Hey everyone. Happy Monday. I hope all the dads out there had a great Father’s Day.
I want to start today with something serious. We have to talk about the President’s mental acuity. Not because we disagree on policy. Because the warning lights are flashing, and the future of this country is riding on the answer. On the eve of Father’s Day, the President went online to celebrate a “great daughter,” and posted a photo of a woman who is not his daughter. His behavior keeps getting weirder, and it’s time we talk about it.
We will also get into reporting on Tulsi Gabbard’s ties to a cult, Trump’s green reflecting pool, updates on Iran, and the brand new Air Force One a foreign government paid for.
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Okay. Let’s get to it.
1. Trump Mistakes a Stranger for His Daughter, Raising Fresh Questions About His Mental State
Late Saturday night, on the eve of Father’s Day, the President posted an old photograph to Truth Social. It showed an older blonde woman sitting on a red sofa, talking on a phone. The caption read, “Great daughter. My Honor!!! President DJT.”
But she is not his daughter. The internet quickly identified the woman as the wife of a New York billionaire and Trump ally. The photo appears to be decades old, likely taken at Camp David during the Clinton administration. The White House has offered no explanation.
Look, I am not a doctor, and I am not going to try to diagnose anyone. But look at the pattern. Last month the President posted 861 times. That’s 27 times a day. And it’s not coherent. It’s AI memes in the middle of the night. It’s a shirtless photo of himself in a pool floatie at the Lincoln Memorial. It’s rage about the war he started in Iran. And in April he was averaging 18 a day, so the behavior is getting worse. Not better.
Unfortunately, a lot of us have watched this happen up close to someone we love. Somebody who is sharp your whole life, but one day they call you by your brother’s name, or they don’t quite place you for a second. It is one of the most frightening things you can go through with someone you love.
And you handle it with grace, because it’s family. If this were your dad, you’d be worried. You’d be making phone calls. You would want to know how bad things really were.
But this isn’t your dad. This is the man who carries the nuclear codes, the man sitting on top of our entire national security.
And the only people who can tell us how bad it really is are the same people who’d lose everything by admitting it. So they don’t. They put out a statement saying he’s sharper than ever and wave off every slip as a typo, a joke, or just completely ignore it.
But we can all see what’s happening here. Things are getting worse. Whatever the cause is, the President’s behavior is becoming more erratic. You see it. I see it. The only people pretending not to see it are the ones who work for him.
2. A Cult May Have Been Scripting Tulsi Gabbard for Years
A Washington Post investigation published this weekend looked at Tulsi Gabbard, who until last week ran all of our intelligence agencies as Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard grew up inside the Science of Identity Foundation, a Hawaii-based religious group. Former members have called it a cult.
The Post got their hands on 25,000 pages of documents, and what they show is extraordinary. Memos telling Gabbard which bills to introduce, which positions to take, and even how to carry herself on television. When the Post compared those memos to 32 of her television interviews, she used the scripted language almost word for word in 24 of them.
The group ran fake social media accounts to defend her and boost her presence online, and the documents suggest she knew. One email even records a phone call where she was berated, and then reassured, at the end, that “me and Krishna still love you.” Krishna is a major deity in Hinduism.
Here’s a pretty crazy example of the reportedly scripted moments. A memo laid out a specific line for her to deliver in a CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer. Watch what she said.
Now guess what the memo given to her by this group, titled “CNN Wolf Blitzer Talking points (Final),” said?
Quote, “It’s not a ‘boohoo, I don’t get to go to the party’ situation, Wolf.”
Look, I served with Tulsi in Congress. Initially we were close, but it became apparent that she was constantly saying whatever would benefit her in the moment. She also appeared to always have a soft spot for dictators, given her regular appearances on Russian state television during the first months of the Ukraine war.
I went on Stephen Colbert’s show early last year where he asked me about how concerned I was with Tulsi’s nomination. I mentioned there about Tulsi meeting with former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and subsequently spewing out Russian talking points like Syrian rebels being the ones responsible for chemical weapons attacks instead of the Assad regime.
This is a person who was labeled by Russian state television as their, quote, “girlfriend.”
For years I have listened to Tulsi’s talking points. I could tell those words were changing depending on the day. I guess I didn’t suspect that a shady religious group was behind many of them, but it was clear something was off. Now it’s all starting to make sense.
3. The Reflecting Pool Turned Green and Trump is Looking For Someone to Blame
Back in April, the President ordered the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool be repainted “American flag blue” for the country’s 250th birthday on the Fourth of July. The cost went from an estimated 2 million dollars to more than 14 million. The pool was refilled, the new paint peeled, and the water has now become a bright, fluorescent…green.
