What Happened Today - 2 Dec 2025
What Happened Today – 2 December 2025
Today’s cabinet meeting….
Trump Accounts: Shiny Kid Cash Up Front, Food Stamp Squeeze in the Back
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Today’s cabinet meeting….
Trump’s cabinet meeting today was exactly what you’d expect from this crew: long, rambling, grievance-filled, and packed with lies, spin, and dangerous nonsense from Trump on down the line. He bounced between bragging about fake “historic” successes, downplaying deadly military strikes, and using immigration and Somalis as his favorite punching bag, while his cabinet sat there either enabling him or piling on.
Overall vibe and behavior
Trump spent a lot of the meeting doing his usual performance: complaining that the media “won’t cover” his supposed accomplishments, demanding praise, and forcing his cabinet to go around the table and essentially kiss the ring on camera. Multiple outlets also clocked him looking like he was literally fighting off sleep during the meeting, which would be funny if he weren’t actively ordering raids and defending botched strikes.
He leaned hard into grievance about the Fed, about Ukraine aid under Biden, and about immigrants, especially Somalis, while cabinet members laughed at his cheap shots about countries that supposedly “ripped us off.” The vibe wasn’t “serious government deliberation”; it was a live-streamed ego session with national security and people’s lives as props.
Trump’s lies and dangerous claims
Here’s the rundown on what Trump said in the meeting and why it’s garbage:
• He claimed 2025 has been “the most consequential and successful first year of any administration,” and that “they’re saying it, not me.” That’s just made up self-promotion; there’s no reputable measure (economic, legislative, approval ratings, foreign policy outcomes) that backs anything close to that, and his approval is sitting in the mid‑40s, not some historic high.
• He whined that the press is ignoring his accomplishments, when in reality the coverage is heavily focused on his Venezuela boat strikes, his immigration crackdown, and his economic pressure on the Fed precisely because they’re controversial and under bipartisan scrutiny. That whole “they won’t cover me” line is just his routine way of trying to delegitimize any coverage that isn’t flattering.
• On the economy, he bragged that tariffs are “generating billions of dollars from around the world,” as if foreign countries are just cutting America checks. In reality, tariffs are taxes paid by importers here, which then get passed on to U.S. businesses and consumers, so his line about tariffs being free money from foreigners is flat-out false economics.
• He trashed Fed Chair Jerome Powell again as a “stubborn ox” and suggested the Fed is the reason growth and markets aren’t even stronger, hinting he’ll replace Powell early next year and claiming he already tried to hand the job to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Beyond the petty insult, he’s misrepresenting how independent the Fed is supposed to be and using it as a scapegoat when inflation is still above target and markets are reacting to his own trade and foreign policy chaos.
• On Ukraine, he claimed the U.S. is “not involved in the war monetarily anymore” and insisted Biden “gave away 350 billion dollars like it was candy.” The “not involved monetarily” line is misleading at best: the U.S. has sharply reduced Ukraine assistance under Trump, but there are still costs tied to existing commitments, deployments, and diplomatic/security support. The 350‑billion figure for Biden is an inflated, rounded political number that lumps all kinds of appropriations and guarantees together and still overshoots serious estimates; it’s meant to inflame, not inform.
• On immigration and crime, he pushed the line that deportations are focused on “the bad ones,” meaning only criminals. ICE data show removals include lots of people with civil immigration violations, and his new operations are literally targeting whole groups, like Somali immigrants in Minnesota, not just violent offenders, so that “only the worst criminals” framing is a lie.
• He leaned into demonizing Somalis again, repeating his talking point that Somali refugees and immigrants are “causing a lot of trouble” and have “taken over” parts of Minnesota. There’s no evidence that the Somali community there is uniquely criminal or “taking over” anything; law enforcement data and local officials don’t support that narrative, and it’s straight-up scapegoating that ramps up risk for that community.
Boat strikes and Hegseth spin
A big chunk of the meeting was Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth trying to put a shine on the Venezuela boat strikes that killed civilians and are now under bipartisan fire.
• Hegseth admitted he gave a verbal command for the second strike on a boat, which ended up killing two people on board, but then tried to frame it as a clean counter‑narcotics operation where everything was done by the book. That’s already being undercut by reporting that the intelligence was shaky and that survivors from the first strike weren’t properly accounted for before the second hit, so his “totally justified, totally controlled” line is at best incomplete and at worst a cover story.
