What Happened Today - 1 Dec 2025
What Happened Today – 1 December 2025
Half Staff for Kirk…but not for Sarah Bergstrom - classy
Boat Strike(s) explained…
Ukraine and Venezuela Updates…
Pardoning a Honduran Drug King vs. blowing up Boats with ZERO evidence
Trump’s Rage Post’s this weekend
Habba Drama
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Half Staff for Kirk…but not for Sarah Bergstrom - classy
The American flag dropped to half-staff for Charlie Kirk because Trump personally ordered it after Kirk was assassinated at a public event. It’s the classic Trump move, bolstering his political ally and fellow culture warrior, making a big public gesture for his guy. Governors in several states echoed the order, following Trump’s lead. The conservative orbit rallied, and the gesture got blasted by critics who saw it as turning a symbol of national mourning into a political statement.
But then you get Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, a 20-year-old West Virginia National Guardsman, ambushed and shot dead in D.C., just a stone’s throw from the White House. Here’s the irony that’s got people’s blood boiling: For Beckstrom, there was no national order—no full-on moment from the White House making sure every flag in America reflected the loss. West Virginia’s governor, Patrick Morrisey, did the right thing for his own state—he lowered the flags, called for a statewide moment of silence, and did what you’d expect from any decent leader. But on the national level? Nothing. Full staff pretty much everywhere else. This snub hit especially hard because Beckstrom was killed in the line of duty, not just while serving, but serving to protect the very capital—making national silence that much more tone-deaf.
Let’s call it what it is: pure political calculation. Trump made Kirk’s death into a MAGA martyr moment, giving him hero’s honors on the grand stage. But Beckstrom? Maybe she just didn’t fit the narrative, or the administration didn’t see the same political mileage. It’s exactly the kind of thing that makes people lose faith in the whole idea of unity or respect for service. Public fury is simmering because the symbolism is obvious—if you’re playing on Trump’s team, you get the flag and the fanfare. If you’re just doing your job, even paying the ultimate price in uniform, that’s not always enough for the big show unless your death suits the political moment.
If you weren’t already rolling your eyes, it gets even richer: Beckstrom’s hometown and her home state did all the right things, but had to stand alone while the White House kept business as usual. They showed more backbone and class than D.C. did, that’s for damn sure.
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Boat Strike(s) explained
Trump’s “boat strikes” mess is exactly what it sounds like: a secretive, made‑for‑MAGA war on the water that’s now blowing up in his face.
What these “boat strikes” actually are
Trump quietly greenlit a series of U.S. military air and naval strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, pitched as a tough-on-cartels campaign against alleged narco‑traffickers from Venezuela and Colombia. Since early September, the U.S. has carried out more than 20 of these strikes, killing over 80 people on vessels the administration has unilaterally labeled “narco‑terrorists,” without publicly showing evidence that most of them were anything more than low‑level movers or even just fishermen.
The “kill them all” order and the second strike
The real scandal is one specific incident: reporting says Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth verbally ordered commanders to “kill them all” on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat hit around September 2. After an initial strike disabled the vessel and left survivors in the water or on a crippled boat, a follow‑up strike allegedly killed the remaining people, turning it from a combat engagement into what legal experts say could be a war crime because survivors who can’t fight back are supposed to be helped, not executed.
Congress finally wakes up
Now you’ve got something rare: Republican‑chaired Armed Services Committees in both the House and Senate joining Democrats to demand full briefings and document production on what exactly Trump and Hegseth ordered and what the military actually did. Members like Sen. Tim Kaine and GOP Rep. Mike Turner are straight‑up saying that, if the reporting is accurate and a second strike intentionally targeted incapacitated survivors, that’s an unlawful act and potentially a war crime, not just “tough” drug policy.
Trump and Hegseth trying to spin it
Hegseth is out there insisting the strikes are “lethal, kinetic operations” against terrorists and totally consistent with U.S. and international law, while dodging direct answers about the second strike and calling the reporting “fabricated” and “derogatory.” Trump is doing his usual two‑step: saying he’ll “investigate,” claiming Hegseth told him he didn’t order survivors killed, and then adding that he “wouldn’t have supported” a second strike—while still defending the overall campaign and bragging that every trafficker killed is tied to a terrorist organization.
Why it feels like a rogue war
Legally, this is way out on the edge: Trump is trying to hang the whole thing on his decision to designate certain cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations,” treating these tiny boats as fair game for military force with no specific authorization from Congress. Intelligence behind individual targets has been thin and often low‑level, meaning the U.S. may be killing couriers, fishermen, or minor players while pretending it’s wiping out cartel masterminds—and doing it all with almost no transparency or debate until the survivor‑killing story forced Congress to pay attention.
