Adam Nichols

Donald Trump built his political brand on the power of national pride — and it could have been the "fatal mistake" of his second administration, according to an analysis Friday.

The American leader can't seem to understand that other countries are patriotic too, Alexander Burns wrote for Politico.

That blind spot is unraveling Trump's second term — fracturing alliances with the global right, prolonging a costly war with Iran, and leaving his own Republican Party to absorb the political damage, Burns wrote.

The warning signs were hiding in plain sight.

When Alberta Premier Danielle Smith — a populist with deep ties to the American right who once hosted Tucker Carlson in Western Canada — visited Mar-a-Lago after Trump's second election win, she looked every bit a MAGA diehard. But when pressed last fall at a Toronto policy summit about Trump potentially meddling in Alberta's volatile politics, the admiration stopped.

"I don't want any foreign influence in our politics here," Smith said flatly.

Sovereignty, it turns out, cuts both ways, Burns wrote.

Trump launched his political career as a hard-edged nationalist, demanding tougher borders and American sovereignty above all else. He cheered Britain's 2016 Brexit vote and crowned himself "Mr. Brexit." He understood, viscerally, what it meant for a people to refuse outside domination.

But that instinct has deserted him, Burns wrote.

"In his second term, Trump’s grasp of nationalist politics has slipped. He has underestimated the power of patriotism and national pride in countries other than his own," he wrote.

"This serial miscalculation has undermined Trump’s trade wars and military adventures, aggravated the cost-of-living crisis, weakened the Republican Party and battered Trump’s bonds with the global right."

His tariff threats and belittling taunts against Canada didn't break Ottawa's will, but instead triggered patriotism that swept a new prime minister, Mark Carney, into power on a platform of resisting American economic domination. His attempted humiliation of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office — dressing him down while grabbing for Ukraine's mineral wealth — was such a naked affront to Ukrainian sovereignty that Zelenskyy faced zero political consequences for telling Trump to get lost.

Dispatching Vice President JD Vance to campaign in Hungary's election didn't save Viktor Orbán from a landslide defeat. Attempts to meddle in judicial decisions in Brazil, commandeer British and Spanish airfields, and dictate military strategy to Israel all went similarly nowhere.

And then there was Iran.

Trump's expectation that he could decapitate the Islamic Republic's leadership, bomb the country into submission, and install a compliant proxy government — all without ground troops — produced a monthslong stalemate that sent energy prices soaring and ground down the global economy.

It shouldn't have surprised anyone, Burns wrote.

Even Trump's ideological admirers abroad have noticed the drift.

Jordan Bardella, the likely presidential nominee for France's far-right National Rally and once a Trump enthusiast, told Politico that second-term Trump was barely recognizable. The United States, he said, was now behaving more like an "empire." Trump himself had become "extremely unsteady and constantly shifting."

And like Smith, Bardella wanted nothing to do with a Trump endorsement. "We don't need to accept or open the door to any form of interference," he said.

Donald Trump is hyper aware that his Iran deal is tearing his party apart — but he's especially concerned that he's left his MAGA base "seething," a columnist wrote Friday.

Even the president's most loyal supporters didn't mince words when they blasted the deal Trump is expected to sign in an effort to end the Iran war.

Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who has spent years carrying water for the MAGA was clearly reeling from Trump's freshly inked Memorandum of Understanding with Tehran.

"Giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea," Cruz said. "I think the President unfortunately is receiving bad advice on this deal."

It was a remarkable moment, wrote the I Paper's Simon Marks. One of Trump's most reliable foot soldiers openly breaking ranks over a deal signed just hours earlier in Versailles.

Cruz wasn't alone. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana declared that "Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave" over what he called Trump's capitulation.

"Iran's nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works," Cassidy warned, "and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future."

The fury didn't start Wednesday. When Trump launched his military campaign — entirely sidestepping the War Powers Act and the congressional approval it requires — prominent MAGA voices were already uneasy. Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens accused Trump of outsourcing American foreign policy to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Now, with a preliminary deal on the table, those same voices smell betrayal on a grander scale, Marks wrote.

