Trump arrives in Riyadh, first stop of his overseas trip
Trump arrives in Riyadh, first stop of his overseas trip
May 13, 2025 | 7:37 AM GMT
President Donald Trump arrived at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May 13, launching the first planned overseas trip of his second term.
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This 'Then And Now' Picture Of The Oval Office Is Going Viral And Says So, So Much About The Trump Administration
Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images Donald Trump has completely transformed the Oval Office into his own gaudy, gold fantasy land. Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images It's A LOT. Andrew Harnik / Getty Images You've got the gold crown molding. Bloomberg / Bloomberg via Getty Images The fireplace is cluttered with gold statues. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images He's got gold coasters. SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images And then there's a TON of these gold squiggly things all over the picture from the White House really shows how many gold accents have been added to the Oval Office. This is how it looked last year: michellelprice/Twitter: @michellelprice From this: To this: Look at all that gold!!! Well, since then, Trump has SOMEHOW managed to add even more gold. @JoeMyGod posted this "then and now" picture that is going super viral: From this: To this: "It's like the Dollar Tree version of Versailles," one person joked. "Which one seems more fiscally responsible...." another person asked. And this person said, "I hope that lovely fireplace can be restored with no damage." Thoughts on the renovations?! Solve the daily Crossword
The Hill
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On the first day of his second term, President Trump issued an executive order suspending all foreign aid expenditures, except for those providing emergency and military assistance. On March 10, the administration cancelled 83 percent of the programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID, Trump declared, had been 'run by a bunch of radical lunatics.' Elon Musk opined that the agency was 'a criminal organization.' Social media outlets spread false allegations that USAID had spent $60 million on condoms for South Africa. On May 21, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 'No one has died because of USAID.' Lawmakers presented him with credible evidence that he was wrong. By the middle of the year, 94 percent of USAID's 4,500 employees, many of them living overseas, had been laid off. As of July 1, Rubio announced, 'USAID will officially cease to implement foreign assistance.' The State Department would only implement existing and new foreign aid programs if they advanced the administration's 'America First' agenda by privileging 'trade over aid, opportunity over dependency, investment over assistance.' The dismantling of USAID has already had a negative impact on the lives of tens of millions of poor and vulnerable people in some 130 countries. And the evisceration of USAID is undermining our national interest. Established in 1961, USAID became the world's leading donor of humanitarian, economic development and democracy-promoting programs. The organization has had considerable success in alleviating poverty and malnutrition, decreasing the spread of infectious diseases and increasing access to safer drinking water and sanitation. Its programs helped mitigate the effect of natural disasters and achieve substantial reductions in mortality rates across all ages and causes, death rates from HIV/AIDS, malaria and tropical diseases. Working with non-government organizations, USAID provided educational opportunities for women in Afghanistan and supported independent media committed to correcting disinformation campaigns by state-controlled outlets in Eastern Europe. Although MAGA Republicans have denounced USAID as 'woke,' the agency's largest implementing partner in 2024 was Catholic Charities. In the last four years, Samantha's Purse, founded by Franklin Graham, the son of evangelical minister Billy Graham, received $90 million in USAID funds. A study recently published in The Lancet, the respected scientific and medical journal, estimates that the implications of dismantling USAID could 'reverberate for decades,' with an impact 'similar in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict.' By 2030, an additional 14 million people, 4 million of them children under five years old, could die. 630,000 of those deaths would be associated with dramatic reductions in staff, medications and treatment through PEPFAR, President George W. Bush's signature foreign aid initiative. USAID is a paradigmatic example of the exercise of 'soft power,' a difficult to quantify strategy of exerting national influence through trade, economic assistance, educational exchanges, public-private partnerships and relationships with business and political leaders. China had already strengthened its global ties by investing $679 billion — more than nine times the foreign aid expenditures of the U.S. — between 2013 and 2021 to construct or repair roads, railways, airports and energy and digital infrastructure. It began filling the soft power void created by the dismantling of USAID almost immediately in Nepal and Colombia. U.S. foreign aid, moreover, is relatively inexpensive. In 2023, total expenditures for non-military foreign aid were $71.9 billion, 1.2 percent of the $6.1 trillion federal budget. USAID was responsible for $43.5 billion of the $71.9 billion. The U.S., it's worth noting, gives a relatively low percentage of its GDP in aid compared to most other wealthy nations. As Trump and Rubio surely know, a substantial majority of Americans do not understand the aims and achievements of foreign aid or know how much the U.S. spends on it. On average, Americans believe that foreign aid constitutes 31 percent of the federal budget. About 70 percent of Americans (and 9 out of 10 Republicans) think Washington spends too much money assisting other countries. Trump and Rubio are not attempting to enlighten them. The dismantling of USAID provides a teachable moment. Referring to PEPFAR, former President Bush recently asked and answered a rhetorical question: 'Is it in our national interest that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is.' Providing humanitarian assistance is the right thing for the wealthiest country in the world to do, whether or not there's an immediate payoff. But it is also one of many ways, in our increasingly interconnected and interdependent planet, in which a robust USAID served — and might again serve — America's national interest.
