What Happened Today - 24 Nov 2025
What Happened Today – 24 November 2025
Sorry there was no update on Friday, I was driving and had a long day in the car. I’m back in Colorado and SO happy to be home. Was a great trip, got to see lots of family and friends along the way. Today I’ll try and cover some hot topics…..
Trump-Mamdani Meeting Friday…
MTG Resignation
G20 No-Show
RFK’s cousin and her response to her uncle on Cancer Research
Abrego Garcia Case Update
Ukraine – Russia Update
Trump was UNHINGED last night…
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Trump-Mamdani Meeting Friday…
This whole Trump–Mamdani thing is pure performance politics from both sides, and it blew up exactly because the vibes don’t match the receipts. Trump spent months painting Zohran Mamdani as a communist, a jihadist, and a threat he might punish by choking off federal money to New York; Mamdani spent months calling Trump a fascist and a despot. Then Friday hits, and suddenly they’re in the Oval Office doing a buddy‑cop routine—Trump calling him “very rational,” saying he wants to “help him, not hurt him,” and rattling off how they’re aligned on housing, crime, and affordability. When a reporter brings up the “fascist” line, Mamdani starts to wiggle, and Trump literally bails him out: “Just say yes, it’s easier than explaining.” That’s Trump laundering Mamdani’s insult into a joke while also signaling, “Look, even this guy who calls me a fascist has to work with me.”
For Mamdani, it’s a pure power play: he walks in knowing Trump is obsessed with the cost‑of‑living narrative and that the White House doesn’t want a televised brawl with the most disciplined left populist in the country. So he sits there, swallows the theatrics, and just keeps dragging the conversation back to affordability, housing, transit, NYPD vs. National Guard, and getting actual federal money for New Yorkers. Then he goes on TV and immediately re‑locks in his brand: yes, Trump’s still a fascist and a despot, yes, everything he said about him before still stands, and no, he didn’t go to the White House to make a moral statement—he went to extract what he can for his city while this guy is in office.
The reason the MAGA ecosystem lost its mind is that this blows up their own planned script. The whole GOP oppo strategy for 2026 was to turn Mamdani into the poster child for “Democrat communism” and use him to tar the whole party; instead, their top guy is on camera praising the dude, calling him rational, brushing off the “fascist” and “despot” labels, and even refusing to cosign Elise Stefanik’s “jihadist” smear as anything more than campaign talk. So now right‑wing podcasters and influencers are split: half screaming that Trump just legitimized a left‑wing mayor who still openly calls him a fascist, and half tying themselves in knots trying to explain that this is 4‑D chess, that Trump is “co‑opting the enemy,” or that if he likes Mamdani, then Mamdani must actually be based on crime and housing.
Trump, meanwhile, gets exactly what he wants on tape: the self‑described democratic socialist from New York talking affordability in his Oval Office while he plays statesman who can “work with anybody.” Mamdani gets what he wants too: video of the sitting president cheering him on as the guy trying to tackle the cost‑of‑living crisis, plus the public record that he never backed down from calling Trump what he thinks he is. The only people truly cooked in this setup are the MAGA purists, who just watched their hero hug it out with the man they were planning to brand as the face of communist New York—and now have to decide whether to follow Trump’s pivot or admit their king just handed a huge legitimacy boost to the lefty they were supposed to destroy.
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MTG Resignation
MTG quitting is the perfect little parable of how MAGA eats its own the second you stop kissing the ring and start asking real questions. She didn’t suddenly grow a conscience or go moderate—she crossed Trump on the one thing he clearly did not want touched: a full, aggressive push on the Epstein files and broader grievances about him selling out the base on foreign policy, health care, and civil liberties. She teamed up with Thomas Massie on the Epstein transparency push, hammered DOJ to cough up more, and started publicly griping that Trump was protecting powerful creeps instead of standing with the trafficked girls and “average Americans” she kept invoking; that’s when he stripped his endorsement, started calling her a traitor, and let the cult know she was fair game.