Vice President JD Vance has insisted no American taxpayer money would be involved — that regional allies would foot the bill. But the optics are brutal: the United States went to war to topple a regime it is now proposing to bankroll.

But it's Trump's base he's most worried about, wrote Marks.

"Politician fury is one thing, but the reaction of his base is another thing entirely for the President. Trump will be watching very carefully the reaction of MAGA, and will be out to convince them that his deal is good for American consumers," he wrote.

"He already got a small bit of good news this week, with US petrol prices dropping to under $4 a gallon for the first time since mid-April.

"However, Trump’s virulent base has a long memory and his damaging war with Iran could be the last straw for some.

"The deal with Iran, and the negotiations that follow, is also only going to intensify the battering the President’s Republican colleagues will likely face on American doorsteps ahead of the crucial midterm elections in November."

CBS' firing of Stephen Colbert has seen the Late Show time slot nosedive in ratings — and it's taking the network with it.

Since CBS handed Byron Allen the 11:35 p.m. slot formerly occupied by Colbert's The Late Show — with Allen Media footing all production costs under a "time buy" arrangement — Nielsen data reviewed by Status show nearly two-thirds of the audience Colbert was drawing toward the end of his run has fled.

And media experts say that massive damage won't stay contained to the late night time slot.

"Within the television industry, it was figured out quite quickly that a popular late-night program would provide a lift to a morning show," University of Maine communications and journalism professor Michael Socolow told Status.

"Early audience studies revealed that people habitually left their TVs tuned to a channel, and they wouldn't switch channels the next time they turned on the TV unless they did not like what they were watching."

Late local news is also exposed. "People who wanted to watch Colbert, a lot of them probably watch late local news," said Bill Carter, the veteran New York Times media reporter and author of multiple books on late-night television. By canceling Colbert, Carter said, CBS "diminished itself."

CBS told the Daily Beast, "We're proud to partner with Byron Allen on a new business and programming model for late night that proactively addresses a network daypart that was cost-prohibitive to continue.

"With this 'time buy' model, we have shifted an hour that was losing roughly $40 million annually to $15 million in profit — a $55 million swing."

Ratings data suggest Jimmy Kimmel's ABC program has absorbed a significant share of Colbert's former viewers.

Allen, 65, said from the outset he wasn't chasing Colbert's audience. "At the end of the day, I'm not trying to replace Colbert," he told NPR last month. "I am not trying to hold on to his audience because Comics Unleashed has been around 20 years and has its own audience."

The White House quietly installed a "babysitter" to keep Robert F. Kennedy Jr in check amid terror the vaccine-sceptic is about to help tank the GOP's midterm performance, a report claimed Friday.

The secretary of health and human services' most powerful aide has been installed to keep Kennedy from going off the rails, several Democrats told Politico.

Chris Klomp was elevated to chief HHS counselor in February, effectively becoming Kennedy's second-in-command with authority over both personnel and policy at the Department of Health and Human Services.

"Klomp's speaking role at White House events and his presence behind the secretary at every hearing would seem to bear that out," a Democratic Senate aide told Politico about claims that Klomp was actually installed as a minder.

The aide added that several senators suspect Klomp was promoted "to babysit RFK because the White House doesn't trust him" and because Kennedy's vaccine policies and other unorthodox beliefs are unpopular.

Klomp has directly overseen major personnel decisions — including selecting a pro-vaccination doctor to lead the CDC over Kennedy's preferred anti-vaccine pick. He's the one who told Trump about the CDC nomination. He negotiated 17 drug-pricing deals that earned him a personal shoutout from the president, and he sat behind Kennedy at every one of seven congressional hearings in April.

One Kennedy ally didn't mince words, telling Politico that Kennedy "is more of a figurehead," while Klomp functions as the real chief operating officer.

"Chris Klomp has been unbelievable, a real star," the president said in April. "You don't know his name as much as some of the others, but he's a real star of the group."

But not everyone is impressed. A former senior HHS official told Politico that Klomp was undermining Kennedy and making unilateral personnel calls. "He's out of control trying to fire people," the former official said, claiming Kennedy wasn't even aware of some of his moves.

