Trump Appears to Have Mental Heath Episode as He Posts AI Slop Nonstop
https://newrepublic.com/post/213538/trump-mental-heath-episode-ai-slop-memes
Trump Appears to Have Mental Heath Episode as He Posts AI Slop Nonstop
Donald Trump spent all of his Sunday posting deranged AI memes.
President Trump spent his entire Sunday on a bender, posting nonstop AI images to his Truth Social page for more than six hours.
It started at 11:16 a.m. with an AI image of CNN correspondent Kaitlan Collins as transgender model Dylan Mulvaney holding cans of Bud Light, and escalated from there. Bruce Springsteen, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Representative Jerry Nadler, and Trump’s longtime nemesis Rosie O’Donnell were among those targeted in his posting binge. He also posted several flattering photos of himself in mock-up movie posters and, in one instance, standing next to former President John F. Kennedy.
None of the images had any text attached to them, and they were interspersed with some of his campaign photos and pro-Iran war propaganda. At one point, he posted nine Iran war memes three times in a row in the span of just over an hour.
It’s
pretty clear that the octogenarian president is experiencing cognitive
decline and had some kind of episode Sunday. It’s been evident
throughout his second term as president, but as of late, he’s thrown a tablet across a room after a bad phone call with world leaders, rambled about the history of paper clips in the middle of a speech, and zoned out
in the middle of a photo op. It’s a terrifying thought to realize that
we still have two years of Trump occupying the Oval Office with his
mental state only growing worse.
Trump’s Own DEA Wrecks His Victory Claim on “Drug Boat” Strikes
The Drug Enforcement Administration finds that Trump’s strikes on alleged “drug boats” haven’t done much but push smugglers to find new tactics.
In January, President Trump told the media that his deadly extrajudicial strikes on alleged “drug boats” in the Caribbean had maritime drug flow “down 97 percent.” New reporting from The Washington Post shows that was a lie. After over 60 strikes, more than 200 people are dead with no trial, and the Drug Enforcement Administration has confirmed that the flow of cocaine into the U.S. has not been impeded at all.
Instead of stopping shipments, traffickers have just changed their strategies, taking larger vessels or even planes to circumvent international waters, the DEA found.
“The business is so extraordinarily profitable that the cartels do not mind paying freight costs that are five or even 10 times higher,” one naval intelligence official from Ecuador said. “They know that while the United States may destroy one speedboat, they will successfully get 10 semisubmersibles—or other speedboats that evade detection—through.”
“When you squeeze the balloon on one side, it always expands on the other side,” an anonymous DEA official told the Post. “They always find the weak spots and exploit them.” While DEA officials noted that prices rose after the first two months of strikes, smugglers “adapted to the intensified pressure,” and neither supply nor price had “been noticeably affected.”
In April, just over seven months into the strikes, Trump wrote that “98.2% of Drugs coming into the U.S. by Ocean or Sea have STOPPED!” It’s unclear where he got that number from.
Perhaps most troubling of all is the 221 people killed by the U.S. government without any kind of trial or legal process. There’s no way we even know for sure that they were “narcoterrorists”—these could have very well been innocent people. And if so, they’ve been killed for no reason, serving as fodder for Trump to drum up fear and resentment toward Latin America.
Trump Team Admits He’s Been Defunding States That Didn’t Vote for Him
Federal officials acknowledged in a recent lawsuit what we all suspected: Trump is targeting Democratic states.
The White House has admitted in court that it deliberately canceled federal grants to states that didn’t vote for President Trump.
In court documents filed last week, and first reported on by The New York Times, Trump administration officials confirmed they terminated $7.5 billion in clean energy grants in October “based solely” on political criteria, focusing on states with Democratic leadership that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. The admission came in a lawsuit filed by California researchers challenging the cancellation of Biden-era funding in multiple federal agencies.
At the time, the White House said it was slashing the grants, passed during the Biden administration, to prevent tax dollars from being wasted. Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought called the money “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda,” and singled out projects in 16 blue states: “CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.”
