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Nicotine-pouch salesman and onetime conservative pundit Tucker Carlson has all but endorsed lefty Michigan Senate hopeful Dr. Abdul El-Sayed while defending his controversial comments about 9/11.Carlson, 57, who recently fawned over disgraced Democratic former first son Hunter Biden, last week ripped into El-Sayed’s Republican foe, Mike Rogers, for his track record on national security issues and urged the “good people of Michigan keep this man far away from Washington.” “El-Sayed did not celebrate airplane hijackings or cheerlead Al-Qaeda; he simply said that the U.S. conducting terrorism of its own in response to 9/11 was not exactly an appropriate reaction. He...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday criticized President Trump's controversial proposal to pay out $5,000 checks to every U.S. adult if Republicans win the midterms. "What I would say is, if you are getting surplus revenue, you should cut people's tax and return it to the people," DeSantis said during a press conference in Miami on Thursday. "What I don't think you want to do is borrow another trillion-and-a-half dollars and then just try to flood that into the economy, because that will lead to more inflation," DeSantis continued. "That will lead to more debt and more inflation."

US President Donald Trump said he did not regret going to war against Iran despite the impact the conflict may have on the November US midterm elections. "I don't believe in the word 'regret.' You can always question yourself a little bit," Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham when asked if he regretted the Iran war due to the impact it may have on the elections. "If I had it do again, I would do exactly as I did," Trump said in the interview broadcast on Thursday on The Ingraham Angle show. Trump dismissed suggestions...

President Donald Trump used the Republican Party’s first midterm convention to justify the Iran war rather than trying to put it behind him, as escalating violence and spiking oil prices loomed over the elaborate Trump-centered showcase in Dallas. In a speech billed as an opening argument for the peak campaign season, he defended his record and encouraged supporters to vote as if he were on the ballot. He also debuted a new enticement, promising to reward Republican congressional majorities by giving every American a $5,000 dividend to spend within the country.

Top White ⁠House ⁠advisers, including Vice ⁠President JD Vance and Secretary ​of State Marco Rubio, have privately warned ‌President Donald Trump that ‌the conflict with Iran could ⁠extend ⁠through the remainder of his presidency, the Wall ​Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing U.S. officials. The White House did not immediately ​respond to a Reuters request for comment. The ⁠advisers ⁠told Trump in private ⁠discussions ​in the Oval Office and the Situation ​Room that ⁠Tehran could continue to resist U.S. pressure, potentially prolonging the conflict beyond Inauguration Day in January 2029, the ⁠Journal added. The reported warning contrasts with Trump's own...

President Trump on Wednesday floated the idea of issuing every American adult a $5,000 “dividend” check if his party kept control of the House and Senate in November — an extraordinary offer that would cost more than $1 trillion and likely would require congressional approval. “It will be called the Trump dividend,” he said at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. He added a caveat: The money must be spent in the United States, though he did not say how the government could track where private citizens used the funds. He offered few additional details about the idea. How could...

Vice-president JD Vance appeared to partially row back on Donald Trump’s outlandish claims that every adult citizen in the US would receive $5,000 if the Republicans retain the House and Senate in the midterm elections. “If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000,” Trump told a roaring crowd, during a nearly two-hour long speech at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas in which he also urged voters to “pretend that I’m on the ballot”. But Vance, speaking after the president, suggested the so-called dividend payments would not go to the wealthy and that it could be...

President Trump on Wednesday told the crowd at the Republican National Committee’s first midterm convention in Dallas not to boo the absent Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), telling them that “John is working hard.” Trump mentioned Thune’s name after he said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) “will go down as the greatest Speaker of the House in the history of our country.” He then added that Thune was “here” before asking where he was, prompting boos from the audience.The president added that Senate Republicans will in general have “great, great success.” Thune and Trump have been at odds with each...

Stocks dropped Thursday after U.S. oil prices topped $100 a barrel, amid growing fears of higher inflation from a prolonged war in the Middle East. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 315 points, or 0.6%. The S&P 500 fell 0.5%, while the Nasdaq Composite slid 0.5% too. Higher oil prices continued to weigh on sentiment, as the war between the U.S. and Iran stretched into a seventh month. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures for October jumped above $100 per barrel. Futures for the international benchmark Brent crude for November delivery spiked above $105 a barrel. The jump in oil prices...

President Donald Trump pledged Wednesday to send every American adult $5,000 if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections, an extraordinary gambit to reverse his party’s sagging fortunes in November. The dubious promise would likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation. “If the Republicans win, you win with us and you get $5,000,” Trump said during the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. “It will be called the Trump Dividend.”

