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Expert uncorks blunt advice for Trump on MS NOW as Iran deal slips away: 'Just shut up!'

A foreign-relations expert offered blunt advice to President Donald Trump as negotiations between his administration and the Iranian regime deteriorate.

Joseph Cirincione, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, told MS NOW's Alex Witt on "Alex Witt Reports" that Trump appears to have a way to make a stronger deal with the Iranian regime, but the president is blind to it because of how much he is blustering about the state of the war. His comments come at a time when Trump's deal with Iran has become the "joke in Washington," according to Cirincione, and the Iranian regime seems to be backing away from an agreement struck between the two sides over continued fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

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Senator sounds alarm over G7 'nightmare scene' exposing 'state-like power' of corporations

Sen. Chris Murphy says a single image from this week's G7 summit captures one of his deepest fears about the growing power of the tech industry: the chief executives of major artificial intelligence companies seated at the table alongside presidents and prime ministers, as if they were heads of state themselves.

"At the G7, the CEOs of the big AI companies sat at the table like heads of state, alongside presidents and prime ministers," the Connecticut Democrat wrote, sharing a photo of the summit's main session. His reaction was blunt: "This is the nightmare scene."

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JD Vance 'humiliated' by Iranian negotiators in stunning spectacle: 'Never looked weaker'

The ongoing peace talks in Switzerland between American and Iranian officials got off Sunday to a rocky start, according to one Emirati political analyst who went on to describe the spectacle as nothing short of “humiliation” for Vice President JD Vance, who’s leading the U.S. delegation.

“This was humiliation. No one in modern history has made America wait and beg for negotiations. This was the moment JD Vance should have returned to Washington. The Islamic regime did this on purpose,” argued Emirati political analyst and author Amjad Taha in an analysis published on social media.

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Trump's 'unhinged' phone call to foreign leader leaves critics stunned: 'Brazenly illegal'

President Donald Trump's account of a phone call he says he had with Iranian officials, in which he reportedly threatened to wipe out their country, take over the Strait of Hormuz, and more, has set off a wave of disbelief, ridicule, and alarm across the political spectrum.

The threats were relayed by Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst, who said he spoke with Trump for more than 20 minutes and came away with what he called "new insight" into the president's posture as nuclear talks opened in Switzerland. According to Yingst, Trump described what he told the Iranians about the strait in blunt terms. "You close it and you won't have a country," Trump said he warned them. "You won't even make it back to your f------ country." Yingst added that Trump said, "We may take over the Strait, if we have to."

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Trump drops profanity in threat to kill peace negotiators: 'Won't even make it back'

President Donald Trump appeared to threaten Iranian peace negotiators with assassination Sunday in a “bonkers” phone call with Fox News’ Trey Yingst, the details of which Yingst revealed on air just moments later.

Last week, Trump officially agreed to a tentative peace deal with Iran, giving the two parties 60 days to finalize a more permanent agreement to end hostilities. Vice President JD Vance arrived in Switzerland Sunday to meet with an Iranian delegation of negotiators led by Speaker Mahammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghci.

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Iran's clerics — not MAGA voters — may decide Vance's future in politics: expert

JD Vance's path to the presidency may run through Tehran, and not in a way that helps him. That is the striking implication of a new analysis by Iran expert Karim Sadjadpour, who argues in The Atlantic that the vice president's political future now depends heavily on whether hardline Iranian officials decide to play along with Donald Trump's latest gamble.

Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, lays out how Trump handed Vance responsibility for an enormous and unlikely task: not merely striking a new nuclear deal, but engineering a wholesale transformation of US-Iran relations after a war that Sadjadpour says ended in humiliation for the president. The memorandum that paused the fighting, he writes, is so lopsided that it reads as if Tehran drafted it, with 13 of its 14 provisions amounting to boilerplate or favoring Iran outright.

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'He will cave': Expert predicts Trump poised to give up to another major adversary

Authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat is predicting that President Donald Trump's praise for China's Xi Jinping will end the same way his Iran standoff did: with the president backing down to a strongman he admires.

Her forecast came in response to an Axios clip in which Trump gushed about the Chinese leader on "The Axios Show." Asked about Xi, Trump described him in the language of physical admiration he often reserves for fellow autocrats, calling him tall, "6-foot-2," and praising his "great stature," "great confidence," and intelligence. For Ben-Ghiat, a historian of fascism and author who has spent years studying how leaders flatter and accommodate dictators, the fawning was a tell rather than a throwaway line.

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Trump's behavior at home is blowing up in his face on the world stage: analyst

Donald Trump's habit of punishing Republicans who cross him may have just cost him the political cover he needs to sell his Iran deal, according to political analyst Sabrina Haake, who argues the president's domestic vendettas are actively undermining him abroad.

In her latest newsletter, Haake makes the case that Trump's "personal thirst for revenge at home is hurting him on Iran." Her logic is straightforward: the lawmakers Trump targeted in primaries, several of whom lost as a result, no longer owe him anything and are now free to attack his foreign policy without fear of consequences. As she puts it, they "have zero Fs left to give."

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Ex-senior official suspects Trump to 'bury horrific' incident that killed children: report

A former senior Pentagon official sounded the alarm on Sunday over their belief that the Trump administration was likely to bury an internal investigation into an incident that coincided with the launch of the U.S. war against Iran, an incident one Democratic lawmaker described as “one of the most horrific episodes” of the “illegal Trump war.”

Trump’s Operation Epic Fury began with “double tap” strikes on Shajareh Tayyebeh, an Iranian girls’ elementary school, which killed at least 156 people, 120 of them children. Trump initially blamed Iran for the strikes before it became clear that a U.S.-made Tomahawk missile was used in the attack.

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Trump floats new plan to impose his own tolls on Strait of Hormuz

President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to muse about who gets to charge ships for passing through the Strait of Hormuz — and landed on an answer that put the United States, and himself, at the center of it.

In a post Wednesday, Trump declared there would be "NO TOLLS in the Hormuz Strait for 60 days" during what he called the "Cease Fire Period," and "NO TOLLS after the 60 day period has expired" — with one sweeping exception. The carve-out: tolls "imposed by and for the United States of America," should the underlying deal collapse.

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'How humiliating': JD Vance ripped as his confident Iran boast unravels in real time

Vice President JD Vance is facing online mockery after a boast about the recent Iran deal backfired.

Vance went on Fox & Friends Weekend on Saturday morning to tout Trump's new Iran deal. He told the Fox program, "My understanding, talking to Steve and Jared this morning, is that things are going well," referring to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

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Trump forgot to bring Iran deal to signing — leaving Rubio scrambling for printer: report

Secretary of State Marco Rubio scrambled for a printer inside the Palace of Versailles after President Donald Trump went to the sign his Iran deal — without bringing a copy with him.

A new report sheds light on the chaotic behind-the-scenes details of how the historic agreement came together.

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JD Vance not traveling to Switzerland for Iran talks: report

Vice President JD Vance will have to stay home instead of traveling to Switzerland to finalize the memorandum of understanding the Trump administration struck with the Iranian regime last weekend, according to a White House spokesperson.

On Sunday, Trump announced his administration had struck a deal with the regime that would immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz and provide a pathway to ending the conflict. The final agreement was initially scheduled to be signed on Friday in Switzerland.

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