Only one month ago, Energy Secretary Chris Wright angrily insisted to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology that the cuts “did not involve politics in the decision-making of our review process,” calling any accusation that the funding cancellations targeted certain states for political reasons “bullshit.”
But last week, a Department of Energy lawyer conceded the obvious.
“With one exception, the 284 terminated grants had a recipient location and/or at least one place of performance in a state that awarded its electoral votes to Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and has two Democratic-caucusing senators,” the attorney wrote in a court filing, confessing that the grants were not terminated “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction or performance-based factor.”
Similar green energy grants in Republican-led states that voted for Trump in 2024 were left untouched, despite the Department of Energy recommending their cancellation, the government said in the filing. The Trump administration is coming clean now, it said, because it wanted to avoid the government having to participate in the discovery process for the lawsuit.
That process could lead to the government having to hand over much more damaging internal documents to the lawyers representing the researchers. It’s not just about clean energy grants. The Trump administration has also held up other federal funding for states that didn’t support the president, such as FEMA disaster aid and childcare funding. While the court’s decision on this lawsuit is still pending, no matter how the judge rules, Trump is not likely to end his belligerent attempts to use federal funding as punishment.
Republican War Hawks Urge Trump to Finish the Job in Iran
As Trump considers an even larger attack in Iran, his Republican allies in Congress are urging him on.
Republicans are urging the president to sidestep negotiations with Tehran and instead pound Iran even harder.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker told The Hill Thursday that he encouraged the president to continue hitting the country through multiple conversations over the course of the week.
“I’ve expressed publicly and privately my approval of finishing the job, and realizing that negotiations were getting us nowhere,” Wicker said. “I’ve made it clear that Iran, in my judgment, has no intention of negotiating in good faith or keeping a promise and that it’s pointless to pretend that they are a trustworthy negotiating party.”
Wicker added that he believed the U.S. could “keep the [Strait of Hormuz] open on our terms” and that the strait is “the key to a successful conclusion of hostilities.”
Texas Representative Ronny Jackson, a close friend of Trump’s who also served as his first-term physician, told The Hill that the military needs to attack Iran “as hard as we possibly can right now.”
“I would do everything I possibly can right now to turn them around. So that’d be my thought,” said Jackson, who has positioned himself to be the next chair of the House Armed Services Committee.
“I just think maximum pressure from the air and maximum security of the strait—anything they have that they could possibly use to cause problems in the strait needs to be destroyed,” Jackson added.
Trump made clear this week that he intends to ramp up the unyielding conflict. In an ominous Truth Social post Thursday, Trump pledged to hold Tehran “responsible” for attacks carried out by Yemen’s Houthis the night before against Saudi Arabian ships. Hours later, Trump told Axios that he was “considering a massive attack.”
“Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it,” the president told the digital outlet.
The unending Iran war has deeply frustrated Trump, according to administration officials who spoke with The Wall Street Journal late Thursday. Trump has tried to find an off-ramp from the conflict in the months since he threatened to obliterate Iran’s “entire civilization,” but he has been repeatedly unsuccessful in doing so.
But while MAGA war hawks urge him on, some of Trump’s advisers are reportedly concerned that the ongoing hostilities could harm Republican election odds in November, a failure that could transform his final two years in office. Trump pursued war against Iran following an unusual Situation Room meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump then went to war without congressional approval, and without formally addressing the American public regarding his intent.
Americans, meanwhile, have suffered. The war has killed at least 18 U.S. service members, and taken an enormous toll on daily life in the U.S., inflaming the cost of practically everything as shipping companies contend with rising oil costs.
Alaska Removes Citizens From Voter Rolls Just Before Midterms
Alaska has removed thousands of people from its voter rolls, claiming they might not be citizens.
Alaska’s effort to appease President Trump’s claims that noncitizens are voting has ended up punishing U.S. citizens.
