I think that’s one of the reasons that there has been a lot of kickback. If people didn’t see that, every single night I’d watch and every single one of those... And I think Israel wanted to show that it’s tough, but sometimes you shouldn’t be doing that.” Trump was a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his term in the White House, and described himself as “history’s most pro-Israel US president.” He imposed sanctions on Iran at Netanyahu’s request, moved the US embassy in Israel to West Jerusalem, and brokered the Abraham Accords, which saw Israel normalize relations with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan. However, this relationship soured after Netanyahu congratulated US President Joe Biden on his electoral victory over Trump in 2020. Speaking to Fox News in October, Trump claimed that Netanyahu was “not prepared” for Hamas’ attack. At a campaign event later that day, Trump declared that Netanyahu needed to “straighten out” his intelligence apparatus. With the war in Gaza approaching the six-month mark, the former president urged Netanyahu to bring it to a swift conclusion, telling his Israeli interviewers that “you’re losing a lot of support” internationally. “You have to finish up your war,” he said. “You gotta get it done. And, I am sure you will do that. And we gotta get to peace, we can’t have this going on.” Netahyahu has vowed to continue fighting until Israel achieves “total victory over Hamas,” and has promised to invade the city of Rafah – currently home to more than a million displaced Gazan civilians – in defiance of the White House’s pleas. The Israeli leader on Monday canceled a visit to Washington by an Israeli delegation to discuss the planned Rafah operation, after the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The resolution passed thanks to the US abstaining from the vote. Given Washington’s typically unconditional support for Israel at the UN, the abstention and failure to veto by the US was seen by pundits as an historic show of dissatisfaction with Netanyahu’s conduct in Gaza. Israel declared war on Hamas on October 7, after the militants carried out a cross-border raid, killing more than 1,100 people and taking at least 250 hostages. Israeli forces have killed more than 32,000 Palstinians in the time since, according to the enclave’s health authorities. The US needs a red wave and will be finished if the Republican Party does not prevail in the 2024 presidential election, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday.
The billionaire, who had previously revealed he voted for Joe Biden in 2020, has since criticized the incumbent US president and clashed with his administration. Musk has repeatedly criticized Biden’s handling of the Southern US border crisis and has accused Democrats of being “controlled by the unions.” “I voted 100% Dem until a few years ago. Now, I think we need a red wave or America is toast,” Musk wrote on X. According to media reports, the entrepreneur became increasingly critical of Biden after Tesla, the top-selling electric-car company in the US, was excluded from a White House summit on EVs in 2021. Last year Musk revealed that he had doubts he’d be voting for Biden in the 2024 presidential election. As of yet, however, he hasn’t endorsed Biden’s rival Donald Trump. “I think I would not vote for Biden,” Musk told a DealBook summit in November, adding “I’m not saying I’d vote for Trump.” Earlier this month the New York Times reported that Trump had met with Musk in Florida, as the former US president seeks a major cash infusion for his re-election campaign. Musk confirmed the meeting but maintained that he is not donating to the Republican’s campaign. “I was at a breakfast at a friend’s place and Donald Trump came by, that’s it,” he told former CNN host Don Lemon last week, adding that Trump had not requested any financial assistance. “I’m not paying his legal bills in any way, shape or form. And he did not ask me for money,” Musk said. Former US President Donald Trump has said that freeing the “wrongfully imprisoned” Capitol Hill rioters will be one of his “first acts” if he returns to the White House. Nearly 1,400 Trump supporters have been arrested and charged for taking part in the January 6 protest.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump said: “My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” A crowd of Trump’s supporters descended on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying what they believed was Joe Biden’s fraudulent victory in the presidential election the previous November. The demonstration quickly degenerated into a riot, although US Capitol Police restored order within hours. Biden and his Democrat allies labeled the affray an “insurrection,” and the US Justice Department launched an unprecedented manhunt to track down and arrest those who took part. As of last week, 1,358 people have been charged in relation to the riot, most of them for misdemeanor trespassing offenses. However, 127 have been charged with using weapons or injuring police officers, and even those convicted of non-violent crimes have received lengthy prison terms. Trump is facing federal charges for allegedly instigating the riot. According to government prosecutor Jack Smith, the former president sparked the unrest and committed conspiracy against the United States by telling his supporters to “fight like hell” against Congress’ certification of Biden’s win. According to Trump’s lawyers, the then-president was well within his rights to give such a speech, during which he also encouraged his followers to protest “peacefully and patriotically.” A Washington DC appeals court has yet to decide whether presidential immunity should shield Trump from being prosecuted over the speech. Trump has referred to the rioters as “political prisoners,” and suggested that he would pardon some of them if re-elected. “I am inclined to pardon many of them,” he said at a CNN town hall event last year. “I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control,” he added. With his last remaining rival, Nikki Haley, suspending her presidential campaign last week, Trump is all but certain to be the Republican Party’s nominee to take on Biden in this November’s presidential election. Most recent opinion polls show Trump leading the incumbent Democrat by between two and nine points. Former US President Donald Trump has essentially ruled out the threat of cryptocurrencies being banned if he wins another term in the White House, triggering a jump in Bitcoin prices to an all-time high.
