President Donald Trump gave an extended interview to NBC News’ Tom Llamas. President Trump addresses immigration enforcement, the American economy, U.S. tensions with Iran, Joe Rogan, AI and other topics during his interview in the Oval Office.
The interview begins with a discussion of what is going on in Minneapolis, Minnesota. WATCH:
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White House Manufacturing Policy Advisor, Peter Navarro, has written an op-ed warning about a new bill under construction in congress [BILL HERE] that seeks to stop President Trump from blocking the ‘de minimis loophole’ on imported goods.
Previously, various shippers and transport companies like UPS and Fed-X had lobbied congress to retain a loophole on customs and duties allowing items valued less than $800 to enter the USA without tariffs. They were joined by ecommerce outlets like Amazon, Alibaba, Temu and Shein to keep cheap foreign goods flowing into the U.S. without passing through customs declarations.
President Trump stopped the de minimis loophole on China and Hong Kong and then globally.
As noted by Navarro, “the threshold for the exemption hit a staggering $800 per package — by far the highest in the world. Europe’s is closer to $150. Japan’s is under $70. China’s general threshold is in the single digits. The U.S. wasn’t “aligned with global norms.” We were the outlier, and a very expensive one.”
Now, Navarro is warning that congress is seeking to subvert the Trump position on imports and go back to allowing cheap foreign goods flood the U.S. market at a level that creates chaos in customs enforcement and facilitates the flow of illegal drugs and narcotics back through the system.
(The Hill) – […] Their bill is simultaneously a poster child for big money politics and a breathtaking insult to the public’s intelligence. It assumes voters won’t read past the title, won’t remember why de minimis was killed in the first place, and won’t connect the dots between lobbying disclosures, campaign checks, and a legislative resurrection of a loophole that nearly destroyed U.S. trade enforcement.
In September 2025, after a two-week trial in Fort Pierce, Florida, a jury found Ryan Wesley Routh (59) guilty of attempted assassination of President Donald Trump, assault of a federal law enforcement officer and multiple firearms offenses. Today Judge Aileen Cannon sentenced Routh to life in prison plus 84 months.
DOJ PRESS RELEASE – Today, Ryan Wesley Routh, 59, was sentenced to life plus 84 months in federal prison for the attempted assassination of then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and related violent and firearms offenses. U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon for the Southern District of Florida imposed the sentence following Routh’s conviction by a federal jury on all five counts charged in the indictment.
“Ryan Routh’s heinous attempted assassination of President Trump was not only an attack on our President — it was a direct assault against our entire democratic system,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Thanks to our prosecutors in the National Security Division and the Southern District of Florida, Routh will never walk free again.”
“Routh’s plan to kill a major presidential candidate, President Donald Trump, was a despicable attack on our democratic system,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “Thanks to the work of the FBI and our Justice Department partners, he will pay a high price for his actions. Today’s sentencing demonstrates the justice system will not tolerate such heinous attacks.”
“Routh attempted to assassinate President Trump and thereby cast our Nation into what would have been one of its darkest periods,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security John A. Eisenberg. “Today’s sentence is a resounding rejection of political violence and a clear reminder that we resolve our differences through civil discourse, democratic elections, and lawful protest, not by force.”
In the past few years people have heard the term “rare earth minerals” or “critical minerals” as they relate to the manufacture of component goods that are vitally important in the lives of everyone. However, the term “rare” is somewhat of a misnomer. The minerals themselves are not rare; indeed, they have been around for hundreds of millions of years in abundant supply. It is the processing of those minerals into stable second stage commodities that has become rare.
As a result of western environmental rules and regulations, U.S, EU and developed nations have outsourced critical mineral processing (the dirty stuff) to China and Asia. We then import the finished commodity after processing. This becomes a problem when you realize the processor can weaponize western dependency, as we have recently seen with China controlling the export of processed minerals needed for manufacturing.
President Trump has made a strategic decision to bring back the manufacturing of critical minerals to the United States and has made a policy decision to create a critical mineral reserve. Just last Monday President Trump announced a $12 billion strategic mineral reserve to combat China’s domination of critical mineral supply chains, a major step toward tackling China’s advantage in a crucial sector of the U.S. economy. The initiative is called “Project Vault.”