The Alaska Beacon reported Thursday that the state removed 3,048 people from its active voter list, including many citizens who were accidentally flagged by the Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles and now have to provide extra identification to be able to vote. The director of the Alaska Division of Elections, Carol Beecher, told state legislators on Wednesday that “old data” was the reason for the mistake and that she wasn’t sure why so many Alaska residents were labeled as noncitizens.
When Alaskans apply for a driver’s license, they are asked whether they want to register to vote and if they are a U.S. citizen. State election officials cross-check the DMV’s records with voter rolls each year, and according to Beecher, “more like 200 names” are typically tagged for extra scrutiny.
The latest check found “a lot more names than we were expecting,” Beecher said.
“We believe that when we did the match, that a lot of old data was picked up somehow. So we’re still ferreting through that,” Beecher said, adding that although the number of flagged names was “very concerning,” the state has to take them seriously.
“It is not disenfranchising the individual from being able to vote, but it’s a measure the division has to take to make sure that we only have citizens voting.”
Beecher said that those who were flagged will receive a letter asking if they are citizens, and that they merely need to contact the state Division of Elections by email, phone, or regular mail, and state they are a citizen. “We don’t require paperwork. We’re not requiring documentation. Nothing like that,” she added.
Eligible U.S. citizens who were removed from the voter rolls disagree.
Chris Waigl, who got her driver’s license in 2019 and became a U.S. citizen in 2025, was alarmed to check her registration status last weekend and find that she was listed as “inactive—non citizen.”
“They were able to correct it there and then after I sent in copies of my naturalization certificate with a date before my voter registration date,” she told the Beacon via email. “It’s just ridiculous.”
Waigl said she reached out to four others who became citizens at the same time as her, and three of them were removed from the voter rolls. One of them told the Beacon by phone that they were removed despite registering in person at a DMV office and presenting citizenship information.
Some people told the Beacon that they haven’t been able to reach the Division of Elections by phone, and that mailboxes are full.
Alaska’s primary elections are less than a month away on August 18, and the general election is less than two months away in November. The state’s lieutenant governor, Nancy Dahlstrom, is in charge of the elections office and has told state officials to comply with the Trump administration’s requests to turn over copies of Alaska’s voter rolls for a national voter database.
But that national database, run by the Department of Homeland Security, has been found to be full of errors, mistakenly flagging U.S. citizens. One month ago, U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan struck it down, saying that the government “haphazardly” created a database of millions of Americans it knew was “inaccurate.”
“States have partnered with the federal government to access the database and are actively removing United States citizens from voter rolls based on inaccurate information,” Soonam wrote in a 75-page ruling. “All in all, the federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote.”
Between the Trump administration and zealous state governments like Alaska’s, thousands of U.S. citizens may not be able to vote in this year’s midterms.
Trump Tries to Blow Up Canada Bridge Deal After Opening Ceremony Drama
Trump is once again trying to change the terms of an already finalized agreement.
President Donald Trump is suddenly reneging on the terms of the Gordie Howe Bridge project after he claimed Ottawa “disinvited” U.S. officials from the Michigan–Ontario crossing’s grand opening.
“Canada disinvited the United States of America to the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge, which is fine, considering they are paying substantial TARIFFS to the United States, but the original Deal on the Bridge, which was terribly negotiated by a previous Administration, no longer stands,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday. “We changed the terms of the Deal so that the United States of America now gets 50 percent of the Profit.”
The Gordie Howe Bridge was the creation of a very different period in U.S.-Canadian relations. The international bridge was first proposed in the early 2000s and agreed upon by the two nations in 2012. Under the terms of that agreement, Canada would fully pay for the bridge to get the project moving forward and only share toll revenue once it had recovered its initial costs.
At the time, President Barack Obama was revered by America’s northern neighbors, and diplomatic relations between the two countries were good. But Trump has worked hard to undo that long-standing goodwill. Over the last year and a half, the U.S. president has repeatedly attacked Canada, punishing its people with enormous tariffs, baselessly accosting its government, and even threatening to invade its land to make another U.S. state.
