Adam Schwarz

There are little kids in the audience at today's White House turkey pardon, including JD Vance's three year old daughter in the front row - traditionally a light hearted, family-friendly event.

And here's what Trump chose to talk about.

Reform UK's Richard Tice calls for Starmer to "utilise" the leverage of frozen Russian assets in Europe against Putin.

The EU is currently debating whether to seize Russian assets - but the UK does not participate in those meetings because of Brexit, thanks to Tice and others.

This is a blatant and serious politicisation of the US Military to suppress opposition.

There are so many examples in history of fascists wielding court-martial and administrative measures against ex-military members involved in opposition - Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, Sadat and Mubarak all did it.

The Department of Defense announces it's considering "court-martial proceedings or administrative measures" against Democratic Senator Mark Kelly.

“Who elected the laws of physics?!” 🥴

Italian Senator Carlo Calenda:

“The President of the United States is simply an asset of Vladimir Putin… Europe will be born at this moment if it has the strength to fight two enemies - one to the East and one to the West.”

“The battle for Ukraine is a battle for Europe.”

Translating a document from Russian to English doesn’t make you its author.

State Dept. Spokesperson now refuting GOP and Dem senators’ account of their joint briefing from Rubio - and claiming the 28 point plan IS authored by the US.

Hard to believe several senators would have fundamentally misunderstood what Rubio told them.

Breathtakingly dysfunctional government.

I'm struggling to get my head around this. Two explanations I can think of:

1. This is severe Trump administration incompetence with an incoherent and disjointed White House and State Dept.

2. This is some BS Art of the Deal negotiation tactic to make the actual proposal look comparatively better.

So the US was aware that the world thought the document was US endorsed, yet waited until now to clarify that it wasn't?

How could the US have communicated to Ukraine that they had to accept the proposal or lose US support without clarifying that the Russian proposal wasn't actually their proposal?

A reminder that if we ensure Ukraine remains sovereign and free - Ukraine will become Europe’s security guarantee against the Russian war machine.

Boris Johnson's inept handling of Covid demonstrates why electorates living in normal times should vote for governments as if they were living in times of emergency.

Never presume you can vote for unserious people on the assumption that they will never have to make serious decisions.

UK Covid Inquiry concludes: 23,000 deaths could've been prevented if the March 2020 lockdown had been imposed just a week earlier.

No mistake by any prime minister in living memory has caused so many deaths in the UK.

The tragic and catastrophic price of Boris Johnson's incompetence & negligence.

No Reform UK MPs have turned up for the Home Secretary's statement on migrant settlement policy.

Yep, the Saudis already have Typhoons. F-35s are totally unnecessary and will be geopolitically destabilising. Not that the State/Def depts could care less under Trump.

The West's lifetime cost for the development, procurement and operation of F-35s is expected to be around $2 trillion.

$2 trillion of Western public taxpayer cash to maintain vital Western military superiority... only for Trump to just casually throw away.

Trump is a Western security threat.

Trump brags that the process to approve selling F-35s to Saudi Arabia will take just 24 hours.

This is the most advanced military capability in Western inventories being fast-tracked to a dictatorship that has deepening ties with the West's primary adversaries Russia and China.

Pence rebukes Trump for his comments on Khashoggi's murder:

"I would not have made that statement... I think it's very important that we never cast aside our deep commitment to freedom, to freedom of the press. Had I been given the opportunity... that meeting would have gone a little different."

Once again, Trump publicly rebukes US intelligence to protect a foreign dictator.

Strong echoes of Trump's Helsinki summit in 2018 when he favoured Putin's denial of interfering in US elections over the opinion of US intelligence services.

Trump defends Mohammed bin Salman over the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi:

"A lot of people didn't like that gentleman... Things happen... He knew nothing about it."

A US intelligence report concluded that bin Salman personally "approved an operation" to "kill or capture" Khashoggi.

Farage dictated government policy under the Conservatives.

Now he's dictating government policy under Labour.

When will the UK get a political leader with the courage to stand up to this aristo-populist demagogue?

Lib Dem Leader @eddavey.libdems.org.uk:

"A great British institution is under attack from a foreign government. President Trump is trying to destroy our BBC... Trump has undermined press freedom in America. Now he's trying to do the same here, disgracefully egged on by the leader of Reform."

This was so enjoyable to watch.

Trump is deteriorating physically and cognitively so rapidly during his second presidency.

He increasingly looks exhausted, falls asleep in public, repeats himself & appears confused/disorientated.

Biden's aging in office had nothing on this. I can't see Trump sustaining another 3+ years of this.

In the same press conference, Trump claimed to lower drug prices by a mathematically impossible "1200%" - up from his usual 200-300% claim.

I'm always watching, so far in vain, in the hope that a courageous reporter will ask, "Mr President, please explain how any price could fall more than 100%."

Trump says the US is collecting "hundreds of trillions of dollars" in tariff revenue.

The size of the entire world's economy is around $110 trillion.

Well I wasn't far off... He's just got one of his corrupt mates to do it instead.

There have been 263 UK prisoners released in error over the last year, but apparently it's only newsworthy when they happen to be a non-UK national.

Offenders are not more dangerous by virtue of being 'foreign'.

Media outlets need to stop helping the far-right poison our discourse with xenophobia.

This is a prime example of the xenophobia that right-wing forces are fueling for political gain - with the support of much of the British press.

The obessive hyper-focus on and exhibiting of non-UK national offenders is simply an attempt to demonise all migrants and asylum seekers.

James Cartlidge devotes his entire #PMQs stint to pressing David Lammy over whether any "asylum seeking offender" has been accidentally released from prison since Kebatu.

He did not ask whether any UK nationals, who account for 88% of offenders, have been accidentally released.