Her resignation rollout was basically a twelve‑minute “I’m the real MAGA, they’re the sellouts” monologue. In the video and statement, she hits the same notes over and over: loyalty is supposed to be a two‑way street, she won’t be a “battered wife” begging the guy who’s attacking her to stop, and if MAGA Inc. can toss her overboard to make room for neocons, Big Tech, Big Pharma, and donors, that means regular MAGA voters are getting swapped out too. She is very explicit that she’s leaving not because she’d lose a fair fight on ideas, but because she doesn’t want to put her deep‑red district through a “hurtful and hateful” Trump‑engineered primary, and she’s openly talking about regrouping outside Congress as a vehicle for “common Americans” to rebuild the movement without the party apparatus.
Trump’s side of this is classic: publicly he slaps a “she went BAD” label on her, calls her a traitor over the Epstein bill and her alliance with Massie, and then wraps it in fake magnanimity about how he’ll “always appreciate” her while telling reporters her resignation is “great news for the country.” Behind that is the raw power move—he brags that her poll numbers were tanking without his endorsement, that she “had no chance of winning,” and that he simply stopped taking her calls, which he casts as the reason she turned on him in the first place. It’s the same pattern he ran on Pence and others: once you stop functioning as a loyal prop, he declares you disloyal, blames you for your own political death, then keeps just enough fake warmth in the script to keep everyone else scared of crossing him.
Democrats, meanwhile, are basically treating her exit like the punchline to a long, dumb story. Jasmine Crockett has been the most direct; on CNN and in follow‑ups she’s saying out loud what everyone sees—that MTG lasted exactly one week on the wrong side of Trump before folding, and that lots of Republicans who’ve taken hits from him manage to “weather the storm” without quitting. Crockett’s also using it to hammer home the point that the threats and harassment that come with being in Trump’s crosshairs are very real, but that he only knows how to chew people up and spit them out, whether it’s his vice president, the people demanding Epstein transparency, or one of his loudest former superfans like Greene. So MTG walks out trying to rebrand herself as the betrayed avatar of “forgotten Americans,” Trump spins her as a failed, disloyal hanger‑on, and everyone else just got a live demo of what happens when you poke at the Epstein nerve and break the first commandment of MAGA: never, ever make Dear Leader look weak.
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G20 No-Show
The G20 in Johannesburg kicked off this weekend as a big global photo‑op minus one key player: the United States, because Trump decided to straight‑up boycott the thing. Instead of at least sending J.D. Vance, the White House pulled the entire delegation, officially whining that South Africa’s priorities—climate cooperation, debt relief, and just energy transition—don’t line up with US policy, and unofficially leaning into another “we don’t need globalism” performance for the base.
The blowback has been exactly what you’d expect: economists and diplomats warning that US absenteeism hands the stage to everyone else, especially China and India, and that the story out of this summit is Trump’s tantrum, not whatever joint statement the remaining leaders manage to push out. Trump’s already teasing that next year’s G20 on US soil will be the “hottest ticket in town” where he hand‑picks “friends” and potentially sidelines some current members, which is setting off new worries he’ll try to turn a global economic forum into a personal patronage show that overlaps with Trump Organization interests.
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This whole Hakeem Jeffries “Epstein scandal” is peak D.C. theater: tons of smoke, no actual fire, and Republicans pretending a bad fundraising email is the crime of the century while their own guy is all over the real files. What Comer dug up out of the Epstein estate dump is a 2013 solicitation email from a Democratic consulting shop that worked for Jeffries, blasting Epstein with a mass‑style pitch to come to a fundraiser/dinner and “get to know” Jeffries when he was still a rising Brooklyn pol. Epstein never gave him a dime, FEC records show no Epstein money to Jeffries, and there’s no evidence at all they ever met, talked, or had any sort of relationship—this is a decade‑old cold call to a gross rich guy who, at that point, Manhattan political and philanthropic circles were still treating like just another scumbag donor.
Jeffries’ response has been exactly right‑sized for how flimsy this is. He flat‑out said he never met or spoke to Epstein, told reporters there’s no record of any Epstein donations, and then labeled Comer a “stone‑cold liar” for trying to turn a stray consultant email into proof that Jeffries was in Epstein’s pocket. Comer then went to the House floor with his big “gotcha,” waving the email around and insisting “the email speaks for itself” while admitting the entire case is that a fundraiser “on his behalf” pinged Epstein about a possible dinner—which is just how these firms work: they spam every rich creep they can scrape out of a Rolodex.