Trump's chief of staff Susie Wiles is reportedly "mesmerized by Klomp" after Dr. Oz — his first boss at HHS — vouched heavily for him. "Oz would say he's a genius," the former official said.

HHS pushed back on the figurehead characterization, calling it "demonstrably false" and insisting Kennedy "is actively engaged in the decisions shaping HHS." An administration official told Politico Klomp "doesn't make decisions without the secretary's sign-off."

A prominent psychologist is sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump's increasingly erratic behavior, warning that his fixation on Washington construction projects is a sign of significant mental decline.

Dr. John Gartner, a clinical psychologist and former Johns Hopkins University Medical School professor, told the Daily Beast that Trump's rambling tangents about pet projects — the White House Ballroom, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a planned Triumphal Arch modeled after Paris's Arc de Triomphe — aren't just political theater.

He warned they're clear symptoms that psychologists would use to reach a worrying diagnosis.

"Tangential speech is one of the diagnostic criteria for dementia," Gartner told the Beast.

A Daily Beast analysis found Trump discussed his construction projects on 17 separate occasions between May 1 and June 5 — at Cabinet meetings, Oval Office events, airport press gaggles — regardless of the actual topic at hand. Wisconsin farmers struggling with falling commodity prices got a six-minute detour about the Reflecting Pool, complete with "before and after" pictures.

Gartner ties the obsession directly to Trump's psychology.

"What he's obsessed with is a function of malignant narcissism. He's obsessed with things that reflect glory on him," he said. "He's changing Washington D.C. to Trump D.C."

And he added, "It's only going to go downhill from here."

"If it quacks like a duck, it may actually just be a Democrat hack doctor," White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast, adding that Trump is "the sharpest, most accessible, and energetic president in American history."

Trump's physician maintains he is in "excellent health" and fully fit for duty, while Trump repeatedly boasts about "acing" cognitive tests as proof of his intelligence — though medical experts note those tests screen for impairment, not IQ.

Gartner, who acknowledges he has not evaluated Trump in person, believes the president has shown signs of frontotemporal dementia for years.

"His dementia is becoming more disorganized and more impulsive," he said. "It's clear that this is someone who is in dramatic neurological decline."

With his Freedom 250 concert series in shambles after a mass exodus of performers, President Donald Trump has pivoted to what a campaign-style rally — and his newly revealed musical guests are really scraping the barrel.

Trump announced the "Rally to End All Rallies" Thursday night on Truth Social. It is scheduled for June 24 in Washington, D.C. — one day before the now-gutted Great American State Fair was set to open.

AN original concert — dubbed Freedom 250 — turned into a farce as headliners learned the event carried explicit political ties to Trump — a fact many said they weren't told upfront. Milli Vanilli singer Fab Morvan became the latest to walk, joining Martina McBride and Bret Michaels. The event's website now lists zero performers.

The replacement event's lineup reflects how dramatically Trump's musical options have narrowed. Country singer Lee Greenwood, 83, will open the proceedings with his 1984 signature track "God Bless the U.S.A." — the same song he has performed at Trump events since 2016. Three of Greenwood's top five songs on Spotify are variations of the same tune.

Trump also tapped tenor Christopher Macchio, whom he compared to the late Luciano Pavarotti, to perform classical selections. Macchio currently draws 571 monthly listeners on Spotify and 2,000 YouTube subscribers.

Flo Rida, Vanilla Ice, and Freedom Williams of C+C Music Factory have not yet withdrawn from Freedom 250.

Jimmy Kimmel delighted in the unraveling of President Donald Trump's massive party for America's 250th birthday, a celebration that has devolved into what the late-night host called a monument to MAGA incompetence.

The event, organized by Freedom 250 and scheduled for the National Mall from June 27 to July 10, was billed as a nonpartisan commemoration of the nation's 250th birthday. But it's suffered an exodus as multiple stars pulled out, claiming they had no idea of its political connections.

