It should come as no surprise that President Trump is racist and that he is insanely jealous of President Obama. Obama won the Nobel Prize, which is beyond Trump’s grasp. It rankles Trump that he can’t threaten or bribe the Nobel Prize committee. Trump can’t believe that there is one award that he can’t get no matter how hard he tries.

Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his racism, such as when he referred to African nations as “shithole countries.” He has made clear that he would welcome white immigrants, whether from South Africa or Scandinavia, as he expels immigrants of color. His vision of Make America Great Again seems to rely on depictions of a White America, a time preceding the Civil Rights movement. Norman Rockwell’s family has complained about the Trump administration’s misuse of Rockwell paintings to allude to an idyllic all-white America.

Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt was quick to denounce protests about the meme as “fake outage” and to urge journalists to focus on issues that “actually matter to the American public.” Like the Epstein files? Or the brutality of ICE?

In the early afternoon, about 1:30 pm, Trump deleted the post, having realized that no one thought it was funny, and many saw it as rank racism.

Erica L. Green and Isabella Kwai wrote in The New York Times:

President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, the latest in a long pattern by Mr. Trump of promoting offensive stereotypes about Black Americans and others.

The brief clip, set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about anomalies in the 2020 presidential election.

The depiction of Mr. and Mrs. Obama as apes perpetuates a racist trope, used historically by slave traders and segregationists to dehumanize Black people and justify lynchings and other atrocities. A spokeswoman for Mr. Obama declined to comment.

Mr. Trump has a history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women and immigrants. And in his second administration, official posts from the White House, Labor Department and Homeland Security Department have posted images and slogans that echo white supremacist messaging.

In response to questions about the clip, which Mr. Trump posted Thursday during a late-night spree on social media, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said criticism of the video was “fake outrage.”

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” she said. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina — the Senate’s only Black Republican — wrote on X that he hoped the post was fake “because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”

The latest clip appeared to have been taken from a video that was shared in October by a user on X with the caption “President Trump: King of the Jungle,” and an emoji of a lion.

In that video, several high-profile Democrats — including former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former vice president Kamala Harris — were shown as various animals, while Mr. Trump was depicted as a lion. The Obamas, in the clip, were shown as apes. The video ended with the animals bowing down to Mr. Trump.

We have known for years that Trump is egotistical. We have seen examples of his egotism repeatedly, from his renaming of the John F. Kennedy Center to his slapping his name on countless products and hawking them.

But this one takes the cake!

According to CNN, Trump make an offer to New York Senator Chuck Schumer: Trump would release billions in federal funding for a tunnel linking New York and New Jersey if Schumer agreed to rename Penn Station and Dulles Airport for him.

Schumer said no.

I read this online last night and thought it a joke or a smear.

It’s not.

CNN wrote:

(CNN) — President Donald Trump told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last month that he was finally prepared to drop his freeze on billions of dollars in funding for a major New York infrastructure project.

But there was a condition: In exchange for the money, Schumer had to agree to rename New York’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles International Airport after Trump.

Apparently, there are no limits to Trump’s egomania.

Republicans in Congress have been pondering whether to name a day for Trump as a national holiday or to put his face on a coin, although such honors are always limited to those who are no longer living.

I assume that Trump is so rattled by a sense of his mortality that he wants to assure that he will be immortalized by plastering his name everywhere.

Sad.

Glenn Kessler is a professional fact-checker. He served in that role for The Washington Post for many years. He left the Post and continues to do what he does best on his own Substack blog. In this post, he reviews the Trump administration’s flurry of lies about the murder of Alex Pretti.

He writes:

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
—George Orwell (1984)

A contact who worked for Donald Trump in his first term once explained to me the White House dysfunction this way: “Everyone lies to each other. So no one can believe anything that they are told.” The standard was set by the president, whose constant lies are documented in the media, but few understood how pervasive lying was within the government, even among people who supposedly worked together.

The dynamic is even worse in the second term. Trump is surrounded by sycophants who provide no constraints and offer no contrary advice. And they understand that lying is not only expected but celebrated.

So, when Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was shot in the back and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday — ten shots fired — the lie machine got to work. Department of Homeland Security officials had to lie to the president, who in turn would be happy to echo those lies. Within hours, a statement was issued:

At 9:05 AM CT, as DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault, an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, seen here.

The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming.

Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene.

The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.

Almost every line in the statement was a lie, as subsequent video analysis and witness reports demonstrated — Pretti was holding a cell phone, not a gun; he was helping a woman who had been shoved to the ground by ICE agents; he was pepper-sprayed by the agents; he did not resist but was pummeled by agents; he was licensed to carry a gun under Minnesota law; an ICE agent removed the gun before he was shot; he was on his knees when he was shot; ICE kept shooting even after he fell to the ground; a doctor reported that ICE initially thwarted his efforts to provide medical aid.