“For years, American businesses have risked running out of critical minerals during market disruptions,” President Trump said. “Just as we have long had a strategic petroleum reserve and a stockpile of critical minerals for national defense, we are now creating this reserve for American industry,” Trump said during the Oval Office announcement.
Today in Washington DC, Vice-President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio led a critical minerals discussion at the State Dept., where they are organizing an effort to get all nations to invest and create their own critical minerals strategic reserves. WATCH:
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As background for this interview, I’m going to say something that generally will not be received well by many. I have it on very good authority that FBI Director Kash Patel’s organization is currently one of the biggest impediments to successful execution of Trump administration domestic policy goals.
Specifically stated, DC operatives within the FBI are creating, manufacturing and leaking information against the goals and objectives of the White House, DOJ and other administration executive offices. In short, Kash Patel does not have his arms around the agency and subversive operatives are actively successful because of his incompetence. Accept it or disregard it, but that is the honest expressed sentiment from officials who are having to deal with the consequence.
All of that said, here is FBI Director Kash Patel appearing on Fox News to again emphasize that the agency is working in a supportive role on various domestic issues of concern. Not “lead“, “support.” WATCH:
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The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) delivered the “read and return” intelligence report to congress that sits at the background of an anonymous whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence, DNI Tulsi Gabbard. [CBS Story] In addition to delivering the report, the ICIG also delivered a declassified letter outlining the framework of the backstory [SEE HERE].
I strongly urge people to take a few minutes and read both links above, particularly the pdf of the ICIG report that frames the complaint. In essence, the same playbook the IC tried to create the impeachment narrative against President Trump (2019), they repeated against DNI Tulsi Gabbard.
Now, the story gets a little weedy, so at the risk of yet another subpoena for outlining highly classified intelligence information simply by using public sourcing information and strategic brain mapping to put dots together, the easiest way to explain what has happened is to tell the big picture story of it.
People opposed to President Trump inside the National Intelligence Council (NIC), which in 2025 was a sub-silo inside the CIA, wrote an analysis saying the Venezuela gang ‘Tren de Aragua” (TdA) was not officially affiliated with the Venezuela government. Therefore, when President Trump and Secretary Rubio defined TdA as an officially recognized terrorist group, the analysis was intended to separate the TdA violence from the official U.S. policy toward Venezuela.
[The NIC is the “federal agency” being described in the media reports. I suspect the report’s authors were Mike Collins and Maria Langan-Riekhof or close associates therein.]
The “highly classified” component to the analysis, the part that intentionally skewers the telling of the story, is almost certainly the sourcing for the NIC analysis.
Here I would estimate with 90%+ confidence, that a CIA asset within the Venezuela government was the source of the intelligence saying TdA is not officially aligned with the Venezuelan govt. That CIA asset could be someone very close to former dictator Nicholas Maduro, or someone currently inside the transitional government. That source makes the component to the NIC analysis “highly classified.” [However, it also fulfills the goals and operational agenda of the people who want to weaponize the “whistleblower angle.]
Now, I want to break out a component here because it is directly related to the reason for anti-Trump IC to manufacture this official CIA-NIC analysis. Remember, Judge James Boasberg’s argument against deporting TdA members was based on his refusal to accept the deportees were designated terrorists. Venezuela would not take them back, so President Trump sent them to the maximum-security prison in El Salvador.
Between the White House ballroom currently under construction, and the proposed Arc du Trump currently in the planning stage, Washington DC could look entirely different when President Trump leaves office. The classic elements are genuinely inspiring.
PRESIDENT TRUMP – “This beautiful building will be, when complete, the much-anticipated White House Ballroom — The Greatest of its kind ever built! It is a rendering from the Treasury Building, directly across the street, and replaces the very small, dilapidated, and rebuilt many times, East Wing, with a magnificent New East Wing, consisting of a glorious Ballroom that has been asked for by Presidents for over 150 years. Being an identical height and scale, it is totally in keeping with our historic White House. This is the first rendering shown to the Public. If you notice, the North Wall is a replica of the North Facade of the White House, shown at the right-hand side of the picture. This space will serve our Country well for, hopefully, Centuries into the future! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP“
Who do you think will be the first “guest of honor” at a state dinner using the completed ballroom?