A professor at George Mason and other experts told reporters it was a harmless algae bloom, the kind you get in shallow, sunlit water, very likely made worse by the renovation itself. Not sabotage, and a pretty predictable problem.
Our president saw it differently. On Truth Social, he claimed vandals “took some form of knife or blade, and put a 250 foot long gash” into it.
But last month, the president said this about the bottom of his renovated reflecting pool.
So…which is it?
Then he went after ABC’s Jonathan Karl, accusing him of vandalism for holding up a loose flake of that peeling paint on camera. Trump said he was quote, “trying to rip the rubber off of the surface.”
At least five individuals have been arrested so far on vandalism charges. One of them was a 67-year-old former Olympic canoeist, who says all he did was reach into the water to touch a piece of the liner that had already peeled off on its own. We’ll have to wait and see what comes out of these arrests, but it sure feels like the President is just looking for someone to blame.
Look, this all follows the classic Trump pattern of making a mistake, not admitting to said mistake, and trying to blame something completely random for said mistake. Trust me, I sat on a committee that investigated in-depth Trump’s biggest mistake of all, and the pattern, like it always is, was eerily similar. Accountability is just nowhere to be found anywhere in this administration, and it’s unfortunate that it isn’t shocking anymore.
4. Days After Declaring Peace, Trump Is Back to Threatening to “Take Over” the Strait
Just last week, Trump announced a deal to end his war with Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The administration spent the next several days justifying every line of the agreement, which included billions of dollars to rebuild the country we just destroyed. But the deal had one core condition: the fighting had to stop on every front, including Lebanon.
That condition failed on Saturday, as Israel kept striking Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Iran declared the Strait closed again. Days after the President capitulated to end the war he started, we are right back to square one. According to Fox News, here is how he responded:
Trump went on to tell Fox News that “we may take over the Strait if we have to”. So we are back to threats of invasion and occupation, no closer to peace than we were before.
By the President’s own admission, we were about four weeks from running out of oil reserves before the deal was announced. We already saw how much he was willing to give up to reopen the Strait last week. So what happens when that clock starts ticking again?
5. The Free Jet From Qatar Is Costing You Close to a Billion Dollars
On Friday, Trump unveiled the jet at Joint Base Andrews. He called it the most luxurious plane in the world, and he could not stop talking about it.
As a reminder, this is a used jet from the government of Qatar who gifted the plane to Trump last year. A gift Trump himself said he’d be “stupid” to turn down.
What he didn’t talk about was the repair bill. Turning an airliner into a plane secure enough to fly the President of the United States is not cheap. Experts put the overhaul at over $1 billion, and the New York Times traced a roughly $934 million transfer out of a nuclear modernization fund into an unnamed classified project widely believed to be the plane.
And here’s the kicker. When he leaves office, the plane goes to his presidential library foundation. A sketchy donation from a foreign government. We pay to fix it up. And then Trump keeps it.
So while millions of Americans struggle to get by, the President is more focused on the gold fixtures and leather seats on his new jet than the people he is supposed to be fighting for. Because at the end of the day, Trump just can’t resist having the biggest and the fanciest. Of Everything.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: America is not for sale. On day one, our next president must take this aircraft as the property of the American people. Sell it and send the money back to the Treasury. Or just scrap it. And we should send a message by sanctioning Qatar for trying to buy the presidency while we are at it.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation Monday morning outside 10 Downing Street, paving the way for the country’s seventh prime minister in a decade. The announcement confirmed what Trump had posted on Truth Social the day before: the president declared “Keir Starmer will resign as Prime Minister of The United Kingdom” on Sunday, when Downing Street hadn’t announced anything yet, raising questions on the president’s handling of sensitive information. It is unclear if Trump was informed yesterday or if it was mere speculation. The UK has had six prime ministers since 2022.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni added more fuel in her feud with Trump Sunday, writing on Instagram that Trump’s attacks are “constant, unprovoked” and “senseless.” She added “As for my popularity, being your friend certainly has not helped it,” and “my popularity is none of your concern…I suggest you focus on yours.” The whole fight started last Friday when Trump told an Italian broadcaster that Meloni had “begged” him for a photo at the G7 summit in France, saying he only agreed because he felt sorry for her. This was a claim Meloni said was fabricated. Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani canceled a planned U.S. visit, and Italian officials reportedly also scrapped plans to attend U.S. Independence Day celebrations in Rome. Meloni was the only European leader at Trump’s 2025 inauguration and was once seen as his closest ally in the EU.
