Trump escalates criticism of Putin, rearms Ukraine, as Russia's war plows on
Using his most forceful language yet, Trump accused Putin of throwing "bulls--t" his way and said he'd be looking "very strongly" at sanctions legislation he once criticized as harsh − less than a day after overturning a Pentagon decision to withhold some weapons shipments to Ukraine.
"He's not treating human beings right. He's killing too many people," Trump said. "So we're sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine."
Trump did not approve the weapons pause, two sources with knowledge of the situation said. And the president told reporters during the Cabinet meeting after he unleashed on Putin that he did not know who did.
Trump's decision to resume supplying Ukraine against an onslaught of Russian drone and missile attacks reverses a Pentagon decision last week amid concerns of dwindling stocks of crucial weapons.
Last week, Sean Parnell, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said the pause in shipments to Ukraine and other countries was being done to assure military aid 'aligns with our defense priorities.'
But after Trump announced arms shipments to Ukraine would resume, Parnell issued a statement that said while the framework of the review remains in effect, at Trump's direction, the Pentagon 'is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops.'
The Defense Department has not informed Congress that key weapons like Patriot interceptors are in critically short supply, a U.S. official briefed on the situation said.
At a State Department news briefing, spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said the United States has been and remains behind Ukraine. "The president feels obviously very passionate and determined regarding the ability of Ukraine to defend itself," she said.
Trump's criticism of Putin has escalated as he nears the six-month mark in his term, in spite of the Russian leader's attempts to entice him with economic partnerships and even an exchange of movies "promoting traditional values," a Kremlin readout of the two leaders' most recent conversation shows.
Trump said in late May that Putin was "playing with fire" and had gone "absolutely crazy," as he speculated that Russia wants to lay claim to all of Ukraine. The next month he said the war had been "more difficult" to resolve than other conflicts and called Putin "misguided."
In a call July 3, Putin informed Trump he was willing to participate in negotiations but would not back down from his goals. Trump told reporters several days later, after a separate call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, that he was disappointed with the outcome.
'We have to': Trump sending weapons to Ukraine after expressing disappointment with Putin
At his Cabinet meeting July 8 Trump used the most colorful language yet to describe his frustrations with Russian leader.
"We get a lot of bulls--t thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth," Trump said. "He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.'
That night, Zelenskyy said Ukraine mainly expected to receive air defense supplies. He added that he had instructed his defense team "to intensify all contacts" with their American counterparts.
"We now have the necessary political statements and decisions, and we must implement them as quickly as possible to protect our people and our positions," Zelenskyy announced July 8.
Ukraine needs defense missiles most urgently, especially those fired by the Pentagon's Patriot system. They can intercept Russian missiles that have targeted the capital, Kyiv.
Patriot interceptors and other weapons awaiting shipment to Ukraine had been held up in Poland last week when the Pentagon announced a worldwide review of its arsenals.
The Pentagon appears to have enough of the interceptors and other air defense weapons to continue supplying Ukraine, a U.S. official briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly said. It can begin immediate shipments of weapons in greater supply, such as artillery shells and anti-tank and shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, the official said.
The Army, which produces the most munitions of the military's branches, said stockpiles are at an acceptable level, but it acknowledged that ramping up production of ammunition and Patriot interceptors is 'difficult.'
Increasing production of Patriots, which are especially vital to Ukraine's defense, 'presents challenges,' Steve Warren, an Army spokesperson, told reporters July 8. The Army now produces 40,000 155mm shells of ammunition every month, but it is working toward increasing that number to 100,000 by mid-2026, he said.
Warren said the question of how much weaponry the United States should have at any given time is 'unanswerable.'
