Wiles suggests real goal of Trump’s boat strikes is to topple Venezuela’s Maduro
Wiles also said of Trump’s Venezuela strategy:
He wants to keep on blowing boats up until [president Nicolás] Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.
The author notes that “Wiles’s statement appears to contradict the administration’s official stance that blowing up boats is about drug interdiction, not regime change”.
“So not a war on the cartels. It’s regime change,” Democratic senator Chris Murphy wrote on X in response to the article. “Either way, totally illegal and nonsensical.”
Wiles also conceded that attacking targets on Venezuela’s mainland would force Trump to get congressional approval.
If he were to authorize some activity on land, then it’s war, then [we’d need] Congress.
Key events
Well, the suspense was great and yet so very short-lived. Karoline Leavitt has told Fox News that Trump’s national address tomorrow night will be “about all of his historic accomplishments over the past year”.
To name but a few, the White House press secretary listed border security, inflation and gas prices as among those accomplishments, adding that the president will possibly be “teasing some policy that will be coming in the new year as well”. A reminder that the sure to be riveting address is happening tomorrow at 9pm ET.
‘She’s fantastic’: Trump stands by Wiles after Vanity Fair interviews
Donald Trump has told the New York Post that he supports Susie Wiles after the publication of interviews in Vanity Fair in which the White House chief of staff said the president “has an alcoholic’s personality”.
“I didn’t read it, but I don’t read Vanity Fair — but she’s done a fantastic job,” Trump told the Post. “I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer, purposely misguided.”
He said that he has a “possessive and addictive type personality” and that he wasn’t offended by Wiles’s word choice. He added:
If anybody knows the interviewer, and if they know Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair is a totally — it’s lost its way. It’s also lost its readers, as you know. No, she’s fantastic.
Donald Trump’s approval rating slipped in recent days to nearly its lowest level of his current term as voters from his party soured on his handling of the economy, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The three-day survey showed 39% of US adults approve of Trump’s job performance, down from 41% earlier in December and within a point of the 38% reading from mid-November, Trump’s lowest rating this year.
Just 33% of US adults said they approved of how Trump was handling the economy, the president’s lowest rating on the matter this year.
While Republicans continue to support the president – 85% approved of his overall performance, unchanged from earlier this month – the share of them who see Trump doing well on the economy fell in the latest poll to 72%, the lowest rating this year and down from 78% earlier in the month.
His approval rating on the cost of living – at 27% – was down from 31% earlier in the month.
The poll, which was conducted online, gathered responses from 1,016 people nationwide and had a margin of error of three percentage points.
And Pam Bondi – who Wiles said “completely whiffed” her early handling of the Epstein files – wrote on X:
My dear friend @SusieWiles fights every day to advance President Trump’s agenda – and she does so with grace, loyalty, and historic effectiveness. Any attempt to divide this administration will fail. Any attempt to undermine and downplay President Trump’s monumental achievements will fail. We are family. We are united.
Vice-president JD Vance – who Wiles said “has been a conspiracy theorist for decades” and whose shift from Trump critic to supporter was “sort of political”, motivated by his Senate campaign rather than principle – joined others in the administration in defending the White House chief of staff today.
He told reporters in Pennsylvania that he admires her consistency and authenticity both in and out of the president’s presence.
I’ve never seen her be disloyal to the president of the United States and that makes her the best White House chief of staff the president could ask for.
He also played down her comments about him:
Sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true. And by the way, Susie and I have joked in private and in public about that.
According to the interviews published in Vanity Fair today, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles also said she warned Trump against pardoning the most violent participants in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and pressed him to delay his decision on sweeping trade tariffs, but was unable to change his mind in either case.
She said Trump’s announcement of tariffs on US trade partners earlier this year exposed deep divisions within his team, as advisers urged him to wait for consensus. She added that the tariff decision “has been more painful than I expected”.
Trump says he will give national address on Wednesday
Donald Trump has just posted a cryptic announcement on his Truth Social platform that he will be giving a national address from the White House at 9pm ET tomorrow. He didn’t give further details.
