Category: The American Spectator
Trump crushes ‘obnoxious’ reporter at White House briefing: ‘It’s always the same thing with you!’
President Donald Trump berated a journalist who pressed him on the lethal attacks on suspected narco-terrorist boats near Venezuela.
Critics of the president say the military strikes are unlawful and unethical, but the administration has defended the actions as necessary and legal defensive acts to protect the American people.
‘Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious — actually a terrible reporter.’
ABC News reporter Rachel Scott asked Trump if he was going to order Department of War Sec. Pete Hegseth to release video of the order to strike the boats, when the president grew angry with her insistence on the question.
“Are you committed to releasing the full video?” she asked.
“Didn’t I just tell you that?” the president fired back.
“You’re the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you, you are an obnoxious — actually a terrible reporter. And it’s always the same thing with you!” he added. “I told you, whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is OK with me.”
Video of the president’s comments were posted to social media.
Scott posted her version of the interaction on social media.
“I asked President Trump if he would release the full video from the second strike on Sept 2nd,” she wrote. “Just days ago the president said he would have ‘no problem’ doing that. But now, he denies saying that. And is not committing to releasing it.”
The president’s opponents allege that a second strike on the survivors on a drug-trafficking boat could be prosecuted as a war crime, but the administration has defended the decision.
RELATED: US strike against military targets in Venezuela could begin at any moment: Report
The president may have been referring to an argument he had with the same reporter in July 2024, ahead of the election, at the National Association of Black Journalists.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner. The first question. You don’t even say, ‘Hello, how are you?’ … I think it’s disgraceful that I came here in good spirit,” he said at the event.
He later continued to lash out at the reporter during the event.
“Look, if I came onto a stage like this and I got treated so rudely as this woman treated me,” Trump said. “Very rude. That was a nasty — that wasn’t even a question. She didn’t ask me a question. She gave a statement.”
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‘Enemy of Europe’: Liberal globalists attack Trump over recognizing ‘civilizational erasure’ in Europe
President Donald Trump has set about bringing the “golden age of America” into existence though appears keen also to strengthen Western civilization at large. Nations across the Atlantic have, however, proven reluctant to join the U.S. in rejecting the “false song of globalism” and in turning away the hordes of unassimilable migrants who threaten to transform their lands into places both unsafe and unrecognizable.
The Trump administration made abundantly clear in its newly released 33-page National Security Strategy that European allies now have a choice to make: lean into their strengths and former greatness, reassert their national identities, and reject the liberal policies that have led them to relative ruin or continue down the path to “civilizational erasure” without the United States of America holding their hands.
‘We want Europe to remain European.’
European officials and liberals on both sides of the Atlantic — including a former Obama official — have melted down over the document, attacking the Trump administration for daring to identify the threat and choice now facing Europe.
In civilizational terms
The administration has attempted on several occasions to give America’s European allies a helmet readjustment.
Vice President JD Vance, for instance, noted in a Feb. 14 speech at the Munich Security Conference in Europe that it is high time to “change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction.”
In addition to blasting the British and European political establishment for their ruinous mass migration polices, Vance expressed disappointment over their suppression of popular political movements, crackdown on free speech, and routine attacks on religious liberties.
RELATED: No more stiff upper lip: My fellow Brits are fed up with ‘diversity’
Photo by Pete Marovich/Getty Images
The State Department has similarly expressed concerns about the trends weakening Europe and the need for America’s friends across the Atlantic to buck up and get their affairs in order.
In a May essay shared on its Substack, the State Department suggested that the globalist liberal campaign to “usher in an era of unprecedented peace” in the wake of World War II “by overcoming the anchors of nationhood, culture, and tradition” was a colossal failure.
“This promise lies in tatters,” wrote Samuel Samson, a senior adviser for the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. “What endures instead is an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself.”
“Our relationship is too important, our history too valuable, and the international stakes too high to allow this partnership to be undermined,” continued the essay. “Therefore, on both sides of the Atlantic, we must preserve the goods of our common culture, ensuring that Western civilization remains a source of virtue, freedom, and human flourishing for generations to come.”
Trump’s national security strategy
The 33-page National Security Strategy document released by the Trump administration on Friday signaled a continued break with the thinking of previous administrations on a number of matters, including on America’s special relationship with Europe, which the document suggested is conditional on Europe maintaining its values and culture.
