Renowned historian Timothy Snyder leveled two explosive accusations against President Donald Trump: that his proposed 50% defense budget increase could be a bribe to secure military loyalty for a coup attempt, and that a staged domestic terror attack is his best remaining path to nullifying elections.

Snyder, a Yale historian recognized as one of America's foremost scholars of authoritarianism, made both cases in a Saturday Substack post laying out five historical scenarios through which Trump could exploit the ongoing U.S.-Iran war to nullify the 2026 midterms and seize permanent power.

On the defense budget, Snyder was unambiguous.

"The war has not been run in a way that brings military commanders to trust the president. Again, one has to see Trump’s proposal to increase the defense budget by nearly 50% as a kind of desperate bribe. There are sound strategic reasons why it is a terrible idea, but there is also a political one," he wrote.

Snyder argued the proposed increase is "meant as a payoff for officers, soldiers, and sailors -- people he has openly disrespected his entire life, people whose funerals he treats as an opportunity to sell his own branded merchandise -- to assist him in a coup against Americans."

On the false flag scenario, Snyder drew a direct line to Vladimir Putin's 1999 apartment bombings, which were staged attacks that helped launch Putin's march toward dictatorship. He called Trump "Putin's client in the White House."

"Some variant of terrorism is Trump’s best bet. And so one should be (preemptively, now) skeptical of Trump’s account of any future terrorist attack; we can be sure that, whatever its true origins and character, Trump will provide a self-serving account meant to serve a coup and a dictatorship," Snyder wrote.

He warned Trump would exploit any such event to "discredit or undo elections."

Snyder argued Trump's position is ultimately weak, but only if Americans actively resist.

"He can only carry out a coup if we decide to obey in advance: to pretend that wartime pretexts for coups are never used, although history instructs us that they are; and then to offer our surprise to Trump as the unique political resource that can transform his weak position into a strong one," he noted.

Second Lady Usha Vance triggered a flood of mockery Saturday after she told Fox Viewers there is a litany of misconceptions about her husband, who has repeatedly found himself on the wrong side of ridicule and memes.

Vice President JD Vance has faced backlash from social media commenters in recent years after agreeing to become Trump's running mate, particularly over Trump's awkward 2028 snub, a joke that didn’t land at a firefighters' event, and a widely mocked WWII history mistake.

This week, however, it was his wife who found herself buried by online critics.

"What do you want America to know about your husband," Usha Vance was asked on "Saturday in America with Kayleigh McEnany."

"I know it's been asked in reverse, but what's something we don't know that you want America to know?" asked McEnany.

The second lady cracked a wide grin as she prepped her answer.

"It's hard because he's written a book, he's given a lot of speeches," she began. "Um, there's so many misconceptions about him. He is just the nicest funniest guy. He makes everything an adventure. He's really just a wonderful person to be around. Our family has so much more joy because he is a part of it. I wish that people saw more of that."

But his past remarks, including a racist lie that Haitian immigrants were eating peoples' pets, didn't go unnoticed on the internet.

Podcaster and "Jeopardy!" champion Hemant Mehta shot back on X, "Remember when Vance spread false claims about Haitian migrants eating pets, leading to the harassment of an entire innocent community for months on end? Hahaha hilarious."

Cody Johnston, host of the Some More News podcast, wrote on X, "Hilarious answer. "Contrary to popular belief, my husband is not, in fact, a boring piece of [expletive].'"

Conservative attorney George Conway, who is running for Congress as a Democrat, wrote on X, "It is true that we, the American public, have seen no indication that J.D. Vance is the nicest, funniest guy. On this there can be no disagreement."

Lawyer Adam Cohen wrote on X, "Oh, yeah. That bit about Haitians eating people’s pets was friggin hilarious."

The progressive commentator account evan loves worf wrote on X, "She knows everyone hates his guts lmao."

Journalist John Harwood wrote on X, "actually he's a bad person."

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt couldn't hide his disbelief Saturday after learning that a senior FEMA official claimed he was transported to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia, by the hand of God.

Gregg Phillips, who leads FEMA's Office of Response and Recovery, the agency's top disaster response position, made the teleportation claim seriously enough that the New York Times dispatched reporters to interview roughly two dozen workers and regulars at Rome's three Waffle House locations to investigate.

None of them, the Times found, could confirm anyone had arrived by paranormal means.

Schmidt, a founding partner of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project and one of the most prominent Republican critics of the president, reacted to the revelation with barely contained sarcasm in his Substack newsletter Saturday.

"I wonder if Pete Hegseth plans to deploy him in Iran as a secret weapon," Schmidt wrote.

The joke comes as the U.S. engages in ongoing military strikes against Iran, and an American pilot remains missing.

Schmidt used the episode as a launching pad for a broader indictment of the Trump administration, rattling off a roster of officials he described as "corrupt whack jobs" running the federal government.

"It seems the most powerful government in world history has fallen to the audience of midnight AM conspiracy radio," he wrote.

Phillips has not publicly responded to the Times investigation.