logo
Russia's Medvedev Mocks Fight Between Donald Trump and Elon Musk

Russia's Medvedev Mocks Fight Between Donald Trump and Elon Musk

Newsweek13 hours ago

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
Senior Russian security official Dmitry Medvedev poked fun at the explosive war of words between U.S. President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, offering to mediate peace between the two political allies.
Trump is attempting to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine to end Moscow's ongoing invasion.
"We are ready to facilitate the conclusion of a peace deal between D and E for a reasonable fee and to accept Starlink shares as payment," Medvedev, a former president and prime minister of Russia, posted to X.
"Don't fight, guys!" Medvedev added, including an emoji of a screaming face.
Starlink is the Musk-owned satellite internet company, which Ukraine has used for battlefield communications and targeting.
Medvedev is known for his sarcastic and at times biting humor on social media, often with dark undertones. He is currently the deputy chair of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.
This is a developing article. Updates to follow.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Democratic congressman steps up his work to pull Musk toward his party
Democratic congressman steps up his work to pull Musk toward his party

Yahoo

time30 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

Democratic congressman steps up his work to pull Musk toward his party

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., talked with one of Elon Musk's 'senior confidants' on Thursday about whether the ex-DOGE leader, now feuding with Donald Trump, might want to help the Democratic Party in the midterms. 'Having Elon speak out against the irrational tariff policy, against the deficit exploding Trump bill, and the anti-science and anti-immigrant agenda can help check Trump's unconstitutional administration,' Khanna told Semafor on Friday. 'I look forward to Elon turning his fire against MAGA Republicans instead of Democrats in 2026.' Khanna, who has known Musk for more than a decade, has long argued that Democrats unwisely pushed him away from their party. Now the world's wealthiest man, Musk benefited from the Obama administration's clean energy investments, defending them against Republican attacks in the 2012 election. He supported Democratic nominees for president until 2024, when he endorsed Trump for president — and spent more to help elect him than he had for any Democrat. Since Musk began attacking the Trump-backed GOP tax bill as an 'abomination' this week, Democrats in Congress have amplified his criticism and even adopted some of his language. But few besides Khanna have gone as far as talking about bringing Musk back into the Democratic tent; most Democrats are furious at Musk's DOGE work to dismantle parts of the federal government and are confident that he is a political liability for Trump. 'How great is it that that dipshit Elon Musk is out?' Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said at last Friday's Democratic fish fry in South Carolina, after Musk left the administration. 'The decisions he was making were literally killing people, so he could dance around and act like he was doing something.' Musk was a 'historic villain' whose unpopularity had helped Wisconsin Democrats win the state's April 1 supreme court race by 10 points, said state Democratic Party chairman Ben Wikler. At their 'Fighting Oligarchy' rallies, the largest political events since Trump was sworn in, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., torched Musk as the embodiment of what Democrats and fair-minded Americans should be against. Some Democrats believe that Musk could have stayed in their coalition, had they paid him a little more respect — specifically, had Joe Biden invited Musk to the White House electric vehicle summit early in his presidency. Khanna is in that camp. Others counter that the party's overall shift leftward after 2016 alienated Musk, who was never coming back. He clashed with Elizabeth Warren ('Senator Karen') over the idea of a wealth tax, and with progressives over the 'woke mind virus' that he blamed for the gender transition of his third child. That's the camp where most Democrats are, although some — like Walz — see this as a political opportunity. Still, the idea of an irate multibillionaire making problems for Republicans is enticing to plenty of Democrats, who have not been above meddling in GOP primaries to help weaker candidates win nominations. What if Musk made Republicans burn money to defend their incumbents, as he slammed them with TV ads? That's all theoretical, as Musk said last month that he would do 'a lot less' political spending now that he'd achieved his goal of electing Trump. If Musk is sincere about the political views he posts about on X, he is completely at odds with the Democratic Party, and the best they could hope for is him making trouble for Republicans out of spite. In Politico, Holly Otterbein and Lisa Kashinsky about the Democrats who hoped that Musk would have a 'villain-to-hero' arc, and help them beat Trump. But Khanna was the only voice in the party who fully believed it could happen.

The Latest Escalation Between Russia and Ukraine Isn't Changing the Course of the War
The Latest Escalation Between Russia and Ukraine Isn't Changing the Course of the War

Yahoo

time30 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

The Latest Escalation Between Russia and Ukraine Isn't Changing the Course of the War