In a section titled “Promoting European Greatness,” the document notes that Europe has lost significant share of global GDP over the past 35 years largely as the result of “national and transnational regulations,” “but this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.”
“The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence,” continued the strategy document. “Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”
The Trump administration’s strategy document indicated that if certain NATO members continue down their present path, they might not only cease to be recognizably European but cease to remain “reliable allies.”
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau summarized on X that despite insisting upon transatlantic cooperation while wearing their NATO hats, “when these countries wear their EU hats, they pursue all sorts of agendas that are often utterly adverse to US interests and security — including censorship, economic suicide/climate fanaticism, open borders, disdain for national sovereignty/promotion of multilateral governance and taxation, support for Communist Cuba, etc etc. This inconsistency cannot continue.”
“Either the great nations of Europe are our partners in protecting the Western civilization that we inherited from them or they are not,” continued Landau. “But we cannot pretend that we are partners while those nations allow the EU’s unelected, undemocratic, and unrepresentative bureaucracy in Brussels to pursue policies of civilizational suicide.”
With the understanding that “Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States” and that the U.S. cannot “afford to write Europe off,” the Trump administration emphasized its support for “genuine democracy, freedom of expression, and unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history,” and recommended its European allies get their acts together.
Backlash from the usual suspects
The strategy document was welcomed by many of those on both sides of the Atlantic who’ve read the writing on the wall and paid close attention to the various crises now destabilizing Europe.
British-American historian Niall Ferguson noted, for instance, “However unpalatable you may find this analysis, you will struggle to find evidence to the contrary. My better-informed British and European friends whisper it softly: ‘Maybe it’s true.'”
‘We must stop behaving as a friend.’
Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt (R) wrote, “America is back to practicing a foreign policy rooted in strength, restraint, and national interest, not Wilsonian fantasy. The new National Security Strategy marks a clear return to a distinctly American tradition: Realism.”
Of course, those supportive of Europe’s current path condemned the document.
RELATED: ‘Begin repatriating’: German chancellor admits it’s time to give Syrian migrants the boot
Syrian rallygoers in Berlin. Photo by RALF HIRSCHBERGER/AFP via Getty Images
Valerie Hayer, a member of the European Parliament and president of the liberal political group Renew Europe, called the document “unacceptable and dangerous,” stating that the Trump administration “has no right to question what makes the European Union, its values, its democratic choices” and no right “to attempt to impose onto our territory the xenophobic and ultra-conservative vision of the MAGA networks.”
Hayer suggested further that the National Security Strategy served as confirmation that the “Trump administration is an enemy of Europe” and that “we must stop behaving as a friend toward it.”
Shashank Joshi, an editor at the Economist, echoed Hayer, saying it was “a radical, dangerous document” and suggesting the strategy was to “Make Europe White Again.”
Brett Bruen, a former diplomat who served as director of global engagement at the Obama White House, told the Independent that the plan was a “disastrously dumb, deeply damaging document for American diplomacy.”
“It only further fuels distrust and puts more distance between Washington and the allies we most desperately need to ensure our own security and prosperity,” added Bruen.
The German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, was reportedly also prickled by the document, stating that “we see ourselves as being able to discuss and debate these matters entirely on our own in the future, and do not need outside advice.”
In Wadephul’s country, which had a birthrate of 1.35 children per woman last year, has in recent years, like other European nations, suffered an explosion in violent crime as a result of its admission of third-world migrants; has a capital city with apparent no-go zones where Jews and homosexuals cannot safely transit certain areas; and has sought to ban, vilify, disarm, debank, and criminalize the popular party that has attempted to turn things around.
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Why the kids are not all right — and Boomers still pretend nothing’s wrong
Here’s a message Baby Boomers need to hear: The America you were born into no longer exists.
A rising tide of young Americans are embracing socialism at a pace this country has never seen. Boomers often assume that it’s about handouts. It isn’t. Beneath the surface is a decades-long campaign so destructive to middle-class mobility that it threatens to push the nation toward civil conflict. The more you study it, the more coordinated it looks.
A people dependent upon ‘gimme gimme’ socialism is an easily managed population. A demoralized middle class keeps the ruling class secure.
In a way, it was.
Short-term profit-maximizing globalists on Wall Street teamed up with the K Street lobbying blob to drown Americans in cheap Chinese goods while saddling them with student debt, consumer debt, and medical debt.
Young people are being priced out of the American dream.
