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Trump Dodges, Denies and Deflects Questions as Ukraine Weapons Scandal Grows

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The halted Ukraine weapons scandal is growing as President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he had not even thought about who gave the order to pause the shipment of vital munitions—which caused tremendous turmoil inside the White House, Congress, and Kyiv—but if it had been given, he claimed, he would have both known about it and likely been the one to give it.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, for the third time, approved the decision to pause the shipments of weapons to Ukraine—just before President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hours after that conversation, Russia launched one of the largest bombing attacks since the start of its illegal war against Ukraine.

“Sir,” a reporter asked President Trump at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, “yesterday you said that you were not sure who ordered the munitions halted to Ukraine. Have you since been able to figure that out?”

RELATED: ‘Secretary Chaos’: Hegseth Running ‘Absolute Clown Show’ Critics Say, Amid Calls to Resign

“Well,” Trump replied, as he acknowledged the munitions had been halted, “I haven’t thought about it because we’re looking at Ukraine right now and munitions, but, uh, I have no, I have not gone into it.”

“What does it say that such a big decision could be made inside your government without you knowing?” the reporter pressed.

“Uh, I would know,” Trump insisted. “If a decision was made, I would know. I’d be the first to know, in fact, most likely, I’d give the order, but I haven’t done that yet.”

The President then moved on to take a question from a different reporter.

President Trump on Tuesday had claimed he had no knowledge of who ordered the halt in weapons shipments. That pause came just after his July 3 call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hours later, Russia launched a massive bombing campaign against Ukraine.

“So who ordered the pause last week?” a CNN reporter had asked Trump on Tuesday.

“I don’t know,” Trump replied. “Why don’t you tell me?”

The halt of weapons to Ukraine was so catastrophic and damaging that it set off “a scramble inside the administration to understand why the halt was implemented and explain it to Congress and the Ukrainian government,” CNN reported.

Critics blasted the President.

READ MORE: ‘No Amnesty’ and No Plan: Trump Ag Sec Grilled on Farm Labor as Deportations Continue

“This is quite literally becoming a daily thing, where Trump disavows making decision after decision, some of which would be wildly illegal without his involvement,” observed civil liberties and national security journalist Marcy Wheeler.

“There are some people who I think are really principled callers-out of cognitive decline, just like deeply invested in the matter as something that self-evidently needs to be called out publicly and not swept under the rug, who I can’t wait to hear from,” noted Pat Dennis, president of American Bridge, a Democratic Super PAC.

Watch the video below or at this link.

 

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DOJ Takes Down Thousands of Epstein Documents After Privacy Concerns Raised

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The Trump Department of Justice reportedly has removed thousands of documents from its Friday dump of millions of pages of Epstein files.

Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney reported on Monday that the DOJ told “the court that it has taken down ‘several thousands’ of documents from the Epstein Files website after victim privacy concerns were raised.”

In its message to two U.S District Court judges, the DOJ wrote: “The Department has worked all hours through the weekend from the point when the first victim-related concerns were raised. To that end, out of the larger production described above, the Department now has taken down several thousands of documents and media that may have inadvertently included victim-identifying information due to various factors, including technical or human error.”

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the DOJ had “exposed the names of dozens of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, including many who haven’t shared their identities publicly or were minors when they were abused by the notorious sex offender.”

READ MORE: Trump to Bongino: ‘Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting’

“A review of 47 victims’ full names on Sunday found that 43 of them were left unredacted in files that were made public by the government on Friday, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Several women’s full names appeared more than 100 times in the files,” the Journal noted, “The Justice Department was required to redact all victims’ names prior to releasing the files. Officials said they had spent weeks doing so after receiving lists of names from victims’ attorneys.”

Late Monday morning, attorney and journalist Aaron Parnas identified two of the Epstein files he said were missing. According to Parnas, they included references to Trump having parties at Mar-a-Lago called “calendar girls.”

