Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR. Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year. The word “Deficit” is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are “carrying” almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST! President DONALD J. TRUMP

9/16/26, 4:38 PM

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/117282643318690567

Travis Kelce Falls Victim to Multi-Million-Dollar Ponzi Scheme: Report

Tom Durante

Sep 16th, 2026, 12:42 pm

Nobody takes a hit like Travis Kelce, except maybe his wallet.

The NFL superstar was named as a victim in an elaborate Ponzi scheme that bilked investors out of $35 million, TMZ reported on Wednesday.

Siddharth Jawahar was sentenced on Tuesday to 11 years in prison, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Missouri.

Jawahar, 38, was also ordered to pay his victims a total of $31.35 million, according to federal authorities.

Jawahar, an illegal immigrant, was behind a Texas-based investment company called Swiftarc Capital LLC, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office, which added:

In 2015, [Jawahar] began investing client funds in a single investment, Philip Morris Pakistan (PMP). Eventually, 99% of client funds were consolidated into PMP. When the value of PMP declined, Jawahar did not tell investors and falsely claimed that his investors were making profits. Investors were also falsely led to believe that he’d invested their money in a specific company or companies but he never made the promised investments.

Authorities said Jawahar used the money to repay older investors and live the high life, including private jets, luxury hotel says, homes in Texas and New York, and dinners at luxe restaurants.

After his indictment, Jawahar attempted to obstruct justice after he was indicted by goading one of his victims into making favorable testimony to the feds and trying to get his sister to remotely wipe his cellphone, according to the U.S. attorney statement.

Kelce, currently in his 12th season with the Kansas City Chiefs, is one of the highest-paid players in the NFL.

It’s not clear how much he lost in the elaborate scam.

Kelce is the husband of pop princess Taylor Swift, who, according to Forbes, has a net worth of more than $2.1 billion.

https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/travis-kelce-falls-victim-to-multi-million-dollar-ponzi-scheme-report/

Paramount Sets California Exit Plans Over Antitrust Battle With Blue States & Stymied $111B WBD Merger

Paramount Sets California Exit Plans Over Antitrust Battle With Blue States & Stymied $111B WBD Merger

By Dominic Patten

September 16, 2026 12:14pm

Leaks the past few months out of David Ellison‘s inner circle said the CEO would take his Paramount ball and leave California if state attorneys general didn’t back off on their antitrust suit to stop the $111 billion merger with Warner Bros Discovery.

And now it looks like the ball really is in play.

Paramount brass have told key officials and stakeholders the company is “deadly serious” about leaving California and the home of Hollywood after over 100 years, sources tell me. Among those told a deposit has been put on the moving trucks is L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and state AG Rob Bonta.

“Mayor Bass is focused on protecting and fighting for jobs in L.A., including critical jobs in the entertainment industry that have been a vital part of Los Angeles’ economy,” a spokesperson for City Hall told Deadline today. “She’s been engaged on this issue and will continue to fight to make sure L.A. is home to Hollywood,” the Mayor’s office added, with the core topic being keeping the Paramount corporate HQ and the thousands of jobs it holds in the City of Angels.

Watch on Deadline

Up in Sacramento, Bonta has over the past several months called out Paramount for engaging in “blackmail” in its efforts to sway the court of public opinion over the merger.

Today, with the exit plans taking more concrete shape, the AGs office said as much again, in many more words.

“We cannot comment on a company’s plans,” a spokesperson for AG Bonta told Deadline Wednesday over the moving notice. “It’s no secret that Paramount has been making this threat, despite its alleged commitment to California and Hollywood. What Paramount decides to do is Paramount’s choice alone. We’ll continue to apply the law without fear or favor and continue to be open to coming to the table for good faith discussions.”

Paramount had no comment when contacted by Deadline about the exit plans and how far along they are.

What no one can be silent on is that the potentially devastating blow to any already ailing Tinseltown industry comes as the mega-merger with David Zaslav’s WBD is trapped in the legal leg-hold of the July 13-filed antitrust lawsuit from a dozen states and the Writers Guild of America. Even with court ordered settlement meetings set for next month and a hearing next week over Paramount’s desire for a $1.88 billion bond from the plaintiffs to cover “extraordinary losses” the company anticipates, clearly the wait for the March 2, 2027-starting trial was too much and too late for Team ParaBros.

Ellison’s big move to move comes almost two weeks before the October 1 deadline that had been bandied around in the rumors out of the Melrose lot since the legal battle with Golden State Attorney General Bonta and 11 other blue state AGs over the WBD deal formally went nuclear two months ago. While there are a number of pricey fees in motion under the merger contract, the “extraordinary losses” Paramount has been referring to specifically is the $7-million-a-day ticking fee in the WBD contract that kicks in (surprise surprise) on October 1.

Doing the math of the ticking fee adding up to $635 million a quarter and a look at the calendar of that trial date, and the money Para could be on the hook for is very real…

(CA is F’ing themselves, more to follow! IMO)

https://deadline.com/2026/09/paramount-leaving-california-merger-lawsuit-1237105417/

Read full article, the battle against CA, etc will be fun to watch!