My urgent message to Boomers — especially those who want to keep influence: The kids are not all right.
The America your kids and grandkids know is not the America you knew. Most Boomers were born in the 1950s, when the country was booming — united by postwar optimism, American industrial strength, shared national institutions, Walter Cronkite on one television in every home, full-fat milkshakes, and Elvis shaking up the culture.
Today, we live in a golden age of technological revolution. We are making remarkable advances in space travel, tech, and medicine — increasingly led by the private sector and unapologetic capitalists. But on the basics — housing, health, education — we’re failing the next generation.
In 1955, the median homebuyer was in his late 20s. In 2025, it’s 56. A minimum-wage worker in the 1950s needed roughly seven years of pay to buy a modest home without a mortgage. Today, it’s around 27.
In 1955, a student could pay college tuition by working a few hours a day at minimum wage. Today, that same student would need to work about six hours a day. If a kid wants Yale or any Ivy League school, he would have to work 26.4 hours a day — an impossible figure that illustrates how detached elite education has become from reality.
Here’s a frightening divide: 93% of Boomers say political violence is never justified; 44% of Gen Z say it “sometimes” is.
Ninety-nine percent of kids are not out for blood, but 100% of them face a massive relative disadvantage. The upward mobility Boomers took for granted has been hollowed out by globalist and left-wing policies sold as progress but experienced as decline.
We spent trillions of American dollars on foreign wars, foreign infrastructure, and foreign elections. We borrowed recklessly. Now the dollar is frail. We allowed millions of illegal migrants to enter the country, fueling crime and pushing Americans out of jobs. Young households are buried in debt — not mortgage debt that builds equity, but consumer debt used to numb the anxiety left by a collapse in community and faith.
Here’s the truth: The populist right and the socialist left agree on the diagnosis. Listen to the first half of Bernie Sanders’ interview with Joe Rogan in June. For an hour, Bernie describes America’s economic troubles. Most people, right or left, would nod along.
Then comes the pivot: Socialism is the cure.
This is the left’s great deceit. Progressives’ proposed “solutions” hurt the very people they claim to help.
RELATED: We built abundance and lost the thing that matters
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Take restrictive zoning and rent regulations — blue-state staples designed to “create” affordable housing. In reality, they choke supply and drive rents higher. Or look at no-cash bail. The neighborhoods hit hardest by serially released offenders are the same minority communities progressives claim to champion. The examples pile up.
So why do left-wing billionaires back these ideas? Simple: Socialism, communism, and their logical end point — fascism — are excellent for entrenched oligarchs. A people dependent upon “gimme gimme” socialism is an easily managed population. A demoralized middle class keeps the ruling class secure.
There is another path.
We must reverse the policies that got us here. Strengthen education outcomes, lower health care costs, rebuild domestic supply chains, expand American energy generation, and restore competence to the workforce.
Boomers, if you don’t lead this shift, your influence will vanish before your next Social Security check arrives. Moderate Democrats already know the socialist tide is rising. They’re afraid to say it out loud.
The Gen Z and Millennial voting bloc will dominate the 2028 election. They are demanding change. Moderates — in both parties — are being replaced by extremists.
You have a choice: Allow yourselves to be absorbed into the socialist machine, or correct the mistakes of the last two decades, return power to citizens, and rebuild access to the American dream.
ART? Beeple puts Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg heads on robot dogs that ‘poop’ $100K NFTs
A political artist says he is making a commentary on how social media platforms control what people see.
Mike Winkelmann, who goes by the moniker Beeple, created an exhibit called “Regular Animals” that featured some of the world’s most influential men as robotic dogs.
‘Zuckerberg and Elon, in particular, control a huge amount of how we see the world.’
Visitors to Art Basel Miami Beach saw realistic masks of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol on robotic dogs that defecate photos. Winkelmann also added two look-alikes of himself into the mix.
“The dogs are continuously taking pictures and ranking those pictures to find the most interesting ones,” Winkelmann explained on his X page. “When it comes time to poop they are reimagined using AI according to each dog’s personality / worldview.”
According to Page Six, onlookers — who called the exhibit “freaky” and “creepy” — saw the Zuckerberg dog produce photos that look like the Metaverse, while Musk’s were black and white.
Bezos’ robot reportedly did not make prints, but was included because Bezos is a person “who shapes how we see the world,” Winkelmann explained. “So he needed to be in the piece.”
