As Donald Trump weighs a potentially imminent escalation of his war on Iran, five sources in and close to his administration tell Zeteo that the president continues to tell senior U.S. officials and other confidants how interested he is in plans for sending American troops into Iran to capture and remove stockpiles of highly enriched uranium.

Seemingly everybody in the federal government thinks such a mission would be a bloodbath.

The president seems to have cooled somewhat on plans his administration drew up for invading other parts of Iran, such as Kharg Island, but knowledgeable sources maintain that he is still intrigued by the idea of sending U.S. troops and special forces to invade Iran for the purpose of seizing the nuclear material.

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President Trump has publicly acknowledged as much, stressing, “I’d just feel better if I got it.” It does not appear that Trump has made a final decision on this yet, even as his administration lays the groundwork for ramping the war on Iran back up.

Sources who’ve discussed this idea with the president say that earlier this year, he used to insist that a uranium-extraction operation would be “easy” for elite U.S. special forces units – or, at least easier than critics and naysayers are making it out to be.

When Trump has spoken about it behind closed doors, it’s often sounded like “he’s talking about a scene in a movie,” one Trump administration official says.

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The Iran war ceasefire, which was never actually a ceasefire, appears to be rapidly coming to an end.

Two senior Trump administration officials and two other sources briefed on the situation tell Zeteo that Donald Trump has grown increasingly frustrated by the state of peace talks with Iran, and the president has ordered an acceleration of the Pentagon’s preparation for a new phase of his war in the Middle East.

U.S. officials who spoke to Zeteo say the Trump administration is ready to ramp up the war again within the coming days, after the U.S. president returns from his state visit in China, should Trump give the order to strike.

“Trump’s war fever is back,” one of the senior administration officials said this week.

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Sources add that military options Trump has voiced a preference for include a potential massive new bombing campaign against the Iranians. The president is still keenly interested in sending in ground troops and special forces, including to find and remove highly enriched uranium stockpiles, but some senior Trump appointees expect him to hold off on that kind of high-risk operation, at least for the moment.

As with all things related to the decision-making of the notably mercurial and impetuous President Trump, things could conceivably change in negotiations, and his decision to re-escalate the war in Iran is final when he says it is. However, knowledgeable sources who have previously and correctly warned Zeteo of Trump’s policies and actions to come were in near-uniform agreement: Get ready for more war – and soon.

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The fact that Fontes – a Latino man and one of his state’s most prominent and visible elected officials – even contemplated that is a sign of how far we’ve fallen in such a short period of time during the second Donald Trump presidency. And as Team Trump mounts its all-out, nationwide onslaught against free and fair elections, the crucial battleground state of Arizona quickly became one of the president’s central targets for attempted election rigging.

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Fontes joined Zeteo’s senior political correspondent, Asawin Suebsaeng, for a Town Hall discussion with Zeteo subscribers, during which Arizona’s top election official discussed his state’s ongoing efforts to fight back against MAGA election meddling, the American “revolutionary spirit” that gives him hope in Trumpian times, and why he thinks it is “our duty” to call President Trump and Republicans’ anti-democratic policies “fascist.”

The full conversation above is free to watch for Zeteo paid subscribers, who also get access to our regular town halls. Free subscibers get a 5-minute preview. If you want to participate in our next town hall and ask your own questions, consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

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Join Swin at 4pm ET (1pm PT) on Wednesday for a live Q&A with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes. Arizona finds itself at the center of Donald Trump’s war on our free elections – there will be a lot to discuss. Paid subscribers can find more information below; free subscribers can upgrade now to watch the discussion.

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Donald Trump is positively furious about leaks from within his administration about his failing, illegal war in Iran – and he wants a clampdown so bad he’s urging his officials to conduct more raids on journalists’ homes and other severe measures, sources tell Zeteo.

According to those who’ve talked to the president about this recently, it is difficult to overstate how much these leaks are setting him off.

“It’s all made him even more paranoid,” says one longtime adviser to the U.S. president. “He has asked some Cabinet members who they think leaked the information… To those members of his Cabinet, I’d say what I’ve been saying for a month: If you want to find the [Iran-war] leakers, you may want to just look in the mirror.”

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Last month, Zeteo reported on how President Trump had ordered a massive leak hunt, including at the upper echelons of his government and inner sanctum, to try to figure out who’s been blabbing to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, and other journalists in legacy media.

The president was incensed by disclosures to the press on how a wide array of his Cabinet appointees and other senior U.S. officials were squeamish or skeptical about launching a war on Iran, during the run-up to the Middle East conflict.

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The largest individual donor to Republican Senator Susan Collins’s super PAC leads a firm that’s raked in tens of millions of dollars in fees from Maine’s retirement system.

As his firm profits off Maine’s public workers, private equity billionaire Stephen Schwarzman has, in turn, plowed millions into efforts to re-elect Collins and keep the Senate under Republican control.

Last year, Schwarzman donated $2 million to Pine Tree Results, the primary super PAC backing Collins’s reelection campaign. He’s also given $5 million this election cycle to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with GOP Senate leaders that’s planning to spend $42 million to boost Collins in Maine.

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Schwarzman is the CEO of the Blackstone Group, which managed roughly $480 million for Maine’s retirement system last year, state records show.