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard responds to the letter from Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Vice-Chairman Mark Warner.
Director Gabbard: “Contrary to the blatantly false and slanderous accusations being made against me by Members of Congress and their friends in the propaganda media, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has and will continue to take action under my statutory authorities to secure our nation and ensure the integrity of our elections. My response to Congress:”
[SOURCE]
Within the letter DNI Gabbard notes, President Trump “specifically directed” her to be present for the execution of a search warrant in Fulton County, Georgia last week as part of the probe. Director Gabbard announced in April 2025 that ODNI was investigating electronic voting systems in order to protect election integrity.
“As I publicly stated on 10 April 2025, there is information and intelligence reporting suggesting that electronic voting systems being used in the United States have long been vulnerable to exploitation that could result in enabling determined actors to manipulate the results of the votes being cast with the intent of changing the outcome of an election,” she writes. “ODNI and the IC continue to collect and assess all available intelligence concerning this threat to ensure the security and integrity of our elections,” she said.
The Wall Street Journal is out with a very specific hit piece against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. The article is 100% Intelligence Community insider lawfare against DNI Gabbard; however, in addition to being completely bogus the construct of the hit itself is very revealing.
The first CIA operation (2017) involved the National Intelligence Council (NIC sub-silo) and a Russian intelligence analyst, Eric Ciaramella. That was the creation of the fraudulent Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) written from within the NIC at the direction of John Brennan. The second CIA operation was the 2019 fraudulent Trump impeachment effort, again originating from Russian analyst Eric Ciaramella (anonymous whistleblower) who was represented by legal counsel Andrew Bakaj.
The current attack against DNI Tulsi Gabbard involves her May 2025 move to take the National Intelligence Counsel out of the CIA, and remove the heads of the agency, Chairman Mike Collins (friend of Mike Morrell) and Deputy Chair Maria Langan-Riekhof. {GO DEEP}
Within the current “leak”, structurally another false narrative, the Wall Street Journal frames yet another anonymous intelligence community whistleblower complaint, this time against DNI Tulsi Gabbard. Notice: the “anonymous whistleblower” is again represented by legal counsel Andrew Bakaj. The anti-Trump intelligence officials are running the same play.
As noted by DNI Spokesperson Olivia Coleman, “This is a classic case of a politically motivated individual weaponizing their position in the Intelligence Community, submitting a baseless complaint and then burying it in highly classified information to create 1) false intrigue, 2) a manufactured narrative, and 3) conditions which make it substantially more difficult to produce “security guidance” for transmittal to Congress.”
WASHINGTON—A U.S. intelligence official has alleged wrongdoing by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in a whistleblower complaint that is so highly classified it has sparked months of wrangling over how to share it with Congress, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the matter.
President Bill Clinton appears in multiple documents throughout the Epstein files. President Clinton’s former White House Chief of Staff, George Stephanopoulos, questions current Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche about the ongoing releases of Epstein information.
Specifically concerning to Stephanopoulos this week is the rushed nature of the 3.5 million-page document release by the DOJ, and victim information. Last week Stephanopoulos was complaining about the lengthy delays in the release as DOJ officials worked to redact victim information. WATCH:
[Transcript] – STEPHANOPOULOS: Thanks, Pierre Thomas, for that. We’re joined now by the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche. Mr. Blanche, thank you for joining us this morning.
As you know, your release on Friday has already received a response from the victims, from Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. I want to show the statement right now. It says, “survivors are having their names and identifying information exposed while the men who abused us remain hidden and protected. This is outrageous. The Justice Department cannot claim it is finishing releasing files until every legally required document is released and every abuser and enabler is fully exposed.”
Will there be more releases?
DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL TODD BLANCHE: I mean, look, first of all, we took great pains, as I explained on Friday, to make sure that we protected victims. This was a — we are talking about a review of 3.5 million pieces of paper that were released on Friday.
Every time we hear from a victim or their lawyer that they believe that their name was not properly redacted, we immediately rectified that. And the numbers we’re talking about, just so the American people understand, we’re talking about .001 percent of all the materials. And so — and we knew this. I said this on Friday, that — that, of course, the nature of this type of review was — the volume of materials that were reviewed, that there would be times when this happened. And so we’re working hard to make sure that we fix that. And I expect that that will continue.