A key Donald Trump adviser is reportedly seeking a war that begins with China and extends all the way to members of the President's own cabinet.
Trump's trade advisor Peter Navarro has been in the news in recent weeks because of his influence on Trump's tariff policies, which have led to massive market uncertainty. Navarro also had a public feud with billionaire Elon Musk.
But Musk isn't the only Trump associate Navarro might see as an "enemy," according to a deep-dive on Navarro by the Washington Post.
The report outlines Navarro's background as a Clinton Democrat, all the way through him becoming a "martyr for MAGA" when he was imprisoned for failing to cooperate with an investigation into Jan. 6.
"One year ago, Peter Navarro sat in a federal prison in Miami, sending messages that he was a martyr for MAGA. He had begged for help paying legal bills that he said would reach $750,000," the Saturday report states, noting that "Navarro’s journey to one of the most powerful positions in the White House has been one of spectacular flameouts and surprising comebacks."
Michael Kranish and Jeff Stein also write that "the story of how this onetime staunch Democrat has won so much influence has become a defining tale of the early days of the second Trump administration, raising concerns even among many Republicans about how the economist has gained such extraordinary power."
"An examination of Navarro’s memoirs, interviews and other documentation shows that it is a war he has sought for decades. The enemy is not only China, he has said, but also the Wall Street titans who benefited from Beijing’s policies and who, notably, are among the most powerful players in the Republican Party, including some now in Trump’s Cabinet," the report states. "If Navarro’s battles in the current Trump administration are anything like they were in the first term, they are filled with shouting matches, name-calling and endless effort to curry the president’s favor."
Donald Trump made a physically impossible claim about his tariff negotiations with China, and one reporter is sounding the alarm.
Politico's Washington-based China correspondent Phelim Kine appeared on MSNBC on Saturday, where he was asked about the President's claim that he has already sealed 200 tariff deals with various nations.
Not only is there no evidence to back that up, according to Kine, but it is also impossible because there are fewer than 200 countries in existence.
He replied, "I think in terms of the claims by the President that he has already sealed 200 trade deals, I think there are only 195 countries on this earth. So there's five extra," he said, adding, "and it's unclear how the administration could have sealed the deals with the entire planet in 13 days."
Regarding Trump's claim that he's been in touch with the leader of China, the reporter said, "My sources here say that just hasn't happened. The only call that we know that Xi Jinping and Donald Trump has had happened on January 17th."
"So we're in this staring contest between the two largest economies of the world, and this staring contest has profound implications for their own economies, but for the world economy, and the fact that neither side is willing to budge really could tip this country's economy, at least, into a real danger zone very soon."
Making a rare appearance on Saturday as a guest on MSNBC host Katie Phang's last show, Rachel Maddow graded out Donald Trump's first 100 days and the best she could say about the second-term president that he has "flailed."
Jumping right into it, Maddow, after saying she would miss Phang hosting her own show, began, "Let me just say, the 100 days, there has never been a president who has botched the first 100 days of his presidency more than Donald Trump has. You don't have to take that as a subjective view. It's the view shown in scientific polling of the American public. The public is deeply, deeply, deeply against what Trump is doing. He's -- the YouGov polling that came out this week, I think he is 19 points underwater!"
Pointing out that she believes Trump is "more ambitious" than during his first term before losing to President Joe Biden in 2020, she added, "I do think we're in the middle of an attempted authoritarian overthrow of American democracy. I mean, I think everybody who predicted that was right, but I don't think he's any better at it."
Maddow also noted expectations for Trump the second go-around were high but that he has stumbled as he's been mired himself in pushing his policies.
"He was going to be better at doing what he wanted to do, and that's what we should brace ourselves for. And I actually don't think that's the way it's worked out," she observed.
'"I think the other thing I was talking about sort of what the pundit class got wrong heading into Trump's second term," she elaborated. "I think what we –– there was, again, a kind of pundit, common wisdom or kind of observer common wisdom that the American people weren't going to resist, you know, weren't going to stand up, that there was there was no sign of the kind of mass resistance to what trump is doing. That's turning out not to be the case at all, it's just different this time."
On Saturday morning, MSNBC host Katie Phang invited Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell on to discuss his new report on the turmoil at the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and quickly singled out a startling revelation of an accusation of cocaine use.
With Hegseth under the gun for what has been dubbed "Signalgate," new revelations that he included his wife, brother and lawyer in a separate Signal chat where he discussed war plan, and use of an unsecured internet commercial "dirty line" from his Pentagon office, Lowell reported that fighting among dismissed Hegseth aides has also gotten messy.