Over the past 15 years, Blackstone has scored roughly $49 million in fees and expenses off the state of Maine’s investments, according to an estimate by Zeteo. This is an exceedingly conservative estimate, as it does not include the fees that alternative-investment firms like Blackstone typically charge on funds’ profits.

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Depressed enough by the Republican election sweep, Democrats in November 2024 sank even deeper when they considered the shape of Donald Trump’s victory.

In 24 of the 31 states he carried, Trump routed Kamala Harris by double-digit margins. Since polarization increasingly aligns election outcomes up and down the ballot, that sent an ominous signal about Democrats’ future competitiveness for other offices too. Their path toward recapturing the Senate ran most steeply uphill of all.

Six months before Election Day 2026, that path doesn’t look so steep anymore.

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Trump’s steadily eroding public standing – 35% approval in the latest CNN polling average – has Democrats confident of regaining a majority in the House. Each of the last five presidents have suffered that blow in midterm contests.

But regaining the Senate – the chokepoint for a president’s Cabinet and judicial appointments – matters more. Democrats need to carry at least two states that candidate Trump won by at least 11 percentage points.

And the collision of Trump’s second presidency with reality has dramatically boosted the odds that they can. The old 2026 shorthand: ‘bad map.’ The new, hopeful one, from Democratic pollster Geoff Garin: “The map is really enlarged.”

Take a stroll across it.

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It’s been four months since Geraldo Lunas Campos was killed while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at the notorious detention camp at Fort Bliss, a US military base in El Paso, Texas.

After the Cuban immigrant’s death, the Trump administration quickly started covering it up, claiming that Lunas Campos died during a suicide attempt as staffers rushed to save his life. But in late January, the El Paso County medical examiner’s office ruled his death a homicide caused by asphyxia – and witnesses at the camp began relaying their accounts of a handcuffed man repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe” in Spanish, while being held down by multiple guards.

Today, Zeteo is publishing the account of one of those witnesses, a young man who is still being detained by the Donald Trump-era ICE. Via his attorney, he has given us permission to share his story and other details of his life. Due to safety and privacy concerns, Zeteo has agreed to refer to this detainee using a pseudonym: “Texas.”

The following is based on a transcript of a conversation he had in recent months with his immigration lawyer.

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In the document, Texas describes hearing the sounds of Lunas Campos apparently getting choked to death after being denied his medication; Texas also recounts a threat an officer made against him, if he or other detainees continued to talk about what happened that day. Texas is an immigrant from Guatemala who had been living and working in the Cincinnati metropolitan area. His lawyer Carolyn Marks, who is based in Ohio, has represented him since he was a minor. He has been in ICE custody for months, following a stint in a Kentucky jail after he was arrested for driving under the influence last year; there were no injuries or damage, per Marks.

“There was a homicide where the officers killed a Cuban man. It was on the news, too,” Texas tells his lawyer, per the transcript. (It is unclear whether it was ICE staff or private contractors who held down Lunas Campos.) “I was there and I was trying to look through the window to see what was happening. The Cuban man was only asking for [his] medication; he said he wanted… medication they weren’t giving him. He was insisting on the medication, and they told him if he didn’t shut up they were going to tie him up. He said, ‘I don’t care if you tie me up, you have to give me my medication.’”

According to Texas, there were roughly 10 detainees, including himself, in “the punishment room,” and they were listening through the wall to “everything that was happening” during the moment of the killing. This witness recalls that Lunas Campos “didn’t calm down,” and continued asking, again and again, for the medication.

When Lunas Campos refused to stop asking for it, “the officers entered, grabbed him,” Texas says, “and the last thing we could hear him say was: ‘They are choking me, they are choking me.’”

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With over a month left in the Democratic primary, Graham Platner is now the party’s presumptive nominee for US Senate in Maine, in the pivotal fight against fake moderate Susan Collins, the five-term Republican incumbent.

Janet Mills suspended her campaign on Thursday, reluctantly ceding the primary to Platner without endorsing him. An anti-war, anti-Israel oysterman and Marine combat veteran, Platner was a complete unknown when he launched his bid. He faced his share of scandals and negative news coverage while building a massive lead in the polls – and ultimately cruising to the nomination.

That Platner came out of nowhere to take control of the race is an embarrassment for Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who recruited Mills, the two-term incumbent governor, into the race.

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Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, put out a humbling statement on Thursday indicating they will support Platner moving forward. “After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her,” they wrote.

Zeteo broke the news of Platner’s launch in August, and we’ve followed his campaign on the ground in Maine. Platner, who was backed early on by Bernie Sanders, appears to be building a grassroots machine, with the candidate declaring in recent weeks that his campaign has 15,000 volunteers. He has packed town hall after town hall around the state, sharing his views with voters and his anger at the political system, presenting a left-wing message focused on building worker power and beating back the forces robbing Americans of their worth, freedom, and time.

Much of the mainstream media and many liberals on social media wrote Platner off after it was revealed that he for many years had a skull-and-crossbones tattoo he got as a Marine that resembled a Nazi symbol. News outlets also dug up Platner’s old Reddit posts, which included misogynistic and bigoted comments, among other things.

The scandals did surprisingly little to affect his primary campaign. He covered his tattoo up, denied he knew its meaning, and apologized. He also apologized for many of his Reddit posts. (It should be noted that throughout his campaign Platner has consistently spoken out against xenophobia, fascism, and right-wing culture-war campaigns against LGBTQ+ communities.)

