Trump live updates: President compares his Iran bombing to Truman nuking Japan in WWII

The Daily Show host has skewered the Republican senators and congress members who briefly stood up to President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” last week, only to fall in line and vote in favor of it.

Speaking on Monday night’s installment of the show, Stewart characterized the bill as a “legislative coup”. He outlined the numerous welfare cuts it contained, affecting everything from Medicaid to renewable energy, student loans, and food stamps, while increasing defense spending and granting tax relief to the wealthy at a cost of an additional $3.4 trillion to the national deficit.

The comedian went on to explain how the passage of the bill through the House of Representatives and Senate prior to its signing by Trump at the White House on July 4 represented as fine an example of “general Washington bulls***ery” in action as one could ever hope to see.

Sticking with immigration, Trump’s “border czar” has defended the increasing number of arrests of non-violent migrants, saying “that’s our job.”

On Monday, Tom Homan said that although public safety threats were a priority, those anyone who is in the country illegally is “not off the table.”

“We’re gonna enforce immigration law,” he insisted.

Here’s a pretty shocking exchange on Fox last night in which DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin does not downplay the prospect of having Karen Bass arrested for allegedly impeding ICE operations in Los Angeles:

The president has said the United States will resume providing weapons to Ukrainian defense forces, as the country continues to be slammed by ongoing Russian aerial attacks, just days after the Pentagon halted shipments to review whether current stockpiles were sufficient for American defense needs.

Speaking during his Netanyahu dinner, Trump was asked if he planned to send more weapons for use by Kyiv.

He replied affirmatively, telling reporters: “We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to, they have to be able to defend themselves.

“They’re getting hit very hard. Now they’re getting hit very hard. We’re going to have to send more weapons, defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard.”

Andrew Feinberg has more.

As the administration tries to put out the flames, it seems JD Vance was happy to fan them before it became his job to be an authority on the matter, writes John Bowden.

As we’ve just seen, much of MAGA World is up in arms over the news that Trump’s Justice Department and FBI have concluded that Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide and didn’t keep a “client list” to blackmail prominent figures.

Piers Morgan, for one, reacted by tweaking one of the president’s top acolytes on Monday for previously promising “incredibly disturbing” details in the Epstein probe.

Justin Baragona has the story.

Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy pressed White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt yesterday on the Feds’ sudden insistence that the late billionaire pedophile left behind no incriminating list of his wealthy friends and patrons.

He was not alone in meeting the pronouncement with scepticism.

From Jesse Watters and Alex Jones to Trump’s followers on Truth Social, MAGA was not satisfied.

Here’s more from Justin Baragona.

I’m not sure why it was necessary to post 15 versions of the same boilerplate template letter on social media but that’s what the president has done.

The recipients are informed of the new August 1 deadline for his reciprocal tariffs coming into effect and urged to sign a new custom trade deal with the United States before then in order to sidestep the steep levies.

Here’s Japan’s version, by way of an example:

The Bosnia letter, like all the others, is addressed to “Mr President,” despite Zeljka Cvijanovic being, er, female, which gives you some idea of how much care and attention went into this.

This is what he had to say about the letters during last night’s dinner with Netanyahu:

Here are a few choice comments from the president’s dinner with Bibi last night, which took place in front of the press despite being touted as private.

Perhaps most significantly, Trump hinted that his new August 1 deadline for the imposition of steep “reciprocal” tariffs on America’s trading partners could be extended again.

Asked by a reporter if the revised date was “firm”, Trump answered: “I would say firm but not 100 percent firm. If they call up and they say they’d like to do something in a different way we’re going to be open to that but essentially that’s the way it is right now, yeah.”

Here’s Rich Hall on why Bibi’s gesture is akin to being nominated for a “not breaking the law” prize by Tony Soprano.