Trump, who warned in 2021 that cryptocurrencies were a “disaster waiting to happen,” appeared in a CNBC interview on Monday to have softened his stance. He acknowledged the popularity of alternative currencies, noting that Bitcoin was even used by many buyers of the special-edition Trump sneakers that he unveiled last month. “You probably have to do some regulation, but many people are embracing it,” the Republican frontrunner said. “More and more, I’m seeing people wanting to pay Bitcoin, and you’re seeing something that’s interesting, so I can live with it one way or the other.” Bitcoin surged above $72,000 for the first time after Trump’s interview. Other cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum, Solana and Dogecoin, also rallied. “It’s an additional form of currency,” Trump said of Bitcoin. “I used to say, ‘I want one currency, I want the dollar, I don’t want people leaving the dollar.’ I feel that way, but I will tell you, it has taken on a life.” The ex-president insisted that he still intends to defend the US dollar’s status as the world’s leading reserve currency. “I would not allow countries to go off the dollar,” Trump said. “When we lose that standard, that will be like losing a revolutionary war. That will be a hit to our country just like losing a war, and we can’t let that happen. Too many countries now are fighting to get off the dollar.” As for cryptocurrencies, he added, “I have seen there has been a lot of use of that, and I’m not sure that I’d want to take it away at this point.” Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee to face incumbent President Joe Biden in this year’s US election. Polls released in the past week by the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, CBS News/YouGov, and the New York Times show that US voters currently favor Trump over Biden by a margin of 2-4 percentage points. Although Trump is no longer contemplating a cryptocurrency crackdown, he has pledged to block the development of a US central bank digital currency (CBDC). He said in January that he would never allow a CBDC, calling it a “dangerous threat to freedom.” A digital dollar would give the federal government “absolute control over your money,” he warned. NATO could face a serious risk of the US leaving the alliance if Donald Trump is re-elected in November, the Telegraph said on Saturday, citing several diplomats from the bloc’s member states.
Europe’s NATO countries should develop some strategy to deal with the consequences of such an eventuality and reconsider the bloc’s defence capabilities, they warn. The possibility of America’s withdrawal is a “concern,” one European diplomat told the paper. “Nobody knows what he’s going to do next,” he said, referring to Trump. The former president secured his leadership in the Republican primaries earlier this week as he swept 14 out of 15 states at stake on Super Tuesday and got 995 Republican convention delegates’ votes. His only opponent, Nikki Haley, dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination soon thereafter. He is now expected to face off against President Joe Biden in November since the incumbent American leader also came out on top in the Democratic primaries. Earlier, several former senior US officials claimed that a Trump White House could make America withdraw from NATO. Former US Défense Secretary Mark Esper made such a prediction in December 2023. According to him, Trump could start pulling US forces out of NATO countries, potentially causing “the collapse of the alliance.” Reuters also reported on such a possibility at that time. In mid-February, Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, made a similar statement. “NATO would be in real jeopardy,” he said, adding that Trump “would try to get out.” A European diplomat said that the rest of the bloc should “do the planning” for a scenario in which Trump follows through on such plans or just weakens America’s commitment to NATO. “Preparations need to be in place,” the paper’s source added. Another official described NATO as “so overdependent on the US.” A “discussion” on hedging against risks of a US withdrawal was “necessary,” this person added. A third source quoted by the paper said European nations should check the adequacy of their own “defence planning” amid such risks. In the UK, similar concerns were previously voiced by Lord Kim Darroch, a former British ambassador to the US and a prime minister’s national security adviser. “If I were an official in any prime minister’s office around Europe, I would be commissioning the experts in government to start doing some contingency thinking about how a NATO without the United States would look and function – just in case,” he said in a piece he wrote for Prospect last month. Trump himself has not made any comment lately about leaving the alliance. Instead, he said in February that he would not “protect” those NATO members that fall short of the 2% spending threshold in case of an attack, including by Russia. Speaking at a campaign rally in South Carolina on February 10, he recalled what he described as a conversation with “the president of a big country” in Europe. When allegedly asked whether he would rush to the nation’s aid in case of an attack by Moscow, Trump said that if this nation hadn’t spent enough on defence, he “would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want” to it. Moscow itself has repeatedly denied any plans to attack a NATO member, adding that starting a global war would go against “common sense.” US President Joe Biden and his main challenger, former President Donald Trump, dominated their respective primaries across the country on Tuesday, according to projections by multiple news agencies.