In Maine, it has been clear that voters were not scared off by the news coverage – and polls supported this. Recent surveys found him with a 30-point lead over Mills, and that he’s leading Collins, too.

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Mills’s ads about Platner’s internet posts, featuring video of him shirtless with the tattoo, didn’t move the needle for her – and may have even helped seal the race for Platner. Mills stopped running the ads earlier this month, as her campaign apparently began running low on cash. (A pro-Collins super PAC began running ads targeting Platner on both topics this week.)

While Mills didn’t campaign that hard, Platner has been hustling, and picking up speed. He’s held over 60 town halls, and recently rallied in Portland with progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren, before a crowd of 1,000 people.

“We’ve got a political system that, in many ways, is entirely inaccessible to the average American,” Platner said at a town hall earlier this month in Windham. “[Politics] tends to be conducted by people who we don’t recognize, who don’t often come from our communities and are espousing policies and ideas that do not in any way, shape, or form reflect the things that we think or that we often talk to our neighbors about. I think that you couldn’t come up with a better example of this right now than the war in Iran.”

He continued: “People see it for what it is. They see it as a war that’s been started by Donald Trump, so he can take attention away from the fact that he’s clearly in the Epstein files. It’s a war that everybody can see has been started because [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to get this war to happen for 30 years, and he finally found a president who was sucker enough to go for it.”

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Platner spent the evening listing off dark truths and red meat for an increasingly pissed-off Democratic voter base. The crowd, in a small meetinghouse filled to the brim, almost certainly past capacity, gave him a standing ovation.

Here’s what one attendee, Jennifer McGowan, had to say about Platner after the event, speaking with Zeteo: “He seems to have a really firm grasp on the history of this country, and I like that… But also I’m really tired of the Democratic Party being a bunch of pussies, to be honest with you. I think that we’re all too nice, we’re all too worried about how it’s going to appear, how it’s going to look. And I think that there’s a way to be tough and assertive without being immoral. I wish we had more people that would do that. I feel like he’s that kind of guy.”

At one point during the Windham town hall, Platner noted his campaign couldn’t have gotten going without an early endorsement from Bernie Sanders. “I’ll tell you as someone that had no money doing this, I got really, really lucky,” Platner said. “If it wasn’t for the fact Bernie Sanders endorsed me in the first couple of weeks. That allowed us to do small-dollar fundraising on a mass scale. [If] we hadn’t been able to do that, this doesn’t happen.”

I spoke with Sanders in September, when he and Platner rallied together at an arena in Portland.

“I think the Democratic leadership is way out of touch. They’re out of touch on what’s happening in Gaza. They’re out of touch economically,” Sanders told me. “I think we need a grassroots movement in this country which transforms the Democratic Party into a party of the working class that is prepared to fight for the issues relevant to the working class. That’s what Graham Platner is about.”

He said he was backing Platner to send a message to the political establishment: “The idea of having a working class guy, who has never run for office before, take on Senator Collins – and I think there’s a good chance he will beat her – that sends a message.”

“Graham’s background is very, very different,” Sanders said. “He’s not a conventional politician.”

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“That sends a message,” he explained, “that ordinary people can step up. You can take on the powers that be, the political establishment. You can win.”

The Democratic political establishment might not appreciate that message – but it’s hearing it loud and clear.

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Amid all of US President Donald Trump’s chronic self-contradictions, his self-serving desire to shape the global economy is a rare constant. The oil crisis stoked by Trump’s war on Iran may have exposed the limits of such efforts, but his public statements and social media posts on the war show he maintains his aim to bend markets to his will.

Furthermore, as Trump sends prices dropping or soaring, anonymous traders seem to be turning foreknowledge of executive actions into financial gain.

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While the nation’s wealthiest exploit stock and prediction markets, regulatory bodies are increasingly uninterested in stopping financial crimes. The number of enforcement cases filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is down 20% from those pursued by his predecessor under the Biden administration. The Trump-appointed SEC chair, Paul Atkins, recently refused to say that insider trading is always bad. Over at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the enforcement agency for futures markets, the current head created an “innovation task force” for industries key to the Trump family. Ben Schiffrin, a former attorney at the SEC, notes that Atkins is prioritizing the promotion of AI, crypto, and prediction markets ahead of his regulatory responsibilities.

In these free-for-all conditions, Zeteo is breaking down seven instances of suspicious trading resulting from the president’s statements:

1. ‘Liberation Day’ Loopholes

In March 2025, ahead of Trump’s various tariff announcements, including the sweeping “Liberation Day” statement that tanked the market, multiple executive branch officials made “well-timed trades.” As ProPublica reported, such traders included a top US trade official and multiple longtime State Department officials. A US ambassador, Gautam Rana, sold between $830,000 and $1.7 million worth of stock in two weeks ahead of Trump’s announcement.

Tyler Gellasch, who runs the Healthy Markets Association, an ethics group, told ProPublica that such trading “undermines trust in government and the markets” and makes “our markets look rigged.”

2. Tariff Tip-offs

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US President Donald Trump left the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday evening after Secret Service and law enforcement agents subdued an attempted gunman who ran through the security perimeter inside the hotel, according to video released by the administration.

When the president was asked at a press briefing late Saturday why he’s been targeted by several attempted gunmen now, Trump said he’s “studied assassinations,” and they often target “the most impactful people” and “the big names.”