On Friday, DOJ blocked access to a document originally released as part of Friday’s Epstein files document dump. That document included language related to accusations against President Donald Trump and others. In just under an hour, access was restored after CNN anchor Jake Tapper noted the block on social media.

The DOJ’s removal of the files on Monday comes as some, including members of Congress, are asking for more files to be released.

“Where are the rest of the Epstein Files?” asked U.S. Senator Mark Warner, the prominent Intelligence Committee vice chairman, on Monday afternoon.

READ MORE: ‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

 

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Trump to Bongino: ‘Republicans Ought to Nationalize the Voting’

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President Donald Trump called into the podcast of his former Deputy FBI Director, Dan Bongino, and said that Republicans should “nationalize” the voting process, especially in fifteen “crooked” states, while insisting that undocumented immigrants are voting in America.

Saying that there are “millions and millions” of undocumented immigrants and “we have to get them out,” Trump warned that “if Republicans don’t get them out, you will never win another election as a Republican.”

He claimed that undocumented immigrants are told, “Oh, well, you can vote, you can do whatever you want.”

“It’s crazy,” he added. “I mean, it’s crazy how you can get these people to vote, and if we don’t get them out, Republicans will never win another election.”

READ MORE: ‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

He went on to say that “they vote illegally, and the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it. The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting,’ the voting in at least many, 15 places.”

“The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” he added, “and we have states that are so crooked, and they’re counting votes, we have states that I won, that show I didn’t win.”

Mediaite reported that Trump “said a big issue with Minnesota is that it has too many Somalis — who he then claimed are, by and large, known for their ‘theft.'”

“Notably, the vast majority of Somalis in Minnesota came to the U.S. legally through refugee programs in the 1990s and are today U.S. citizens,” Mediaite added.

 

READ MORE: Gabbard Spokesperson Goes Off the Rails Spinning Explosive WSJ Report

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‘We Don’t Have Much Time’: George Conway Issues Dire Warning About Donald Trump

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Republican never-Trump attorney and critic turned Democratic congressional candidate George Conway issued a dire warning on Monday about President Donald Trump and his “megalomania.”

“The way things are going in America, it should be clear we don’t have much time,” Conway wrote on social media. “We certainly don’t have three years. We need to help ourselves by pushing for impeachment and removal as hard as we can and carrying it out as soon as humanly possible.”

Reiterating that he sees this as “a race against time,” Conway asked, “How quickly does the megalomaniac lose strength versus how quickly he destroy[s] everything around him. The one thing you can depend on is that the megalomaniac gets more destructive and dangerous over time before he’s done.”

Conway kicked off his social media thread with a New York Times opinion piece by history professor Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders.

He quoted Dr. Ben-Ghiat, who wrote: “I have seen this brand of strongman megalomania and the adverse effects it can ultimately have on leaders and their governments. I call it autocratic backfire.”

READ MORE: Gabbard Spokesperson Goes Off the Rails Spinning Explosive WSJ Report

“As autocrats surround themselves with loyalists who praise them and party functionaries who repeat their lies, leaders can start to believe their own hype,” the excerpt continued. “As they cut themselves off from expert advice and objective feedback, they start to promulgate unscrutinized policies that fail. Rather than course correct, such leaders often double down and engage in even riskier behavior — starting wars or escalating involvement in military conflicts that eventually reveal the human and financial tolls of their corruption and incompetence. The result: a disillusioned population that loses faith in the leader and elites who begin to rethink their support.”

Conway added that the word “megalomania” is “essentially a synonym for narcissistic sociopathy or malignant narcissism.”

“All three terms accurately describe Trump,” he charged.

He offered some “good news,” saying that, as Ben-Ghiat pointed out, “megalomaniacal leaders ultimately blow themselves up politically or militarily. The bad news is that the longer they survive, the bigger the figurative blast radius.”

Conway ended the social media thread by saying this is why he is running for Congress and posted a link to his campaign website.

READ MORE: ‘Snowflake’ Trump Mocked for 1 A.M. Lawsuit Threat Over Trevor Noah’s Epstein Island Jab

 

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