The voting held in several states on March 5 – dubbed ‘Super Tuesday’ – is crucial in determining who the Democrats and Republicans will formally nominate as their candidates for the presidential election in November. According to Reuters, Trump comfortably won the GOP challenges in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. His last-remaining Republican rival – former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley – currently maintains a narrow lead over Trump in Vermont, CNN reported. Trump celebrated his victory on Tuesday evening, vowing to unify the country. “We have a great Republican party with tremendous talent and we want to have unity and we’re going to have unity and it’s going to happen very quickly,” he said in a speech in Palm Beach, Florida. Biden, meanwhile, won the Democrat vote in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia, Reuters said, citing a projection from Edison Research. The voting took place a day after the US Supreme Court struck down a decision by Colorado’s top court to bar Trump from the presidential ballot in November. The ruling effectively derailed the campaign waged by Democrat activists to disqualify Trump because of his controversial role in the riot at the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021. Trump has long argued that attempts to prevent him from seeking a second term were a politically motivated “witch hunt.” Campaigning has intensified in recent weeks, with Trump and Biden attacking each other’s record and character. The incumbent president and his aides have described Trump as a “threat to democracy.” The Republican, meanwhile, has questioned Biden’s mental fitness and has claimed that the continuation of his administration would usher in “the collapse” of America.
Activist lawyers had successfully petitioned the state to remove Trump’s name, arguing that his alleged encouragement of the Capitol Hill riot in 2021 had made him an “insurrectionist.” The states of Illinois and Maine had also attempted to bar Trump from contesting the election, but both will now be forced to abandon these efforts.The ruling was unanimous, with no written dissents published. However, two different concurrences were filed. In the majority view, conservative justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and Brett Kavanaugh argued that “nothing in the Constitution requires that we endure [the] chaos” of an electoral map in which different presidential candidates were offered to voters in different states. “The judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court therefore cannot stand,” they concluded, before arguing that only Congress could enforce the insurrection clause against presidential candidates.
Concurring with the decision, conservative Amy Coney Barrett agreed that “states lack the power to enforce” the clause, but argued that the five justices in the majority should not have ruled that Congress has this power. Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson also concurred with the majority, but argued that the ruling went too far to “insulate” Trump from “future controversy.” In a post on his Truth Social platform immediately after the ruling was announced, Trump described it as a “big win for America.” The court was expected to side with Trump, after all nine justices expressed skepticism at the Colorado Supreme Court’s judgment during a hearing last month. At the time, Kavanaugh pointed out that Trump had not been charged with the crime of insurrection, and all nine justices voiced reservations at allowing an individual state to determine the outcome of a federal election. Having won eight out of nine primary contests so far, Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee to challenge President Joe Biden in November’s election. Recent polls show him with a lead of between one and six points over his Democratic rival. Former US President Donald Trump has said that he would “very much consider” Texas Governor Greg Abbott as his running mate for this year’s presidential election. The Republican frontrunner said that Abbott has “done a great job” in securing the US-Mexico border.
Trump and Abbott met in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Thursday, with Trump touring a stretch of the border that has been heavily fortified by Abbott since 2021. Despite the US Supreme Court siding with the White House and permitting federal agents to remove razor wire fencing along the frontier, Abbott has vowed to build more barricades, and the governor snubbed President Joe Biden to meet with his chief political rival instead. Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity later that day, Trump described Abbott as “a spectacular man,” adding that the Republican governor had “done a great job” in fighting to stem the tide of illegal immigration across Texas’ 1,200-mile stretch of the Mexican border. Asked whether he would consider Abbott for vice president, Trump replied: “Yeah, certainly he would be somebody that I would very much consider.” “So he’s on the list?” Hannity asked again. “Absolutely, he is,” Trump confirmed. When asked who else he was considering for the role, Trump named South Carolina Senator and former Republican challenger Tim Scott. However, he was less effusive in his praise for Scott, describing him as an “okay” presidential candidate but an “unbelievable” campaign surrogate. Trump’s list of potential running mates now numbers seven people. Last month, the presidential hopeful confirmed to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that Scott, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida Representative Byron Donalds, and former Hawaii Rep.Tulsi Gabbard, an ex-Democrat who broke with the party in 2022, were all in contention for the spot. However, Abbott said on Friday that he is not interested in the role. “Obviously, that’s very nice of him to say,” the governor told reporters on Friday. “But I think you know my focus is entirely on the state of Texas. I’ve announced that I’m running for re-election two years from now, and so, my commitment is to Texas and I’m staying in Texas.” DeSantis, who along with Ramaswamy dropped out of the race for the Republican nomination in January, has also said that he wouldn’t consider the job. Trump has won all five Republican primary contests to date, and is the firm favorite to secure his party’s support to take on Biden later this year. However, his last remaining challenger, Nikki Haley, has refused to drop out of the race, despite being soundly beaten by Trump in her home state of South Carolina last month and trailing the former president by 20 delegates to 110. US State Department fixture and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, aka “Regime Change Karen,” apparently woke up one day recently, took the safety off her nuclear-grade mouth, and inadvertently blew up the West’s Ukraine narrative.