“I hate to say I’m honored by that, but I’ve done a lot,” he said. “We’ve changed this country, and there are a lot of people that are not happy about that.”

Saturday’s dinner event with the media is the first Trump has attended as a sitting president. Trump said he wants to do this event over “within the next 30 days,” adding that he had been “set to really rip it” with his speech before he was escorted out. “I said to my people, this would be the most inappropriate speech ever made. And I said, I don’t know if I could ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight.”

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Trump added Saturday evening that the incident underscored the need for the massive ballroom he’s been constructing at the White House – a construction project that has partially been placed on hold in court.

“I didn’t want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we’re planning at the White House,” he said, adding: “That’s why the Secret Service, that’s why the military are demanding it.”

The president’s attempt to turn a moment of violence and chaos that had just happened that same evening into an opportunity to promote his East Wing-demolishing ballroom is strange for a number of reasons. One of them is that a White House Correspondents’ Association event or dinner is not supposed to be hosted at the White House anyway. The WHCA is an independent organization.

Multiple shots could be heard inside the ballroom before Trump was set to speak, according to live video of the scene from Fox 29 in Philadelphia. Security surrounded Trump, and police in riot gear with rifles appeared, as agents escorted out the president, the First Lady, and other dignitaries on stage, as attendees and Trump officials ducked down.

Moments after the loud bangs sent the gala into a state of chaos, both media and political sources at the event told Zeteo that at first there was complete confusion about what had happened. For a moment, multiple tables were convinced it was a false alarm. Minutes, if not seconds, later, conflicting reports and accounts quickly emerged.

At his press briefing late Saturday, Trump said the alleged gunman wasn’t “anywhere close” to breaching the ballroom.

“Quite an evening in D.C. Secret Service and Law Enforcement did a fantastic job. They acted quickly and bravely,” Trump posted after evacuating the event. “The shooter has been apprehended, and I have recommended that we ‘LET THE SHOW GO ON’ but, will entirely be guided by Law Enforcement. They will make a decision shortly. Regardless of that decision, the evening will be much different than planned, and we’ll just, plain, have to do it again.”

Twenty minutes later, Trump wrote that law enforcement requested he leave the event.

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This is a developing story and has been updated.

Donald Trump’s musings about dictatorship once sounded almost funny. Nobody laughs anymore.

Trump has not created a dictatorship. He has, however, dragged the US further toward authoritarian rule than many of us thought possible. His corruption of the legal system, subordination of Congress, embrace of state violence, and hostility toward free elections led the sober-minded centrist Jonathan Rauch to write earlier this year: “Yes, it’s fascism.”

How Trump has managed to do that, contravening the values that made the US the world’s leading democracy, remains hard to fathom. But at least part of the answer lies in his use of techniques that earlier historical figures have used to amass and centralize power.

Laurence Rees, a former head of history at the BBC and best-selling author, has made studying those techniques his career’s work. His books and video documentaries explore how skillful, if repugnant, Nazi leadership drove ordinary Germans to monstrous wrongdoing during World War II. In January 2025, as Trump returned to the White House, Rees published ‘The Nazi Mind’ in an attempt to explain the inexplicable.

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To state the obvious, Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler. MAGA is not Nazism. No despot or movement in history compares to the Third Reich, and the nature and scale of evil it perpetrated.

Moreover, Trump’s handiwork appears less formidable today. Most of America recoils from his second-term grotesquerie. If permitted free and fair elections, voters will punish his Republican Party this fall – just as Hungarian voters have now punished Trump’s authoritarian role model Viktor Orbán.

But the lessons Rees identifies remain relevant to the crisis confronting 21st-century America. And that is not merely because Trump and a disturbing number of his young fans have at times expressed admiration for Nazi strength and ruthlessness.

“Everything is fragile – often a great deal more fragile than we think,” Rees writes. He lists 12 “warning signs” of how authoritarians can corrupt democracy.

All sound familiar.

Spreading conspiracy theories. Nazis persuaded rank-and-file Germans that their problems stemmed from the machinations of Jews. You can hear unmistakable echoes as Trump factotums blame immigrants for violent crime, stolen tax money, even high housing costs. “The mass looting of a civilization,” spits White House propagandist Stephen Miller.

Using “them” and “us.” Would-be dictators rouse supporters by exploiting their primal instinct to sort friends from foes, scapegoating those who seem different. Trump’s rants and social media feeds show this.

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Leading as a hero. Myths of heroism helped elevate authoritarian leaders from Napoleon to Hitler to Castro. Having created an image of business success, Trump promotes fantasies about his personal qualities by invoking aspirations for the Nobel Peace Prize and Congressional Medal of Honor; he depicted himself as Jesus on Truth Social.

Deploying the photograph of Trump bloodied with a raised fist after a 2024 assassination attempt, he and his supporters have declared he was “saved by God” to save America.

Corrupting youth. Those under 25, their brains not fully matured, show particular vulnerability to the lure of extremism. The conservative writer Rod Dreher has estimated that 30% or more of Gen Z Republican operatives identify with Groypers. Trump has sprinkled such Nazi-adjacent loons through his administration.

Andrew, a 20-year-old white Christian landscaper, told the conservative City Journal last year, “Hitler was a nationalist. He was like, we have to take Germany back for Germans, and I feel like we should do that for America.”