'We are confident we have what we need to meet battlefield threats,' he said.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Patience fraying, Trump hammers Putin, offers Ukraine a lifeline
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
Economy Updates: After a Weak Jobs Report, Trump Fires That Agency's Commissioner
President Trump said on social media on Friday that he had directed his team to fire Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. President Trump unleashed his fury about weakness in the labor market on Friday, saying without evidence that the data were 'rigged' and that he was firing the Senate-confirmed Department of Labor official responsible for pulling together the numbers each month. In a long post on social media, Mr. Trump said he had directed his team to fire Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who was confirmed on a bipartisan basis in 2024. Emily Liddel, an associate commissioner for the bureau, confirmed late Friday that Dr. McEntarfer had been fired and that William Wiatrowski, the deputy commissioner, would serve as acting commissioner. The president fired Dr. McEntarfer after the bureau released monthly jobs data showing surprisingly weak hiring in July and large downward revisions to job growth in the previous two months. Economists widely interpreted the report as evidence that Mr. Trump's policies were beginning to take a toll on the economy, though the president insisted in a subsequent post that the country was 'doing GREAT!' Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the labor secretary, echoed Mr. Trump's concerns about Dr. McEntarfer in a post on social media. 'So you know what I did?' Mr. Trump later told reporters, as he claimed the numbers were 'phony.' 'I fired her, and you know what? I did the right thing.' Dr. McEntarfer was appointed to her post by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2023 after a long career at the Census Bureau and other agencies, where she served under presidents of both parties, including Mr. Trump. Among the Republicans who voted to confirm her as commissioner was Vice President JD Vance, who was then an Ohio senator. The firing prompted swift criticism from economists, former government officials and others, who said the removal would further erode trust in government statistics and make it more difficult for policymakers, investors and businesses, who rely on having dependable data about the economy to make decisions. In addition to the monthly jobs numbers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is responsible for producing data on inflation, wages and other aspects of the economy. William W. Beach, who led the bureau during Mr. Trump's first term, criticized the move to fire Dr. McEntarfer on Friday. 'It's unfortunate,' he said. 'This could set a precedent where bad news on many different fronts is a reason for dismissing a person.' Mr. Beach, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2019 and remained in the role for the first two years of the Biden administration, said he had never felt pressure to manipulate the data under either president. Even if there were such pressure, he said, there is 'no way' the commissioner could interfere in the revisions process, which is conducted by career employees. Erica Groshen, who led the agency under President Barack Obama, called the decision 'a terrible precedent.' 'I hope will be reversed because it undermines the integrity of our statistical system and really all of government data and science,' she added, calling it 'a very sad day.' Dr. McEntarfer's tenure got off to a rough start last year when the agency made a series of missteps in which Wall Street firms had access to data before the general public. But none of those incidents involved issues with the statistics themselves. Mr. Trump and his top aides have made a habit of attacking government agencies, researchers and watchdogs when they have produced findings that the president does not like. That has led to concerns that Mr. Trump could seek to interfere with the operations of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other statistical agencies, particularly if the economy begins to take a turn for the worse. Until now, however, most experts on the statistical system said they remained confident in the data produced by the agencies and had seen no evidence of political interference in their operations. Current and former agency staff members consistently echoed that message — in part, they said, because they trusted Dr. McEntarfer and her counterparts at the other major statistical agencies to protect their independence. 'If that pressure got too great, you would see people resigning rather than shape the numbers,' Mr. Beach said. Economists across the ideological spectrum said Mr. Trump's move to oust Dr. McEntarfer was likely to erode public confidence in the data published by the administration. 'If you want people to stop trusting the numbers coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, firing the person who is confirmed by the Senate to make sure those numbers are trustworthy is a real good way to do it,' said Martha Gimbel, the executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale, who served in the White House under Mr. Biden. Dr. McEntarfer could not immediately be reached for comment. On Friday morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data showing that employers added only 73,000 new jobs in July. It also notably revised data for the previous two months, reducing the number of jobs created by 258,000. While revisions to previous months are common, it was an unusually high number that came as a surprise. It suggested the labor market was not as resilient as it had seemed earlier this summer. Shortly after the numbers were released, Stephen Miran, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, offered an explanation for the jobs revision that was much different from Mr. Trump's. On CNBC, he said much of the change was the result of 'quirks in the seasonal adjustment process' and even the president's own policies, particularly on immigration, potentially affecting hiring numbers for May and June. He made no mention of any concerns about manipulated data as he sought to recast the slowdown in July as a 'pretty decent' jobs report. By evening, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, sought to frame the firing as an attempt to restore 'trust' at the statistics agency. Unlike Mr. Trump, who described the revisions as politically motivated, Mr. Hassett said its jobs figures had been 'awful' for some time. 'I think it is a good time for a fresh set of eyes to look at what the heck is going on,' he told Fox Business. In his social media posts on Friday, Mr. Trump provided no evidence that Dr. McEntarfer had injected political bias into her agency's data. And his criticisms contained contradictions and inaccuracies. Mr. Trump complained about not just the latest jobs numbers but also a set of revisions from last year. The bureau, like other statistical agencies, routinely updates its figures to incorporate data that wasn't initially available or to reflect information from more authoritative sources. Last August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said employers had added roughly 818,000 fewer jobs over a 12-month period than previously believed. That announcement was part of a normal annual revision process, although the change was unusually large. (It was also preliminary — the final figures were revised down by just under 600,000 jobs.) In a social media post on Friday, Mr. Trump said the revision was made 'right after the election.' In fact, the announcement was made roughly two and a half months before Election Day. Indeed, Mr. Trump posted about the revisions at the time, calling them a 'MASSIVE SCANDAL.' To the agency's defenders, however, the twin revisions show that it operates without political bias and was willing to announce politically inconvenient news under presidents of both parties. 