CNN broadcast a 2024 audio in which Trump could be heard speaking with wealthy donors prior to taking office for the second time about a conversation he had with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In it, Trump claimed he threatened Putin to bomb Moscow had the Russian invaded Ukraine.
However, according to Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Kremlin, there were no telephone conversations at the time Trump claims to have made the threats.
“After all, we are talking, as far as I understand, about the period when Trump was not yet the president of the United States,” Peskov added.
Commenting on the genuineness of those conversations, Peskov added: “Whether this is fake or not, we also do not know. There are a lot of fakes now. Often, there are many more fakes than true information. And we always proceed from this when we analyze certain news.”
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
The audio revealed Trump sharing with the donors, “With Putin I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I’m going to bomb the sh*t out of Moscow. I’m telling you I have no choice.
“And then [Putin] goes, like, ‘I don’t believe you.’ But he believed me 10%.”
The White House commented on the matter, telling Newsweekthat “as President Trump has said time and again, Russia never dared invade Ukraine when he was in office.”
The audio revealed Trump claiming that he had a similar conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Allegedly, he told him Beijing would be bombed if the nation decided to invade Taiwan.
According to CNN, it was Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf who obtained the audio. They outlined a number of the exchanges in their 2024 book.
REUTERS via NewYork Post
The conversations revealed in the audio surfaced after Trump recently expressed his frustration with President Putin over Ukrainian soldiers dying in their thousands.
“I’m not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now,” Trump said to the press after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday (July 8).
“We get a lot of bulls*** thrown at us by Putin… He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Trump also hinted at new Russia sanctions and approved additional US arms for Ukraine, with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zeelenskyy asking for immediate reaction.
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Sweeping new tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump will take effect on August 1, 2025, and they are expected to strain the budgets of US households.
Trump branded the move Liberation Day, but the delays in the implementation of the tariffs he announced back in April led to a volatile stock market.
While the White House has extended the deadline to August 1, they added there is still a “possibility of further extensions – or delays – to come.”
REUTERS
One important thing to note is that tariffs don’t come out of foreign pockets. On the contrary, the burden falls on US importers and usually pass it on buyers by increasing the prices of the products.
Since a huge jump in the prices of many products is expected to take place very soon, there are certain products experts advise people to purchase before tariffs take effect.
According to Forbes, even with details of tariffs on consumer electronics not finalized yet, the uncertainty itself may prompt early price hikes.
“There is a lot of uncertainty on if such tech does see price hikes because of tariffs, so to avoid any worries, it’s advised you make that big purchase soon,” the publication reports.
Furniture
The Alliance for American Manufacturing reports that over 75 percent of all furniture sold in the US is produced overseas. This means increased prices of almost all furniture items, including, tables, sofas, office desks, and basically everything that falls under this cathegory.
Tariffs are expected to hit Americans’ closets too.
“Men’s shorts, crossbody bags, and bath towels” are just some products on Forbes’ watchlist of affected items.
Food
Shutterstock
The most critical item on this list is definitely food.
In 2023 alone, the US purchased over $45 billion in Mexican food and farm products, and with the newly-imposed tariffs, prices are expected to hit your grocery bill.
Steel tariffs have already affected the prices of a bunch of home appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers, and fridges, and as of August 1, the prices of these products are expected to go even higher.
If you were planning on buying anything on this list, don’t waste your time and do it before it would be hard for many to even afford purchasing any of these products.
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President Donald Trump made a shocking decision to launch an investigation concerning former POTUS Joe Biden.
Namely, Trump tends to inspect “who ran the US” during the previous presidency, accusing Biden of masking his “cognitive decline” and deceiving the public about his actual mental state.
Trump believes Biden did that by letting his aides use an autopen—a device that reproduces signatures used by presidents, including Trump, for decades—to authorize executive actions.
Biden didn’t stay silent. On the contrary, he accused Trump of trying to distract Americans in a time when the current administration is working towards extending tax breaks for the wealthy. He dubbed Trump’s accusations as “ridiculous.”
BBC reported that Trump said in a Wednesday statement how the American public had been “purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power” while Biden’s signature was used to endorse documents Trump described as leading to “radical policy shifts.”
“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump concluded.
Biden issued a statement commenting on Trump’s accusations later the same day.