Conniving with the elite. “Dictators frequently do not seize control on their own,” Rees says. “Instead, power is handed to them by others.” Among those empowering Trump: tech billionaires, Wall Street executives, Republican congressional leaders, the conservative-led Supreme Court.

Attacking human rights. Authoritarians make subverting the rule of law and curbing press freedom job number one. Trump and his administration have tried hard on multiple fronts, from threatening regulatory punishment of news networks to denying due process to arrested immigrants to ginning up baseless prosecutions of political adversaries.

Exploiting faith. Promises of a utopian future resembling an imaginary past represent a critical tool for rallying adherents. Thus Trump, behind a facade of religious inspiration, constantly predicts America’s return to a “golden age” that allegedly existed once upon a time.

Valuing enemies. Identification of hostile forces binds authoritarian movements together. Trump and MAGA use labels such as “domestic terrorists,” “Communists,” and “radical left, country-hating Democrats.”

Eliminating resistance. Would-be dictators often face institutional opposition from the church and the military, among others. Trump seeks to cow the Vatican, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth weeds out generals for insufficient loyalty. The administration applies legal pressure to Democratic lawmakers and progressive organizations that challenge him.

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Escalating racism. The modern GOP assembled its national majority with white conservatives repelled by the Democrats’ embrace of civil rights. Trump and prominent followers have taken today’s racial politics to another level by asserting the inherent superiority of white societies in the style of 20th-century eugenicists – who included Hitler.

Killing at a distance. Violence up close is harder to commit than at physical remove. Trump and his aides revel in aerial strikes on boats in international waters or targets in Iran, as if playing video games.

Stoking fear. “One of the most potent political statements of all is, ‘Be frightened, they are coming for your homes and children,’” Rees concludes. Trump has sounded that theme since he rode down the golden escalator in 2015.

Trump has used that bracing playbook to damage our country and the world. But Rees concludes his book on a note of optimism, which should hearten those seeking to reclaim America’s democratic heritage.

“Adolf Hitler employed every one of the techniques above,” he writes. “But in the end – at enormous human cost – something tremendous happened. The Nazis were defeated.”

John Harwood is the former chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and White House correspondent for CNN. He has interviewed every president from George H.W. Bush to Joe Biden. Sign up for ‘The Stakes with John Harwood’ to get all of his columns in your inbox.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.

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It’s no secret that large-ego Donald Trump loves those who love him. “When somebody’s nice to me, I love that person,” he said earlier this month. “Even if they’re bad people.”

Over the years, he has made that abundantly clear with his unwavering support of people who praise and applaud him… until they do otherwise, of course.

So, we compiled a list of 9 people Trump has previously praised for whom he has since revoked support.

1. Jeffrey Epstein No Longer ‘Terrific’

Trump did not used to hide the fact that he and Jeffrey Epstein were the best of buddies. In 2002, when a New York magazine reporter asked Trump about Epstein, he responded: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with.”

The president went on to boast about their active social lives and acknowledged Epstein’s taste for young women.

But, when asked about the disgraced sex offender last November, Trump had a very different response. “I have nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein,” he said. “I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert – and I guess I turned out to be right.” Ironic that the change of attitude came a day before Congress approved the release of the Epstein files.

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2. ‘Low IQ’ Tucker Carlson

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Donald Trump may not be a church-going man, but he sure loves to invoke God when it suits his wallet or his ego.

From picking fights with the Pope to profiting off the Bible instead of reading it, Trump has turned faith into farce for his own benefit. The MAGA cult has remained bizarrely loyal to its “savior” of choice – even as he readily admits he is unlikely to make it into heaven.

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Here are nine times Trump has insulted God and the Christians who elected him:

1. Depicting Himself as Jesus

On Sunday, the president of the United States posted an AI-generated photo that appeared to depict himself as Jesus.

He has since taken down the post, which drew rare ire from some religious figures on the right. When Trump was asked about the photo on Monday, he admitted to posting it himself but claimed he thought it was “me as a doctor” and it “had to do with Red Cross.” See it for yourself…

Ex-Trump ally and former conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene screenshotted the post and wrote on Twitter: “It’s more than blasphemy. It’s an Antichrist spirit.”

2. Fighting With the Pope

The bizarre Jesus image came just after Trump dunked on Pope Leo XIV, calling him “WEAK on crime,” and “terrible for Foreign Policy.”

“Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician,” Trump raged on.

Later on video, Trump doubled down: “I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo. He’s a very liberal person, and he’s a man that doesn’t believe in stopping crime.”

The Pope, for his part, responded that he has “no fear of the Trump administration.” Imagine if Joe Biden or any other president, had picked a fight, publicly, with the Pope.

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3. ‘I’d Like to Be Pope’

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Hundreds of Michiganders waited in long lines in the cold for Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s rallies with Hasan Piker at two universities.

Zeteo was inside those rallies, where the national reporters who traveled to Michigan for the events seemed extremely puzzled as to why the progressive politician would choose to campaign with the popular leftist Twitch streamer – and they were intently focused on Israel.

“Hasan, do you feel like your presence on the campaign trail may hurt the candidates that you’re supporting more than help them?” a Fox News reporter asked. Another reporter asked El-Sayed what he would say to people who attend a local synagogue that was the site of a foiled terrorist attack, and are “concerned now about you campaigning with Hasan.”