According to his report, the DOD has been "marked for weeks by ugly internal politics" with his now-ousted chief of staff Joe Kasper pointing the finger at the departed Dan Caldwell, deputy chief Darin Selnick and chief to the deputy defense secretary Colin Carroll, with them reciprocating.
According to MSNBC host Phang, what she fund intriguing was a passage where Lowell wrote, "The tensions among the former aides have continued since their collective ouster. Carroll has considered filing a defamation suit against Kasper and started making calls on the Monday after he was fired, asking people whether Kasper had ever been seen doing cocaine in a previous job. Kasper has complained that some of the calls went to his wife and previous clients, asking rhetorically to associates how he would have been able to hold a security clearance and pass regular drug tests."
"Your piece that just came out this morning is fantastic, but there was something that stuck with me was pretty hardcore," Phang prompted her guest. "I mean, Hugo, this is the Department of Defense, this is national security, this is the welfare of not only our armed forces and the people that are sacrificing to be able to defend us, but it's our safety. And this is the type of insanity that's going on under Pete Hegseth's's tenure."
"It was Colin Carroll, the chief of staff of the deputy secretary, who in the wake of his firing, you know, he was basically bundled out of the Pentagon along with two other aides who were seen as antagonistic or at odds with the chief of staff at the Pentagon, Joe Kasper and what we have seen in the days since is this kind of continuation of that interpersonal conflict," Lowell responded.
"And so the Monday, after Colin Carrol was was fired –– he was fired on the Friday –– he was busy calling up people around Kasper's life, including his wife and his in-laws and, and kind of former clients trying to chase down a tip that Kasper may have, been using cocaine in a previous job. and he claimed it was because he was trying to do research for his defamation suit," he elaborated.
"Now, we should say, you know, Joe Kasper, the chief of staff who has since left that role in the wake of all of this as well, he has strenuously denied using any cocaine," the Guardian reporter cautioned "And when reached by phone yesterday, told us that, you know, it's so 'egregiously. stupid' that I'm, you know, getting mired into this stuff and how could I have held a security clearance for so long if I was actually doing drugs? But the wider point is correct."
On Saturday morning the funeral for Pope Francis — who died on April 21 at the age of 88 — was held in Vatican City in Italy. Top officials from around the world attended, including U.S. President DonaldTrump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to reports, Zelensky received a much warmer welcome than Trump. And X is being inundated with reactions.
The conservative Republicans Against Trump, posting CNN's coverage of the funeral, tweeted, " The crowd at the Pope’s funeral erupted in applause when President Zelensky arrived. Donald Trump must be furious."
In a separate tweet, Republicans Against Trump noted, "The strict dress code for the Pope’s funeral required men to wear dark suits and long black ties. Naturally, Trump was the only one who showed up in a blue suit and tie."
X user Anna Komsa observed, "While Zelensky was greeted with a spontaneous round of applause, Trump, in his blue suit at Pope Francis's funeral, received nothing."
Another X user, Barry Kenny, commented, "He is so self-absorbed he won’t have registered it, his toadies so cowardly they won’t say it, but Trump roundly ignored by Pope Francis’ funeral crowd, while @ZelenskyyUa spontaneously applauded - the people know who the true leader of the free world is. #popefrancisfuneral."
Political strategist Chris D. Jackson posted, "Trump may see himself as the main event, but at Pope Francis’s funeral, he’s reportedly stuck in the third row. Not surprising — it's no secret the Pope and his people didn’t care for him. If Biden were still president, he'd be up front — where real leaders sit."
X user Mike Thomas tweeted, "Watching the spectacle of the funeral of Pope Francis is special. Catholic or not you have to respect his humility and core humanity. Why is Trump in a blue suit and blue tie. At least Melania is correctly attired with a veil. What a great ovation for Zelensky (Trump none!)
The finger-pointing and sniping at each other that has consumed Donald Trump's inner circle as the harsh reality of running the country overwhelms them, led New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to put them under the microscope on Saturday.
As Dowd wrote of Trump, "How do most Americans see his first 100 days in office? 'Chaotic' and 'scary' — not the paternal reassurance he might have hoped to engender with his cartoonishly macho style, his manosphere heroics and his swaggering U.F.C. and wrestling posse."
Pointing to evidence of "gossiping, catfighting, backbiting and clawing each other’s eyes out," in the administration," Dowd wrote "... it is grimly entertaining to see this most 'masculine' of administrations reflecting stereotypes about female behavior that long kept women out of power," before quipping, "Trump’s macho crew, it turns out, is a vicious little sewing circle."
Singling out Trump's pick to be defense secretary, she asked, "If you don’t want an unstable creature at the top, particularly at that bastion of masculinity, the Pentagon, why would you hire Pete Hegseth?"