• Trump defended the operation in broad terms, painting it as a necessary hit on “drug boats” and brushing off the civilian concerns as media and political attacks. That’s dangerous because it normalizes a pattern of lethal force based on loose vetting in a gray zone that looks a lot like targeted killing outside formal war zones.
• Trump also tried to distance himself financially, suggesting the U.S. isn’t really bearing costs there while still insisting on aggressive operations. Again, that’s false: these missions cost money, involve U.S. assets and personnel, and create diplomatic and legal fallout that the U.S. has to manage.
ICE, Somalis, and Kristi Noem’s numbers
On immigration, it got even uglier and more dishonest.
• South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, in the meeting, claimed that “two million” undocumented immigrants “have gone home already” under Trump and that ICE has hired 10,000 new officers. Official deportation stats show nowhere near two million removals under this administration so far; you get to that number only by cooking the books with previous years, border turnbacks, and anything else you can pad in. ICE has ramped up hiring, but the 10,000‑officer boast overshoots what’s actually been funded and onboard.
• Trump and his people pushed the line that they’ve achieved “zero illegal aliens entering the country month after month,” a claim Karoline Leavitt has also thrown around in the briefing room. That’s straight fiction: border encounters remain in the hundreds of thousands annually, even if some categories are down; there is no serious metric under which entries are literally zero.
• At the same time, reporting broke that ICE has been ordered to surge operations against undocumented Somali immigrants in the Minneapolis–St. Paul area, going after hundreds of people with deportation orders. Trump’s rhetoric about Somalis “taking over” Minnesota and “causing a lot of trouble” feeds directly into that operation, and there’s documented fear in the community that this is profiling wrapped in enforcement language.
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said his department is investigating whether Minnesota public funds somehow ended up with al‑Shabaab, the Somali extremist group, which Trump world is already using as justification to treat an entire diaspora community as suspect. There’s no public evidence tying ordinary Somali residents in Minnesota to al‑Shabaab financing; throwing this out in the middle of a political crackdown is reckless and stigmatizing.
Karoline’s spin and blow‑ups
Karoline Leavitt wasn’t in the cabinet meeting itself, but her briefings are the communications arm of all this nonsense, and she’s been on the same script.
• In a recent briefing, she claimed that the administration has “secured the borders” in “record time” and that there are “zero illegal aliens entering into the country month after month,” which is just a straight-up, quantifiable lie. Border and DHS stats do not show zero entries; they show fluctuations but still large numbers of encounters and entries.
• She’s also been attacking the press as “fake” and accusing reporters of relying on anonymous sources with “no idea what they’re talking about,” even while those same outlets are breaking accurate stories about the Venezuelan strikes and the Somali ICE operation that the administration later has to half-confirm.
• On top of that, she recently lost it in a briefing, getting cornered on transparency and storming out mid‑question when pressed on these exact issues — immigration operations and the boat strikes — which shows how thin their skin is when anyone challenges the propaganda line.
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Trump Accounts: Shiny Kid Cash Up Front, Food Stamp Squeeze in the Back
Trump’s “Trump accounts” play is classic shiny-object politics: splashy numbers, a friendly billionaire, lots of flag-waving about “the kids,” all while his people are tightening the screws on poor families’ basic food money.
What the “Trump accounts” actually are
The so‑called Trump accounts are tax‑advantaged investment accounts for kids under 18 that came out of his big “Big Beautiful Bill” tax package earlier this year. Every child born between 2025 and 2028 is supposed to get a $1,000 government seed deposit, regardless of family income, and families can then put in up to about a year post‑tax, with investment growth shielded from taxes until withdrawal.
Michael and Susan Dell just dropped a massive $6.25 billion donation on top of that, which will send an extra $250 into Trump accounts for roughly 25 million kids who are age 10 or younger and were born before 2025, basically trying to backfill the kids who don’t qualify for that $1,000 baby bonus. The money flows through the Treasury and the Invest America/“Trump accounts” infrastructure, and Trump is branding the whole thing like he personally wrote the checks, even though it’s Dell’s money plus a tax bill Congress passed.
The fine print and equity problem
On paper, it sounds generous, but once you get past the headline, the usual problems pop up. There are no income limits, so a kid in a wealthy suburb gets the same federal $1,000 seed as a kid whose parents are living below the poverty line, and the tax benefits mainly matter for families who actually have spare cash to invest each year. For low‑income households, the accounts are useless if they can’t keep putting money in, and critics are already pointing out that participation will likely skew toward higher‑income families, the same way 529 college accounts do.