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations,” the statement read.
“Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false,” it added.
In a memorandum on Wednesday, Trump instructed the White House counsel, in coordination with Attorney General Pam Bondi and other officials, to investigate whether “certain individuals conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the President.”
When Biden disclosed his prostate cancer diagnosis, Trump and other officials claimed Biden was aware of his health condition while still in office and accused him of “not telling the facts.”
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A man, 35, lost his life in a freak accident after being ‘sucked’ into the jet engine right before takeoff.
The tragic incident, which unfolded in front of staff and passengers, took place at Milan Bergamo Airport, prompted an investigation by the Italian authorities.
Reports say that the man, Andrea Russo, 35, from the Calcinate county, breached security and made his way into a restricted area on the tarmac in a vehicle, a red Fiat 500 that he abandoned in the airport’s internal parking area.
Volotea Airbus A319 was preparing for takeoff to Oviedo, Spain, just before 10:35 a.m. local time when one of the aircraft’s turbofan engines sucked Russo.
The airline company confirmed the incident in a statement released on X. “We regret to confirm flight V73511 from BGY-OVD was involved in an incident at Milan-Bergamo Airport at 10:35h. One person not onboard and not affiliated with the company was seriously injured,” Volotea Airlines.
The statement continued: “All 154 passengers and 6 crew are safe. A new flight is scheduled for 15:55.”
Builder Andrea Russo
It remains unclear how Russo managed to bypass security to access such a high-risk area. According to witnesses, however, he opened a security door that led directly to the plane parking area. Officers chased after him as he ran across the runway.
Tragically killed Russo wasn’t neither an employee at the airport nor a passenger.
Reuters
Authorities assume that he did what he did with an intention to end his own life. However, the ongoing investigation is yet to reveal the exact reason Russo entered the restricted area. Also, they need to discover how he gained access to the runway undetected.
“We are investigating on any possible relationships with the airport or the world of aeroplanes,” Public Prosecutor Maurizio Romanelli said, as per The Mirror. “In the car with which he arrived at the airport, full of all kinds of material, we have not found anything that could provide any kind of explanation.”
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That President Donald Trump isn’t fond of one of the most popular performers of today, Taylor Swift, is something we are all aware of. In the past, Trump criticized the singer and even called her out during several occasions.
His comments on Swift came as a response to her publicly supporting his opponent, Kamala Harris, during the 2024 presidential campaign. At the time, Swift said, “We can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.”
During this year’s Super Bowl, which Trump attended, Swift was booed by the crowd, and the president seemed to love the public’s reaction.
“The only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift,” he wrote at the time.
He also re-shared a post from Libs of TikTok, which read: “Trump gets massive cheers at the Super Bowl while Taylor Swift gets booed—The world is healing!”
One time, he even posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
During his presidential rallies in 2023, Trump used the song Justice for All, sang by a group of dissidents incarcerated over their alleged roles on January 6. Eventually, the song reached the No. 1 spot on iTunes. It was more than enough for Trump to mock Swift.
“It beat Taylor Swift, it beat Miley Cyrus, who was number one and two,” Trump said. “They were number one and two, we knocked them off for a long time.”
Truth Social
However, while Trump and Swift got into a feud numerous times, Melania Trump hasn’t commented on the singer… until recently.
Namely, on June 2, the First Lady visited a children’s hospital in Washington, brining gifts to the kids and chatting with them. At one moment, she asked one of the kids about their favorite music, to which the child replied, “Taylor Swift,” according to the NY Post. Hearing this, Melania said that the worldwide superstar was “very talented.”
Shutterstock/MaciejGillert
So, it’s more than clear that Melania’s opinion of Swift differs from that of her husband.
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Mary Trump has been one of the most vocal critics of President Donald Trump — her uncle.
Mary is the daughter of the president’s late brother Frank who died of heart-attack in 1981.
Over the years, Mary has been warning the public of her uncle’s mental and emotional state. In her book Too Much and Never Enough that she published in 2020, Mary wrote that Trump is “utterly incapable of leading this country and it’s dangerous to allow him to do so.”
She referred to his second return to office as “uniquely dangerous times” and went on to express her fears of him aiming to remain president for life.