Note what is missing in the statement — any sense of regret or concern about the loss of life. Nor is there any pledge to fully investigate the incident, which used to be the standard in any law-enforcement use of deadly force. (Radley Balko wrote in the New York Times recently about how different ICE statements are from typical police statements — what he called a “projection of power.”)

Instead, the lie was set in motion.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem then attacked Pretti as a domestic terrorist and sought to pin the blame on Democratic politicians in the state.

“When you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence, that is the definition of domestic terrorism,” she said at a news conference. “This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism,” Noem added. “That’s the facts.”

These were faux “facts” — designed to serve the lie.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller went even further and called Pretti a “would-be assassin” who “tried to murder federal law enforcement,” adding that he is a “domestic terrorist.”

President Trump posted a photo of Pretti’s gun — calling him a “gunman” — and also sought to blame local authorities.

“This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go –- What is that all about? Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers? The Mayor and the Governor called them off? It is stated that many of these Police were not allowed to do their job, that ICE had to protect themselves — Not an easy thing to do!”

The lie began to unravel almost immediately, as videos and sworn witness statements emerged that contradicted the government’s account. But the lie had already taken root, echoed by the administration’s supporters, which is why the administration works hard to get a misleading version of the story out first.

They used the same tactics with the killing of Renee Good, asserting she tried to run over an ICE officer who shot her in self-defense. Witness videos established that was a lie, but the administration controlled the narrative for 24 hours before it all fell apart. (This is why ICE agents harass and intimidate people filing videos. They want to minimize potential evidence.)

The lie about Pretti was debunked within hours. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune produced an excellent fact check. The New York Times visual forensics team quickly assembled the footage. Witness statements emerged.

Here’s what a witness to the shooting — who filmed the encounter — filed in a sworn statement: “The agents pulled the man on the ground. I didn’t see him touch any of them—he wasn’t even turned toward them. It didn’t look like he was trying to resist, just trying to help the woman up. I didn’t see him with a gun. They threw him to the ground. Four or five agents had him on the ground and they just started shooting him. They shot him so many times.”

The witness added: “I have read the statement from DHS about what happened and it is wrong. The man did not approach the agents with a gun. He approached them with a camera. He was just trying to help a woman get up and they took him to the ground.”

Of course, this new evidence didn’t alter the administration’s lie.

Gregory Bovino, a top Border Patrol official appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” this morning to claim that the agents were the real victims. He blamed Pretti — “The suspect put himself in that situation” — and asserted that he aimed to “perpetrate violence, obstruct, delay or obfuscate border patrol in the performance of their duties in an active crime scene.”

A man was shot and killed by federal agents. No remorse. No regret. Remember: They lie to each other and then they lie to the American people. The truth is too dangerous to their plans.

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, posted this message on his Substack blog. Having watched Trump apologists on TV today, explaining why it was just to kill Alex Pretti, it was refreshing to encounter simple truths: the murderers running our government, especially the Department of Himeland Security, have no souls.

Their first instinct is to lie.

Anyone who watched the videos saw that Alex had a cellphone in one hand and the other hand was empty. Everyone knows by now that Alex had a registered gun that he never drew, and that was removed by an Ice agent before he was slaughtered. Everyone could see that he advanced to help a woman throw to the ground by ICE and that he never posed a threat to ICE agents.

Krugman wrote:

I was working on another wonkish post about China’s trade surplus when the news about Alex Pretti’s murder broke. I’ll put that post up at some point, but not today.

It has been clear for a long time, to anyone willing to see, that the people running the federal government — Trump, Miller, Noem, Bovino and more — are monsters. It has been equally obvious that ICE and the Border Patrol are now filled with sadistic thugs. Yet many people — almost the entire GOP, everyone serving in the Trump administration, some Democrats, a significant part of the media — were too cowardly to admit the obvious.

At this point, however, there are no more excuses. In a way the cowards and opportunists enabling Trump are more to blame for where we are than Trump and company themselves: monsters are monsters and can’t help themselves, but the enablers have a choice. And they have chosen, again and again, to accommodate and facilitate evil.

I wish I could believe that the last few weeks will be the last straw, but I don’t. To be honest, I wish I believed in Hell, because if it did exist, the enablers would be going there along with the monsters.

What I do believe in is the courage and decency of millions of ordinary Americans, which have been so dramatically on display in Minneapolis. We can only hope that this courage and decency get us through this nightmare — and we must do all we can to make it happen.

David Graham reported for The Atlantic from Davos about Trump’s big speech to foreign heads of state and leaders of business and culture.

It was, writes Graham, filled with the trademarks of Trump speeches: lies, incoherence and confusion. It was the kind of speech that Trump has delivered to adoring audiences while campaigning. Filled with boasts, grievances, and exaggeration.

