Latest news with #POTUS
Time of India
25 minutes ago
- Politics
- Time of India
That's a steal!
Credit is laughably easy to filch in a post-truth world In the interest of world peace, it would be prudent to nod politely, smile blandly and let POTUS take the credit for preventing a nuclear holocaust in the nick of time, halting a thousand-year conflict or whatever else he may wish to claim. Such an accommodative attitude is smart management. Let's face it, in the praise-starved world we live in, almost everyone covets credit, preferably deservedly but all kinds are welcome. There are some who decide to wait their turn, hoping that when the bouquets do come, they are doubled because the intended recipient has been patient and gracious. But Trump has no time for such fripperies. He knows from long experience that good guys finish last, and the meek are not even in the running. Credit is laughably easy to filch in our post-truth world. You just need to look authoritative, and act busy, for virtually any accomplishment in the vicinity to be ascribed to you. That's why this battle between those who do all the work and those who take the credit has been raging in many quarters. It sows dissension at the workplace as it divides offices and factories into hierarchical camps, pitting the junior staff (who do the work) against bosses who inscribe their initials at the bottom of the sheet, and walk away with the credit. The 'creative' professions are even more vulnerable. Authors and artists go through sleepless nights, fearing their carefully wrought masterpiece will appear in someone else's name. As for science, history is awash with experts kicking themselves for being lax when they ought to have rushed to the patent office and got their submissions in order. Most of the major discoveries and inventions of science are actually of uncertain parentage. Graham Bell's phone, Edison's light bulb, Fleming's Penicillin and even Einstein's Theory of Relativity have enough drama behind the scenes to become the subject of whodunits. The names with which we commonly associate landmark achievements belong to those who did a fastest-finger-first and staked their claim early. Perhaps, that's all POTUS attempted to do. In light of this, does it matter if he adds a truce in Asia to his other long list of 'accomplishments', including rebuilding an economy wrecked by Biden, winning for US the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and bringing about peace in Gaza? History has seen worse. Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Donald Trump reveals when and how he would consider pardoning Sean ‘Diddy' Combs
Donald Trump, speaking to reporters Friday afternoon, said he'd be open to considering a presidential pardon for Sean 'Diddy' Combs, but there's some catch. The POTUS didn't confirm any action is currently in motion but said, 'I would certainly look at the facts. If I think somebody was mistreated,' when asked whether he'd consider a pardon for Diddy. 'It's not a popularity contest,' Trump added. 'Whether they like me or don't like me, it wouldn't have any impact on me.' Notably, this comes when Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Trump about his previous ties to Diddy and whether that history might influence a potential pardon. 'I know people are thinking about it. I know that they're thinking about it. I think people have been very close to asking,' Trump noted. ALSO READ| When Diddy met Britney: Resurfaced pics show the pair partying before Spears' shocking MTV VMAs 2007 performance 'First of all, I'd look at what's happening, and I haven't been watching it too closely, although it's certainly getting a lot of coverage,' Trump responded to Doocy's pressing questions. The disgraced music mogul is currently facing serious federal charges outlined in an indictment unsealed on 17 September. The list includes racketeering conspiracy under the RICO statute, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and transporting individuals for prostitution. If convicted, Combs could be sentenced to at least 15 years in prison, with the possibility of life behind bars. Combs has denied all the charges as the ongoing trial has included disturbing allegations from multiple witnesses involving rape, physical abuse, forced labor, and drug trafficking. The Prez clarified in front of the reporters, 'I haven't seen him. I haven't spoken to him in years.' He then recalled when Diddy 'used to really like me a lot,' but when 'I think when I ran for politics … that relationship busted up.' Trump even recalled reading 'some little bit nasty statements in the paper all of a sudden.' ALSO READ| Second woman tells jury Sean 'Diddy' Combs raped her 'You become a much different person when you run for politics, and you do what's right,' Trump explained. 'I could do other things, and I'm sure he'd like me, and I'm sure other people would like me, but it wouldn't be as good for our country.'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Diddy Pardon: Donald Trump 'Certainly' Would Consider Clemency For Sean Combs As Old Pal Faces Sex-Trafficking Trial & Life Behind Bars
Sean 'Diddy' Combs is facing life behind bars if found guilty in his sex-trafficking trial, but old pal Donald Trump today hinted he could prove the 'All About the Benjamins' performer's pardoning guardian angel – maybe. 'I would certainly look at the facts if I think somebody was mistreated, whether they like me or don't like me,' Trump said in the Oval Office when asked if he would pardon the currently under trial Diddy. 