Until now, Americans have been told that all the US taxpayer cash being earmarked for Ukrainian aid is to help actual Ukrainians. Anyone notice that the $75 billion American contribution isn’t getting the job done on the battlefield? Victory in military conflict isn’t supposed to look like defeat. Winning also isn’t defined as, “Well, on a long enough time axis, like infinity, our chance of defeat will eventually approach zero.” And the $178 billion in total from all allies combined doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, either. Short of starting a global war with weapons capable of extending the conflict beyond a regional one, it’s not like they’ve been holding back. The West is breaking the bank. All for some vague, future Ukrainian “victory” that they don’t seem to want to clearly define. We keep hearing that the support will last “as long as it takes.” For what exactly? By not clearly defining it, they can keep moving the goal posts. But now here comes Regime Change Karen, dropping some truth bombs on CNN about Ukrainian aid. She started off with the usual talking point of doing “what we have always done, which is defend democracy and freedom around the world.” Conveniently, in places where they have controlling interests and want to keep them – or knock them out of a global competitor’s roster and into their own. “And by the way, we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the US to make those weapons,” Nuland said, pleading in favor of the latest Ukraine aid package that’s been getting the side eye from Republicans in Congress. So there you have it, folks. Ukrainians are a convenient pretext to keep the tax cash flowing in the direction of the US military industrial complex. This gives a whole new perspective on “as long as it takes.” It’s just the usual endless war and profits repackaged as benevolence. But we’ve seen this before. It explains why war in Afghanistan was little more than a gateway to Iraq. And why the Global War on Terrorism never seems to end, and only ever mutates. Arguably the best one they’ve come up with so far is the need for military-grade panopticon-style surveillance, so the state can shadow-box permanently with ghosts while bamboozling the general public with murky cyber concepts that it can’t understand or conceptualize. When one conflict or threat dials down, another ramps up, boosted by fearmongering rhetoric couched in white-knighting. There’s never any endgame or exit ramp to any of these conflicts. And there clearly isn’t one for Ukraine, either. Still, there’s a sense that the realities on the ground in Ukraine, which favor Russia, now likely mean that the conflict is closer to its end than to its beginning. Acknowledgements abound in the Western press. And that means there isn’t much time left for Europe to get aboard the tax cash laundering bandwagon and stuff its own military industrial complexes’ coffers like Washington has been doing from the get-go. Which would explain why a bunch of countries now seem to be rushing to give Ukraine years-long bilateral security “guarantees,” requiring more weapons for everyone. France, Germany, Canada, and Italy have all made the pledge. Plus Denmark, which also flat-out said that it would send all its artillery to Ukraine. If security for Europe is the goal, that sounds kind of like the opposite. Particularly when Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba told the EU that “Russia has gotten closer to your home” in the wake of the most recent defeat in Avdeevka. He sounds like one of those guys in TV ads trying to peddle burglar alarms. Seems like Russia only exists in the minds of the West these days to justify sending weapons to Ukraine to get blown up, while also justifying to taxpayers why they should continue funding this whole charade. Meanwhile, the West’s drive towards peace seems to be taking the scenic route. “As we move forward, we continue our support to Ukraine in further developing President Zelensky’s Peace Formula,” G7 leaders said after a recent meeting with Zelensky in Kiev. Nice to see that he’s devoting all his time to this magic peace formula instead of running around extorting his friends for cash by threatening them with Putin. It was already a pretty big hint of what’s really been going on when the EU decided to use the taxpayer-funded European Peace Facility to reimburse EU countries for the unloading of their mothballed, second-hand weapons into Ukraine, where Russia can then dispose of them before anyone could be accused of overcharging for clunkers. Now, with the clunker supply running dry, they just have to make more weapons. Maybe funneling cash into weapons for themselves will be the Hail Mary pass that saves their economies that they’ve tanked “for Ukraine”? Thanks to Nuland’s nuking of any plausible deniability on Ukrainian “aid” not going to Washington, it’s now clear that Ukrainians continue to die so poor weapons makers don’t end up shaking tin cans on street corners. She has also removed any doubt about the ultimate US goal being Russian regime change, calling Putin’s leadership “not the Russia we wanted,” and sounding like someone who chronically sends back a meal to kitchens of a dining establishment. “We wanted a partner that was going to be Westernizing, that was going to be European. But that’s not what Putin has done,” she told CNN. That’s exactly what Putin has done, actually. It’s the West that’s moved away from itself and is becoming increasingly unrecognizable by its own citizens. Pretty sure that it goes beyond just wanting a country to be “European,” too. Because Germany’s European, and an