Trump’s niece, Mary Trump/ Getty Images
Most recently, during and episode of the YouTube series Trump Trolls Trump she dubbed Trump’s behavior as a “reign of idiocy.”
“We’re now 166 days into the Trump regime’s reign of terror, reign of confusion, reign of chaos, but also let’s call it what else it is, it’s a reign of idiocy,” she said. Mary added: “Time flies when you’re having a horrible time and when democracy is slowly being strangled by a man who can’t tie his own shoes.”
Still, she has given him “credit” for something. “Donald is good at very, very few things but I’m going to give him credit for something,” she said. “He has an actually quite decent ability to mix cognitive decline with narcissism. I mean that’s a twofer.”
Further, Mary called out her uncle’s recent public stops, most particularly his visit to the new Florida immigration center, Alligator Alcatraz, during which reporters asked him how long detainees would remain in custody. Trump gave a vague answer, and Mary was quick to point that out, saying, “The question, you idiot, wasn’t do you like Florida? The reason he can’t answer that question is because he doesn’t have an answer.”
Mary added: “He has an attention span of a toddler, although that’s actually nothing new.”
On the contrary, she commented on the pricey fragrance named “Victory” Trump promoted on Truth Social. The fragrance sells for $249 and includes a gold figurine of himself.
“It is grotesque for the sitting president of the United States to grift off of his office, but here we are,” she said. “The idea of having to guess what that horror smells like is deeply unfair to those of us who are still sane.”
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The death toll reached over 100 after the devastating Texas floods.
Tragic stories from the southern state come one right after another, showing the braveness of individuals who sacrificed their own lives for the sake of those of their loved ones.
Currently, a rescue operation is ongoing as a number of people are still missing.
Inside a cabin at Camp Mystic in the aftermath of deadly flooding in Kerr County, Texas/ Reuters via Daily Beast
The floods also swept away Camp Mystic, an all-girls summer camp in Kerr County. According to reports, 27 children and counselors hosted by the camp at the time floods surged 26 feet in just 45 minutes lost their lives while 11 are still missing.
“Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy. We are praying for them constantly,” the camp wrote in a statement on their website. At the time being, they are in contact with local authorities, continuing the search for “missing girls.”
“We ask for your continued prayers, respect, and privacy for each of our families affected. May the Lord continue to wrap His presence around all of us,” the statement ended.
First responders looking for survivors and remains at Kerr County/ EPA
Camp Mystic’s director Dick Eastland died trying to take the children to safety.
“If he wasn’t going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way, saving the girls that he so loved and cared for,” his grandson, George Eastland, wrote on Instagram, ABCreported. “A husband, father, grandfather, and mentor to thousands of young women, he no longer walks this earth, but his impact will never leave the lives he touched.”
Another tragic story from Texas speaks of the heroic final attempt of a dad to save his family at Kerr County, the region hit hardest by the catastrophic floods.
First responders at Blue Oak RV Park in Ingram, Texas/ Shutterstock
Lorena Guillen, owner of the Blue Oak RV Park, recalled how the father, identified as John Burges of Liberty, Texas, clung to a tree while holding his children and refused to let go of them. Not long after, they were all swept away by the rising water.
“My husband was in the water trying to ask them, ‘Please throw me your baby!’ The man was holding tight to his babies, and he just got swept away,” Guillen told the NY Post.
John Burgess/Facebook John Burgess
Burges’ wife and two sons are still missing, while his daughter, who was at a camp at the time of the floods remained safe.
The family was spending the Fourth of July weekend at Guillen’s park.
“The kids were so excited to be here,” Guillen said. “We heard people screaming throughout the night. The cabins from the RV park next door came floating, and they were getting smashed against the trees. ‘Help me! Help me!’ — that was the main thing. You heard a lot of screaming, it was just too much.”
Her entire camp was completely destroyed, but it is the thought of the lives lost that haunts her.
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Melania Trump is a name known world-wide. Being married to the President of the United States of America and business mogul Donald Trump, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the public is interested in her private life. She, however, tends to stay out of the spotlight, which is also true for her son Baron and another person very close to the former First Lady, her older sister Ines Knauss.
Growing up, the two sisters shared a very strong bond, and today, that hasn’t changed even a bit.