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Olivia Reingold, a writer for Bari Weiss’s Free Press who has defended Israel’s manufactured famine in Gaza, created a viral moment for El-Sayed when she asked him, “Does Israel have a right to exist as a Jewish state?”

“What do you mean by Jewish state?” El-Sayed responded. As Reingold stumbled and failed to answer, he retorted: “If you can’t define the question, I’m not going to answer your question.”

In recent weeks, a well-funded centrist think tank and El-Sayed’s Democratic opponents have led a campaign to try to publicly cancel Piker, and El-Sayed for rallying with him. And as President Donald Trump was actively threatening to commit genocide in Iran on Tuesday, the US media was busy attempting to shame El-Sayed over some of Piker’s past controversial comments. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the journalists filed stories with headlines focused on the Muslim men’s anti-Israel views and Piker’s old remarks.

“Michigan Senate candidate El-Sayed declines to disavow Hasan Piker’s past comments,” Politico wrote. Jewish Insider’s headline went further: “Abdul El-Sayed emphasizes anti-Israel rhetoric at rallies with antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker.” The Jewish Telegraphic Agency headlined its piece: “In rallies taking on Israel, a defiant Hasan Piker boosts Michigan Senate candidate Abdul el-Sayed.”

You would never know from the reports that El-Sayed’s rallies were, in fact, focused around affordability, getting money out of politics and into people’s pockets, and securing Medicare for All. Nor would you know that El-Sayed’s decision to invite Piker to his rallies at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University has been a big boon for his campaign.

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FBI emails obtained by Zeteo show that the Trump administration is pushing state and local police to target Americans with left-wing views, emails show. As Donald Trump’s hot war in Iran enters its second month with no end in sight, a quieter, colder war is simmering on the home front.

Its target is not a foreign power thousands of miles away, but US citizens who disagree with the president and his hardline advisers. This domestic war’s chief weapon is a national security presidential memorandum, NSPM-7, which attempts to criminalize a laundry list of common left-wing beliefs and viewpoints.

Trump’s FBI is conducting trainings for state and local law enforcement officials on the president’s NSPM-7 directive, in order to help enlist them in the administration’s ongoing crackdown on the left, emails show. And it’s happening at the same time as Trump’s war in Iran is throttling energy prices and the global economy – creating even more discontent with his administration.

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What this development means in practice is if you have criticized a corporation on social media, held a sign that demands ICE leave your city, shared a meme about alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione, or publicly condemned Trump’s Iran war at a local town hall, both the federal government and your local police could take note and forward along a list of your thoughtcrimes to the FBI for further review.

Unlike a standard-issue presidential directive that nudges a sector of the federal bureaucracy or realigns a federal agency towards the president’s liking, national security directives target the entire intelligence and defense apparatus, which is why they are almost always classified. NSPM-7, which was published publicly by the White House in September, makes no effort to conceal its goals.

The presidential directive is the most significant shift in domestic counter-terrorism efforts since the Patriot Act was introduced into law in the wake of 9/11. The program is sweeping in its scope, not only for the list of subversive activities it seeks to target, but also in the joint terrorism task forces it relies upon.

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Remember former Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona? Given how she spent most of her single term in the Senate blocking one priority after another of her own party’s policy agenda (along with Joe Manchin of West Virginia), and then left the party and washed out of politics, it may come as a surprise that she was personally recruited to run for Senate by none other than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Indeed, Sinema is the rare politician whose behavior in office was so obnoxious that it has somewhat dented her post-office lobbying career. While she is being paid a lot by Hogan Lovells, a top-shelf lobbying firm, Arizona groups report that local Democrats hate her guts so much that if they catch a whiff of her pushing something, they automatically take the opposite side. A data center project she was pushing in Chandler, for instance, went down in a unanimous city council vote last December. It turns out it is possible to sell out to vested interests so much that it backfires on your future selling-out plans.

It’s not like Sinema was the only type of person who could possibly win in Arizona. While no Democrat but Manchin could have won in West Virginia in 2018, Arizona currently has two Democratic senators, as well as a Dem governor and attorney general. And while they are not progressive stalwarts on everything, unlike Sinema, they are certainly not voting against almost everything the party proposes.

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Sinema’s performance in the Senate is reflective of the terrible judgement with respect to candidate recruitment shown by Schumer and the rest of Democratic establishment. They tend to pick candidates that are far more conservative than necessary, and rate supporting Israel out of all proportion.

Up in Maine, Graham Platner, a military veteran and political novice, is running an insurgent campaign against the incumbent Republican senator, Susan Collins. Schumer had his own ideas, and scrambled to find someone to defeat him in the primary.

Platner is, to say the least, not someone likely to be Schumer’s best friend. But he does have three qualities that are inarguably in high demand among Democratic voters at present: He is relatively young, he is a political outsider, and he has progressive economic views.

But rather than finding someone with those qualities but without Platner’s tattoo or Reddit history – think Tammy Baldwin or Chris Murphy – Schumer and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee found someone with none of them: the incumbent governor, Janet Mills. Not only is Mills a career politician, she was handpicked by the Democratic DC leadership. Not only does she have conservative economic views, those views are half the reason Platner is running in the first place; the local unions helped stand up his candidacy because she kept vetoing pro-labor legislation, including a minimum wage increase for farmworkers. And not only is she very old, she would be, at 79, literally the oldest freshman senator ever inaugurated in American history. The chance of her dying before her term is up is something like one in three.