RELATED: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are racing to enclose Earth in an orbital computer factory
The dogs — which are reminiscent of the film “Mars Attacks!” — are an attempt by Winkelmann to communicate that he parodied individuals who are controlling what the world sees.
“It used to be that we saw the world interpreted through the eyes of artists, but now Mark Zuckerberg and Elon, in particular, control a huge amount of how we see the world,” he told Page Six. “We see the world through their eyes because they control these very powerful algorithms that decide what we see. And so we wanted to kind of play with that idea.”
Beeple added, “You’re increasingly seeing the world through the eyes of AI and robotics,” noting that he thinks this will increasingly occur.
The 44-year-old artist does not seem to be against the capitalistic nature of those he criticizes, however, as his robodog-produced photos are allegedly being sold to private collectors for up to $100,000 each. The photo owners will allow them to travel with the exhibit, though.
This is not Winkelmann’s first foray into politics. His video shorts, for example, have focused on issues relating to power and communication.
On his website, the artist features pieces like “Transparent Machines,” which is meant to portray “conflicting concepts of transparency and privacy.”
Other clips include a music video for “Manifest Destiny” by Run the Jewels, a radical political rap group, as well as commentary on the housing market collapse of 2009.
Apart from the music video, the shorts compile vague imagery that serve as safe commentary representing widely popular viewpoints. This was reflected in an interview with Icon, in which Winkelmann said he is “not extreme” in his political views.
“To me, it’s very frustrating that we have such binary parties these days, because I’m very much in the middle.”
The artist also revealed he “voted for f**king [George W.] Bush twice, which seems dumb in retrospect,” he noted.
“I’m not sure [I’m] liberal, but it’s just crazy town on that other side,” he said of his politics.
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The Supreme Court takes up New Jersey’s baseless assault on pro-life support for moms
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s office was recently forced to make a stunning admission before the U.S. Supreme Court. During oral arguments, Platkin’s team conceded that although the state issued a sweeping subpoena against a pregnancy center — First Choice Women’s Resource Centers — the office had no complaints against the organization.
That admission stripped away any pretense that the attorney general was protecting consumers. It revealed the real motive: a fishing expedition into constitutionally protected internal records and private donor information for no reason other than First Choice’s commitment to life-affirming support for women. Now the court must decide whether New Jersey’s top law enforcement officer can bully pro-life charities out of helping women and families.
When First Choice made its case before the Supreme Court, it stood up for every American who believes mothers deserve compassion without harassment from the state.
What’s at stake is the work of pregnancy centers and charities nationwide that help women sustain their decision for life. These organizations provide the material and emotional resources mothers need to meet their own needs and the needs of their children.
Choosing life for an unborn child is never a one-time decision. It’s a daily commitment made amid financial, professional, emotional, or health-related pressures — and often in the face of serious challenges in securing food, clothing, housing, and other essentials. Women deserve support in every one of those areas so they can pursue their ambitions with their children. Pro-life Americans stand ready to offer that support. Platkin prefers abortion over help for moms.
Research shows that 60% of women who have had abortions would have preferred to choose life if they had more financial security or emotional support. Pregnancy centers and life-affirming organizations across the country confront this reality every day. Last year alone, they provided $452 million in support services, medical care, and material goods — all free of charge.
And the need keeps growing. Over the past two years, pregnancy centers increased their material assistance by 48% to ensure that women have what they need to thrive in pregnancy and early parenting. In 2024 alone, they served 1 million new clients.
When families face challenges beyond diapers and baby supplies, pregnancy centers rise to meet them. At Real Options Pregnancy Center in Texas, staff provided full Thanksgiving meals to local families. In Chicago, a center hosts an annual Christmas celebration so moms can put gifts under the tree. Across the country, community partners working with Her PLAN offer free car maintenance and help women escape trafficking and addiction, secure housing, and receive job training.
Every woman’s story is unique. Pregnancy centers recognize that dignity, which is why they collaborate with trusted community resources to provide comprehensive support tailored to each individual who walks through their doors.
This community network forms the pro-life safety net that Her PLAN strengthens through grassroots engagement and an online directory of vetted service providers across seven categories of care. For women with nowhere else to turn, this wraparound support provides stability, hope, and practical help.
RELATED: Leftist war on pro-life pregnancy centers faces Supreme Court reckoning
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
Women who receive services from pregnancy centers report a 98% satisfaction rate. The real measure of success, however, is the women who later return to help others.
