"Donald Trump's 2025 Middle East policy balances Gulf investments and coercive diplomacy, pressuring Israel to align with US interests while still sidelining Palestinian concerns. His strategic pivot, marked by $600 billion Saudi deals, signals a transactional shift, with effects on the US-Israel 'special relationship'."

Is US President Donald Trump doing a "balancing act" of sorts in the Middle East? His latest gestures towards the Saudis and Qatar, and even surprising statements about pressuring Israel into allowing humanitarian aid to get to Palestine clearly suggest so.

Donald Trump's Middle East policy in 2025 is, by all indication, a blending economic opportunism, coercive diplomacy, and calculated pressure on allies and adversaries alike. His recent trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates — notably excluding Israel — signals a strategic pivot, prioritizing Gulf investments and regional stability over unwavering allegiance to the US-Israel "special relationship."

While Trump's gestures toward Saudi Arabia and Qatar, alongside calls for humanitarian aid to Palestine, suggest a pragmatic recalibration, his approach remains rooted in that transactional "they're ripping us off" mindset. This blunt, Mafia-style tactic — often devoid of traditional diplomacy — employs tariffs, threats, and provocative proposals to extract concessions, thereby leaving partners on edge — as Israel is now seeing.

Yet, beneath the bluster, Trump's moves serve basically as a stark reminder to the Jewish State: Washington holds the reins, and therefore even its closest ally must "behave", so to speak — or pay a price.

"Don't misunderstand me. I want Biden to get better and live many more years, so he can watch his family go broke from running out of influence to sell."
-- Oilfield Rando on X

If the slithering denizens of Okefenokee-on-the-Potomac were nervous about their fates before Sunday — and I'd say they've been rather jumped-up since Nov. 4 — then Maria Bartiromo's Sunday morning session with FBI top dawgs Patel and Bongino must have been a near-death experience for them. Something Roto-rooterish this way comes, officialdom must be thinking, if you can call utter hysteria "thinking."

Washington is nervous because there have been zero leaks from the agency, a condition heretofore unknown in that haunted, pestiferous, reeking marsh. There's plenty of the usual background noise, of course: the insectile hum, the croaking, trilling, buzzing, staccato peeps, chirps, and squeals of the squirming lesser creatures. . . the occasional roar of an ancient gator. . . the guttural cry of the night heron, the sharp yelp of some furry prey meeting its doom, the pulsating, primordial, chthonic cacophony of creatures suffering to mate in the frightful darkness. . . but that's just the news media doing their thing.

If courts can 'strike down' the other branches' actions, as Roberts claims, then that isn't 'co-equal.' It's judicial supremacism.

It's a sad day in America when the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court ignores the basic framework of the Constitution he's supposed to interpret.

That's what happened on Wednesday, when Chief Justice John Roberts took it upon himself to subtly thumb his nose at President Trump and conservatives during a rare sit-down interview in his hometown of Buffalo, New York. In addition to rebuking calls to impeach activist lower court judges for overstepping the confines of the Constitution, the chief justice had this to say about the subject of "judicial independence":

In our Constitution ... the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president. That innovation doesn't work if ... the judiciary's not independent. Its job is to, obviously, decide cases, but in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or of the executive. And that does require a degree of independence.

To quote Vice President J.D. Vance, does John Roberts hear himself?

The world should not be controlled by a single power, Myanmar Prime Minister Min Aung Hlaing has said in an exclusive interview with RT. A multipolar system is the best approach to avoid conflict, he believes.

In the interview aired on Saturday, the prime minister stressed that developing countries such as Myanmar have especially suffered "under a unipolar system."

"That is why transitioning to a multipolar world works best for us. It is better to share global resources, to act fairly, to distribute things more evenly. Conflicts arise from inequality, so if we want to avoid conflicts, I believe a multipolar system is the best approach," he said.

Trump's recent grand tour of the richest petro-states of the Middle East saw him feted as an emperor, make "trillion$ for America" in "yuge deals," and meet the "young, attractive," head-choppy leaders of the Arabian peninsula and "the new, free Syria."

Speaking about the "dawn of a bright new day" for the region, the farce of Trump staging what amounted to a MAGA rally in the ostensibly ultra-conservative Saudi kingdom - complete with the YMCA soundtrack - was completed by Israelis literally blowing up his attempt to ease the suffering of starving Gazans when they launched "Operation Gideon's Chariots," another round of intense bombing of blockaded Gaza that UN officials say has turned the tiny enclave into a veritable "slaughterhouse."

Whatever happened to MAGA being different from the House of Horrors that was the NeoCons' obliteration of most of the rest of the region? Were we naive for thinking things would turn out differently?

