Trump News

White House Communications Director Steve Cheung exploded with rage over a report detailing what Donald Trump's closest associates have privately said about the president's intellectual capabilities — revealing a toxic dynamic that has defined Trump's political career.

According to the Daily Beast, former Trump biographer Michael Wolff recalled conversations with Trump allies who openly questioned his mental faculties.

Wolff, granted unprecedented access to the chaotic opening months of Trump's first administration, recounted a pivotal conversation with Sam Nunberg, a longtime Trump confidant and early political adviser known as the "Trump whisperer."

"I remember Sam looked at me and he said, 'You don't get it, do you?' And I was like, 'Tell me.' And he said, 'He's an idiot,'" Wolff recounted.

Nunberg, 44, attempted damage control when confronted with Wolff's recollection, telling the Daily Beast: "That was a long time ago and President Trump has certainly proved me wrong by getting [re-elected] in 2024."

But Nunberg wasn't alone in his private assessment. Steve Bannon, another senior Trump adviser and a key source for Wolff's explosive 2018 tell-all "Fire and Fury," held an identical view, according to Wolff. Bannon "absolutely" believed Trump was an "idiot."

Bannon offered a psychological explanation for Trump's stubborn resistance to expert input, linking it to deep-seated problems rooted in his school years.

"[Bannon] would say it was not only that Trump had problems with school—that he was a lackluster student—but he was so lackluster that he was always rebelling against school, so that his entire life after school then became resistant to anyone telling him anything, anyone suggesting that they had more expertise than he did," Wolff said.

"School was not only a bad experience for him, but it became the experience that made him reject all further learning," Wolff added.

When asked for comment, Cheung responded with characteristic venom, attacking Wolff rather than addressing the substance of the allegations.

"Michael Wolff is a lying sack ... and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain," Cheung complained.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's "Operation Epic Fury" is draining America's precision missile arsenal at a rate that has triggered serious alarms inside the Pentagon, according to the Washington Post.

In just four weeks of war with Iran, the U.S. military has fired more than 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles — a staggering burn rate that has prompted urgent internal Pentagon discussions about ammunition replenishment and the crippling strategic consequences.

The Tomahawk has been the backbone of American military operations since its combat debut during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. These missiles are prized for their ability to travel more than 1,000 miles, eliminating the need to send pilots into heavily defended airspace. But there's a critical problem — only a few hundred are manufactured annually, meaning the global supply is severely limited and not easily replenished.

The frantic pace of consumption has forced the Navy to conduct emergency resupply operations at sea — a capability that has only recently been developed. Each destroyer carries dozens of these massive weapons, 20 feet long and weighing about 3,500 pounds each.

Pentagon officials are sounding the alarm in private. One official characterized the remaining Tomahawk supply in the Middle East as "alarmingly low." Another used military slang to describe the dire situation: the Pentagon is approaching "Winchester" — military terminology for running out of ammunition — for Tomahawk missiles in the Middle East.

The strategic implications are staggering. Heavy reliance on Tomahawks in the Iran conflict will force Pentagon planners into painful choices — whether to relocate missiles from other critical regions, including the Indo-Pacific, and whether to launch an expensive long-term manufacturing surge.

Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, laid out the grim mathematics. If the military has indeed fired more than 800 Tomahawks against Iran, "that would be about a quarter of the total inventory and would leave a large gap for a conflict in the Western Pacific." His think tank estimates the Navy possessed approximately 3,100 Tomahawks when the war began a month ago.

"It would take several years to replenish," Cancian warned.