'It wouldn't have any impact on me,' Trump added, teasing the situation out as he loves to do. More from Deadline Artificial Intelligence Influencers To Get D.C.'s Acclaim At The AI Honors Ceremony "I Didn't Want To Die Or Get Hurt" Sean "Diddy" Combs' Ex-Aide Says Of Not Telling Anyone About Rapes By Bad Boy Records Founder Donald Trump Urges Judge Not To Dismiss CBS '60 Minutes' Lawsuit As Paramount And POTUS Teams Talk Settlement Listening to his defense lawyer Brian Steel cross-exam his former personal assistant 'Mia,' Combs was in court in New York City today as he has been at almost every hearing since being arrested last fall and since this criminal trial started on May 12. Facing off against the tumultuous but powerful U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, the much-accused Combs is up against on racketeering, sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution and more, charges. Just a few feet away from Combs himself and the jury of eight men and four women, 'Mia' told the lower Manhattan courtroom that she was raped multiple times by the Bad Boy Records founder. That testimony is very similar to that of previous witness and ex-Combs girlfriend Cassie Ventura, who spoke at grueling length on the violence and filmed sex marathon 'freak-offs' she says she was forced to participate in over the couple's decade long relationship. Like other witness in the trial, 'Mia' also spoke of watching Combs beat, abuse and manipulate Ventura, as he did to many of the people in his orbit. Insisting that 'no one has asked' for a pardon for Combs yet, Trump went on to say 'I know people are thinking about it.' With a nod to the increasing rumors of outreach from Combs' crew to Trump's team, the former Apprentice host added: 'I know they're thinking about it. I think people have been very close to asking.' Always one to reward friends, armed supporters and donors, Trump recently gave pardons to Todd and Julie Chrisley, the reality show stars who were sentenced in 2022 after fraud and tax evasion convictions. 'I'd look at what's happening, and I haven't been watching it too closely, although it's certainly getting a lot of coverage,' Trump stated Friday at the White House of the intensively profiled Diddy trial. 'I haven't seen him. I haven't seen him. I haven't spoken to him in years. He used to really like me a lot, but I think when I ran for politics, sort of that relationship busted up.' Other than the Combs question, facing a just published New York Times expose of Elon Musk's ketamine and other drug use, Trump's Oval Office farewell to his top donor and Department of Government Efficiency chief became another freewheeling exercise in deflection and softballs. To put that exercise in perspective, when querried about the Gray Lady's story that last year on the campaign trail stumping for Trump, the world's richest man had been 'using drugs far more intensely than previously known,' Musk flipped the question to an attack on the NYT. Mocking the paper over its investigative coverage of Vladimir Putin and Russia's interference in the 2016 Presidential election and more and a recent court ruling over their Pulitzer Prize on the topic. Musk quipped: 'That New York Times? Let's move on.' And the press corp did, with no one asking a follow up question. With questions about martial advice for French President Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden's mental state from a carefully curated press pool, the softballs represented a clear example the squeeze the media has gotten from this White House and the injection of MAGA supporting outlets. The few serious questions about tariffs, banning foreign students in Ivy League universities, the war in Ukraine, and a Middle East ceasefire got short shrift from Trump and Musk and more partisan rhetoric. Covered live by all the cable news networks and streamed on multiple feeds on multiple platforms, Trump and Musk's mutual admiration club saw POTUS seated at the Resolute desk reading in great part from a binder in front of him while the SpaceX boss loomed over Trump in his traditional all-black uniform with 'Dogefather' t-shirt and a MAGA ballcap uniform. Starting a bit later than its scheduled 1:30 p.m. ET time, the bulk of the presser was more a meandering Trump monologue of half-truths, outright lies and falsehoods, the 'rigged' 2020 election, Biden autopen and the usual greatest hits, with some Oval Office redecoration praise tossed in from a fast and loose with the facts Musk. About to hit the deadline on his time as an official advisor to Trump, Musk announced earlier this week he would leave his controversial role in the administration to refocus on his stock market and sales huritng businesses. Under regulations around financial disclosure and more, an individual like Musk can only serve as special government employees a period not exceeding 130 days per year. Perceived to be crossing the line ethically with benefits to his companies from his administration position and close proximity to Trump, Musk's chainsaw approach became the opposite of an exercise in cost saving and a clown show in execution. Promising to save the taxpayers up to $2 trillion dollars, Musk and his DOGE crew claimed in the end to bring in around $175 billion. More than a few analysts actually pegged the number at closer to $16 billion. Not chump change on any level, but a number dwarfed by the estimated expenditures of Trump and Project 2025 to add up to $5 trillion to the already ballooning federal deficit Even today, Musk swore that DOGE would cut and save $1 trillion from the federal government. Combs' trial is expected to last another four weeks. Working on a 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. ET daily schedule, with wiggle room to go an hour longer here and there if required, Judge Arun Subramanian has promised the jury they will be done by July 4 – exactly when a round of Independence Day pardons could be coming from Trump. Best of Deadline 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More Everything We Know About Netflix's 'The Thursday Murder Club' So Far 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery
Time Magazine
5 days ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
From MAHA to TACO—A Guide to the Acronyms of Trump's Second Term