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18 minutes ago
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"He's a madman": Trump's team frets about Netanyahu after Syria strikes
As smoke and debris swirled over the Syrian presidential palace, the chatter in the West Wing grew louder: Benjamin Netanyahu is out of control. What they're saying:"Bibi acted like a madman. He bombs everything all the time," one White House official told Axios, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. "This could undermine what Trump is trying to do." A second senior U.S. official also pointed to the shelling of a church in Gaza this week, which led President Trump to call Netanyahu and demand an explanation. "The feeling is that every day there is something new. What the f***?" A third U.S. official said there's growing skepticism inside the Trump administration about Netanyahu — a sense that his trigger finger is too itchy and he's too disruptive. "Netanyahu is sometimes like a child who just won't behave." Netanyahu's spokesperson Ziv Agmon did not respond to a request for comment. Why it matters: Six U.S. officials tell Axios that despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that halted this week's escalation in Syria on Friday, this week ended with the White House significantly more alarmed about Netanyahu and his regional policies. However, Trump has so far refrained from public criticism and it's unclear if he shares his advisers' frustrations. It is not totally clear whether he shares his advisers' recent concerns about Israel's actions in Syria. Driving the news: On Tuesday, Israel bombed a convoy of Syrian army tanks en route to the city of Suwayda to respond to violent clashes between a Druze militia and armed Bedouin tribesmen, which had killed over 700 people as of Saturday according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Israel claimed the convoy crossed into a zone of southern Syria it demands be demilitarized, and that the Syrian military was participating in attacks on the Druze minority, which Syria denies. U.S. envoy Tom Barrack asked his Israeli counterparts on Tuesday to stand down to allow for a diplomatic resolution, and the Israelis committed to do so, according to a U.S. official. Instead, after a pause, Israel escalated the strikes. On Wednesday, Israel dropped bombs on Syria's military headquarters and near the presidential palace. Friction point:"The bombing in Syria caught the president and the White House by surprise. The president doesn't like turning on the television and seeing bombs dropped in a country he is seeking peace in and made a monumental announcement to help rebuild," a U.S. official said. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Netanyahu and his team to stop on Wednesday. Netanyahu agreed to do so in return for the Syrian military withdrawing from Suwayda. But by then countries including Turkey and Saudi Arabia had conveyed angry messages to the Trump administration about Israel's actions, and several senior U.S. officials had complained directly to Trump about Netanyahu. Behind the scenes: Among those officials were Barrack and White House envoy Steve Witkoff — both close friends Trump's, according to a U.S. official. The general belief in the White House was that Netanyahu bombed Syria because of domestic pressure from Israel's Druze minority and other political considerations. "Bibi's political agenda is driving his senses. It will turn out to be a big mistake for him long-term," a U.S. official said. Another U.S. official said the damage the Israelis had done to their standing at the White House over the past week didn't seem to be breaking through to them. "The Israelis need to get their head out of their asses," the official quipped. Between the lines: The tensions over Syria came just days after Netanyahu's visit to D.C., in which he met Trump twice and the two leaders seemed closer than ever in the afterglow of the war with Iran. In addition to Syria and the attack on the church in Gaza, the murder of Palestinian American Saif Mussallet by a mob of Israeli settlers last weekend also sparked pushback from the Trump administration toward Netanyahu's stridently pro-settler government. Amb. Mike Huckabee, who days earlier had visited Netanyahu's corruption trial in a show of support, released a series of statements calling the attack "terrorism" and demanding answers. On Saturday, he also visited a Christian community in the West Bank that had been targeted by settler attacks. Huckabee, long an effusive supporter of Israel, also criticized the Israeli government this week for making it harder for American evangelicals to obtain travel visas. The other side: The Israelis were surprised by the U.S. pushback over the Syria strikes. A senior Israeli official said Trump had encouraged Netanyahu to hold parts of Syria during his first weeks in office and hadn't previously expressed concerns about Israel's interventions in the country. The official stressed that Israel only intervened after its intelligence indicated the Syrian government was involved in attacks against the Druze. The official denied any domestic political considerations. "The U.S. wants to keep the new Syrian government stable and doesn't understand why we attack in Syria, because of attacks on the Druze community there. We tried to explain to them that this is our commitment to the Druze community in Israel," the senior Israeli official said. State of play: The instability in Syria is a major concern to the administration. On Saturday, Rubio posted on X that the regime in Damascus needs to help bring peace and stop the killings. But a senior U.S. official said Israel shouldn't be able to decide whether the Syrian government can exert its sovereignty over its own citizens and territory. "The current Israeli policy would lead to an unstable Syria. Both the Druze community and Israel will lose in such a scenario," the official said. The big picture: This was hardly the first time Netanyahu tested Trump's patience. His gamble that Trump would ultimately back his strikes on Iran paid off in dramatic fashion. He's pressed on in Gaza for months despite Trump's desire for an end to the war. In Syria, he bet once again that he could escalate dramatically without destabilizing the region or his relationship with Trump. And Trump aides have become more and more aware in recent months of the influence far-right Jewish supremacist elements in Netanyahu's coalition have on policy. This dynamic has also become more evident to the broader MAGA movement. The bottom line: U.S. officials who spoke to Axios cautioned that Netanyahu's luck, and Trump's goodwill, could run out.