The bigger tell here is timing. Trump just did a full 180 and signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act after fighting it for months, and now DOJ has 30 days to dump a massive cache of FBI/DOJ material that will absolutely contain plenty of Republicans, Trumpworld figures, and finance types alongside Democrats. At the same time, House Oversight Republicans have already released tens of thousands of pages from the Epstein estate, including documents that mention Trump repeatedly and even show Epstein bragging that he “knew how dirty” Trump was and could “take him,” but they’re fixating on this one nothingburger Jeffries email while pretending those parts don’t exist.
So when Jeffries calls Comer a liar and says Republicans are cherry‑picking drips from a giant document pool they themselves won’t fully contextualize, he’s not wrong—this is about building a narrative that “Democrats are the real Epstein party” right before the fuller DOJ files land, and about muddying the waters around Trump’s own long‑running social and political history with Epstein. Strip away the spin and here’s what’s actually there: one consultant‑sent email, zero responses, zero money, zero meetings, and a GOP machine trying to inflate that into a scandal big enough to overshadow the fact that their guy is named all over the documents they’re hyping.
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RFK’s cousin and her response to her uncle on Cancer Research
Tatiana Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy’s daughter and JFK’s granddaughter, who’s largely stayed out of the family circus until now. In a New Yorker essay, she revealed she has acute myeloid leukemia with a rare mutation, was diagnosed in May 2024 right after giving birth to her second child, and that her doctors are now telling her she probably has about a year to live despite chemo, stem‑cell transplants, and trials.
While she’s in the middle of all that, her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr is sitting in the Trump cabinet as Health and Human Services Secretary, slashing research money and pushing his anti‑vax, anti‑science agenda into actual policy. In the essay she basically says: while I’m depending on doctors, nurses, researchers and cutting‑edge treatments to stay alive, he’s cutting nearly half a billion dollars from mRNA vaccine research—technology that can be used against cancers like mine—and pushing vaccine skepticism that directly undermines people like me.
She also makes it clear this isn’t just a policy disagreement; she calls him an embarrassment to her and her immediate family and frames his rise as HHS chief as something that made the whole health‑care system feel less stable and trustworthy from the perspective of a severely immunocompromised cancer patient. Other Kennedy relatives have already been on this beat—Caroline urged the Senate to reject his nomination, and RFK Jr’s own brother Maxwell shredded him in an op‑ed—but Tatiana’s hit is personal in a way the others aren’t because she’s tying his war on vaccines and research dollars directly to whether people with her exact diagnosis get to live long enough to see their kids grow up.
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Abrego Garcia Case Update
The Abrego Garcia situation has somehow gotten even more shameless, which is saying something given how bad it already was.
Where things stand now
Instead of fixing their original illegal deportation, Trump’s people are still playing jurisdiction hopscotch with this guy’s life. After the Supreme Court ordered them to “facilitate” his return and treat his case as if he’d never been wrongfully dumped into El Salvador’s CECOT hellhole, they dragged him back to the U.S., slapped him with federal smuggling/trafficking charges out of Tennessee, and then immediately went back to trying to get rid of him again. He’s now in a three‑front war: a civil case in Maryland challenging DHS/ICE’s deportation schemes, the criminal trafficking case in Tennessee, and an asylum/immigration fight he’s trying to reopen so he can actually stay with his family in Maryland.
The latest deportation games
Over the last few months, DHS has cycled through a list of random “third countries” to dump him in—Uganda, Eswatini, Costa Rica, now Liberia—despite the fact that he has no ties to any of them. In court last week, government lawyers told a judge they want to ship him to Liberia and claimed they’ve got “credible assurances” he won’t be tortured or sent somewhere worse, while his lawyers pointed out the basic problem: there still isn’t a clean, final, lawful removal order on the books, and every time the government loses a key motion, it just invents a new country and a new removal theory in retaliation.
Judge and Costa Rica calling bullshit
Two things blew up their narrative in the last few days. First, a senior ICE official, John Cantú, got absolutely roasted on the stand by Judge Paula Xinis for giving what she called the “worst of all” answers about why they’re ignoring Costa Rica—he could not explain, in any coherent way, why the U.S. wouldn’t send Abrego there when Costa Rica had already offered to take him on humanitarian grounds. Then Costa Rica’s security minister went public and flatly contradicted DOJ’s courtroom spin, saying on the record that their offer to accept Abrego is still very much on the table, directly undercutting the government’s claim that was no longer an option.