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Ukraine and Venezuela Updates…
Trump’s doing his usual “peace with a gun to your head” routine, and he’s running it simultaneously on Ukraine and Venezuela.
Ukraine “peace” with strings
The U.S. is pushing a Trump-branded peace framework where his envoy Steve Witkoff shuttles between Moscow and Kyiv, and Trump keeps telling cameras there’s a “good chance” of a deal soon. Behind that optimism, the draft framework reportedly leans toward Russian terms: extra territorial concessions beyond what Russia already occupies, limits on Ukraine’s military, and shutting the door on NATO—exactly the kind of thing Ukrainians see as surrender dressed up as peace.
Zelensky is clearly nervous; he’s saying publicly that Ukraine will discuss “sensitive issues” with Trump but keeps repeating that no one can decide Ukraine’s security or borders without Ukraine and Europe at the table. He’s in a politically weakened spot—corruption scandals and Russian gains on the battlefield—so he’s scrambling around Europe, including Paris, trying to lock in European backing so Trump can’t just hand Putin a deal and pressure Kyiv to sign it.
Venezuela “talks” under threat
At the same time, Trump has confirmed he’s been in direct contact with Nicolás Maduro even as he ramps up military pressure with those deadly “drug boat” strikes and openly warns that Venezuela’s airspace should be considered “closed.” He’s planning a White House meeting on “next steps” for Venezuela, while aides float everything from more maritime strikes to potential ground or air operations, all under the cover of drug interdiction and “narcoterrorism.”
Venezuela’s government is accusing the U.S. of murder after admitting some of the more than 80 people killed in the boat strikes were Venezuelan citizens, and its National Assembly is launching an investigation. So you’ve got Trump on one hand saying he’s open to talks with Maduro, and on the other hand threatening more force and keeping “all options on the table,” which is classic Trump theater: pretend to be the dealmaker while making sure the gun is visible in every shot.
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Pardoning a Honduran Drug King vs. blowing up Boats with ZERO evidence
Trump’s “drug war” logic doesn’t just fail the smell test – it flat-out contradicts itself.
Pardoning a kingpin, bombing nobodies.
On one hand, Trump is gearing up the military, sending carriers and warships into the Caribbean, greenlighting lethal strikes on small boats he claims are “narco‑terrorists” tied to Maduro and Venezuelan gangs. Those operations have killed scores of people on barely identified vessels, with intelligence so thin that even U.S. officials and legal experts are questioning whether these are truly high-level traffickers or just low-level couriers and fishermen caught in a political show.
At the exact same time, he’s announcing a “full and complete pardon” for former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, a man convicted in U.S. federal court of helping move tons of cocaine into the United States and handed a 45‑year sentence. Prosecutors said Hernandez and his cronies let Venezuelan cocaine flow through Honduras to the U.S. for years, and yet Trump is suddenly calling him unfairly treated and worthy of a walk — even as he claims he’s at war with the very cartels and routes that made men like Hernández rich.
The “drug” story vs the oil reality
The whole Venezuela angle is sold to the public as a noble crusade to stop cocaine and “narcoterrorism,” but the broader pattern screams oil and power, not fentanyl and grief-stricken families. Analysts, former officials, and even U.S. allies point out that the size and posture of the U.S. military build‑up off Venezuela — carriers, destroyers, Marines, covert ops — looks a lot more like regime-change pressure and resource leverage than a precision anti-smuggling mission.
Trump has privately talked about Venezuela’s oil reserves and the chance to control or reopen flows in ways favorable to U.S. companies, all while calling Maduro a “narco‑terrorist” and designating shadowy groups as foreign terrorist organizations to give himself a legal hook for strikes. So yes, the narrative is drugs, but the incentives line up with oil, contracts, and geopolitical flexing — and that’s exactly why the pardon and the bombings sit side by side: the enemy isn’t “drugs,” it’s whoever stands between him, his donors, and the money.
Why the two things don’t add up
If this were truly about protecting Americans from cocaine, you wouldn’t pardon a man U.S. courts found responsible for helping ship massive quantities of the stuff into the country while vaporizing barely identified crews in the Caribbean. You’d go after the political kingpins and financial networks with the same ruthlessness you’re showing to guys on a leaky boat. Instead, Trump’s pattern is crystal clear: loyalty and political usefulness get mercy, even if you’re a convicted trafficker; being useful as a prop in a “war on drugs” gets you blown up at sea.
That’s why people keep calling this a fake drug war – it’s a branding operation for regime change and oil leverage dressed up as moral crusade, with real bodies on the water and a cartel-linked ex-president walking free to prove just how hollow the “principle” really is.
