TV News LIES

President Trump has long called for escalating the U.S. drug war against Mexican cartels and wants tougher penalties for dealers selling fentanyl and other street drugs in American communities. "I am ready for it, the death penalty, if you deal drugs," Trump said during a meeting with state governors in February, where he said dealers are too often treated with a "slap on the wrist."

But despite his tough rhetoric, Trump has sparked controversy by pardoning a growing number of convicted drug dealers, including this week's move to grant clemency to Larry Hoover, 74, who was serving multiple life sentences in federal prison for crimes linked to his role leading the Chicago-based Gangster Disciples.

Already during the early months of his second term, Trump has granted clemency to at least eight individuals convicted on federal drug charges. Some, including Hoover, have extensive criminal records involving violence and gun charges.

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The White House on Saturday said it will pull the nomination of tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator.

“It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon,” a White House spokesperson told The Hill.

The Senate was slated to vote on his nomination in the coming days.

Isaacman worked alongside tech billionaire Elon Musk at SpaceX to fund the company’s first private spacewalk, and he was one of four astronauts aboard the Polaris Dawn flight this fall. He is also the founder and CEO of Shift4, a payment processing company.

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In 2017, watching a two-hour Bastille Day procession, Donald Trump told the French president that we’d have one too, only better. That time, the grown-ups said no. The reasons given were costs – estimates ran to $92m – hellish logistics, and the Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser’s worries that tanks and other armored vehicles would tear up Washington’s streets.

Some retired generals objected publicly to the totalitarian-adjacent optics, especially given the US president’s praise for such bad actors as Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin. Several Republican lawmakers also expressed their distaste. “Confidence is silent, and insecurity is loud,” the Louisiana senator John Kennedy told MSNBC. “America is the most powerful country in all of human history ... and we don’t need to show it off. We’re not North Korea. We’re not Russia, we’re not China,” he continued, “and I don’t wanna be.”

This time, as Washington prepares for a huge military shindig on 14 June, Trump’s 79th – and, oh yes, the US army’s 250th – birthday, the generals are silent. The Republicans have sworn allegiance to the king. And the media are focused on the price tag, the potholes and the impending pomp; on tensions between the blue city of Washington and the red capital; and on the decimation of veterans’ healthcare, housing, and pensions while the administration throws $25m to $45m at a circus of war.

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Elon Musk arrived in Washington, D.C., with high hopes. He left with a literal and reputational black eye.

President Donald Trump marked the end of Musk's tenure as a government employee with an event in the Oval Office May 30, where he thanked the billionaire for his work leading the Department of Government Efficiency and gave him a golden key.

“Elon’s delivered a colossal change in the old ways of doing business in Washington,” Trump declared.

A second federal court blocked the bulk of President Trump’s tariffs on Thursday, ruling he cannot claim unilateral authority to impose them by declaring emergencies over trade deficits and fentanyl.

The ruling from U.S District Judge Rudolph Contreras, an appointee of former President Obama who serves in the nation’s capital, comes hours after the U.S. Court of International Trade similarly blocked a series of Trump’s tariff announcements.

The administration quickly appealed both rulings.

Since February, Trump has attempted to impose tariffs by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA). The law authorizes the president to impose necessary economic sanctions during an emergency to combat an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” but a series of businesses and plaintiffs have argued the law doesn’t authorize tariffs.

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