Headliner country star Martina McBride became the most prominent act to ditch the event, writing on X Thursday that the nonpartisan framing she'd been given "turned out to be misleading." The Commodores, Young MC, and Morris Day & The Time have also quit the event.

What remained, Kimmel told his audience, was a lineup "like Coachella for bands that hired their cousin as their tour manager" — a roster headlined by Flo Rida, Vanilla Ice, and Bret Michaels.

Then there's the Milli Vanilli situation.

The German duo that was famously exposed as lip-synching in a 1990 scandal is scheduled to perform, though one of its two public frontmen is now dead. The actual studio vocalists behind the group, twin sisters Jodie and Linda Rocco, said they were never contacted by organizers.

A statement from the Milli Vanilli camp confirmed they had no involvement and warned that anyone appearing under the name should be regarded as a tribute act with no authentic connection to the group.

"How can someone pretend to be Milli Vanilli," Kimmel asked, "when Milli Vanilli was pretending to be Milli Vanilli?"

He added, "What a concert this is gonna be," he said. "Everything they do, they screw up. They cannot do anything."

The devolving concert has left Trump's allies furious.

Trump ally and former head of the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell responded to McBride's announcement with the comment, "You've always been a woke lefty,"

Fox News host Todd Starnes on X, “Since you are clearing the air, how about explaining why you performed at the White House during the Obama regime? Or during Bill Clinton’s scandalous presidency?”

President Donald Trump's planned celebration of the nation's 250th birthday was dealt a crippling blow as the headliner of a planned concert became the latest to pull out.

Country star Martina McBride scrapped plans to lead the Great American State Fair, claiming she agreed to perform without knowing the MAGA links to the massive event in Washington, D.C.

The concert is fast unravelling as nearly half of its scheduled acts have now backed out less than a month before the event, organized by Freedom 250 and scheduled to start June 25 on the National Mall, starts.

"I was presented with an opportunity to perform at a nonpartisan event," McBride wrote on X, "but that turned out to be misleading."

The 59-year-old singer's abandonment came a day after she was announced as headliner. She said she had pressed organizers with questions before agreeing to perform, believing it would "bring people together in the way that only music can." Once the announcement dropped, she said, "things started changing and what we were told is, in fact, not what is happening."

Also on Thursday, soul group The Commodores announced their withdrawal. "Our music has always been our voice," the band said in a statement, "and we choose not to publicly affiliate with any single political party."

The exodus started earlier as multiple stars claimed they'd had no idea of the political affiliations of the event.

Rapper Young MC, who pulled out Wednesday, told Vibe Magazine, "I was told one thing and then it was a bait-and-switch. When an event is presented to an artist as nonpolitical and nonpartisan, and then turns around and becomes hyper-partisan like it's a rally, that's when I have a problem."

Morris Day and The Time also withdrew, leaving Flo Rida, Bret Michaels, C+C Music Factory, Vanilla Ice, and Milli Vanilli still on the bill. One half of the original Milli Vanilli duo, Rob Pilatus, died in 1998, and a separate act currently touring under the Milli Vanilli name said it has no involvement with the Freedom 250 show.

Fired U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi could be stripped of her law license after a retired judge and 120 Florida legal experts filed a sweeping ethics complaint against her with the Florida Bar.

The complaint was brought by Peggy Quince, a retired chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, and carries the signatures of more than 120 judges, law professors, and attorneys. It is their second attempt; the Bar turned away an earlier filing last June on the grounds that it doesn't investigate sitting federal appointees.

But President Donald Trump's dismissal of Bondi in April means that obstacle is no longer in the way.

"No one lawyer is above the law," Quince said in a statement.

The coalition behind the complaint — which includes Lawyers Defending American Democracy, the Democracy Defenders Fund, and Lawyers for the Rule of Law — alleges Bondi pressured DOJ attorneys to bend their ethical obligations or face termination.

Much of the filing focuses on Bondi's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, accusing her of misleading the public about a supposed "client list" she claimed was on her desk, then overseeing a document release so poorly managed that unredacted names, birth dates, and photos of victims were exposed.