The sisters were born in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, but grew up in the small railway town of Sevnica. Their father, Viktor, who was a car mechanic and chauffeur, and their mother, Amalija, who worked as a pattern-maker at a clothing factory, were able to provide a good life for Melania and Ines.
“I grew up with a beautiful family and had a wonderful childhood,” Melania Trump said. “My mother and father taught us the importance of education, hard work and family.”
Viktor and Amalija took their daughters on vacations in France, Italy, and Germany. Today, they live in the States but they still own their home in Slovenia which they visit several times a year.
The two sisters were always dressed impeccably as their mom spent hours designing and making clothes for them. Later on, Melania designed the clothes her mother sewed for her herself.
“She was very pretty,” Tomšič, who has run a local hospital to which Melania donated $25,000 after marrying Donald Trump, told GQ in 2016. “She was always very fancy.”
Youtube/BBC
At the age of 16, Melania was scouted by fashion photographer Stane Jerko who spotted her leaning on a fence while leaving a fashion show at the Festival Hall.
“By the staircase at the entrance, I saw this girl,” Jerko recalled. “She was tall, slim, with long hair. I told her who I was, what I did, and why I would photograph her.”
It was back in 1987 when young Melania decided to drop out of the University of Ljubljana and focus on modeling instead. It took her only a year to get a contract with a modeling agency in Milan.
Once in Milan, Melania focused on her goal of making a name for herself and went home after work instead of partying.
“She kept to herself, she was a loner. After a shoot or a catwalk, she went home, not out. She didn’t want to waste time partying,” Jerko said.
Melania didn’t embark on this adventure by herself, her sister Ines, who also wanted a career in the world fashion, as a designer, accompanied her.
Speaking of Ines, Paris-based photographer Ale de Basseville who took the nude photos of Melania for the French magazine told the New York Post, “She really wanted to be in fashion but didn’t know how to break in.
“Ines wasn’t like the other girls you would meet there, who behave like queens. She was really polite and very mellow.”
When Melania met famous Italian businessman Paolo Zampolli, who helped her get a work visa to the U.S., her sister went with her.
Ines Knauss at 20. Facebook/InesKnauss
At a Kit Kat Club event during the New York Fashion Week in 1998, Zampolli brought a friend, Donald Trump. He was with a date that night, but when he saw Melania, he immediately wanted to know more about her.
One of Melania’s friends, Edit Molnar, spoke of that night and explained that Donald asked Melania for her number, but she didn’t give it to him because he wasn’t alone. “Melania said, ‘He’s here with a woman. I am absolutely not giving him my number,’” Molnar told New York Post. “She wouldn’t even consider it. Donald did all the work.”
Melania also spoke of the night she first met Donald Trump. “He wanted my number,” she told Tatler. “But he was on a date, so of course I didn’t give it to him. I said, ‘I am not giving you my number; give me yours and I will call you.’ If I give him my number, I’m just one of the women he calls.”
Well, the rest is history, and as much as Melania wants to ‘hide’ from the world, we still know a thing or two about her, which can’t be said about Ines, who isn’t only Melania’s sister but also her closest confidante.
PALM BEACH, FL – FEBRUARY 4: (TABS OUT) Ines Knauss, Melania Trump, and Audrey Gruss attend the Valentino Fashion Luncheon benefitting Boy’s Club of New York at Mar-a-Lago February 4, 2005 in Palm Beach Florida. (Photo by Lucien Capehart Photography, Inc/Getty Images)
According to People, Ines was her sister’s maid-of-honor at her wedding to Donald Trump.
Ines is reported to be residing in a Trump-owned apartment – in a building on the Upper East Side in which Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump also resided before they moved into their new home. Her apartment is just four blocks away from her sister’s triplex penthouse at Trump Tower.
Palm Beach philanthropist Audrey Gruss met Ines at a fundraiser for the Boys’ Club of New York at Mar-a-Lago in 2005. She said Ines struck her “as a lovely person, and extremely creative,” adding that the two sisters are extremely close.
Twitter/Melania Trump
Ines appears to be an artist. In the past, Melania shared on the social media illustrations done by her sister.
Speaking to The Post, Milan-based fashion designer Luisa Beccaria confirmed that the two sisters are like best friends and added that when Barron was born, Melania relied on her sister the most. “Melania had all the professional help she needed at that point,” he said. “But it was her sister she trusted.”
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