'President Trump is completely wrong in asserting there's been any sort of anti-Trump bias in the labor market data,' said Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 'I think that assertion is wholly unsupported.' Mr. Strain said that government data is revised frequently, and that doing so reflected a 'standard' practice to ensure its quality. In this case, he acknowledged that the change was 'historically large' but 'doesn't smell fishy.' Federal statistical agencies have faced mounting challenges in recent years as Americans have become more reluctant to respond to the surveys that are the basis for much of the nation's economic data. Shrinking budgets have made it harder to make up for falling response rates, and to develop new approaches to replace surveys altogether. Those concerns predate the current administration, but have grown worse since Mr. Trump returned to office. The statistical agencies have struggled with staff attrition as a result of the president's freeze on federal hiring, combined with the buyouts he offered early in his term. The president's budget also proposed further staff and funding cuts. In June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said it was reducing its collection of data on consumer prices in response to resource constraints. Economists warned that, over time, such cuts could erode the reliability of the inflation data that Federal Reserve policymakers rely on when setting interest rates, and that determine cost-of-living increases in union contracts and Social Security benefits, among other uses. Asked about those cuts on Wednesday, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, said policymakers were 'getting the data that we need to do our jobs.' But he stressed the importance of the federal statistical agencies. 'The government data is really the gold standard in data,' he said. 'We need it to be good and to be able to rely on it.' Sydney Ember contributed reporting.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Kyiv hit with Russian attack: What it felt like on the ground
Robert Sherman is a White House correspondent for NewsNation. He is reporting from Ukraine. Subscribe to his newsletter: Frontlines with Robert Sherman here. (NewsNation) — It almost looks normal. Maybe it's the bustling McDonald's our team got coffee at this morning. Maybe it's the young couple sharing an ice cream cone in Independence Square. Or the police officers stationed on the highway with their radar guns preparing to write tickets to speeders, as if that were the biggest concern in the world. It look little time for reality to sink in for our NewsNation crew. WATCH: Sleepless night in Kyiv Overnight, Ukraine's capital of Kyiv came under fire from a Russian attack. Sirens blared and intercoms urged people to take shelter as people hastily headed for lower ground. For some, that meant taking shelter in the subway station beneath the city for safety. That first missile impact, which rocked the capital, sent a pulsing wave through the whole city, rattling my hotel. It was several miles away, but the laws of physics (and for that matter the might of modern warfare) made it seem anything but. We stayed put in the center of Kyiv, which locals say is about as safe as it gets here. The sunrise couldn't come sooner. But when it did, new clarity came with the beating rays of this Eastern European Thursday morning. Our team made our way to one of the impact sites in Kyiv hours after the attacks subsided, and what we saw was a residential building blown to pieces. Half of the structure was collapsing in on itself as first responders worked hastily to pick through the rubble. Even before we spoke with the local officials leading the operation, we knew what was happening. The giveaway was the countless faces, concealed by cupped hands over mouths, staring incredulously at the site. The anxiety in their eyes, in too much shock to produce tears, could not unglue from the building. Hundreds were waiting for news. Did their loved ones survive? Could there be a harmless reason they were considered 'missing'? VIDEO: Back in Ukraine Moment by moment, as first responders called the surnames of family members, the painful truth became evident. They were gone. Buried beneath the rubble and lost in a single moment in time. The death toll from this one incident alone is still fluid as of this writing Thursday evening, but it's confirmed to be at least 16 including two children, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The president also says more than 150 are injured including 16 children and six police officers. It was impossible to know the nature of the drone and missile attack from our vantage point in the early morning hours. Even standing there at the scene, I couldn't possibly get the full scope of what transpired. But when I started to see the videos coming in of the Kyiv skyline and multiple plumes of fire erupting, everything started to come into focus. It was a large-scale attack that even locals called 'crazy.' Just days after President Trump announced he was upping the pressure on Russia to make strides toward peace, imposing a new deadline of 10 or 12 days from Monday which would be sometime in the territory of Aug. 7-9, Russia made it's next didn't sleep last night. And in our conversations with the people on the streets today, they don't anticipate that will be changing anytime soon. Our NewsNation coverage from Ukraine will continue through next week. I'll be filing some exclusive reports in the coming day that I hope will shed some insight on what this war looks like nearly three and a half years in. If you have a question or observation, please write to me at rsherman@ or through any of my social media channels such as Facebook, X, Instagram or TikTok. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of NewsNation. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Returning after a six-week break, the 'Real Time' host had a bit of catching up to do.
Following a six-week break, Bill Maher returned to Real Time with guns blazing as he tore into President Donald Trump's first six months in office. Dismissing frivolities like renaming the Gulf of Mexico and changing Coca-Cola's recipe, Maher said there are 'only so many f---s to give' when it comes to current events. Instead, he focused his ire on stories that matter in his current scorecard for Trump's administration during his 'New Rules' segment. 'Turning the Environmental Protection Agency into the Pollution Protection Agency, yes, that's going to matter,' Maher said. 'All the people who will lose healthcare and all the death that will be run up from the Big, Beautiful Bill, yes, that matters.'