Attorneys for survivors called one January release "the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in United States history." Virginia Canter, chief counsel at the Democracy Defenders Fund, said, "Lawyers have been disbarred for less."

The complaint further alleges Bondi greenlit prosecutions without probable cause against Trump adversaries — including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose cases a federal judge dismissed in November — and against protesters detained during immigration raids. Bondi's successor, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former personal lawyer, re-indicted Comey in late April on a separate charge.

The Democracy Defenders Fund says Bondi had "created an environment in which DOJ lawyers were induced to engage in acts they were ethically prohibited from doing, under threat of suspension or termination — or were fired for not doing so."

The Justice Department called the complaint, "a baseless and pathetic media stunt conjured up by inept attorneys desperate for relevance," according to the Miami Herald.

Bondi is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee Friday over the Epstein investigation — but only in a closed-door session, not the public sworn testimony Democrats sought.

"Bondi must testify under oath, on camera, for the public to see," Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) wrote on X.

Since her firing, Bondi has been recovering from thyroid cancer surgery. Trump has since appointed her to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

A rare albino buffalo in Bangladesh is drawing crowds — and comparisons to the leader of the free world.

The animal, currently housed in Paikpara, Narayanganj, earned the nickname Donald Trump thanks to a flowing golden mane that locals say bears a striking resemblance to Trump's signature hair. Videos of the buffalo have since spread widely across social media ahead of Eid al-Adha, the Muslim "Festival of Sacrifice," which falls next week, the US Sun reported.

"My younger brother jokingly named it Donald Trump after seeing the hair on its head," owner Ziauddin Mridha told NDTV, adding that the animal's disposition does not match the president's. "It is very calm in nature. Albino buffaloes are generally peaceful and do not become aggressive unless provoked."

Visitors made the pilgrimage after the clips went viral. "When I saw his pictures on Facebook, he looked exactly like Donald Trump," one woman told Bangladeshi newspaper Prothom Alo. "His facial structure and even hairstyle match that of Trump."

Mridha said the buffalo was purchased from a cattle market in Rajshahi about ten months ago. It has since been sold — meaning its brief, improbable moment in the spotlight may already be over.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

A bizarre brag by President Donald Trump suggested he has lost track of what month it is.

The 79-year-old posted a three-month-old New York Post front page to Truth Social early Friday, captioning it with the barely coherent "Have it!!! Great. President DJT."

But the cover he shared, headlined "Trump wins gold," praised him for his "'winning' economic message in State of the Union" — a speech that took place back in February.

That State of the Union ran a record-breaking 107 minutes, during which Trump declared the economy was "roaring like never before," blamed Democrats for the affordability crisis, and boasted that he had made America the "hottest" nation on Earth.

A lot has changed since then.

Trump is now staring down a midterm catastrophe, with a New York Times/Siena poll putting his approval rating at just 37 percent — down from 41 percent in January. Pollster Nate Silver's compiled average painted an even bleaker picture, putting his disapproval at 58.6 percent, surpassing his own first-term worst of 57.9 percent and Joe Biden's worst of 58.3 percent. It is the worst presidential polling average since George W. Bush left office.

A Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday found just one in three Americans — 33 percent — approve of his handling of the economy, down five points from 38 percent in mid-April. It marks the lowest economic approval rating of either of his terms.

The State of the Union also came just three days before Trump launched a war with Iran, a conflict that has since claimed 13 American lives and triggered the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil flows in peacetime. The closure has sparked a global energy crisis and pushed gas prices toward $5 a gallon, deepening the affordability crunch Trump once promised to fix.

A Daily Beast analysis of Trump's posting habits found that in April alone, he posted on 80 percent of nights — leaving just five nights in which he could theoretically have gotten a full night's sleep. He has also repeatedly appeared to doze off during Oval Office appointments.

President Donald Trump delivered a bitter 2 a.m. screed against Stephen Colbert Friday, just hours after the late-night comedian delivered a star-studded final performance to a massive audience.

"Colbert is finally finished at CBS," Trump wrote. "Amazing that he lasted so long! No talent, no ratings, no life. He was like a dead person. You could take any person off of the street and they would be better than this total jerk. Thank goodness he's finally gone!"