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Trump’s Rage Post’s this weekend
Trump spent the whole weekend rage‑posting like a guy trying to govern straight from his comment section, and it was ugly even by his standards.
The Thanksgiving xenophobia dump
On Thanksgiving night he unloaded this enormous screed on his platform, vowing to “permanently pause” migration from all “Third World countries,” basically saying the quiet part out loud that his goal is to shut the door on poor, brown countries entirely. He painted immigrants as criminals, welfare leeches, and products of “failed states,” and capped it off by saying only “reverse migration” can fix America and that people who “hate” or “destroy” the country “won’t be here for long,” which is straight-up eliminationist talk from the president of the United States.
Going after Somalis, refugees, and citizenship
He went especially hard at Somali communities in Minnesota, ranting that they’re “taking over” the state and slurring Gov. Tim Walz as “seriously retarded,” which is vile on every level and exactly the kind of dehumanizing language his base eats up. Off that same shooting in D.C. that killed Guard member Sarah Beckstrom, he used the fact that the suspect is an Afghan evacuee to call for re‑screening all Afghan refugees and said he wants to denaturalize migrants who “undermine domestic tranquility” and revoke federal benefits from non‑citizens.
Pretending he can void Biden’s acts
In another post that barely got buried under the hate‑fest, he claimed that any orders or documents Biden signed using an autopen are “hereby terminated, and of no further force or effect,” as if a social media post from Trump can just retroactively erase four years of another president’s signatures. Legal experts have already laughed this off as nonsense, but he keeps going back to it because it fits the fantasy that Biden was never legitimate and Trump can just snap his fingers and rewrite history.
Warposting about Venezuela and the boats
At the same time he’s screaming about immigrants, he’s also online puffing his chest about Venezuela, boasting that he’s declared its airspace “closed” and daring people not to “read anything into it” when everyone can see he’s inching toward open conflict. He’s confirmed on camera and via posts that he personally spoke with Maduro even as he brags about U.S. strikes that have killed more than 80 people on “drug boats,” and his allies are clipping and sharing his videos as if threatening war and hyping a potential war crime is some kind of strongman highlight reel.
Wrapping it all in martyrdom and destiny
The through‑line in all of it is the same: he’s casting himself as the chosen savior who has to purge migrants, punish “failed” countries, and take the gloves off abroad because everyone else is too weak. It’s not policy, it’s a full weekend of grievance, bigotry, and war talk blasted out to his followers like a sermon, and the scariest part is the White House then turns around and calls these rants “one of the most important messages” of his presidency like this is normal governing instead of a live, unfiltered meltdown.
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Habba Drama
Trump just took another legal hit, and this one is squarely on his handpicked loyalist Alina Habba.
What the court actually did
A federal appeals court flat-out said Habba was serving unlawfully as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey and upheld a lower court’s decision kicking her out of the job. The judges said the Trump administration tried to game the system with a “novel series of maneuvers” to keep her in charge past her 120‑day interim term without ever getting her confirmed by the Senate, which violates the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and the statute that governs U.S. attorneys.
How Trump tried to rig it for her
Here’s how shady it was: Trump nominated Habba to be U.S. attorney, then when her interim term was running out and it was clear New Jersey’s Democratic senators wouldn’t back her, local federal judges used their power to install her deputy instead. In response, Attorney General Pam Bondi fired that judge-appointed prosecutor, slid Habba into the “first assistant” slot, and tried to claim that made her the legitimate acting U.S. attorney anyway—basically an end run around the Constitution’s appointment and confirmation process.
Why this is a bigger deal than just Habba
The appeals panel, which included Republican‑appointed judges, unanimously rejected that theory and warned that if Trump’s approach stood, presidents could bypass Senate confirmation and keep de facto U.S. attorneys in place indefinitely. Defense lawyers are already challenging indictments she signed, and the ruling has ripple effects because the administration used similar tricks to plant loyalists in other districts like Nevada and Virginia, setting up a bigger showdown that could end up at the Supreme Court.
Bottom line: this is what happens when Trump treats the Justice Department like his personal law firm—he elevates a former personal lawyer into a powerful prosecutor’s chair through legal contortions, and the courts, including Republican judges, smack it down as unlawful.
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Here we go….another week with Trump steering the ship. Don’t know about you, but I’m ready to get off this crazy cruise.
Speak Truth! Keep speaking TRUTH!
Don’t Give up the Ship!
Go Cause Good Trouble, with Your Elbows Up!
These are facts that I researched and verified – AI helped put together some sentence structure, but the words and tone are mine. These are my views based upon facts, research and thoughtful consideration using logic. I own the copyright to any images used. I’m comfortable to stand alone to uphold truth. Feel free to check me, but do not attack me. I am only causing good trouble.