🚨 THE DAY AFTER PERFECTLY, TRUMP STRUGGLES THROUGH A CABINET MEETING
The Narativ | Know Sooner
👀 STORIES TO WATCH
💣 TRUMP’S CABINET MEETING LAID BARE FOR THE WORLD TO SEE
On Tuesday, the White House posted that Donald Trump’s six-month physical had “checked out PERFECTLY.” On Wednesday, sitting at the Cabinet table, the president threatened to bomb Oman. “Oman will behave just like everybody else or we’ll have to blow them up,” he said of the longtime US security partner whose territorial waters share the Strait of Hormuz with Iran. He told the room Iran was “negotiating on fumes” and that he was unbothered by November because “I don’t care about the midterms” — pointing to Paxton’s win over Cornyn as “the prelude.” Marco Rubio looked at the wall, Pete Hegseth at the floor. Trump said allowing the media into the Cabinet meeting was more transparent than any previous administrations. He may well be right — Trump’s condition was visible to anyone watching. The president who leads the free world couldn’t lead a meeting.
🎖️ TALARICO GAINS THE FOE HE NEEDED
Within minutes of Paxton being named the winner of the Republican Senate primary in Texas, James Talarico — the man he will face in November — released his first general-election video and called Ken Paxton “the most corrupt politician in America.” “Mega-donors and their puppet politicians like Ken Paxton have stolen from us,” Talarico said. Within the hour, Cook Political Report moved Texas from Likely Republican to Lean Republican — the rating tip Talarico needed. The thirty-seven-year-old Presbyterian seminarian and state representative raised $27 million in the first quarter, more than every Republican Senate candidate in the country combined. The Senate Leadership Fund’s $342 million in fall reservations did not include Texas at this scale. Trump may have forced Cornyn off the board, but he handed Talarico the foe he needed — the chance to be seen in the ring with Trump’s handpicked nominee. “The biggest fight is not left versus right,” Talarico said. “It’s top versus bottom.”
⚖️ ALFONSI WALKS, CBS BURNS
Sharyn Alfonsi’s last day at 60 Minutes was Saturday. She left her newsroom colleagues a statement naming CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss as the person who killed her 60 Minutes segment on CECOT. The behavior, Alfonsi wrote, was “a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting” — “a chilling message to the entire newsroom.” Paramount-Skydance is one regulatory approval from putting CBS News and CNN under the same roof.
📉 TEHRAN TURNS THE LIGHTS ON
Eighty-seven days after Iran went dark — the longest national internet shutdown ever recorded — Tehran flipped the internet back on, a signal of the regime’s swagger after the failed US attacks. Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref called it “the first step toward free and regulated access,” the word regulated doing its work. If Trump thinks he forced regime change, he’s delusional — the new leaders of Iran are the same if not worse than the ones before.
🌍 TWO HUNDRED BODIES, ONE FISHERMAN
For three months Trump has run a quiet shooting war across the Eastern Pacific and Caribbean — more than fifty maritime strikes, nearly two hundred dead, all of it framed as drug interdiction. Today Ecuadorian fishermen said a US-flagged vessel attacked them and destroyed their boats. War crimes beckon.
🎯 THE PATTERN
Trump is clearly losing his grip. The Cabinet meeting showed a president no longer sharp, no longer coherent, no longer able to recall the names of countries. He told the press and his Cabinet he doesn’t care about November’s election, claiming Paxton’s win shows how much support he really has. But unlike the shrewder Trump of old, he didn’t see the gift he handed Democrats. It’s the same shoot-before-you-think philosophy Trump deployed in Iran — and the one his acolytes used to pull Sharyn Alfonsi’s 60 Minutes piece and terminate her CBS contract. Every political move has consequences, and a president who can’t tell Oman from Iran isn’t thinking clearly about the consequences of his next move. Day 493.