Latest news with #Truth Social
Bloomberg
4 days ago
- Politics
- Bloomberg
The Epstein Conspiracy Is Finally Giving MAGA and Democrats Common Ground
The monster that President Donald Trump helped to create is now turning on him, and, try as he might, he can't tame it. 'I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. It's pretty boring stuff. It's sordid, but it's boring,' Trump said Tuesday. 'And I don't understand why it keeps going, I think, well, really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going.' He kept it up on Wednesday, asserting on his Truth Social platform that the Democrats' 'new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax, and my PAST supporters have bought into this 'bullsh*t' hook, line, and sinker.'
ABC News
5 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
Donald Trump announces trade deal with Indonesia with a 19 per cent levy to be imposed
US President Donald Trump says he has struck a trade deal with Indonesia, the latest pact since unveiling his so-called "liberation day" tariff policy. News of the deal came as the European Union continued to push for its own agreement with the US, while also readying to retaliate if one could not be reached. "Great deal, for everybody, just made with Indonesia. I dealt directly with their highly respected President. DETAILS TO FOLLOW!!!" Mr Trump said in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. He later said the US would pay no tariffs to Indonesia as part of a trade deal while goods from the south-east Asian nation would face a 19 per cent levy. Indonesia's total trade with the US, which totalled just under $US40 billion ($61.4 billion) in 2024, does not rank in the top 15, but it has been growing. US exports to Indonesia rose 3.7 per cent last year, while imports from there were up 4.8 per cent, leaving the US with a goods trade deficit of nearly $US18 billion ($27.6) Last year, the top US import categories from Indonesia, according to US Census Bureau data retrieved on the International Trade Centre's TradeMap tool, were palm oil, electronics equipment including data routers and switches, footwear, car tires, natural rubber and frozen shrimp. Prior to Mr Trump's comments, Susiwijono Moegiarso, a senior official with Indonesia's Coordinating Ministry for Economic Affairs, told Reuters in a text message: "We are preparing a joint statement between US and Indonesia that will explain the size of reciprocal tariff for Indonesia including the tariff deal, non-tariff and commercial arrangements. We will inform [the public] soon." Mr Trump had threatened the South-East Asian country with a 32 per cent tariff rate effective August 1 in a letter sent to its president last week. The US president sent similar letters to roughly two dozen trading partners this month, including Canada, Japan and Brazil, setting blanket tariff rates ranging from 20 per cent up to 50 per cent, as well as a 50 per cent tariff on copper. The August 1 deadline gives the targeted countries time to negotiate agreements that could lower the threatened tariffs. Some investors and economists have also noted Mr Trump's pattern of backing off his tariff threats. So far, framework agreements have been reached with the United Kingdom and Vietnam, and an interim deal has been struck with China to forestall the steepest of Trump's tariffs while negotiations continue between Washington and Beijing. The breakthrough with Indonesia came as the European Commission, the EU's governing body, gets set to target 72 billion euros ($84.1 billion) worth of US goods, from Boeing aircraft and bourbon whiskey to cars, for possible tariffs if trade talks with Washington fail. Mr Trump is threatening a 30 per cent tariff on imports from the EU from August 1, a level European officials say is unacceptable and would end normal trade between two of the world's largest markets. The list, sent to EU member states and seen by Reuters on Tuesday, pre-dates Mr Trump's move over the weekend to ramp up pressure on the 27-nation bloc and responds instead to US duties on cars and car parts and a 10 per cent baseline tariff. The package also covers chemicals, medical devices, electrical and precision equipment as well as agriculture and food products including a range of fruits and vegetables, wine, beer and spirits, valued at 6.35 billion euros ($11.3b). Following a meeting of EU ministers in Brussels on Monday, officials said they were still seeking a deal to avoid Mr Trump's heavy tariff blow. But EU trade chief Maroš Šefčovič said those at the meeting expressed unprecedented resolve to protect EU businesses using European countermeasures if negotiations with Washington failed to produce a deal. NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte warned on Wednesday that countries such as Brazil, China and India could be hit very hard by secondary sanctions if they continued to do business with Russia. Mr Rutte made the comment while meeting with senators in the US Congress the day after President Donald Trump announced new weapons for Ukraine and threatened "biting" secondary tariffs of 100 per cent on the buyers of Russian exports unless there was a peace deal in 50 days. "My encouragement to these three countries, particularly is, if you live now in Beijing, or in Delhi, or you are the president of Brazil, you might want to take a look into this, because this might hit you very hard," Mr Rutte told reporters. "So please make the phone call to Vladimir Putin and tell him that he has to get serious about peace talks, because otherwise this will slam back on Brazil, on India and on China in a massive way," he added. Republican US senator Thom Tillis praised Trump for announcing the steps, but said the 50-day delay "worries" him. He said he was concerned that: "Putin would try to use the 50 days to win the war, or to be better positioned to negotiate a peace agreement after having murdered and potentially collected more ground as a basis for negotiation. "So we should look at the current state of Ukraine today and say, no matter what you do over the next 50 days, any of your gains are off the table," he added. Mr Rutte said Europe would find the money to ensure Ukraine was in the best possible position in peace talks. Reuters/ABC