Referring to him as a "lightweight former Fox weekend anchor," she piled on with, "... the man in charge of a department with a budget of approximately $850 billion seems flighty and shaky, unable to find loyal consiglieres and unable to stick to the Pentagon’s classified message system, which is among the best in the world for a reason."
Getting in a final dig, she proposed, "Trump, who often casts by looks, may have liked Hegseth’s slick style and pretty face. But even the Emperor of Chaos must realize this Princess of Chaos has to go"
After a second consecutive night of deadly Russian air attacks – against the capital Kyiv on April 23 and the eastern Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad on April 24 – a ceasefire in Ukraine seems as unrealistic as ever.
With Russian commitment to a deal clearly lacking, the situation is not helped by US president Donald Trump. He can’t quite seem to decide who he will ultimately blame if his efforts to agree a ceasefire fall apart.
Before the strikes on Kyiv, Trumpblamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for holding up a deal by refusing to recognise Crimea as Russian. The following day, he chidedVladimir Putin for the attacks, calling them “not necessary, and very bad timing” and imploring Putin to stop.
The main stumbling bloc on the path to a ceasefire is what a final peace agreement might look like and what concessions Kyiv – and its European allies – will accept. Ukraine’s and Europe’s position on this is unequivocal: no recognition of the illegal Russian annexation.
This position is also backed by opinion polls in Ukraine, which indicate only limited support for some, temporary concessions to Russia. The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, also suggested that temporarily giving up territory “can be a solution”.
The deal that Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff apparently negotiated over three rounds of talks in Russia was roundly rejected by Ukraine and Britain, France and Germany, who lead the “coalition of the willing” of countries pledging support for Ukraine.
This prompted Witkoff and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to pull out of follow-up talks in London on April 24. These ended with a fairly vacuous statement about a commitment to continuing “close coordination and … further talks soon”.
And even this now appears as quite a stretch. Coinciding with Witkoff’s fourth trip to see Putin on April 25, European and Ukrainian counterproposals were released that reject most of the terms offered by Trump or at least defer their negotiation until after a ceasefire is in place.
Why is it failing?
The impasse is unsurprising. Washington’s proposal included a US commitment to recognize Crimea as Russian, a promise that Ukraine would not join Nato and accept Moscow’s control of the territories in eastern Ukraine that it currently illegally occupies. It also included lifting all sanctions against Russia.
In other words, Ukraine would give up large parts of territory and receive no security guarantees, while Russia is rewarded with reintegration into the global economy.
It is the territorial concessions asked of Kyiv which are especially problematic. Quite apart from the fact that they are in fundamental breach of basic principles of international law – the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states – they are unlikely to provide solid foundations for a durable peace.
Much like the idea of Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, to divide Ukraine like post-1945 Berlin, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what, and who, drives this war.
Both proposals accept the permanent loss to Ukraine of territory that Russia currently controls. Where they differ is that Kellogg wants to introduce a European-led reassurance force west of the river Dnipro, while leaving the defence of remaining Ukrainian-controlled territory to Kyiv’s armed forces.
If accepted by Russia – unlikely as this is given Russia’s repeated and unequivocal rejection of European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine – it would provide at best a minimal security guarantee for a part of Ukrainian territory.
What it would almost inevitably mean, however, is a repeat of the permanent ceasefire violations along the disengagement zone in eastern Ukraine where Russian and Ukrainian forces would continue to face each other.
This is what happened after the ill-fated Minsk accords of 2014 and 2015, which were meant to settle the conflict after Russia’s invasion of Donbas in 2014. A further Russian invasion could be just around the corner once the Kremlin felt that it had sufficiently recovered from the current war.
The lack of a credible deterrent is one key difference between the situation in Ukraine as envisaged by Washington and other historical and contemporary parallels, including Korea and Cyprus.
Korea was partitioned in 1945 and has been protected by a large US military presence since the Korean war in 1953. After the Turkish invasion of 1974, Cyprus was divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriots along a partition line secured by an armed UN peacekeeping mission.
Trump has ruled out any US troop commitment as part of securing a ceasefire in Ukraine. And the idea of a UN force in Ukraine, briefly floated during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko between 2014 and 2019, never got any traction, and is not likely to be accepted by Putin now.
The assumed parallels with the situation in Germany after the second world war are even more tenuous. Not only did Nazi Germany unconditionally surrender in May 1945 but its division into allied zones of occupation was formally and unanimously agreed by the victorious allies in Potsdam in August 1945.
Muddling up Potsdam and Munich?