Why this is such a damning case
Put together, it looks exactly like what critics have been saying: Trump’s ICE and DOJ made an illegal deportation they admitted was an “administrative error,” fought the order to fix it all the way to the Supreme Court, and once forced to bring him back, pivoted to heavy criminal charges and a carousel of third‑country deportation schemes instead of just owning the mistake and restoring his status while the case plays out. His lawyers are now telling the court, in plain language, that the timeline shows a pattern of retaliation—lose in civil court, file criminal charges; lose key rulings in the criminal case, threaten to deport him again to a country he’s never set foot in. Abrego has basically become the live exhibit for how this administration uses the deportation machine: break the rules, lie about your options, then keep moving the goalposts instead of ever admitting you were wrong.
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Ukraine – Russia Update
Trump’s Ukraine “peace” push right now is basically a three‑way knife fight dressed up as diplomacy: Trump wants his quick win, Ukraine wants survival with dignity, and Europe is trying to keep him from handing Putin a victory on a gold‑plated platter.
What Trump’s plan actually is
The 28‑point plan Rubio is selling in Geneva is built around three big asks from Ukraine:
• Give up claims to Crimea and big chunks of Donetsk/Luhansk (and, in some leaked drafts, effectively freeze Russian gains in parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia).
• Cap and shrink Ukraine’s army and lock in a legal pledge to never join NATO.
• Replace hard “Russia pays” reparations with softer language about “investment” and reconstruction that doesn’t explicitly force Moscow to pay for the damage it caused.
Rubio’s line all weekend has been that “this is a living document” and the gaps are “not insurmountable,” which is diplomatic code for: the original plan was way too generous to Russia, Ukraine hated it, and now everyone is furiously rewriting it before Trump’s self‑imposed November 27 deadline makes it look like Zelensky is defying him.
How Europe is trying to blunt it
The Europeans have basically written their own competing blueprint and dragged it into the room. Their counter‑proposal:
• No up‑front territorial concessions; borders and status questions only get talked about after a ceasefire and only along the current line of contact, not handing Russia places it doesn’t even fully control.
• No forced demilitarization of Ukraine; no hard cap that would leave them permanently weak and dependent on whatever mood Washington is in.
• Reconstruction funded using frozen Russian assets and structured as reparations—meaning Russia doesn’t get its money back unless it agrees to pay for the damage it caused.
They also want NATO‑style security guarantees from the US and EU baked into any deal, because if Trump is going to slam the NATO door shut in writing, someone has to pick up that security slack on paper. That European text is why you’re now seeing breathless talk of “progress”: they’ve taken Trump’s original Russia‑friendly skeleton and are trying to wrap it in enough guarantees and conditions that Zelensky can sell it at home without looking like he just capitulated.
Ukraine’s tightrope
Kyiv is playing this incredibly carefully. Publicly, Ukrainian officials and Rubio are using the same words—“productive,” “substantial,” “most meaningful talks so far”—because nobody wants to be the one who looks like they torpedoed peace talks while Kharkiv is getting hammered by drones. Privately, Ukraine’s red lines haven’t moved much: no recognition of Russian annexations, no paper disarming them into dependence, no “peace” that just freezes an occupation and gives Putin time to reload.
Zelensky’s public line reflects that balance: he thanks the US and Trump for mediating and says the talks are real, but he keeps saying the only true obstacle is Putin’s refusal to stop the war, not some Ukrainian stubbornness. When you pair that with Trump’s deadline threats, it’s obvious what’s happening—Trump wants a deal he can announce, Europe and Ukraine are trying to make sure that if something gets signed, it’s not a 21st‑century Munich.
Reality on the ground
Meanwhile, the battlefield keeps reminding everyone why Ukraine is terrified of locking in a bad deal. Over the weekend, Russia launched another big drone strike on Kharkiv, killing at least four and injuring well over a dozen, with homes and residential areas taking direct hits. Russian officials are using their recent local gains in Donetsk to push the propaganda line that Ukraine “has no chance” and the West should just accept that the region is lost, which is exactly the narrative Putin wants in the background while Trump dangles a “take the deal or else” ultimatum in Geneva.