“Without us, right now you’d all be speaking German,” Donald Trump scolded European leaders at the World Economic Forum this morning. Perhaps the Germans have a word for the experience of watching your country’s leader embarrass himself and the country on the global stage.

Where does one start in summarizing such a speech? The straightforward racism? The economic illiteracy? The determination to alienate allies? The many moments where the president said things that were blatantly, provably false? And because he rambled through more than an hour, he covered a lot of ground.

The most anticipated section was about Trump’s ongoing effort to acquire Greenland. Trump argued that only the United States could defend the island, which he perplexingly also dismissed as “a giant piece of ice” and accidentally called “Iceland” on a few occasions. He also said Greenland was essential for the “golden dome” missile-defense system he claims he will build. (He denied that the U.S. is after rare-earth minerals in Greenland.)

Although Trump insisted that he has the utmost respect for both Danes and Greenlanders, nothing else he said evinced any. He accused them of being ungrateful for the U.S. defense of Greenland during World War II and argued that the American government erred when it “gave it back” after the war. Trump delivered a classic mafioso threat to take Greenland by force, saying that U.S. military might was irresistible, before adding nonchalantly that he would not do such a thing. This was not as reassuring as some headlines might lead readers to believe. And he said that if European leaders didn’t acquiesce, “we will remember….”

When Trump selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, the nation’s leading source of research and policy about health, many critics worried that Kennedy’s adherence to conspiracy theories about vaccines would cloud his judgment.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Senator Bill Cassidy–a medical doctor–asked Kennedy if he would promise that he would not apply his personal views to the vaccine schedule. Kennedy promised. But, of course, once he was confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, he broke his promise. He fired all the members of his advisory committee on vaccines and replaced them with his own choices.

Recently Kennedy released a new childhood vaccine schedule, which eliminated some vaccines that had been standard. Organizations of medical professionals were aghast. Until now, guidance from the HHS and Centers for Disease Control were reliable sources for guidance.

Many states responded to Kennedy’s bad advice by determining to ignore the federal recommendations and make their own decisions.

The Boston Globe reported:

Governor Maura Healey released new guidance on childhood vaccinations Wednesday, countering Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent overhaul of the schedule. 

On Jan. 5, the Trump administration reduced the number of vaccinations it recommends for all children, framing the decision as a way to increase public trust by backing only the most important shots.

Unlike the federal government, Massachusetts continues to recommend that every child receive inoculations for hepatitis B, rotavirus, flu, COVID, and RSV, following guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Under Kennedy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now recommends these shots only for children at high risk or when doctors encourage them in what’s called “shared decision-making,” in which doctors and patients collaborate on treatment decisions. 

Insurance will continue to cover all vaccinations for children. 

The federal rollback caused outrage among doctors and health authorities, mainly because it came amid a particularly deadly flu season. The flu has killed 66 people in Massachusetts so far this season, including four children, double the number of deaths reported at this time last year. 

The federal changes came without any new evidence casting doubt on the decades of data showing vaccines for children are safe and effective.

“The decision to change CDC’s childhood immunization schedule is reckless and deeply dangerous,” said Dr. Robbie Goldstein, the state public health commissioner, in a statement Wednesday. “It replaces decades of transparent, evidence-based guidance with uncertainty.”

SNOPES, the fact-checking site, reviewed claims that the ICE agent who killed Renee Good acted in self-defense because she was trying to run him over.

SNOPES determined that the basis of this claim was an AI-generated video that contained multiple indicators of being a fake.

It determined:

Rating: Fake 

After a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Renee Nicole Good, 37, in Minneapolis on Jan. 7, 2026, social media users shared an image appearing to show Good’s car aimed toward and about to hit the officer.

The image spread on social media platforms such as Reddit and X. “Any questions?” one Facebook user posted, apparently assuming the image was authentic. 

However, the image was fake. Using reverse image search tools, we traced it to a post from X user @ScummyMummy511, who acknowledged using artificial intelligence to create it. The AI-generated depiction also did not match the scene shown in multiple credible videos and photos of the shooting, further proving it wasn’t authentic.  

Multiple credible analyses of videos from the shooting contradicted claims that Good was attempting to run over the officer and found that the wheels of her vehicle were turned away from him right before the shooting. (After a Minnesota news outlet released the agent’s own cellphone video on Jan. 9, Vice President JD Vance was among officials who said the footage showed he had fired his gun in self-defense.)

But Good did not try to run him over. The officer fired three shots, two of which struck her in the chest, a third in the arm. None of those shots were necessary. The ICE officer did not fire his gun in self-defense. And the Department of Justice will not investigate the killing, contrary to standard policy. Half a dozen investigators in the Civil Rughts Division of the Justice Depsrtnent resigned to protest the decision not to investigate.