By the time two separate German states of East and West Germany were established in 1949, the western allies had fallen out with Stalin but remained firmly united in Nato and western Europe. So the west German state was firmly protected under the US nuclear umbrella.
The agreements made in Potsdam didn’t have the same implication of permanence as the US suggestion to formally recognise Crimea as Russian territory. The suggestion was always that the allied forces would pull out of Germany at some stage, and restore the country’s sovereignty.
Most importantly, the allies did not reward the aggressor in the war or create the conditions for merely a brief interruption for an aggressor’s revisionist agenda.
After all, what has driven Putin’s war against Ukraine is his conviction that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”.
The Trump administration deludes itself that it is applying the lessons of Potsdam by recognizing Russia’s territorial conquests in Ukraine and handing them over. Instead it is falling into the trap of the 1938 Munich Agreement. Negotiators in Munich tried, but failed, to avoid the second world war by appeasing and not deterring an insatiable aggressor – a historical lesson that doesn’t need repeating.
In 2025, the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) is celebrating its 114th anniversary. The organization, founded during Democrat Woodrow Wilson's presidency, was designed to be an alliance of journalists who covered the White House but were independent of it.
The United States has had some controversial presidents since then, from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump. But before Trump, all U.S. presidents attended the WHCA's dinner — an event that goes back to Republican Calvin Coolidge's presidency in 1924.
In an article published Saturday, The Guardian's David Smith describes some of the anxiety surrounding the WHCA's forthcoming 2025 dinner.
"It is no laughing matter," Smith reports. "The annual dinner for journalists who cover the White House is best known for American presidents trying to be funny and comedians trying to be political. But this year's edition will feature neither. Instead, the event in a Downtown Washington hotel on Saturday night will, critics say, resemble something closer to a wake for legacy media still trying to find an effective response to Donald Trump's divide-and-rule tactics and the rise of the MAGA media ecosystem."
Smith adds, "Joe Biden's effort to restore norms included the former president giving humorous speeches at the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) annual dinner. But just as in his first term, Trump will not be joining the group he has long branded 'the enemy of the people,' and most of his staff are expected to boycott."
The WHCA invited comedian Amber Ruffin to speak at their 2025 dinner but withdrew the invitation — a move that, Smith notes, is being criticized as an "exercise in capitulation and cowardice" and "a metaphor for the failure of the media to unite around a strategy to push back against Trump's all-out assault."
Author Sally Quinn, widow of the late Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, isn't planning to attend this year's WHCA dinner —which, she laments, is taking place during a very dark time in U.S. history.
Smith quotes Quinn as saying, "Everyone's scared. You're scared you're going to get thrown in jail if you write something (Trump) doesn't like, and that's going to happen very soon. Then you have the owners of these news organizations who keep keeling over and bending the knee. So you've got all these people in the media who are quitting in protest. It's a horrible time to be covering Trump."
Quinn added, "If you're a journalist and you want to be on the story, this is the story to cover. But people are not having fun covering it. It's very intense and very upsetting."
During a segment on MSNBC on Saturday morning about what the Democratic party needs to do to get back on track with voters, a former GOP House member suggested Donald Trump is giving them a helping hand.
Speaking with the hosts of "The Weekend," ex-Rep Joe Walsh (R-IL) took the side of newly-elected DNC Vice Chair David Hogg who wants to oust some longtime House Democrats with younger candidates in safe districts to shake-up the party.
"That's all inside baseball," Walsh, a harsh Donald Trump critic admitted before adding, "Look, I'm not a Democrat. The Democratic party brand is in the toilet; they need to be shaken up, they need to fight I want to see the Democratic party fight."
"I want to see new blood," he continued. "Some of this old blood needs to go retire. This is good for the Democratic party. I think what David Hogg is proposing is going to change the change the subject, as it should."
As the segment began to close, he offered a warning to Republicans.
"Look, just one quick final thought," he stated. "Because of the madness and the chaos and the disaster that is Trump, Democrats are going to be competitive in districts and states this year, next year that we can't even imagine right now."
"So doggone it, field candidates, get active, spend money everywhere," he suggested.
Attorney General Pam Bondi may come to regret approving and then boasting about the arrest of a Wisconsin judge on Friday for allegedly trying to shield an immigrant from being scooped up by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) outside her courtroom.
That is the opinion of ex-U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance who appeared on MSNBC Saturday morning to poke holes in the DOJ's case against Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, with Vance calling the arrest outrageous and unlikely to lead to a conviction.