That’s where Viktor Orbán comes in. He’s out there telling anyone who’ll listen that Ukraine can’t win, that EU support is “crazy,” and that Ukraine isn’t even fully sovereign because it depends on Western money—basically laundering Kremlin talking points from inside the EU club. Those comments give Trump cover to say, “See, even Europe knows this can’t go on,” and they make it that much harder for Zelensky to hold the line when one of the EU leaders is openly arguing his country is a lost cause.
Pulled together, you’ve got Trump chasing his big “I ended the war” moment on a deadline, Ukraine trying not to get sold out, Europe frantically rewriting the fine print, and Russia bombing Kharkiv in the background to raise the pressure and make surrender look like “realism.”
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Trump was UNHINGED last night…
Trump is in that danger zone again where he’s not just ranting, he’s actively playing with the same matchbook that lit January 6 — only now he’s wrapping it in AI cosplay.
What set him off
The trigger was that video from six Democratic veterans and nat‑sec types—Slotkin, Kelly, Crow and others—telling service members what every JAG and military ethics manual already says: you can and must refuse illegal orders. Trump took that as a personal affront to his authority and fired off posts calling them “traitors,” labeling the video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and explicitly tying their message to capital punishment for sedition.
It didn’t stop at rhetoric. He demanded they be arrested and put on trial, said their conduct “could” carry the death penalty, and kept reposting takes that framed them as enemies of the state corrupting the chain of command. Democrats responded by filing formal police complaints and beefing up their own security, with folks like Chris Murphy flatly saying this is one of the most reckless things he’s done and that it could get people killed.
The AI‑fueled martyr complex
Instead of backing down, he pivoted into full fantasy mode on Truth Social. Over the weekend he plastered his feed with AI hero shots: Trump in a flag cape staring over a city with “Time to obliterate the Deep State” and “Remember your oath” in big text, plus other images with QAnon slogans like “Nothing can stop what is coming.” The creator of those images literally describes herself as a Q believer and signs off with “WWG1WGA,” and he keeps elevating her stuff like state propaganda—this is straight movement signaling, not random fan art.
He also pushed an AI “DeepFakeQuotes” video with a Guy Fawkes–masked narrator arguing that what the Democrats did was a “direct attack on the chain of command,” calling for censure, expulsion or prosecution, and framing it as a constitutional emergency. On top of that, he shared AI clips showing those lawmakers as inmates behind bars, visually matching his earlier call to arrest and try them and lining up neatly with his “punishable by DEATH” posts.
Even Republicans are spooked
You can tell how far over the line this is because some Republicans who normally swallow anything are suddenly doing the “those aren’t the words I’d use” dance. Speaker Mike Johnson said he doesn’t think what the Democrats did is “punishable by death,” called Trump’s phrasing something he wouldn’t repeat, but still slammed the video as “wildly inappropriate” and kicked the question to DOJ and the Pentagon. Others on the Hill are quietly telling reporters that he’s inviting another wave of threats and potential violence against specific named members of Congress, right as the atmosphere is already heated by the Epstein files fight and shutdown brinkmanship.
The White House, for its part, is trying to square the circle by claiming Trump “did not intend” to actually call for executions while still insisting the Democrats’ video might itself be unlawful. Karoline Leavitt literally said “No” when asked if he wants them executed, then pivoted immediately to accusing the lawmakers of inciting a breakdown of military discipline and hinting that DOJ could look at it. So the line is: he didn’t mean it, but also maybe they’re the real criminals—which is exactly how you launder an incitement into “just asking questions” while your base sees “traitors who deserve death” in big caps on his feed.
Put together, you’ve got the president calling specific Democratic veterans traitors, saying what they did is “punishable by DEATH,” pumping out Q‑adjacent AI propaganda that shows them in prison and himself as a caped savior, and then hiding behind press‑office word games about intent. It’s the same script as before January 6—turn up the heat, target named enemies, then pretend it was all metaphor when his people inevitably take him literally.
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I’ll stop here as this is a lot of news – but it’s been a FAST moving cycle. I expect this week that the Comey and L. James case will be dismissed – at least the Comey case to start with. Halligan has screwed these up six ways to Sunday….but we shall see.
Hang in there, I do hope everyone is enjoying their WAY CHEAPER Thanksgiving meals (sarcasm) from WalMart.
Speak Truth! Keep speaking TRUTH!
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.