Hegseth avoids impeachment vote with early House election recess

PUBLISHED WED, SEP 16 20262:34 PM EDTUPDATED

KEY POINTS

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will avoid a vote to impeach him after U.S. House leadership decided to leave Washington a day earlier than planned.

• Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who introduced the articles of impeachment, claimed the early dismissal was because Republican leaders feared holding the politically awkward vote, which attacks Hegseth for his role leading the Iran war.

• The House was already operating on a diminished schedule, after Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this month canceled two weeks in session for late September.The chamber is not due back until after the Nov. 3 election.(why do they get two months off?)

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/16/hegseth-impeachment-house-election-recess.html

==EXCLUSIVE: Talarico’s Lesbian Minister Caught On Camera Saying His Political Makeover Is A Lie

“I can guarantee you that once he gets elected, he’ll change his tune back to where he was."==

Jacob Wheeler

•

Sep 16, 2026

A lesbian minister at James Talarico’s longtime Austin church believes the Democrat is playing a political game in an attempt to flip Texas blue as he races to recast his record on transgender issues and his declaration that “God is non-binary,” according to undercover footage obtained by The Daily Wire.

Rev. Babs Miller, minister to the parish at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, was caught making stunning admissions about Talarico’s political makeover as he seeks to win over conservative-minded Texas moderates. The newfound shift includes striking new positions, including support for a national ban on gender-transition surgeries for minors and opposition to transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports when he believes it threatens safety or fairness.

When an undercover journalist told Miller that Republicans were attacking Talarico over his “God is non-binary” comment, she responded, “Duh,” agreeing with the theological assertion before shedding light on his internal political strategy.

“He’s getting some advice that I don’t think he should be following,” Miller said.

Miller then suggested Talarico would revert to his embrace of the LGBT movement’s most extreme elements if he wins the race against Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton.

“I can guarantee you that once he gets elected, he’ll change his tune back to where he was,” she said.

When the undercover journalist suggested Talarico had to “play this game,” Miller shook her head and agreed.

“That’s what his campaign has convinced him of,” Miller said. “The Democratic Party is backing off on their stances on trans and all of this, and so his staff is encouraging him to kind of do the same thing, just for the next 50 weeks, whatever days.”

==“I think it’s bad advice personally, but if it helps him win, okay…” an exasperated Miller added.

Talarico has long attended St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, where he has delivered politically charged sermons, including one declaring “God is not a Christian.”==

Miller’schurch bio says she has been part of the St. Andrew’s community since the mid-1990s and was ordained there in 2014 as an “out” lesbian chaplain. She retired shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic but returned in 2022.

The Daily Wire recently obtained additional undercover footage in which Texas Democratic Party organizer Jennifer Miranda described Talarico’s shift as a misleading campaign to flip disgruntled conservative Texans not thrilled about Paxton at the top of the ticket.

“I would say right now he’s trying to target a wider net, which unfortunately means being more palatable to Republicans here in Texas,” Miranda, a manager with Texas Together and the Texas Democratic Party, said. “He really needs to win those Texans over.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-talaricos-lesbian-minister-caught-on-camera-saying-his-political-makeover-is-a-lie

LINK YOUR PORTFOLIO

==Gold / US Dollar Spot

XAU=:Exchange==

LIVESTREAM

Fast Money

RT Quote | USD

Last | 4:59 PM EDT

4,263.63quote price arrow down-29.06 (-0.68%)

1D5D1M3M6MYTD1Y5YALL

Wow, I bought Gold at $150 or less 2-3 years ago. Going up so much is not necessarily a good sign.

https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/XAU=

BUSTED: ‘Blue-Collar Independent’ Senate Candidate Endorsed by Democrats Caught on Hot Mic Revealing Exactly What He Thinks About Rural Trump Voters (AUDIO)

by Cullen Linebarger Sep. 16

A so-called ‘blue-collar independent’ pushed by Democrats as their candidate in a key Senate race has unwittingly exposed his true feelings about GOP voters in leaked audio.

On Wednesday, the Republican National Committee shared leaked audio of Nebraska’s Dan Osborn, who is now running just behind with GOP incumbent Pete Ricketts in the polls, making some really sick remarks about salt-of-the-earth Americans who loyally support the Commander-in-Chief.

Osborn promotes his background as an industrial mechanic, Navy veteran, and union leader to fool Nebraskans into believing that he is one of them.He previously attempted the same trick two years ago and came up just over sixpoints short against Senator Deb Fischer (R-NE).

Like last time, Democrats are not running a candidate in the Nebraska Senate race.

But notice how elitist and disgusting Osborn’s language is in the video. These are his true colors.

“Billy Bob is fking Red Cloud, Nebraska, who lives next to the fking Trump store as you pull into town and is waving the Trump flag. All he knows is that he is on the winning team,” Osborn says.