Speaking with the hosts of MSNBC's "The Weekend," Vance lambasted Bondi for running to Fox News to hype up the arrest where she told hosts, "We are going to prosecute you, and we are prosecuting you. I found out about this the day it happened. We could not believe, actually, that a judge really did that. We looked into the facts in great depth… You cannot obstruct a criminal case. And really, shame on her. It was a domestic violence case of all cases, and she's protecting a criminal defendant over victims of crime."
According to Vance, the arrest, with the judge photographed being taken into custody in handcuffs had little to do with "protecting a criminal defendant" than it did as a warning to other judges to not buck Donald Trump's policies.
Noting that the DOJ report on the arrest was at odds with what Bondi was claiming, the former prosecutor claimed it will likely come back to haunt the attorney general doing Trump's dirty work.
"This is all in violation of very clear DOJ policy," Vance accused. "You're not permitted in a case of an indictment or a complaint to go to the press and talk about anything that's not in the four corners of the document, because it prejudices the defendant's rights."
"We will probably see a motion to dismiss this case outright," she then asserted before continuing, "If this was a normal Justice Department. Pam Bondi, [FBI director] Kash Patel, anybody else who was talking about this case on national TV would be referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility for disciplinary action"
"This is not a functional Justice Department," she added. "So the dirty laundry will come out in the wash in these proceedings, where the facts just don't add up."
Following his appearance at the funeral of Pope Francis on Saturday, where he was called out in a homily, Donald Trump jumped onto Truth Social to lash out at the New York Times and, in particular, reporter Peter Baker.
In his rant, the president accused Baker and the New York Times of having it all wrong and accused them of giving former President Barack Obama a pass on the annexation of Crimea by Russia.
As he wrote, "No matter what deal I make with respect to Russia/Ukraine, no matter how good it is, even if it’s the greatest deal ever made, The Failing New York Times will speak BADLY of it. Liddle’ Peter Baker, the very biased and untalented writer for The Times, followed his Editor’s demands and wrote that Ukraine should get back territory, including, I suppose, Crimea, and other ridiculous requests, in order to stop the killing that is worse than anything since World War II."
He then added, "Why doesn’t this lightweight reporter say that it was Obama who made it possible for Russia to steal Crimea from Ukraine without even a shot being fired. It was also Liddle’ Peter who wrote an absolutely fawning, yet terribly written Biography, on Obama. It was a JOKE! Did Baker ever criticize the Obama Crimea Giveaway? NO, not once, only TRUMP, and I’ve had nothing to do with this stupid war, other than early on, when I gave Ukraine Javelins, and Obama gave them sheets."
"This is Sleepy Joe Biden’s War, not mine," he accused. "It was a loser from day one, and should have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened if I were President at the time. I’m just trying to clean up the mess that was left to me by Obama and Biden, and what a mess it is. With all of that being said, there was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through 'Banking' or 'Secondary Sanctions?' Too many people are dying!!!"
A Saturday morning discussion on the devastating impact of Donald Trump's tariffs on American consumers spiraled into laughter on MSNBC after "The Weekend" co-host Symone Sanders Townsend read on-air a boast the president made in an interview this past week.
The co-hosts of the popular MSNBC show were peppering guest Bharat Ramamurti, a former deputy director of the National Economic Council, with questions about the long-term effects of the president's trade war, when Sanders Townsend directed their attention to an interview Trump did with Time magazine.
"I just want to ask because the president says he's making all these deals, okay?" the MSNBC co-host prompted her panel.
"He's in this Time interview on Friday saying, 'I've made all the deals.' Time is like, 'When are you going to announce them?' Trump? 'I've made 200 deals.' Time said, 'You've made 200 deals?' Trump '100 percent,'" Sanders Townsend read.
"He also, in that interview, he also said --," she continued, but co-host Alicia Menendez exclaimed, "There are 193 UN members!" which led to an outburst of laughter.
"So he's rounding up there?" Menendez joked.
"They're rounded up," Sander replied before quipping, "I don't know who the extra seven are now."
Donald Trump got a front row seat to his own humiliation Saturday as he was verbally attacked in a homily at Pope Francis’ funeral.
Trump, who traveled to Rome Friday, sat with world leaders at the service as his signature policy was rebuked to an audience of millions watching live around the world.
“Pope Francis incessantly raised his voice, imploring peace and calling for reason and honest negotiation to find possible solutions,” Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who gave the homily, said.
“‘Build bridges, not walls,’ was an exhortation he repeated many times.”
The statement was clearly aimed at Trump’s promise to build a wall between Mexico and the USA to halt illegal immigration.
It — along with many other Trump policies — was frequently criticized by the pope, who said anybody who thought of building walls rather than bridges was “not Christian” — which prompted Trump to call that statement “disgraceful.”