Trump is selling this as a “universal trust fund” moment, but withdrawals down the line are taxable and can carry penalties if taken too early, and there are open questions about how much employers will really kick in outside of PR‑friendly companies like Dell himself. Employers can, in theory, contribute up to around half the annual limit tax‑free into these accounts, but nothing forces them to, and the benefit overwhelmingly flows to workers with stable jobs at big firms instead of the people juggling part‑time, low‑wage work.
The SNAP threat in the background
Now put that next to what his Agriculture Department is doing with SNAP. Brooke Rollins just made it explicit: the administration is moving to withhold SNAP funds from Democratic‑led states that won’t hand over detailed recipient data, including names and immigration status, under the excuse of rooting out “fraud.” If those states don’t cave, millions of people in places like California, New York, Minnesota and others could see their food aid disrupted or cut, even though SNAP is one of the most tightly policed, low‑fraud programs out there.
On top of that, his earlier policy changes are already expanding work requirements to older adults and other vulnerable groups, making it harder for exactly the families who would need a Trump account the most to even keep food on the table. Democratic states are openly saying they don’t trust this data haul because it can be used to hunt immigrants, not just find benefit errors, which lines up way too neatly with the rest of his ICE and “show us your papers” agenda.
Why it feels like a PR cover
So, on one screen, you’ve got Trump at the White House with Michael and Susan Dell, talking about “investing in our children” and handing every kid a little stake in the American dream. On the other, his administration is threatening to yank food stamps from blue states unless they cough up sensitive data on poor families, many of whom are immigrants or living paycheck to paycheck.
It’s the same pattern: headline generosity for kids that doubles as a tax‑sheltered savings vehicle for people who are already relatively secure, paired with punitive, surveillance‑heavy policy aimed at the poorest households under the banner of “fraud prevention.” The Trump accounts let him play benevolent rich guy on TV while his agencies quietly make it harder for low‑income families to buy groceries — that’s the domestic squeeze under all the feel‑good branding.
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Ukraine/Russia Update
Trump’s Ukraine‑Russia “peace” push today was basically a long, late‑night photo op in Moscow with zero real movement and a whole lot of pressure on Ukraine to swallow concessions.
Here’s the short version of what went down:
• Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met with Putin at the Kremlin for about five hours, talks stretching past midnight Moscow time, going over a “revised” U.S. peace framework.
• The Kremlin and its talking heads called the meeting “constructive,” but made it clear there was “no compromise” on core issues like Russia keeping occupied territory and blocking Ukraine from ever joining NATO.
• Putin used the moment to flex: state media pushed new battlefield “gains,” he warned Europe that if it wants war Russia is “ready,” and he publicly trashed European counter‑proposals as designed to sabotage Trump’s plan.
On the U.S. side:
• The plan Witkoff and Kushner are shopping is a tweaked version of an earlier 28‑point proposal that leaked and freaked out Kyiv and European allies because it leaned hard toward Russia on territory, NATO limits, and Ukraine’s military.
• Trump keeps saying he can “end the war quickly,” but officials and analysts warn the dynamic now is mostly about what Ukraine would be forced to give up, not how to actually hold Russia accountable or guarantee long‑term security.
• A U.S. official anonymously warned that Putin may hand Witkoff a counteroffer he can spin as a win for Trump, even if it mostly locks in Russian gains and drags the process out.
From Ukraine’s side:
• Zelenskyy and his team have been looped in on the revised framework, but they haven’t signed on; Zelenskyy publicly warned there must be no “behind‑the‑scenes” deal over Ukraine’s head.
• Ukrainian and European officials still see Russia’s core demands as basically a demand for capitulation: permanent loss of occupied regions, hard limits on Ukraine’s forces, and a NATO veto that would leave them exposed to future attacks.
Bottom line: there was a long, high‑profile meeting, lots of Kremlin spin about being “open to peace,” and zero actual breakthrough — and the center of gravity is still dangerously tilted toward a deal that locks in Russian land grabs and leans on Ukraine to concede.
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I had a busy day, sorry for the late update. Sounds like today was just as filled with circus clowns as most days. I did hear that Trump got himself a solid nap today during his cabinet meeting…bravo Trump!
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.