The military has lost 25% of its fleet over the past five months The U.S. has lost 45 MQ-9 Reaper drones, worth at least $1.3 billion, since the start of its war on Iran, the Washington Post reported Friday. The drones can cost between $30 and $50 million each, depending on their sensor and weapons payload. The U.S. military has lost roughly 25% of its pre-war fleet in the past five months. A defense official told the Washington Post that some of the drones were not shot down by Iranian forces, but instead were lost after their communications link to...

In August 2024, candidate Donald Trump told a rally crowd that Joe Biden was "using the strategic reserves, which is meant for military, which is meant for war," and pledged that "We have to fill up the strategic reserves immediately." Two years later, with the United States locked in a protracted conflict with Iran, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is doing the opposite of filling up. According to figures circulated by Geiger Capital and Hedgeye, the SPR has fallen roughly 25% in recent months and now sits at its lowest level in about 43 years, covering an estimated 16 days of...

President Trump halted new US strikes on Iran as he weighs whether Tehran is ready to cut a deal — while a wider regional war appears to be spreading into another critical shipping corridor. After 13 consecutive days of attacks, Trump instructed the US military to pause any additional strikes against Iran Friday, Axios reported Saturday, which cited two people familiar with the decision. But the president has made clear that the temporary halt does not mean Washington is backing down. In a brief phone interview with France’s LCI news, Trump said he was still prepared to restart a major...

A week after Iran killed American troops in Jordan, crossing President Donald Trump's red line for restarting all-out war, the U.S. military didn't launch airstrikes on the regime.Friday came and went without an announcement from U.S. Central Command about a new attack, breaking a nearly two-week streak.Sources told Axios that Trump received plans from the military yesterday to conduct strikes in Iran but didn't give a green light and instead ordered them to hold off.U.S. forces are still preparing for major combat operations to potentially resume, but Trump hasn't issued orders to move in that direction, the report added.The White...

ISTANBUL—The conflict between the U.S. and Iran is escalating just as the two warring parties are running up against the limits of what they can achieve through military force.The conflict widened this week after Iranian-allied militants in Yemen began striking ships transiting a key Red Sea chokepoint, helping drive oil prices above $100 a barrel for the first time in two months on Thursday.The U.S., meanwhile, has escalated its bombing campaign in Iran in recent days, striking throughout the country during the most intense period of fighting since President Trump and Israel began bombing Iran in late February.Trump and other...

Republican Steve Hilton launched his general election campaign for California governor Wednesday with a gambit to win over left-leaning voters who dominate the state: Even if they loathe President Donald Trump, he said, they should consider voting for him. During an event in Los Angeles ... he vowed to bring the price of gasoline down to $3 a gallon, about half the current cost, cut residents’ utility bills in half, now among the nation’s highest, and eliminate state income taxes on the first $150,000 in earnings... In his campaign remarks and ads he took out in leading newspapers throughout the...

Disapproval of President Donald Trump’s handling of Iran hit a record high in July. A majority of voters oppose U.S. military action, and nearly two thirds think the conflict will last at least a year. The latest Fox News survey finds 56% oppose U.S. military action against Iran, including 40% who "strongly" oppose. More Democrats oppose the war (84%) than Republicans support it (76%). Voters increasingly expect a long-term commitment. Today, 64% think the war will last a year or more, up 13 percentage points since May. *** There is also doubt the conflict will produce an agreement. About half...

Donald Trump flew into an expletive-laden rant in the Oval Office as he increasingly loses patience over the war he started in Iran, according to someone who overheard the angry meltdown. The president launched into a raging tirade against Iran's leaders, referring to them as "scumbags" and "lunatics," while also spitting out a series of expletives during the White House meeting, a person who heard the comments told The Wall Street Journal. It comes after Trump's 'diaper nurse' left devoted letters to the president in his room with intimate messages.

Far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was among thousands who gathered at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site Israel’s far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, joined thousands of Jewish extremists who stormed Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site on Thursday. Escorted by armed police, they prayed, waved the Israeli flag and sang the national anthem in a provocative display of political power. Under a fragile, decades-old agreement known as the status quo, non-Muslim prayer is banned at the site, known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif compound and to Jews as the Temple Mount. Ben-Gvir has eroded the agreement in recent years through a...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has voted repeatedly for resolutions to withdraw U.S. troops from the military conflict with Iran, told reporters Wednesday that the United States is “worse off” than it was before President Trump launched the war in late February. “I think the Iran war has not been a success. I’ve been opposed to the Iran war from the beginning. I think by any objective measure we’re worse off than we were before the war,” Paul said on Capitol Hill. “If you look at the militarization of the Strait of Hormuz, that’s never happened before,” he said. “There’s...