ally, and Nuland wouldn’t shut up about how much she hated its Nord Stream gas supply — until it mysteriously went kaboom. Regime Change Karen saying the quiet part out loud has decimated the Western establishment’s narrative so badly that it’s a miracle no one has yet accused her thermonuclear mouth of being an asset of Russia’s weapons program. Political scientist Ivan Katchanovski – of the University of Ottawa – revealed last year, in a paper, that the February 2014 massacre of Ukrainian protesters by sniper fire, a defining moment of the Western-backed Maidan coup, was not published by an academic journal for “political reasons.” In a lengthy Twitter thread, Katchanovski first laid out the circumstances behind the rejection of his article, and the bombshell evidence included in it. The paper was initially accepted with minor revisions after peer review, and the journal's editor offered a glowing appraisal of his work, writing: “There is no doubt that this paper is exceptional in many ways. It offers evidence against the mainstream narrative of the regime change in Ukraine in 2014… It seems to me that the evidence the study produces in favour of its interpretation on who was behind the massacre of the protesters and the police during the ‘Euromaidan’ mass protests on February 18-20, 2014, in Ukraine, is solid. On this there is also consensus among the two reviewers.” As the editor noted, the massacre was a “politically crucial development,” which led to the “transition of powers in the country” from the freely elected Viktor Yanukovich to the illegitimate and rabidly nationalistic administration of Aleksandr Turchinov, a former security services chief. It was endlessly cited in Western media as a symbol of the brutality of Ukraine’s government and an unprovoked attack on innocent pro-WesternMaidan protesters, who allegedly sought nothing more than democracy and freedom. Rumors that the killings were a false flag intended to inflame tensions among the vast crowds filling Maidan, and provoke violence against the authorities, began circulating immediately. No serious investigation into what happened was ever conducted by the Western media, with all claims that the sniper attacks were an inside job dismissed as Kremlin “disinformation.” However, even NATO’s Atlantic Council adjunct admitted in 2020 that the massacre was unsolved and that this “cast a shadow over Ukraine.” It may not remain unsolved for much longer though, due to an ongoing trial of policemen at the scene on the fateful day. The legal action has been unfolding for well over a year and has received no mainstream news attention at all outside Ukraine. Katchanovski drew heavily on witness testimony and video evidence that has emerged over the course of the trial in his suppressed paper. For example, 51 protesters wounded during the incident testified at the trial that they were shot by snipers from Maidan-controlled buildings, and/or witnessed snipers there. Many spoke of snipers in buildings controlled by Maidan protesters shooting at police. This is consistent with other evidence collected by Katchanovski, such as 14 separate videos of snipers in protester-controlled buildings, 10 of which clearly feature far-right gunmen in the Hotel Ukraina aiming at crowds below. In all, 300 witnesses have told much the same story. Synchronized videos show that the specific time and direction of shots fired by the police not only didn’t coincide with the killings of specific Maidan protesters, but that authorities aimed at walls, trees, lampposts, and even the ground, simply to disperse crowds. Among those targeted by apparently Maidan-aligned snipers were journalists at Germany’s ARD. They weren’t the only Western news station in town at the time – so too were Belgian reporters, who not only filmed Maidan protesters screaming towards Hotel Ukraina for snipers not to shoot them, but also participants being actively lured to the killing zone. This incendiary footage was never broadcast.
CNN likewise filmed far-right elements firing at police from behind Maidan barricades, then hunting for positions to shoot from the 11th floor of the Hotel Ukraina, minutes before the BBC filmed snipers shooting protesters from a room where a far-right MP was staying. The network opted not to report this at the time. We needn’t rely purely on video footage. Over the course of the trial, no fewer than 14 self-confessed members of Maidan sniper groups testified they had explicitly received massacre orders, Katchanovski claims. By contrast, no police officer at the scene has said they were directed to kill unarmed protesters, no minister has come forward to blow the whistle on such a scheme, and no evidence Yanukovich approved of the killings has ever emerged. CNN likewise filmed far-right elements firing at police from behind Maidan barricades, then hunting for positions to shoot from the 11th floor of the Hotel Ukraina, minutes before the BBC filmed snipers shooting protesters from a room where a far-right MP was staying. The network opted not to report this at the time. We needn’t rely purely on video footage. Over the course of the trial, no fewer than 14 self-confessed members of Maidan sniper groups testified they had explicitly received massacre orders, Katchanovski claims. By contrast, no police officer at the scene has said they were directed to kill unarmed protesters, no minister has come forward to blow the whistle on such a scheme, and no evidence Yanukovich approved of the killings has ever emerged. Scared of being abandoned by the US under Trump, European officials are floating the idea of the bloc’s own nuclear force.
