Trump’s Embarassment: Live with John Aravosis

Tonight’s show was all about Donald Trump embarrassing himself on the world stage, starting with his speech at the United Nations, where he threatened to annihilate Iran. Let’s think about that for a moment. He’s speaking at the United Nations -- an organization created to prevent wars -- and he’s threatening to wipe out another country. Trump said he could either negotiate a deal that would turn Iran into one of the greatest countries in the world or annihilate the Islamic Republic. As I talked about during the show, it sounded to me like Trump was once again hinting at nuking Iran. But would he actually use them? And what would the American military do if he gave that order? Then there was Trump’s big announcement that he’d found a way to replace Canadian fertilizer with cheaper imports from Belarus. Potash is critically important to American farmers, and we get most of ours from Canada. But Trump announced that he was working on a massive deal with Belarus, one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies. Well, guess what happened next? Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko publicly contradicted Trump, saying Belarus doesn’t have the potash to sell us. It’s already been contracted to other buyers. So much for Trump’s massive deal. And speaking of embarrassing moments, Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the UN. Ukraine is fighting a war for its survival, Zelensky wants to end the fighting before winter, and what does Trump start talking about? His new White House ballroom! We also discussed Trump’s upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and why Republican Senator Roger Wicker publicly criticized Trump for inviting Xi to the White House in the first place. Meanwhile, Trump’s war against the American press continues to backfire. After he banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, other news organizations refused to participate in the traditional press pool. NPR and PBS took additional steps to stop using White House-provided material. We discussed what this means for Trump, who needs television coverage but is increasingly restricting the journalists who provide it. And, of course, Trump had another confrontation with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. Then there’s Donald Trump Jr. A Republican senator is calling for an investigation of reports that a wealthy Russian businessman with close ties to Putin paid for lavish festivities surrounding Don Jr.’s wedding. Senator John Curtis wants both Don Jr. and Hunter Biden subpoenaed. And Hunter’s response? Bring it on! He says he’ll happily testify alongside Don Jr. We also discussed San Francisco’s lawsuit against Truth Social over its plan to charge subscribers as much as $100,000 a month for early access to Trump’s posts. Imagine the potential value of getting Trump’s market-moving announcements before everybody else. We also looked at reports that Trump’s pardons have disappeared from the Justice Department website, and a potentially enormous national security problem involving hackers who claim to have stolen the personal information of FBI employees and their spouses. And if you were thinking about downloading the new White House app, you might want to hear this first: a community note alleges that the app sends your precise location to a remote server every four and a half minutes, with no way to turn it off. Plus, we covered the serious criminal charges against social media influencer Clavicular, who denies the allegations, and new ProPublica reporting alleging that Senator Susan Collins helped steer millions of dollars in defense contracts to a company whose CEO funneled $150,000 to her super PAC. We discussed the potential implications of that reporting for Collins and her relationship with the Trump administration. Finally, we had an extended audience Q&A, including a deeper discussion of Trump’s threats against Iran, whether he might actually use nuclear weapons, and what could happen if the military received such an order. We also talked about the White House press boycott, answered some gardening questions, and finished with a discussion about artificial intelligence -- including my latest disturbing experience with ChatGPT. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aravosis.substack.com/subscribe