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And the strongest possible argument for Mills’ candidacy – that she would be more likely to defeat Collins – does not appear to be true. The latest Emerson survey shows that despite a firestorm of media criticism, Platner is polling roughly four points better against Collins than Mills (as well as 27 points ahead of Mills in the primary). It would be hard to imagine a better proof of Platner’s basic argument that Washington is badly in need of fresh blood.

In Michigan, Schumer at least found someone who isn’t more than a decade past retirement age: Haley Stevens, the incumbent House member in the state’s 11th district. The problem here is that Stevens, unlike her more progressive competitors Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed, is both a staunch Israel supporter and has received millions of dollars in support from Israel-aligned groups like AIPAC and the Democratic Majority for Israel. Just a few weeks ago she recorded a pro-Israel video for AIPAC social media pages.

Politically, that wasn’t as much of an issue back in 2022 when Stevens successfully defeated Andy Levin, a Jewish former Democratic representative who was also an Israel critic. But America is in the midst of a sea change in attitudes towards Israel. The Gallup poll on whether Americans sympathize more with Israelis or Palestinians shifted to Palestinians on net for the first time last month, and by a 10-point margin. Among Democrats, the balance shifted in 2023, and the gap is now at almost 50 percentage points.

And that is before the severe consequences of Trump’s utterly deranged war on Iran start biting in. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government was an enthusiastic advocate for the war, and he finds the fact that it happened deeply satisfying.

According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Israel basically buffaloed the administration into attacking. While the growing antisemitic narrative that a shadowy Jewish conspiracy masterminded the whole thing is wrong – and even if it were true, it would not excuse Trump’s idiotic decision at all – Israel certainly did push hard for the attack.

This Trump-Israel Iran war might just be the most purely boneheaded foreign policy move since Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, and it is causing an energy and supply chain shock whose consequences are going to reverberate for months, if not years. Gasoline is cresting $4; diesel is over $6 in multiple states. A shortage of fertilizer is taking hold just as the planting season in the northern hemisphere starts. A shortage of helium threatens semiconductor production, MRI machines, and dozens of other cutting-edge technologies.

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This is what our sainted Israeli ally insists on doing? So that we can ruin the global economy, blow up hundreds of schoolchildren, spend tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars, and seriously degrade the American military, in service of no perceptible goal? That’s why even otherwise longstanding Israel supporters like Dan Goldman are scrambling to distance themselves from the country.

Given all that context, a firm Israel partisan is about the last person Democrats should be nominating for Senate in any state, let alone in Michigan, which has one of the largest Palestinian American communities in the country. Stevens might well finish third in the primary. If she were to win, she could end up losing a winnable seat and costing Democrats a majority.

Schumer made his choice, of course, because he is personally a fanatical Zionist and views helping Israel as one of his primary responsibilities. “My job is to keep the left pro-Israel,” he told the New York Times’ Bret Stephens last year.

In other states, Schumer has largely picked the most moderate option. But one begins to understand how he ended up picking someone back in 2018 who flushed most of President Biden’s agenda down the toilet. Schumer is just not very good at this.

Ryan Cooper is a senior editor at the American Prospect, and the author of ‘How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics.’

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.

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US President Donald Trump kicked off Easter Sunday by dropping an F-bomb and rage-posting on social media, threatening apocalyptic war crimes in Iran as part of the illegal war he started – while praising “God.”

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

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For those keeping track, in his primetime address to the nation last week, Trump insisted that reopening the Strait of Hormuz – which Iran has effectively closed since the start of the war, blocking the flow of oil – should be other nations’ responsibility. Now, he’s threatening to carry out war crimes and destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure if its regime doesn’t reopen the strait.

Sunday’s disturbing insanity is unfortunately what we have grown to expect from the sitting president of the United States, who the entirety of the Republican Party elite insists is well.

White House officials did not immediately reply to Zeteo’s query about whether this was an appropriate Easter Sunday message to the nation. Other current and former Trump administration officials had initial reactions ranging from “LMAO” to casual exasperation.

Early on in the conflict, Zeteo dubbed this the worst-run war in US history. As evidenced on this Easter Sunday, President Trump and his party keep reinforcing and inflaming that diagnosis.

The Iranian embassy in Thailand responded to Trump’s message on Twitter, referencing the president’s pledge to bomb Iran to the Stone Age: “Judging by how POTUS swears like a teenager, it seems the US has reached the Stone Age sooner than expected.”

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A half hour before Trump issued his latest threat, Pope Leo XIV posted his own (much more appropriate) Easter message – a plea for peace.

“In the light of #Easter, let us allow ourselves to be amazed by Christ!” the Pope wrote on Twitter. “Let us allow our hearts to be transformed by his immense love for us! Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!”

If only Trump was listening.

Later Sunday morning, Trump told Fox: “If they don't make a deal and fast, I'm considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil.”

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Donald Trump is costing American taxpayers billions of dollars for a lethal long-range missile to illegally bomb Iran, even as he slashes funding for public services at home.

The Tomahawk – a long-range, precision-strike cruise missile that can carry up to a 1,000-pound warhead – has already been used in at least one documented war crime. The New York Times reported that videos showed a Tomahawk had struck near the Minab girls’ school in the early hours of the US-Israeli war in Iran. The footage further proved that the US was responsible for the horrific attack, since it is the only country in this war with access to Tomahawk missiles.