With its farmers rebelling, its economy declining, and its traditional parties decaying, you’d think the European Union has enough to worry about at home. Yet its thoroughly detached elites love to think big. And what’s bigger than nuclear weapons? That’s how they have ended up falling for one of Donald Trump’s typically blunt provocations. The former – and likely future – American president has warned that NATO members not spending enough on defence won’t be able to count on US protection on his watch. Eminently sensible – why do declining but still comparatively wealthy EU states keep behaving like defence beggars? – Trump’s threat has triggered various predictable meltdowns. The White House archly tut-tutted about the “appalling and unhinged” rhetoric of a man who is not, unlike the current president Joe Biden, overseeing a genocide together with Israel. Go figure, as they say in the US. On the other hand, many Republicans have displayed demonstrative insouciance, if not outright agreement. And that is certain to reflect what many ordinary Americans think as well; that is, if they think about Europe at all. And as if the Big Scary Orange Man hadn’t done enough damage yet, next came the Pentagon, which (sort of) revealed that Russia – that famous gas station sending out its shovel-wielding soldiers to capture German washing machines – is building, if not a Death Star, then at least something equally sinister out there in space: Sputnik déjà vu all over again, as America’s greatest philosopher might have said. All of that, of course, against a background of incessant NATO scaremongering, which, it seems, has succeeded in spooking NATO most of all. No wonder then that inside EU-Europe, reactions to Trump’s taunting sally have been marked by serious abandonment anxiety. One of its symptoms has been a call for the bloc – or Europe’s NATO members; the issue is fuzzy – to acquire its own nuclear force. One way or the other, Christian Lindner, Germany’s minister of finance, made time from razing the state budget in an economy that his cabinet colleague, the children’s book author and minister of the economy, Robert Habeck, has just labelled “dramatically bad,” in order to pen an article calling for France (not subordinating its nukes to NATO) and Britain (not even in the EU anymore) – two small nuclear powers – to step in as the new security sugar daddies by expanding their nuclear umbrellas over everyone else. Katarina Barley, eternally fresh-eyed vice president of the European Parliament and the top EU election candidate of the German Social-Democrats – a party leading a deeply unpopular government while approaching extinction in the polls – and Manfred Weber, head of the conservative faction in the European Parliament, have kept things more general: They simply suggest that the EU should get its own doomsday weapons, somehow. Donald Tusk, freshly re-established as Poland’s EU-subservient viceroy, has made similar noises. Well, who cares about details, right? That attitude of “on s’engage et puis on voit” has, after all, proven a smashing success in Ukraine. In reality, this is not a problem caused by Trump: That, in a world of more than one nuclear power, the US nuclear umbrella over any place other than the US itself is – and can only be – fundamentally unreliable is, of course, a perennial, structural problem. Those who prefer realism to wishful thinking have always understood this. Henry Kissinger, for instance, a sinister yet sometimes brutally frank practitioner of realpolitik, explained as much as early as the 1950s – perhaps most succinctly in a television interview in 1958 – just a little over a decade after the dawn of the nuclear age. If any clients abroad were to be attacked so severely or successfully that only a US nuclear strike would be left to respond, any American president – whatever treaties are in place or promises have been made – would always face an impossible choice: Drop the client or suffer a retaliatory strike on America itself. It is true that various policies have been devised to mitigate this dilemma (“limited” nuclear war, nuclear sharing, or the NATO medium-range missiles of the 1980s), but, in reality, it cannot be resolved. Yet here we are. An EU that seems to suffer from historical amnesia produces chatter about a search for nukes of its own. Not the nukes that are already in US-aligned Europe anyhow, in the national arsenals of France, Britain, and at American bases in five NATO countries, so that, at least, we are already used to them, but different nukes, new nukes. Nukes the acquisition, politics, and rules of which are all still to be figured out. What could go wrong? Everything, really. But let’s be a little more detailed. First of all, the elites of EU-Europe have, expectably, immediately displayed disunity and confusion. In essence, while no one meant the call for nuclear weapons as a challenge to the US, it was still too much for hard-core Atlanticism compradors: Germany’s minister of defence, Boris Pistorius, NATO’s figurehead General-Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, and the head of the German parliament’s defence committee – and “jokingly” “Volkssturm”-nostalgic (no kidding) – uber-hawk Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann all scrambled to contain the inadvertently mildly subversive idea that Europe could possibly try to do anything significant on its own. Perish the thought! A house so divided against itself is not a safe place to own nukes. Secondly, nuclear weapons are, of course, meant for extreme emergencies, means of last resort either to serve deterrence by the threat of we-will-take-you-with-us retaliation when all is lost anyhow (the purpose of Britain’s and France’s arsenals) or, at best, in a situation of imminent, catastrophic defeat. One implication of this fact is that the decision to use them would end up with either one person or a very compact group hunkered down in a bunker. Who would that be in the