My Fellow Americans: I will be giving an ADDRESS TO THE NATION tomorrow night, LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, at 9 P.M. EST. I look forward to “seeing” you then. It has been a great year for our Country, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!
Analysis: Donald Trump v the BBC: key points of the president’s claim
My colleague Haroon Siddique has examined some of the key allegations in Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the BBC over its editing of a speech he made on 6 January 2021, including Trump’s claims that it was done with “malice” (which in the US has to be proven), failed on “objectivity”, and caused him “reputational harm”. Bafflingly, the UK’s shortest-serving PM Liz Truss also gets a mention.
One of the claims relates to VPN use to access the documentary in Florida:
The Panorama documentary’s publicity, coupled with significant increases in VPN usage in Florida since its debut, establishes the immense likelihood that citizens of Florida accessed the documentary before the BBC had it removed.
Haroon writes: “Trump potentially needs to establish the BBC Panorama documentary was available in Florida to able to sue there, otherwise it might not be deemed to be the appropriate jurisdiction for the case.
“The BBC says that it did not distribute the Panorama episode on its US channels and, when made available on BBC iPlayer, it was geographically restricted to viewers in the UK.
“As well as jurisdiction, whether anyone – and if so, how many – watched it, would affect the level of reputational harm (if any) Trump could claim had been caused to him.”
Further, on the claim of reputational harm, Haroon goes on: “The BBC is believed to argue that the programme could not have caused the US president ‘overwhelming reputational harm’ as he went on to win the US presidential election after it was aired. winning Florida by the largest majority versus a Democrat candidate since 2004.
“Given Trump’s polarising nature and that his role in the Capitol Hill insurrection has been well played out in the US, even if people in the US saw the documentary, it is questionable whether anyone would change their mind about him.”
Get the full run-down here:
Trump administration says White House ballroom construction is matter of national security
Earlier this morning, Donald Trump’s administration argued in a court filing that the president’s White House ballroom construction project must continue for reasons of national security.
The filing came in response to a lawsuit filed three days earlier by the National Trust for Historic Preservation asking a federal judge to halt the ballroom project until it goes through multiple independent reviews and wins approval from Congress.
In its filing, the administration included a declaration from the deputy director of the US Secret Service saying more work on the site of the former White House East Wing is still needed to meet the agency’s “safety and security requirements”. The administration has offered to share classified details with the judge in an in-person setting without the plaintiffs present.
The government’s response to the lawsuit offers the most comprehensive look yet at the ballroom construction project, including a window into how it was so swiftly approved by the Trump administration bureaucracy and its expanding scope.
The filings assert that final plans for the ballroom have yet to be completed despite the continuing demolition and other work to prepare the site for construction. Below-ground work on the site continues, wrote John Stanwich, the National Park Service’s liaison to the White House – and work on the foundations is set to begin in January. Above-ground construction “is not anticipated to begin until April 2026, at the earliest”, he wrote.
Democrats condemn Republicans calling for Muslim ban on the heels of Australia shooting
Rachel Leingang
Democrats are condemning two Republican members of Congress who said, in the wake of the mass shooting in Australia, that the US should ban Muslims from the country and kick out those who already live here.
Congressman Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, said he not only wants deportations of legal immigrants who are Muslim, but “citizenship revocations wherever possible” of Muslims.
“This has to stop. Diversity is not our strength. Diversity has become suicidal,” Fine wrote on X on Monday. “It is time for a Muslim travel ban, radical deportations of all mainstream Muslim legal and illegal immigrants, and citizenship revocations wherever possible. Mainstream Muslims have declared war on us. The least we can do is kick them the hell out of America.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama, said Islam is a “cult”, Muslims are “here to conquer” and that people needed to “stop worrying about offending the pearl clutchers”.
“We’ve got to SEND THEM HOME NOW or we’ll become the United Caliphate of America,” he wrote on X on Sunday.
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