Courtney, once overwhelmed by two unexpected pregnancies, now works at the very center that supported her.
Jean Marie, who escaped human trafficking with the help of a New Hampshire pregnancy center, now runs a center in Vermont, using her experience to counsel vulnerable women.
In Northern Virginia, a maternity home helped Shawnte when she lost her job and housing. Today she works as a peer-recovery coach and credits the maternity home with giving her the strength not to abort “a child I knew I wanted, just because things got hard.”
These women — and countless others — were empowered by the pro-life safety net and now devote themselves to strengthening it for the next mother in crisis.
This is work that protects lives, stabilizes families, and strengthens communities. It deserves support, not intimidation from pro-abortion politicians. When First Choice made its case before the Supreme Court, it stood up for every American who believes mothers deserve compassion without harassment from the state.
Helping women is not controversial. It is love in action.
For once, Medicare is trying something that actually saves money
Medicare is the second-largest program in the federal budget, topping $1 trillion last year. In 2023, it accounted for 14% of federal spending — a share projected to reach 18% by 2032. After years of ballooning costs, something is finally being done to slow the growth. A new Medicare pilot program, the Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction model, borrows a successful private-sector tool: prior authorization. And that’s good news.
Medicare Part B premiums now sit at $185 per month — up 28% from five years ago and a staggering 76% since 2015. Last year, 12% of the 61 million Americans enrolled in Part B spent more than a tenth of their annual income on premiums. That burden is unsustainable.
In a system as expensive and fragmented as ours, no one can afford to keep writing blank checks for low-value care.
WISeR, set to launch in Ohio, Texas, Washington, New Jersey, Arizona, and Oklahoma, will require prior approval for a short list of “low-value” services — procedures that research shows are frequently overused, costly, and sometimes harmful.
To some, the idea of Medicare reviewing certain treatments before covering them may sound like red tape. But when done correctly, prior authorization is not a barrier. It is a guardrail — one that protects patients, improves quality, and helps ensure that both tax dollars and premiums are spent appropriately.
The goal of WISeR is simple: Cut unnecessary treatments and shift resources toward more effective, evidence-based care. Critics warn about the possibility of delays or extra paperwork, and those concerns are worth monitoring. But they don’t negate prior authorization’s potential to make U.S. health care safer, more efficient, and more financially stable.
Prior authorization directly targets some of the most persistent problems in health care. Medicare spends billions each year on low-value services. A 2023 study identified just 47 such services that together cost Medicare more than $4 billion annually. Those are taxpayer dollars that could be put to better use.
The private insurance market shows the same pattern: unnecessary imaging, avoidable specialist referrals, and brand-name drugs chosen over generics all contribute to rising premiums. Prior authorization, when used properly, reins in this waste by ensuring coverage lines up with medical necessity and evidence-based best practices. Research from the University of Chicago shows that Medicare’s prior authorization rules for prescription drugs generate net savings even after administrative costs.
Consider one striking example. Medicare Part B covers wound-care products known as skin substitutes. But an Office of Inspector General report found that expenditures on these products skyrocketed over the past two years to more than $10 billion annually. Meanwhile, Medicare Advantage plans — which rely heavily on prior authorization — spent only a fraction of that amount for the same treatments.
RELATED: When a ‘too big to fail’ America meets a government too broke to bail it out
DNY59 via iStock/Getty Images
More importantly, prior authorization helps promote evidence-based medicine. It curbs outdated clinical habits and reduces financial incentives to overtreat. Health plans consistently say that prior authorization aligns care with gold-standard clinical guidelines, particularly in areas prone to misuse.
Of course, the system must be designed responsibly. A well-functioning PA process should be transparent, fast, and grounded in strong clinical evidence. Decisions should be made in close coordination with the patient’s treating provider. The appeals process must be straightforward. And both public and private payers should be held accountable for improper denials or harmful delays.
When structured this way, prior authorization is far more efficient than the current “pay-and-chase” model, where Medicare pays first and tries to recover improper payments later.
Prior authorization already works in the private sector. It can work in Medicare.
Public and private payers have an obligation to steward the dollars they spend — whether those dollars come from taxpayers or premium-payers. In a system as expensive and fragmented as ours, no one can afford to keep writing blank checks for low-value care. When implemented wisely, prior authorization keeps coverage aligned with medical necessity, elevates the value of care, and helps deliver better outcomes at a sustainable cost.
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