The late-night tirade came after Trump had teased on Wednesday that he would make a comment on Colbert's final episode "at a later date."

Colbert, 62, closed out his 11-year run on The Late Show in front of a crowd that included Paul McCartney, Paul Rudd, Bryan Cranston, and Ryan Reynolds. Fans who couldn't get into the live audience crowded the street outside the New York City Ed Sullivan Theater, while viewership of the broadcast was expected to be massive.

McCartney capped the evening by playing "Hello Goodbye" before he and Colbert together pulled the plug — literally — on the show.

CBS announced the cancellation last July, just three days after Colbert blasted the network's MAGA-friendly parent company, Paramount, over its $16 million settlement with Trump. Despite repeatedly savaging Colbert on social media, Trump tried to distance himself from the axing at the time.

"Everybody is saying that I was solely responsible for the firing of Stephen Colbert from CBS, Late Night," Trump posted last year. "That is not true! The reason he was fired was a pure lack of TALENT, and the fact that this deficiency was costing CBS $50 Million Dollars a year in losses — And it was only going to get WORSE!"

Trump's overnight screed recycled language from a 2024 Truth Social attack in which he had written that CBS "should terminate his contract and pick almost anyone, right off the street, who would do better, and for FAR LESS MONEY."

"It's heartbreaking to see how one man can silence a whole nation," Joshua McGehee told CNN. "When Colbert can be silenced for being critical, it puts everyone at tension to be themselves and to speak their minds."

Alan Tipert said he traveled all the way from Georgia "to witness the death of free speech."

"I mean, how silly would it be?" Colbert told People. "The ending of the show aside, which people can speculate about all they want, and I can't argue with their speculations, but we're clowns. How much does it diminish the office of the presidency to even notice what we say?"

CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil's disastrous attempt to cover Donald Trump's state visit to China hit yet another wall Thursday — this time as the MAGA-friendly network got thrown out of their makeshift broadcast studio by hotel management unhappy with the on-air coverage of the China-Taiwan conflict.

Dokoupil had already been forced to report on Trump's Beijing summit from Taipei — more than 1,000 miles away from where Trump and Chinese President Xi Jingping were meeting — after failing to secure a broadcast visa to enter mainland China. But according to Status, the setbacks didn't stop there.

A Status source said that the hotel's manager "was appalled" by the way in which Dokoupil discussed Taiwan on air while Trump was sitting across from the Chinese president. The hotel subsequently barred him from using his room as a broadcast studio.

Dokoupil then moved his operation to Taipei's Liberty Square — and addressed the debacle directly on Thursday night's broadcast while reporting on the broader climate of fear surrounding China's territorial claims over that nation.

"The threat of China is felt all over this island," Dokoupil said on air. "One woman slapped her husband's arm when he started talking to us about independence. Another woman asked that her words not be used, telling us 'We cannot speak freely.'"

"And even at our hotel where, after seeing our broadcast last night, the manager told us we can't cover anything political on their property," he added.

The visa failure and hotel expulsion are the latest embarrassments for CBS News under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who was installed in the role by Paramount Skydance CEO and Trump ally David Ellison despite having no prior television news experience. Weiss has presided over a turbulent run that has included pulling a critical "Inside CECOT" segment about Trump's deportation policies from 60 Minutes and ousting CBS News' international chief Claire Day.

Dokoupil's elevation to the flagship evening anchor slot has done little to reverse the network's fortunes. His broadcast regularly draws fewer than 4 million viewers — a number one television executive described as a threshold that "would previously have been considered disastrous" — and his May 8 broadcast hit a record low of just 3.4 million viewers.

One television news executive told Status the damage traces directly back to Weiss and ownership.

"It's easy to sit at home and criticize TV journalism and say how it needs to be done differently or better. But it takes real, serious people and skill to execute this stuff," the executive said. "Bari and the Ellisons demonstrate yet again that this is much harder than it looks. I hope for their business and their talent they start to understand just how badly they've miscalculated their approach to news."