One Tomahawk takes up to two years to make, and the latest model costs $3.6 million. The US has used over 850 of them in Iran, according to the Washington Post, burning through a limited supply of the costly missile and setting a grim record for the number of times the Tomahawk has been used in one US conflict alone. The same missiles were also used in Trump’s attacks last year on Iran, Yemen, and Nigeria.

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The estimated 850 Tomahawk missiles used to bomb Iran so far in Trump’s latest war have cost an estimated $3.1 billion. Here’s what that money could fund instead:

School Lunches

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Donald Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday for, among other things, failing to put his enemies in jail.

Bondi is the second Cabinet member that Trump has ousted, after he fired former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last month.

In the days leading up to this latest sacking, sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Zeteo that President Trump had been privately trashing Bondi’s job performance behind her back for weeks, if not months. Complaints were multi-faceted, and included griping about her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files debacle, which continues to haunt the White House to this day.

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However, another recurring grievance of Trump’s, these sources recount, is that he believes she did a “very subpar” job (in the words of a person who speaks to Trump often) leading the Justice Department’s baseless criminal investigations into and prosecutions of his political enemies. In recent months, the president has repeatedly vented to confidants that the Bondi-era DOJ isn’t prosecuting his many foes swiftly or ferociously enough, and that the now-former AG was at risk of letting his political foes, in Trump’s phrasing, “get away with it.”

Sources in and close to the administration also add that Trump has at times fumed that Bondi and the Justice Department have not investigated the 2020 presidential election results as aggressively as he’d like; Trump of course lost that election to Joe Biden but for years has worked to turn his anti-democratic lies and conspiracy theories into Republican dogma.

In other words: one of the key reasons that President Trump is getting rid of Attorney General Bondi – who went all-in on Trump’s cult of personality, and has overseen a Department of Justice that has indeed corruptly gone after Trump’s vindictively selected targets – because she is not corrupt or authoritarian enough.

In typical Trump fashion, he announced Bondi’s ouster on Truth Social while calling her a “Great American Patriot and loyal friend.” He also claimed she will be taking a job in the private sector, and said her deputy, Todd Blanche, will step in as acting attorney general in the interim.

Several outlets have reported, and Zeteo can confirm, that Trump is considering EPA administrator Lee Zeldin for Bondi’s replacement, a staunch Trump ally who as a congressman voted against certifying the election results when Joe Biden won in 2020.

Bondi’s firing comes just 12 days ahead of her scheduled deposition over how the Justice Department has handled the release of its files relating to pedophile and former Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein. The House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena Bondi last month to compel her testimony on the matter.

A previous congressional hearing over the Epstein investigation in February devolved into a shouting match when Bondi – who faced the impossible task of defending the indefensible – resorted to insults and bizarre diversions. At one point, she pivoted to the stock market to avoid answering questions about her failures on the investigation and apparent coverup of her boss’s alleged ties to Epstein.

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“The Dow is over 50,000 right now. The S&P [is] at almost 7,000 and the Nasdaq [is] smashing records. Americans’ 401k and retirement savings are booming right now,” Bondi said as Epstein survivors seated behind her looked on. “That’s what we should be talking about.”

Her performance on Capitol Hill was just one example of her servitude to Trump, which in the end, was still not enough to stay in his good graces.

At a Cabinet meeting last summer, Bondi lavished completely nonsensical praise on Trump – an enduring theme of her short, rocky tenure as the president’s yes-man in court.

“Mr. President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever … ever,” she said. “Never seen anything like it. Thank you. Your directive to me was very simple: Make America safe. And, despite that, we’ve still been defending over 200 civil lawsuits filed against you.”

Bondi then read some numbers on Trump’s supposed fentanyl seizures, then said, “which saved – are you ready for this media?” She turned to the camera and said “258 million lives” – or about 75% of the nation.

And off-camera, she faced Trump’s scolding push – sometimes publicly – to weaponize the Justice Department to prosecute his perceived enemies.

In a September Truth Social post that read more like a berating text, Trump ordered Pam to hire his former personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, as US attorney, and to prosecute high-ranking Democrats that had dared to stand up to him, including New York Attorney General Letitita James, former FBI director James Comey, and Senator Adam Schiff.

Bondi’s Justice Department did attempt several prosecutions, including of James and Comey but they’ve all failed in court – and Halligan completely embarrassed herself.

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No matter how upset Trump was with Bondi’s job performance, numerous Trump officials privately say that the president himself has made it harder for them to charge his political enemies, given how obvious and public he is about ordering up selective and vindictive prosecutions of people who pissed him off.

As AG, Bondi turned the Justice Department’s mission into serving the personal and political interests of the president. A recent ProPublica analysis found that the Justice Department had quietly abandoned over 23,000 criminal cases in just the first six months of Trump’s second term – including hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime and drugs – all to shift resources to his anti-immigration efforts.

Bondi even explicitly instructed employees of the Justice Department to serve the interests of the president, even though the agency is meant to be independent.

“When Department of Justice attorneys, for example, refuse to advance good-faith arguments by declining to appear in court or sign briefs, it undermines the constitutional order and deprives the president of the benefit of his lawyers,” Bondi wrote in a memo dated Feb 5. 2025.

But Bondi’s fierce allegiance to Trump – even over her sworn obligation to the rule of law – still fell short for the Mad King.

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