On this day in 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Donald Trump, three of his children, and their company for business fraud. In February 2024, the Trumps were ordered to pay $450 million. In August 2025, the verdict was upheld, but the penalty was thrown out. Trump is now trying to prosecute James on dubious charges.
Good morning. Martin and Swin here, in Martin’s case, forgoing the usual Happy Mondays link because the news this morning is rather serious, if not outright unhappy. Try this for size, instead.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we’ve got exclusive reporting from Trumpworld about the president’s state of mind as he appears to ponder, yet again, a major escalation in his disastrous war with Iran, even as what promise to be disastrous midterm elections loom. We also take a look at Donald Trump’s petulant decision to ban CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, and a predictably anodyne response from the rest of the press. Let’s get to it.
‘Political Suicide’
On Saturday, without explanation to the press or public, Donald Trump cut short a visit to the presidential retreat at Camp David. Trump has never liked the place much, but presidents do tend to make unexpected trips from the Maryland hills back to the Washington swamp when something big is cooking. They don’t usually travel with two top golfers and a model, true. But Trump’s gonna Trump, as we know.
On Sunday, Trump proved that maxim again when he told Fox he was considering ordering a war crime, saying he was deciding between “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal. My question is, ‘If and when do I blow the entire nation up?’ They better behave.”
As has been pointed out throughout the seven-month war, Trump has often made such dire threats and nothing so serious has resulted – a point made without wishing to lessen the parade of horrors Trump’s war has produced, not one iota. This time, speaking to Fox, Trump offered another possible get-out, saying he was open to meeting Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian at the UN in New York this week.
But as the Wall Street Journal depicted ‘Veep’ levels of mania in the White House – the president off the leash and alarming aides in the absence of departed press secretary Karoline Leavitt and chief of staff Susie Wiles, who has been addressing health concerns – the State Department issued a security alert to citizens across the Middle East, a common move ahead of military action. Furthermore, amid stark reporting on the “cascade of preventable failures” that led U.S. forces to annihilate at least 123 children at a school in Iran on day one of the war – the Trump administration hasn’t owned up, but the evidence is overwhelming – multiple outlets reported regional preparations for renewed U.S. bombing.
In Iran, the Revolutionary Guard said it had information that a new attack was coming, and added that if so, “all U.S. bases and interests in the region will become targets of continuous, effective and painful attacks without any limitations or considerations.”
For Zeteo, Swin hit the phones, working his Washington sources, testing the strength of reports that Trump is looking for “foreign policy victories” ahead of the midterm elections.