case of the EU? The head of the commission, for instance? Someone like Ursula von der Leyen, a self-promoting, short-sighted, and reckless power-grabber, free of any electoral legitimacy, who is really serving the US and not Europe? Good luck! And how would the EU overcome the fact that any such ultimate decider would also have national allegiances: An Estonian or a Pole perhaps, from states, that is, that have their own risky agendas and, to be frank, national(ist) complexes? Or someone from Spain or Greece perhaps, from, that is, countries that may well largely escape the direct effects of a large-scale fight in central Europe, and therefore would have no sane incentive to have Madrid or Athens incinerated to make a last point about Latvia or, indeed, Germany? Set up a committee (unanimity rules or majority voting on when to push the very last red button?), and all you will get is a multiplication of clashing and divided loyalties. Thirdly, more generally, can you imagine today’s EU – or anything growing out of it – in possession of weapons of mass destruction? That is, a club of states most of which are now stubbornly complicit (International Court of Justice be damned) in an ongoing genocide in the Middle East (committed by Israel against the Palestinians), many of which have a pathological obsession with crusading against Russia, and none of which can even grasp that the greatest threat to their sovereignty comes from their “allies” in Washington. And that leads us to the final and most fundamental problem: This whole debate about nukes for Europe is based on bizarrely blinkered premises that betray that EU-Europe is by far not politically mature enough to have such weapons (if any state ever is). Because if it were, then its strategists and politicians would honestly acknowledge and discuss one simple fact: A nuclear force would have to deter every possible vitally dangerous opponent, that is, of course, including the US. Yet these are the same leaders that have simply ignored that the greatest act of war, eco-terrorism, and vital-infrastructure demolition against the EU – the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines – was launched by Washington, whether hands-on or via proxies. The EU is a large bloc of countries in an increasingly unstable and lawless world where the ever-wider proliferation of nuclear weapons will be inevitable. Hypothetically, such an entity would be a candidate for owning such weapons. Yet, in reality, the EU lacks three essential qualities to even consider acquiring them: It is far too fractious, it has no serious concept of its own interests as apart from and, indeed, opposed to the US, and it lacks an elite that could remotely be trusted with weapons capable of ending the world. There, it is of course, not alone. But isn’t one US on planet Earth bad enough already? In the symphony of American politics, the Iowa caucus has once again unveiled its complex dance as the first major contest in the run-up to the presidential election, leaving candidates and observers alike mesmerized in its wake.
Among the cacophony of contenders, one name resonates louder than the rest – Donald J. Trump. The maverick, the disruptor, the maestro of political showmanship, is back, and his showing in Iowa has stirred both supporters and critics into a fervor. As the Iowa caucus unfurled its drama on Monday, Trump’s presence loomed large. Despite the unorthodox scenario of a former president participating in a caucus typically reserved for contenders and the fact that he has refused to participate in televised debates with his rivals, Trump’s decision to engage in the Hawkeye State signaled a reprise of the political opera that had captivated the nation during his presidency. His opening gambit was nothing short of spectacular – a strategic dance between traditional Republican values and his unapologetic Trumpian brand. It was a calculated performance and a firm reminder that the GOP, as it stands today, is unmistakably Trump’s domain. In short: Trump’s influence was palpable and he never had a chance of losing the caucuses. His base, a formidable force that has weathered storms and controversies, mobilized with a zeal reminiscent of a movement rather than a mere political campaign. The Trumpian faithful, armed with red hats and unwavering loyalty, stood as a testament to the enduring impact of the 45th president. As the results trickled in, it became evident that Trump’s resonance with the Republican base remains unparalleled. His unique blend of populism, economic nationalism, and an unfiltered approach to politics has forged a connection that defies the norms of conventional Republicanism. The Iowa caucus, with its intricate dynamics, exposed a conundrum within the GOP. The party finds itself at a crossroads, torn between the allure of Trump’s unapologetic approach and a desire to reclaim a semblance of its pre-Trump identity, with such carbon Republican cutouts as former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and former VP Mike Pence. Trump’s shadow, cast long over the proceedings, poses a challenge that the GOP must confront – embrace the Trumpian legacy or attempt a return to a more traditional conservative narrative, the latter apparently next to impossible. As the maestro orchestrates his political comeback, the legacy of Trumpism emerges as a defining force. It’s a legacy that transcends party lines and polarizes political discourse. Trump, with his unfiltered rhetoric and dozens of standing felony charges related to his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, continues to be a lightning rod for both adoration and disdain. In Iowa, Trump’s legacy was not merely a campaign strategy; it was a spectacle that showcased the enduring influence of a political outsider who disrupted the established norms. The latest polls show that he is edging out incumbent President Joe Biden in a head-to-head, with the most recent Morning Consult poll having Trump