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During his first live national address about the Iran war, President Donald Trump diverged from serious matters to extensively discuss gold drapes he personally selected and a planned White House ballroom. While awarding Medals of Honor to three Army soldiers, Trump pointed to the drapes concealing construction and boasted about the future ballroom entrance, claiming he could save money by leaving the decorative drapery. Social media commenters expressed shock at the disconnect. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman joked about "drapes of wrath." Mother Jones editor David Corn noted that Trump spent more time discussing interior design than honoring fallen soldiers. Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob called Trump "mentally unfit." The New Republic's Osita Nwanevu highlighted the contradiction between Trump's assertion that he doesn't get bored and his tangent about decorative choices while Americans die in combat.

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President Donald Trump appears to have just blown up one of the reasons he gave for coordinating strikes against Iran with Israel over the weekend, according to one expert.

The Trump administration has offered shifting reasons for the strikes, ranging from protecting protesters from the brutal regime to overthrowing the regime itself. If regime change was a true aim, then the administration has a lot of explaining to do, argued David Rothkopf, former editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, on Monday's episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast" with Joanna Coles.

On Monday morning, President Donald Trump appeared in public with a significant rash on his neck. The 79-year-old President awarded the Medal of Honor at the White House to Vietnam veteran Terry P. Richardson, who is credited with saving the lives of 85 soldiers during a 1968 battle. In a social media post, journalist Aaron Rupar pointed out a heavy rash on the right side of Trump's neck at the event. Trump has frequently been seen in public, including the medal award event, with makeup covering the back of his right hand to cover what appears to be injuries from IV injections, and the photo of his rash raised new concerns about his health. People reacted to the President's appearance on social media, "Well I'm no Dr Oz, but that's shingles," said a Bluesky user.

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A MAGA lawmaker gave Secretary of State Marco Rubio a low grade for his "troubling" answer about the Trump administration's strikes on Iran.

On Saturday, U.S. and Israeli troops coordinated strikes across Iran, which killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and multiple top political and military leaders. Since then, the White House has waffled on its justification for the strikes. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that the administration believed Iran would attack the U.S. if it were attacked by another country like Israel.

President Donald Trump appeared to excommunicate two MAGA heavyweights on Monday night during an exclusive interview with reporter Rachael Bade.

In the interview, Trump hit back at Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, two of his most staunch media allies, over their criticisms of his decision to strike Iran alongside Israel over the weekend. The president's comments came at a time when his supporting coalition appears deeply fractured over the strikes.

Iran will almost certainly be out for blood now that U.S. and Israeli forces took out Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, MS NOW's Rachel Maddow said on Monday — but the very group of U.S. counterintelligence officials tasked with keeping Americans safe from their retribution is out of a job because of a longstanding Donald Trump grudge.

"They're really good at this," Maddow said of Iran. "They can reach all around the globe to kill people when they want to, and they have done it ... They've killed or tried to kill their own dissidents and whistleblowers and political opponents, not over not only just over, you know, all over the Middle East, but throughout Europe. They have killed people. They've even tried to kill people here in the United States before."

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman predicted Iran's military strategy targets Trump's primary vulnerability: the stock market and economy. Appearing on "Morning Joe," Friedman argued that the Iranian leadership recognizes Trump gauges his performance through market indicators and has weaponized this knowledge. Iran's missile strikes on Middle Eastern targets and infrastructure aim to create chaos in global oil and financial markets, destabilizing Trump and making him more vulnerable to negotiations. Friedman suggested Iran's approach involves driving oil prices higher and the Dow Jones lower, hoping Trump will "chicken out" as he has previously. By destabilizing economic conditions, Iran believes it can pressure Trump into favorable negotiation terms. The strategy reflects Iran's recognition that, despite U.S. military superiority, economic disruption represents Trump's critical pressure point.

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Vice President JD Vance is facing political backlash from his own allies after abandoning his core anti-war stance to support the Trump administration's military strikes on Iran.

Just three years ago, Vance built his political brand on opposing endless foreign wars. He championed Trump in 2023 specifically because the then-former president "started no wars." But now, as the administration launches sweeping military operations against Iran, Vance's former supporters are furious — and questioning whether he ever believed anything at all, Politico Magazine reported Tuesday.

Vice President JD Vance caught heat on Monday night after defending the Trump administration's "objectives" in Iran following the strikes over the weekend.

Vance joined "Jesse Watters Primetime" on Fox News to discuss the administration's decision to strike Iran on Saturday morning. Watters asked how Americans can be sure that the operation won't turn into another War on Terror, which dragged on for decades without a clear end in sight.

President Donald Trump was seen with an alarming skin rash on his neck Monday, with many initially suspecting he may be having a flare-up of shingles — but the cagey response from the White House has led some medical experts to fear a cover-up of something potentially worse.

“President Trump is using a very common cream on the right side of his neck, which is a preventative skin treatment, prescribed by the White House Doctor," White House physician Sean Patrick Barbabella wrote in a statement flagged by The Daily Beast. "The President is using this treatment for one week, and the redness is expected to last for a few weeks.”

Pop star Kesha has joined a growing roster of musicians calling out the Trump administration for unauthorized use of their songs on social media.

The controversy erupted after the White House posted a TikTok video on Feb. 10 featuring her hit track "Blow" alongside military jets, including a fighter jet launching a missile at a naval ship, with the caption "Lethality." The clip has racked up more than 14 million views and 1.8 million likes.