The empire strikes back. Last week, Ukrainian spies destroyed a large chunk of Russia's fearsome nuclear bomber fleet using small, smuggled drones. On Friday, Russia retaliated with some of the largest air raids against Ukraine to date. The Russian air raids killed eight Ukrainians and wounded 46. They also sent the message that, as Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, the current round of peace talks is over. On the whole, however, neither the Ukrainian guerrilla operation nor the old-fashioned Russian retaliation changed the course of the war. Russia has a slight, but not decisive, advantage. Russian forces have been gaining ground in Ukraine at a slow rate and high cost. Although they have continued to suffer from manpower shortages, Ukrainian forces have managed to inflict greater losses on the Russian side. The human butchery on the front lines can continue for the time being. Of course, the attack on the Russian nuclear bomber fleet matters a lot for the global balance of power. And Ukraine has grown quite bold at attacking Russian interests outside of Ukraine. Ukrainian operatives have reportedly blown up the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea, captured Russian mercenaries in Sudan, enabled Tuareg rebels to kill dozens more Russian mercenaries in Mali, and trained Syrian rebels to use drones against the former government of Bashar Assad, a Russian ally. Rather than changing the balance of forces on the battlefield, these moves serve two psychological purposes. On one hand, they blunt Putin's confidence that he can simply wait Ukraine out. U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly told European leaders last month that Putin doesn't want to end the war because he believes Russia is winning. On the other hand, Ukrainian operations help demonstrate Ukraine's usefulness to its foreign backers. Even more than having to justify the financial cost of U.S. aid, over $128 billion in total, Ukraine has to compete for scarce physical resources with other theaters of war. (Late last month, the U.S. military decided to move anti-drone proximity fuzes from Ukraine to American forces in the Middle East.) And Trump has made no secret of his belief that Ukraine is a freeloader that doesn't "have the cards." After the drone attack, Ukrainian spokespeople bragged that they do, in fact, hold "the cards." The Trump administration was reportedly very impressed by the "badass" Ukrainian attack. As one White House adviser told Axios, "you've got a chihuahua inflicting some real damage on a much bigger dog." Feats of reckless defiance might prove more effective than the half-baked scheme to market Ukraine's non-existent mineral wealth to Trump. Many political figures have misread Trump as someone who enjoys flattery. But he does not necessarily respect those who grovel before him, whether it's domestic politicians or allied heads of state, and he does enjoy winning over adversaries. Congress is also getting ready to impose new economic sanctions on Russia, something that Trump has threatened to do over the past few months. The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House is fighting to "water down" the legislation, but the dispute seems to be more about keeping the president's options open to lifting sanctions than the strength of the pressure. Unlike in the Middle East, where U.S. enemies are relatively weak and American partners are extremely reliant on U.S. support, the United States does not have an easy "off" switch for the Russian-Ukraine war. Europe provides Ukraine with slightly more aid than the United States. Although U.S. aid to Ukraine has been massive—and irreplaceable in the areas of air defense and intelligence—Ukraine can fight on for quite a while with European support and its own domestic capabilities. "Both sides are suffering before you pull them apart, before they're able to be pulled apart," Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. "You see in hockey, you see it in sports. The referees let them go for a couple of seconds, let them go for a little while before you pull them apart." That's a lot of suffering in the meantime. A recent estimate put overall casualties of the war—which includes both wounded and killed—at 1.2 million troops since 2022. And the United Nations has recorded 45,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine throughout the war. Each of those numbers represents a family torn apart forever. However depressing the situation sounds, the fact that neither side has a clear path to victory means that they will both have to come back to the negotiating table. It's in America's interest for this war to end as quickly as possible, and as other conflicts show, the U.S. can do a lot of good as a distant but powerful mediator. The post The Latest Escalation Between Russia and Ukraine Isn't Changing the Course of the War appeared first on

DOGE employees can search Social Security records, Supreme Court says
DOGE employees can search Social Security records, Supreme Court says

Los Angeles Times

time30 minutes ago

  • Los Angeles Times

DOGE employees can search Social Security records, Supreme Court says

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court cleared the way Friday for the DOGE team that had been led by Elon Musk to examine Social Security records that include personal information on most Americans. Acting by a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an appeal from President Trump's lawyers and lifted a court order that had barred a team of DOGE employees of freely examining Social Security records. 'We conclude that, under the present circumstances,' the Social Security Administration, or SSA, 'may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work,' the court said in an unsigned order. In a second order, the justices blocked the disclosure of DOGE operations as agency records that could be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The court's three liberals — Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — dissented in both cases 'Today, the court grants 'emergency' relief that allows the Social Security Administration (SSA) to hand DOGE staffers the highly sensitive data of millions of Americans,' Jackson wrote. 'The Government wants to give DOGE unfettered access to this personal, non-anonymized information right now—before the courts have time to assess whether DOGE's access is lawful.' The legal fight turned on the unusual status of the newly created Department of Governmental Efficiency. This was a not true department, but the name given to the team of aggressive outside advisors led by Musk. Were the DOGE team members presidential advisors or outsiders who should be not given access to personal data? While Social Security employees are entrusted with the records containing personal information, it was disputed whether the 11 DOGE team members could be trusted with same material. Musk had said the goal was to find evidence of fraud or misuse of government funds. He and DOGE were sued by labor unions who said the outside analysts were sifting through records with personal information which was protected by the privacy laws. Unless checked, the DOGE team could create highly personal computer profiles of every person, they said. A federal judge in Maryland agreed and issued an order restricting the work of DOGE. U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander, Obama appointee, barred DOGE staffers from have accessing to the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans. But her order did not restrict the Social Security staff or DOGE employees from using data that did not identify persons or sensitive personal information. In late April, the divided 4th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to set aside the judge's order by a 9-6 vote. Judge Robert King said the 'government has sought to accord the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) immediate and unfettered access to all records of the Social Security Administration ('SSA') — records that include the highly sensitive personal information of essentially everyone in our country.' But Trump Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer appealed to the Supreme Court and said a judge should not 'second guess' how the administration manages the government. He said the district judge had 'enjoined particular agency employees — the 11 members of the Social Security Administration (SSA) DOGE team—from accessing data that other agency employees can unquestionably access, and that the SSA DOGE team will use for purposes that are unquestionably lawful. ... The Executive Branch, not district courts, sets government employees' job responsibilities.' Sauer said the DOGE team were seeking to 'modernize SSA systems and identify improper payments, for instance by reviewing swaths of records and flagging unusual payment patterns or other signs of fraud. The DOGE employees 'are subject to the same strict confidentiality standards as other SSA employees,' he said. Moreover, the plaintiffs 'make no allegation that the SSA DOGE team's access will increase the risk of public disclosure.' He said checking the personal data is crucial. 'For instance, a birth date of 1900 can be telltale evidence that an individual is probably deceased and should not still receive Social Security payments, while 15 names using the same Social Security number may also point to a problem,' he said.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store