The Verge
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Verge
The MAGA backlash over Epstein isn't dying down
On July 12th, the political world experienced an unprecedented phenomenon: President Donald Trump got ratioed on his own social media platform, and it was on a post about Jeffrey Epstein — someone who, according to Trump, 'nobody cares about.' Clearly, his followers on Truth Social disagreed. As of today, this post has 43.2k likes, 13.7k ReTruths, and 48K comments, nearly all of which express fury about the information — or lack thereof — that the Trump administration has provided about the well-connected billionaire, who died in prison shortly after being arrested for alleged sex trafficking of minors. Last week, after months of promises to release more information about the Epstein investigation, the Department of Justice and FBI released a joint memo, stating that there was no list of high-powered 'clients' who joined Epstein in his activities, no evidence that Epstein blackmailed anybody, and that Epstein did actually die by suicide. Even though Trump's Truth Social post was trying to address the attacks on Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was partly responsible for publishing the Epstein memo (and, according to conspiracy theorists, the reason why the supposed client list isn't being made public), his followers didn't care. 'We want the ELITE PEDOS exposed! You promised us that,' one user responded, in a post with 19.6K likes. 'Pam promised us that. Kash [Patel, FBI Director] promised us that. Now it's OUR fault bc we want that promise fulfilled and call Pam out every time she lies? What else has she lied to us about?' The like-to-comment ratio shows how thoroughly the Epstein files have jeopardized the MAGA base's relationship with Trump. Over the past several months, the administration has had mixed success in keeping the populist base in its corner, due to things like Trump's tariffs and the 'big, beautiful bill,' to the point that the possibility of a 'MAGA civil war' keeps emerging in the news cycle. Most times, those brewing fights get extinguished before they go further. But the backlash to the Epstein files is unusually fierce and may not be extinguished as easily, if at all. The source of the conflagration: the world of MAGA influencers, whose audiences implicitly trust them to carry out the 'America First' agenda. Their status and functions vary wildly: media moguls like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, and Steve Bannon; solo talents like Laura Loomer, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes; political organizers like Charlie Kirk; content creators like Cattturd; and hundreds of others who've established lucrative careers by attacking the globalist elite online. They're normally pro-Trump, and many of them now have access to the White House. Some of them even brag about having Trump's cell phone number. But now they won't stop talking about how angry they are about the flimsiness of the Epstein files, which means their followers won't let go of it either. 'The real question is not 'was Jeffrey Epstein a weirdo who was abusing girls?' The real question is why was he doing this, on whose behalf, and where did the money come from,' Carlson said during a keynote speech at a Turning Point USA summit on July 11th. He then insinuated that Epstein was running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government — possibly Israel, though he caveated with 'there's nothing antisemitic about saying that' and that 'every single person in Washington, DC,' suspected that Epstein was a Mossad asset. Bannon agreed with him at the same conference, while Loomer, who once got three members of the National Security Council fired, called for Bondi to be fired, accusing her of 'harming Trump's administration [and] embarrassing all of his staff and advisors.' Even the influencers that wield direct government power are starting to revolt. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene demanded that the administration reveal the truth about Epstein 'and the rich powerful elites in his circle.' And last week, several mainstream outlets reported that Dan Bongino, a right-wing podcaster who was appointed to serve as deputy director of the FBI, had threatened to resign unless Bondi was fired. According to Axios, Bongino was so upset about the rollout of the Epstein evidence — including a video taken of Epstein's cell phone on the day of his death, which had a full minute missing from it, fueling even more conspiracy theories — that he screamed at her in front of Trump and his senior advisors, and then took a day off from work. Trump's 10-year relationship with the MAGA base has been an endless cycle of breaking and making up: Trump does something that infuriates the base, they revolt, Trump smooths things over, and the base goes back to loving the president. In every case, he's always assisted by a network of online MAGA influencers who are effectively his proxies — enforcing message discipline when interacting with their audiences, amplifying his talking points, defending him from his haters, and making sure the base sticks with him no matter what. But the strength of an influencer, especially a MAGA influencer, is that they don't have to rely on elite-controlled media — cable and broadcast news, print journalism, etc. — to build their massive followings. In fact, they could use their internet platforms to hold those powerful elites accountable, touting themselves as 'independent' content creators, which works exceedingly well when they can present themselves as outsiders deliberately shut out of the system and therefore need subscribers to pay a monthly fee to support their mission. Unfortunately, they now have unprecedented access to the president, which makes them insiders with power — and their followers sure would love for them to use it to get to the bottom of things. It doesn't help that there's no 'deep state' to hide behind this time, and it may be the reason why QAnon — another powerful conspiracy theory that involved pedophile elites in Washington — hasn't revived itself. Trump could easily attack the career agents at the FBI and DOJ for investigating him during his first term, but upon his reelection, he purged those agencies and immediately chose MAGA influencer loyalists to run them. (Prior to becoming FBI director, Patel had a podcast, wrote a children's book about 'King Donald,' and opened his own merch store.) The Epstein files have scrambled MAGA influencers, who now have to decide what is more important to them: access and loyalty to Trump or maintaining their brand It's no wonder why the Epstein files have scrambled MAGA influencers, who now have to decide what is more important to them: access and loyalty to Trump or maintaining their brand. If they want to stay loyal to their followers and their brand reputation, they should be trying to get to the truth of Epstein's death. But if they were trying to do that — or at least, convincing their insatiable audience that they were working on it — it would jeopardize their relationship with the Trump administration, or worse, Trump himself. The cullings are already underway, if Alex Jones is to be believed. On July 13th, he alleged that Trumpworld surrogates had started reaching out to 'talk show hosts and journalists and influencers,' threatening to cut off their access if they kept going on about Epstein. 'You'll never be invited to a Trump event again. You'll never be invited to the White House. You'll never be any other stuff. You're not getting any conservative sponsorship, no campaign contribution, ads running next cycle if you do this. That's been going on,' Jones claimed. 'That, A, is not very moral, that's how the Democrats try to censor and control, and then B, it's gonna create a mega-Streisand effect, as I said seven, eight days ago. And that is exactly what all of this has done.' A few of the influencers, however, are circling the wagons again. 'Honestly, I'm done talking about Epstein for the time being. I'm going to trust my friends in the administration. I'm going to trust my friends in the government to do what needs to be done,' Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said on his podcast yesterday, reiterating that he would support whatever the Trump administration concluded on the matter. Kirk, a key player in Trump's political machine, also distanced himself from Carlson's Epstein conspiracies, which were made at his youth group's conference. 'I think that there was plenty of, let's say, speeches that were directed towards this topic this last weekend. So we don't need to spend our valuable time on this program relitigating it,' Kirk said. Around that time, other influencers began attempting to deflect the Epstein flack Around that time, other influencers began attempting to deflect the Epstein flack: promising that the government was about to start a real investigation soon (Benny Johnson), attacking Carlson as 'not trustworthy' and 'obsessed [with] making everything about Jews' (Loomer), suggesting that maybe 'demons' were at work and not the government (Mike Cernovich), or hyping up a new discovery about Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA (Rep. Anna Paulina Luna). But a growing faction of influencers are going the other way with Carlson, Greene, and Jones: Candace Owens, who's attacking the former Israeli prime minster about the Mossad; Matt Walsh, who wants the 'evildoers [to] be dragged in front of us, weeping and begging for mercy'; white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who accused TPUSA world of 'appeasing' a base that wanted 'authentic opposition to organized Jewish influence'; and Tim Pool, who pointed out the strange new messaging coming out of the White House influencer pool, 'After speaking with my friends in government and also private island equity holdings I have decided that no one cares about Epstein anyway. I mean, like who? Lol who's Epstein amirite?'
Bloomberg
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Trump's Warning Shot to Trade Partners
Donald Trump's latest threat to impose a 50% levy on Brazil over its domestic political affairs shows the rest of the world that nothing is off limits. The US president linked the hike to the trial of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — a right-wing populist — over an alleged coup attempt in 2022, in a letter posted on his Truth Social account yesterday. It was the most extreme case yet of Trump weaponizing trade policy to make unrelated demands. Brazil even sells fewer goods to the US than it buys.