You may be familiar with POTUS (President of the United States), MAGA (Make America Great Again), and GOP (Grand Old Party), but there's a new acronym that President Donald Trump isn't a fan of. Short for 'Trump Always Chickens Out,' Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined the phrase shortened as 'TACO' to describe the President's pattern of making major disruptive policy moves, such as levying hefty tariffs on effectively every country in the world, before reversing course after the moves cause panic and economic shock. The shorthand, which has been picked up by others, has clearly ruffled Trump's feathers. 'Don't ever say what you said, that's a nasty question,' Trump shot back when a reporter asked him about 'TACO' on Wednesday. 'To me that's the nastiest question.' 'You call that chickening out?' Trump said. 'It's called negotiation,' adding that he 'usually [has] the opposite problem—they say, 'you're too tough!'' Trump's apparent sensitivity will likely only ensure the acronym's longevity among critics. 'I want to be famous for my dumb joke, definitely, but I also don't want the President to ruin the U.S. economy," Armstrong told Axios. 'And so I'd like to have both of those things, if at all possible.' But TACO isn't the only acronym to take off in Trump's second term. Here's a guide to some of the others to know. DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) 'DEI is DOA,' Trump's son Don Jr. posted on X in March, referencing the medical acronym for 'dead on arrival.' It's a common refrain among Republicans and supporters of the President's push to dismantle diversity-related policies across the federal government and private sector. Whereas Trump's first-term Administration focused most of its attacks on 'CRT' (Critical Race Theory), his 2024 campaign and current Administration have made 'DEI' a main target and scapegoat. DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) What started in the 2010s as a nickname for an internet-viral shiba inu and morphed into a ' meme coin ' became an official initialism in November when then-President-elect Trump announced the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory body spearheaded by tech billionaire Elon Musk. The initiative, aimed at slashing federal spending, has overseen mass layoffs and sweeping cuts to government programs in the early months of Trump's second term. Musk, who announced on Wednesday that he is exiting the Trump Administration, has long hyped up the Doge meme, including naming a SpaceX satellite ' DOGE-1,' and boosted the cryptocurrency, including when he changed the then-Twitter logo to the dog-image meme. FAFO (F-ck Around, Find Out) Amid a dispute over deportations with Colombia's President Gustavo Petro in January, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform an AI-generated image of himself wearing a fedora with the letters FAFO in red on a sign next to him. 'This is awesome,' Musk said, resharing the image on X. Trump had previously reshared a post by right-wing internet troll that said '5 days until FAFO' alongside an image of Trump, on Jan. 15, five days before Trump's second-term inauguration. The acronym, which stands for 'f-ck around, find out,' has been adopted 'as a slogan' by far-right groups, according to Merriam Webster, but is also widely used across the ideological spectrum 'as an expression of schadenfreude' about someone receiving negative consequences for their actions. The Times of London dubbed it ' Fafo diplomacy ' when Trump pressured Colombia to quickly reverse its opposition to accepting deportation flights after Trump threatened to hike tariffs on the nation's exports. MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) MAHA is a spin on Trump's tried-and-tested slogan 'Make America Great Again'—only with a focus on health. It took off in 2024 after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. —known for his fringe and sometimes disinformation-based views on health including vaccine skepticism —suspended his presidential campaign and threw his support behind Donald Trump. Trump nominated Kennedy to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Kennedy has since continued to use the slogan for government initiatives. TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) 'Are you or your loved ones suffering from illnesses such as TDS, also known as Trump Derangement Syndrome?' begins a satirical ad released by Kennedy's former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, in late August, days after Kennedy suspended his presidential bid and endorsed Trump. (Trump even promoted the video on his Truth Social platform.) 'It's a horrible, horrible terminal disease. It destroys the mind before the body, but the body eventually goes,' Trump said of TDS at a Moms for Liberty event in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 30, 2024. While the phrase originated during Trump's first presidential campaign in 2016, TDS has become an increasingly popular diagnosis Trump and his supporters like to give his critics. Five Republican state senators in Minnesota introduced a bill in March to codify TDS and categorize 'verbal expressions of intense hostility toward' Trump as a mental illness. The bill defines TDS as 'the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies' of Trump. It also lists symptoms as 'Trump-induced general hysteria, which produces an inability to distinguish between legitimate policy differences and signs of psychic pathology in President Donald J. Trump's behavior.' 'This is possibly the worst bill in Minnesota history,' Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy, a Democrat, said. 'If it is meant as a joke, it is a waste of staff time and taxpayer resources that trivializes serious mental health issues. If the authors are serious, it is an affront to free speech and an expression of a dangerous level of loyalty to an authoritarian president.' Rep. Warren Davidson, a Republican from Ohio, on May 15 also introduced a bill in Congress to direct the National Institutes of Health to study TDS. 'Instead of funding ludicrous studies such as giving methamphetamine to cats or teaching monkeys to gamble for their drinking water,' he said, 'the NIH should use that funding to research issues that are relevant to the real world.'