ahead by 2 percentage points. Other polls reflect the same basic direction. Additionally, a recent approval poll by McLaughlin and Associates commissioned by America’s New Majority Project for Biden has him at a 60% disapproval rating. Trump has also been leading Biden in seven swing states since December. Despite all of his controversies, including his failure to responsibly manage the Covid-19 pandemic, his dictatorial handling of the George Floyd protests, and his hints that he wants to transform the US into a dictatorship, Trump has managed to make people nostalgic for a time before Biden. The former vice president was meant to be a technocrat, and someone the American elite could trust to defend their interests and maintain US hegemony. Biden’s administration has failed miserably at this task, consistently losing diplomatically vis-a-vis China and outright losing its proxy war in Ukraine. As the curtain falls on the Iowa caucus, Trump’s encore resonates, setting the stage for a political drama that will unfold across the nation. The GOP, a party at a crossroads, must grapple with the echoes of Trumpism – a force that refuses to be confined to the annals of political history. Trump’s results in Iowa may not be a mere prelude but rather the opening notes of a political saga that promises unpredictability, fervor, and a relentless pursuit of dominance. Some important Democrats recognize this, including Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats. Sounding the alarm on Trump’s strong showing, he said: “If Democrats hope to win this November, they must stand with working people and fight for an aggressive progressive agenda.” This will never happen. Biden, whose own base does not believe he is a suitable candidate, once famously said during the 2020 elections that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he were elected, and so he was correct: Under his watch, the rich have gotten richer, the poor have gotten poorer, and the war machine has kept on a-chuggin’. Biden’s mediocrity has made America yearn for Trump once again, and the results of the Iowa caucus show that Trump is the very clear favorite in this race. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has invited former US president and potential Republican nominee in the 2024 election, Donald Trump, to visit Kiev.
In his interview with UK’s Channel 4 News on Friday, Zelensky was asked to comment on Trump’s claim that if he returned to the White House, he would be able to put an end to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in just 24 hours. “I don't know if his message… will have such [a] positive result,” the Ukrainian leader replied in English. It could be just a “political message” made by a candidate during the “complicated” election period, “but if it's some formula – I have to know it,” he stressed. The reporter then asked the Ukrainian leader if he wanted to invite Trump to arrive in Kiev in person to explain his plan. “Yes, please, Donald Trump, I invite you to Ukraine, to Kiev. So, if you can stop the war during 24 hours I think it will be enough to come, in any day,” Zelenksy said. “Maybe Donald Trump really has some idea, a real idea… he can share it with me, and I think it's OK,” he added. If somebody knows how to stop the conflict with Russia, this information shouldn’t be kept secret from the Ukrainian people, the president insisted. Addressing a crowd of his supporters in Des Moines, Iowa, on Monday night, Trump said, “I know [Russian] President Vladimir Putin very well; I know Zelensky well. I’m gonna get them in; we’re gonna get it solved very quickly.” On Thursday, in his interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, the former US president reiterated his other claim that “Putin would’ve never attacked Ukraine” if he was still in office. When asked about ways to end the conflict in Ukraine last week, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., suggested that “the only way” to persuade Zelensky to engage in talks with Russia was to “cut off the money” that’s being provided to Kiev by Washington. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, Zelensky tried to brush off concerns that US aid to Ukraine would halt if Trump were back in power. “One man can’t change the whole nation,” he argued. Former President Donald Trump won a landslide victory in the first Republican primary of the 2024 presidential race, taking home three times more delegates than his closest opponent and over 50% of the popular vote. With more than 95% of the votes counted following Monday’s caucus in Iowa, Trump had 51% of the electorate and 19 delegates, far ahead of Republican rivals Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who earned 21.3% and 19.1% respectively. DeSantis won eight delegates and remained in second place, while Haley scored seven. As the race came to a close late in the evening, Trump penned a social media post thanking his supporters in Iowa, writing “I LOVE YOU ALL!”The victory comes on the heels of favorable polling for the frontrunner, with an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey giving him an almost 30-point advantage over the other candidates. While the same poll put former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in second place, the number two spot went to DeSantis, Florida’s current governor. Before heading home, Haley hurled a veiled criticism at Trump, telling supporters “If you want to move forward with no more vendettas, if you want to move forward with a sense of hope, join us in this caucus.”
As the 2024 election season kicks off, the former president faces multiple criminal indictments, including charges linked to alleged election interference, hush money payments to a porn star, and mishandling of classified material. Trump has rejected all the charges against him, calling them part of a political “witch hunt” launched by his opponents in the Democratic Party.
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