The latest insult came earlier this week, when Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on a wide range of Canadian products worth $20 billion. Canada rescinded its invitations to U.S. officials for the bridge’s grand opening ceremony shortly thereafter, and moved the ribbon-cutting ceremony from the international border line at the center of the bridge to a nearby inspection plaza.
“In light of trade action threatened by the United States earlier this week, it would be inappropriate to proceed with a celebratory event between the two countries,” the office of Canada’s infrastructure minister said, in a statement obtained by The New York Times. “The Gordie Howe International Bridge remains a vital infrastructure project that reflects years of hard work and will be a major economic driver.”
Now Trump is threatening the bridge by claiming that the two countries will split the revenue 50-50, which was not what was agreed upon nearly 15 years ago.
It’s not the first time that Trump has meddled with the bridge. In February, Trump promised that he would block the grand opening unless Canada “fully compensated” the U.S. “for everything” and give him “at least half” ownership of the bridge.
It was not clear, even then, what Canada needed to compensate Washington for. Canada footed the bill for the Gordie Howe International Bridge. The project created new American labor and was constructed with U.S. supplies to boot.
Trump’s take was an unexpected backtrack from how he felt about the bridge during his first term: Trump seemed to wholeheartedly support the endeavor in a joint statement issued in 2017 by himself and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, claiming at the time that the bridge would “serve as a vital economic link” between the two countries.
RFK Jr. Now Responsible for 35-Year Record High in Measles
Add that to the salmonella risk, the flesh-eating parasite infesting cattle, and the explosive diarrhea outbreak.
Measles cases in the U.S. have surpassed last year’s totals to reach a new 35-year high, and we’re only in July.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday that there have been 2,318 measles cases in 2026 so far, more than the 2,289 cases reported in 2025 and many more than the 283 cases reported in 2024. The last time the numbers were this high was in 1991, and the past 18 months have seen more measles cases than the last 25 years combined.
The vast majority of infected people—93 percent—were unvaccinated, according to the CDC. The number is expected to only grow higher, as new outbreaks have been reported in Wyoming, Delaware, and Arizona. It doesn’t help that the CDC hasn’t had a permanent director for most of President Trump’s second term, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is skeptical of all vaccines, has a history of dismissing measles, even though it can be fatal.
In 2000, the U.S. had declared measles eradicated in the country, but the Pan American Health Organization will review that status later this year. Meanwhile, Kennedy’s HHS isn’t openly supporting vaccination, with the secretary suggesting that vitamin A is an effective treatment for measles.
Kennedy remains on the job, even though he has reportedly checked out of his responsibilities as a Cabinet secretary with the White House stepping in to manage HHS in March. Meanwhile, the country is dealing with an explosive diarrhea outbreak caused by a one-celled parasite linked to tainted lettuce, a flesh-eating parasite infesting cattle, and a new salmonella risk for millions of America’s eggs.
Americans have little, if any, confidence that government officials like Kennedy are up to the task of solving these public health crises. With all of the budget cuts to government regulators, the U.S. probably hasn’t seen the last disease outbreak of Trump’s presidency.
Ken Paxton Runs Away When Asked About His Alleged Voting Fraud
The Texas attorney general and Republican Senate candidate allegedly voted in six elections while registered at an address where he does not live.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is literally running away from accusations of voter fraud.
A bombshell report earlier this month exposed Paxton for allegedly voting in six elections while registered at an address where he does not live.
On Friday, while entering the Ronald Reagan Republican Center in Washington, D.C., Paxton was asked point-blank whether he had committed voter fraud. Rather than face the music, the attorney general raced inside.
This isn’t the first time Paxton has run from questions about his alleged voter fraud. Earlier this week, Paxton fled a press conference when faced with tough questions, earning him the nickname “No Comment Ken.”
“This is at least the third time just this week he’s literally run away from questions of this sort,” journalist Aaron Rupar wrote on X.