Also in this NewsReal, the bizarre "neo-Nazi terrorist group" you've never heard of, despite being number one on the FBI's terror watch-list, plotting to "take down America's power grid" and "usher in a far-right theocracy." Finally, strange happenings in London, England, where a young Ukrainian appears to have committed arson against personal properties of the British prime minister - and NOT for political reasons...


Running Time: 01:58:56

Download: MP3 — 109 MB

Trump's tussles with the courts could lead the nation into uncharted waters

Tucked deep in the thousand-plus pages of the multitrillion-dollar budget bill making its way through the Republican-controlled U.S. House is a paragraph curtailing a court's greatest tool for forcing the government to obey its rulings: the power to enforce contempt findings.

It's unclear whether the bill can pass the House in its current form — it failed in a committee vote Friday — whether the U.S. Senate would preserve the contempt provision or whether courts would uphold it. But the fact that GOP lawmakers are including it shows how much those in power in the nation's capital are thinking about the consequences of defying judges as the battle between the Trump administration and the courts escalates.

On Friday, the U.S. lost its last perfect credit rating as Moody's downgraded it from 'AAA' to 'Aa1,' citing decades of rising deficits and interest costs. This ends a perfect rating streak held since 1917. Moody's had warned in 2023 that a downgrade was possible, following similar moves by Fitch in 2023 and S&P in 2011.

The layers of irony behind this downgrade — and its timing — aren't lost on me.

It's a farce, really. By the logic Moody's is now applying, the downgrade should have happened a decade ago, when it became painfully clear that the U.S. had a crippling spending addiction, compounded by a monetary ideology that essentially tried to reverse the fundamental laws of debits and credits.

Yes, it's bad enough that the U.S. now carries $37 trillion in debt. But what's worse is that, despite this massive burden, deficits have continued to grow — clear proof that we've learned nothing about fiscal restraint. Our refusal to stop putting everything on the national credit card, and our complete disregard for basic math and economic reality, should have triggered multiple downgrades over the past decade.

If the talks have any chance of succeeding, the American side must take responsibility for the war it started and fueled.

The talks in Istanbul this week provide a prospect for peace. It bears emphasizing that the three-year proxy war could have been avoided if diplomacy had been permitted by Washington in early 2022 instead of being sabotaged.

Three years on, we have a new president in the White House, and there appears to be a more enlightened policy. Or maybe it's an implicit admission that the U.S. proxy war agenda is a failure and can't go on.

In any case, Trump and his envoys are unequivocally saying that they want to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine. That's a big change from his predecessor, Joe Biden, who vowed to back Ukraine for as long as it takes in a fantastical, reckless pursuit to strategically defeat Russia.

It was the Biden administration, along with the British government, that intervened to scupper nascent peace talks in March 2022 between Russia and Ukraine for a peace deal. Washington and London coaxed the Kiev regime to fight on with promises of more weapons.

The result: three more years of intense conflict, which have caused millions of casualties, mainly on the Ukrainian side. The proxy war has come perilously close to provoking an all-out world war between nuclear powers.

While Democrats are busy defending criminal gang members and terrorists from Tren De Aragua* and MS-13*, President Trump is putting on a command performance in the Middle East.

In a blockbuster speech yesterday at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Mr. Trump said this:

"Before our eyes, a new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts and tired divisions of the past, and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce, not chaos."

Then, he urged the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords, telling them:

"It's my fervent hope, wish, and even my dream, that Saudi Arabia — a place I have such respect for — will soon be joining the Abraham Accords. ... You will be greatly honoring me and you will be greatly honoring all those people that have fought so hard for the Middle East."

Then, he stunned the audience and drew a standing ovation by announcing that he's lifting American sanctions on Syria.

Donald Trump continues his Jacksonian revision of international policy by substituting trade to war. This week, he is in the Gulf where he has managed to sign historic agreements with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but has still not recognized the Palestinian state.

US President Donald Trump delivered a speech at the Saudi-US Investment Forum in Riyadh on May 13. After recalling his speech eight years ago in the same room, in which he urged Muslim states to stop supporting terrorist organizations, he called for trade to be substituted to war. He sharply criticized "nation builders," "neoconservatives," "liberal NGOs," adding that "In the end, the so-called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves" and praised the vitality of the people of the Greater Middle East.

He said:

"As I have shown time and again, I am ready to end past conflicts and forge new partnerships for a better and more stable world, even if our differences may be very deep.

"In recent years, far too many U.S. presidents have been afflicted by the idea that it would be our duty to examine the souls of foreign leaders and use U.S. policy to dispense justice in place of their sins.

"If the responsible nations of this region seize this moment, if you put aside your differences, and focus on the interests that unite you, then all of humanity will soon be amazed at what they will see here in this geographic center of the world, the spiritual heart of its greatest religions."