Mint
5 days ago
- Politics
- Mint
Trump vs judiciary: 12 times US court blocked President's order
A US trade court blocked President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" import tariffs from going into effect. The court ruled that the president overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board duties on imports from nations that sell more to the United States than they buy. The Trump administration said it would appeal the ruling. This is not the first time that the Trump administration and the judiciary have been at the loggerheads. There have been several occasions in the past when US judges objected to or put a halt to policies launched by Trump since he took office on January 20, 2025. Here are a few instances when this happened: Earlier in March this year, US President Donald Trump's administration decided to revoke the temporary legal status of 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in the United States. The move, effective April 24, sought to cut short a two-year "parole" granted to the migrants under former President Joe Biden that allowed them to enter the country by air if they had US sponsors. Later in April, District Judge Indira Talwani announced that she will block the POTUS from revoking the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans in the US. On May 29, the judge ordered the Trump administration to resume processing applications from migrants seeking work permits or more lasting immigration status who are living in the country temporarily under "parole" programs. A US judge had on May 24 temporarily blocked the Trump administration from revoking Harvard University's ability to enrol foreign students. The order provided temporary relief to thousands of international students who were faced with being forced to transfer. Earlier this month, US District Judge Susan Illston extended a temporary block on a bid by President Donald Trump's administration to lay off hundreds of thousands of federal employees, saying he needed permission from Congress before restructuring the US government. Mass layoffs is a key piece of Trump's plans to downsize or eliminate many federal agencies, pending the outcome of a lawsuit by unions, nonprofits and municipalities. On May 9, US District Judge Susan Illston blocked about 20 agencies from making mass layoffs for two weeks and ordered the reinstatement of workers who had already lost their jobs. US District Judge Myong Joun had also blocked Trump's administration from carrying out his executive order to dismantle the US Department of Education and ordered it to reinstate employees terminated in a mass layoff. The Trump administration was also blocked from firing workers and taking other steps to shut down federal agencies that fund museums and libraries, mediate labor disputes and support minority-owned businesses. In April, US District Judge William Orrick blocked Donald Trump's administration from withholding federal funding from more than a dozen so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the Republican president's hardline immigration crackdown. US District Judge Mary McElroy blocked President Donald Trump's administration from freezing billions of dollars in grants Congress authorised under climate investment and infrastructure laws of his Democratic predecessor, former President Joe Biden. Judge McElroy in Providence, Rhode Island, had then issued an injunction at the behest of environmental groups who argued the Trump administration was unlawfully freezing already-awarded funding for projects to combat climate change, reduce pollution and modernize US infrastructure. US District Judge Mary S. McElroy had in April temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's administration from cutting more than $11 billion in public health grants allocated to US states during the COVID-19 pandemic. The grant funding was used by states to track, prevent and control infectious diseases, including measles and bird flu, as well as track mental health services and fund addiction treatment. On March 15, Judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order blocking deportations under Trump's executive orders. However, the administration proceeded with deportations to El Salvador, escalating tensions. Later, US District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston issued a nationwide temporary restraining order designed to protect migrants subject to final orders of removal from being swiftly deported to countries other than those that had already been identified during immigration proceedings. US District Judge Richard Leon in Washington struck down an executive order targeting law firm WilmerHale. The judge said Trump's order retaliated against the firm in violation of US constitutional protections for free speech and due process. A US judge ordered that Indian researcher Badar Khan Suri not be removed from the country, following his arrest and threat of expulsion for alleged Hamas ties. The detention of Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University in the US capital, came as fears mount in the academic world that freedom of research and speech is being challenged two months into US President Donald Trump's new term. On March 20, a federal judge blocked Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Social Security records as part of its hunt under President Donald Trump for fraud and waste, calling the effort a "fishing expedition." A federal judge temporarily blocked the US military from enforcing President Donald Trump's executive order barring transgender people from military service while a lawsuit by 20 current and would-be service members challenging the measure goes forward. US District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington found Trump's January 27 order, one of several issued by the Republican president targeting legal rights for transgender Americans, likely violated the US Constitution's prohibition on sex discrimination. Later on May 6, a divided US Supreme Court allowed Trump's ban on transgender individuals serving in the military to take effect, putting thousands of active-duty troops at risk of removal. eed.
