Trump wildly exaggerates trade deficits with Canada, Mexico, China and the EU

 https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/06/politics/us-trade-tariffs-trump-fact-check/index.html

President Donald Trump has for years wildly exaggerated the size of US trade deficits with various other countries. Now, as Trump cites those trade deficits as a key justification for his tariff policies, newly released federal statistics show just how wrong Trump’s numbers are.

Trump, who on Tuesday imposed 25% tariffs on almost all imports from Canada (10% on energy), has repeatedly said this year that the US has a “$200 billion” trade deficit with Canada – sometimes making the claim explicitly and sometimes using vaguer language about a supposed $200 billion subsidy or loss to Canada.

Trump’s number is not even close to correct. The new federal statistics show the 2024 deficit with Canada in goods and services trade was $35.7 billion, down from $40.6 billion in 2023.

Pentagon official posted neo-Nazi talking point about Jewish lynching victim Leo Frank last year

 https://www.jpost.com/american-politics/article-844884

Kingsley Wilson, appointed in January to be deputy press secretary at the Pentagon, last year tweeted a neo-Nazi talking point about Jewish lynching victim Leo Frank.

The post came amid a flood of far-right social media content by the Trump administration appointee, who previously worked at an organization founded by the architect of Project 2025, the Christian conservative blueprint for a Trump White House. Many of Wilson’s posts, which remain online, reflect antisemitic conspiracy theories.

The one about Frank has resurged in recent years. Frank was a factory manager in Georgia who was convicted on thin evidence of killing a 13-year-old girl, Mary Phagan, and was sentenced to death.

Trump's refugee ban is keeping out 700 persecuted Iranian Jews

 https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-845061

Trump had said during his presidential campaign that he would end refugee resettlement on day one, so the executive order didn’t come as a surprise for HIAS. 

“We knew this was coming, so we tried very hard to promote exceptions, particularly for Iranian religious minorities,” Mark Hetfield, the president of HIAS, said in an interview, recalling the period preceding Trump’s inauguration. “We tried it through every channel we could. We reached out to people who had good relationships with the Trump team.”

Trump defends direct US-Hamas talks as Israel seethes, attempts to sabotage them

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-defends-direct-us-hamas-talks-as-israel-seethes-attempts-to-sabotage-them/

US President Donald Trump on Thursday defended his administration’s unprecedented direct negotiations with Hamas, saying they were being conducted for the benefit of Israel and in order to secure the release of Israeli hostages.

Jerusalem is not happy about the direct US-Hamas talks, though, a government official told The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity. Accordingly, Israel was behind Wednesday’s media leak about the negotiations’ existence, the official said, confirming reporting in the Ynet news site.

Trump gets Crushed

Everyone against Trump

Canada's Trudeau humiliates 'cowardly' Trump who backs down on tariffs. Again.

A third of America's biggest donors are Jewish

 https://www.ynetnews.com/article/syphsshjkl

Bloomberg, who donated over 1 million shekels to rebuild Israel's north and $44 million to the Magen David Adom health emergency service, continued to solidify his position at the top of the 50 biggest American philanthropists with donations totaling $3.7 billion, twice as much as the amount donated by the second billionaire named on the list, Netflix founder Wilmot Reed Hastings Jr. who with his wife, Patricia, donated close to $1.6 million in the past year. 

NZ fires envoy to UK who questioned Trump's grasp of history

 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3yew446k5o

New Zealand has fired its most senior envoy to the United Kingdom over remarks that questioned US President Donald Trump's grasp of history.

At an event in London on Tuesday, High Commissioner to the UK Phil Goff compared efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine to the Munich Agreement of 1938, which allowed Adolf Hitler to annex Czechoslovakia.

Goff recalled how Sir Winston Churchill had criticised the agreement, then said of the US leader: "President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. But do you think he really understands history?"

Trump agrees to one-month tariff reprieve aimed at helping U.S. automakers

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/05/trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-autos/

Less than 48 hours after slapping tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico, President Donald Trump agreed to a one-month reprieve for automobile imports that qualify for duty-free treatment under the North American trade agreement negotiated during his first term.

The president’s decision followed a phone conversation with executives from the Big Three automakers — General Motors, Ford and Stellantis — who sought relief from the new import taxes. Each of the automakers over the past several decades has developed complex supply chains that cross North American borders multiple times before delivering a finished product.

World Leaders Are Secretly Teaching Zelensky the Art of Buttering Trump Up

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/starmer-and-macron-are-teaching-zelensky-the-art-of-buttering-trump-up/

Volodymyr Zelensky is receiving a crash course in how to grovel for Donald Trump’s favor after the Ukrainian president’s disastrous Oval Office sit-down last week, according to a report.

His teachers are seasoned Trump-handlers: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, the New York Times reported. The two men are giving Zelensky advice on how most effectively to flatter Trump, inside sources told the Times.

The Trump Tariff Roller Coaster

 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-tariffs-uncertainty-canada-mexico-autos-7ba5dda4?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

President Trump gave a one-month tariff reprieve to auto makers on Wednesday, a day after his 25% tax on imports from Mexico and Canada took effect. Everyone else will still pay. Welcome to the Trump tariff thrill ride, where you never know what’s going to happen next.

Stock prices surged Wednesday after official news of the auto reprieve, which had been signaled by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. GM and Ford shares jumped in particular. This is the second time Mr. Trump has blinked on tariffs, and investors may figure he’ll do it again in a month.

Elon Musk wants to save Western civilization from empathy

 https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empathy-doge/index.html

While Musk said he believes in empathy and that “you should care about other people,” he also thinks it’s destroying society.

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”

Empathy, he said, has been “weaponized.”

It’s an important thing to remember as Musk turns his crusade toward the US government. While President Donald Trump has said cuts will not touch safety net programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, except to root out fraud, Musk made clear during the interview that he believes that the concept of Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.”

Amy Coney Barrett Sparks MAGA Fury Over Trump Supreme Court Decision

 https://www.newsweek.com/amy-coney-barrett-maga-fury-trump-supreme-court-ruling-2040203

Supporters of President Donald Trump turned their sights on Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett—and to a lesser extent, Chief Justice John Roberts—after they sided with the court's liberals in a ruling against the Trump administration on Wednesday.

The court currently has a 6-3 conservative supermajority, but both Barrett and Roberts have at times broken ranks and voted with the court's liberal wing in rulings that have infuriated the MAGA base.