In another tough moment on Thursday, Paxton refused to answer whether he was ready to debate James Talarico, the Democratic Texas Senate candidate, who has publicly accused his opponent of voter fraud.
This form of voter fraud is a second-degree felony punishable by a fine up to $10,000 and up to 20 years in prison. Paxton, a fierce ally of President Donald Trump, has previously advocated for cracking down on voter fraud, while also threatening to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
Ex–60 Minutes Journalist Exposes How Bari Weiss Tried to Help Trump
Weiss apparently even mixed up two wildly different states in her efforts.
CBS News chief Bari Weiss has been so busy skewing the storied network’s coverage that she’s gotten basic facts wrong—including elementary details about America’s leaders and where they’re from.
Fired 60 Minutes correspondent Cecilia Vega spilled the tea at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Conference in New Orleans Thursday, revealing that she had endured network pressure on a number of issues before she was canned, including one particularly stunning dispute over a story on SNAP benefit cuts in West Virginia.
While stopping short of referring to Weiss by name, Vega said her decision to tell the story strictly through the eyes of West Virginians had spurred backlash from CBS’s “new” top brass because she had not interviewed Vice President JD Vance or referred to his decade-old memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.
But Vance, as Vega pointed out, is from Ohio. Not West Virginia.
Other arguments bubbled up over the network’s new intent to insert political bias into the famed news magazine’s reporting, according to Vega. One such instance involved demands by network executives that she include footage of protesters attacking plainclothes Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Minnesota—footage that her team discovered did not exist. She said she was also tasked with inserting a line into one of her scripts that claimed Iran was “totally outgunned” by U.S. and Israeli forces—a detail that she noted was a copy-paste administration talking point.
Weiss, the founder of the pro-Israel blog The Free Press and a former New York Times opinion columnist, was tapped to run CBS News late last year, despite the fact that she had never worked in broadcast journalism, lacked traditional reporting experience, and had also never run a major news operation.
Weiss’s business decisions atop the news giant have unequivocally and single-handedly divorced CBS News from its decades-long place within America’s prestige news media circuit. What was once crowned the “gold standard” of broadcasting and the home of some of journalism’s most venerable names, such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow, has since devolved into a graveyard for journalism ethics.
Under Weiss’s stewardship, CBS News has killed critical stories in order to save face for the Trump administration. In December, Weiss pulled the plug on Vega’s 60 Minutes segment investigating the result of Donald Trump’s mass deportation program, focusing on Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador’s notoriously brutal CECOT megaprison.
The network has also lost a cadre of veteran journalists, ranging from Vega to 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens and the program’s de facto face, Scott Pelley.
Navy Official Suspended After Calling Trump a “Narcissist” on Camera
The official was caught making the comments while being secretly recorded.
A senior Pentagon official has been suspended after he was secretly filmed calling President Donald Trump a “textbook narcissist” and criticizing changes at the Department of Defense.
Right-wing activist James O’Keefe—founder of the far-right Project Veritas, known for its videos that capture individuals disclosing information about their employers—published a hidden-camera sting Wednesday that showed Brandon Newsom, the director of business operations for the U.S. Navy, complaining about changes at the DOD.
Newsom can be heard saying he hopes to “stay and stick it out” at the Pentagon, in the hopes that he can “undo whatever’s been done [by the Trump administration].” Pressed on what exactly he would undo, Newsom appeared to say that his work “challenges [his] morals.”
When asked what he would change, Newsom said he didn’t think there should be “one specific prayer service,” referring to the monthly Christian prayer services started by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The services have been widely criticized for violating the First Amendment prohibition against establishing a state religion.
Newsom also called Trump a “textbook narcissist,” and described the Iran war as “completely stupid” and “driven by one man’s ego.”
Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao announced Wednesday that Newsom had been placed on administrative leave as the agency determined next steps.
“Such statements and apparent intent to leverage a position to undermine the policies and direction set by our elected leaders are inappropriate and incompatible with the standards expected of Department personnel,” Cao wrote on X.
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