“It really is that simple, it is. And Trump…That’s why he’s been so effective,” he continues. “He’s been so effective at taking Billy Bob and his wife, Mary Jane, or Mary Jo, and telling them, ‘Look, we’re winning. You’re on the winning team.’

“And that’s all they care about, because their lives probably suck so f**king (much).”

LISTEN:

When Bash asked whether he had made these disgusting remarks, Osborn replied. “It sure sounds like me.”

Osborn, of course, then pretended like he did not mean what he said in the video. But we all know that’s exactly what he believes.

Ricketts responded to Osborn’s vile remarks on X:

“Dan Osborn was caught making derogatory comments about rural Nebraskans in another leaked audio,” he wrote. “Dan Osborn continues to show us who he really is. His comments show a clear lack of respect for the Nebraskans who make this state great.”

“I will continue standing up and delivering for every Nebraskan in every part of this state.”

(https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/09/busted-blue-collar-independent-senate-candidate-endorsed-democrats/

Thank God he’s so stupid to tell the truth he’s a Trump and Trump supporters hater!

House Democrats seek to block data centers from federal tax breaks

The lawmakers want to prevent the data center industry’s access to tax incentives Republicans created or enhanced in their 2025 megabill.

Brian Faler

09/16/2026, 9:47AM

A group of rank-and-file Democrats will introduce legislation Wednesday aimed at stopping data centers from taking advantage of certain lucrative tax breaks.

The lawmakers say the fast-growing facilities shouldn’t be able to make use of investment incentives like so-called bonus depreciation and the Opportunity Zone program, as public unease grows over the rise of artificial intelligence and proliferation of data centers.

“Michigan families are working hard to keep up with the rising cost of gas, groceries, and child care,” said Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D-Mich.). “They shouldn’t be asked to shoulder more of the burden while data centers and big tech companies already making record profits get another giant tax break. This bill will fix that.”

Democrats have begun zeroing in on the industry’s use of tax incentives, especially those beefed up by Republicans’ signature tax cuts last year.For Democrats, it’s a chance to beat up on a law they never liked, while addressing the growing data center backlash ahead of the midterms.

That scrutiny will likely only intensify if Democrats vault back into power.

The tax breaks weren’t specially designed to promote AI — they’re general business provisions. But tech industry’s massive spending on its infrastructure needs qualifies for huge tax breaks too, which are now big enough to put a serious dent in corporate tax receipts.

The legislation being rolled out Wednesday follows a call by Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the tax-writing Finance Committee, to ban data centers from using bonus depreciation as well as tax benefits associated with the Opportunity Zone program and real estate investment trusts.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), a fellow tax writer who represents a state where data centers crowd the landscape, would prevent them from tapping depreciation breaks unless they meet certain energy efficiency standards, a move to push them to curb their use of electricity and water.

While President Donald Trump in recent weeks has amplified his enthusiasm for data centers, there’s bipartisan interest in limiting their tax breaks. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) said this month that he wants to create a federal tax to offset any incentives awarded by localities.

“If a state or local government gives a data center a tax incentive, the federal government will take that incentive at 100%,” Moreno said of his plan.

Many states led by Democrats and Republicans alike are themselves now reconsidering their own AI tax breaks.

The legislation unveiled Wednesday is backed by 21 other Democrats, including Rep. Jimmy Panetta (Calif.), who sits on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/09/16/congress/house-democrats-seek-to-block-data-centers-from-federal-tax-breaks-01078060

Tesla Cybercab turns 10-minute Austin trip into 70-minute detour

Fred Lambert

Tesla Cybercab robotaxi hostage

A Tesla Cybercab rider in Austin says a 10-minute trip turned into a 70-minute ordeal after the driverless taxi took a long detour across the city.

The reason is a limitation Tesla still hasn’t solved. Its robotaxis can’t drive on highways, so a quick hop that a human would take up the freeway becomes a winding surface-street tour.

The rider, posting on r/Austin, booked a ride from 99 Ranch Market to the Domain, both in north Austin. That’s normally about a 10-minute trip straight up the highway. Instead, he wrote, the Cybercab “took me on a massive south detour through East Austin,” and the whole thing took 70 minutes.

He titled the post “My Cybercab held me hostage for an hour.” That part’s a joke. As other riders pointed out, you can end a Tesla robotaxi ride at any time and call something else. The fare came to $20, roughly market rate, but Tesla’s app only shows a price estimate when you book, not a time estimate. So you don’t find out you’ve signed up for the scenic route until you’re on it.

Why the car drove the long way

Riders in the thread landed on a plausible explanation, and the original poster agreed with it.

Tesla’s robotaxi doesn’t use highways like MoPac or US-183 in Austin, and riders say it also steers clear of at-grade railroad crossings. Put those two constraints together and the car had to run far south on surface streets, staying parallel to Capital Metro’s Red Line until it could finally get across the tracks on a bridge in East Austin. “It was basically driving parallel to the Red Line the whole way,” the poster wrote.

It’s a small story, but it’s a clean illustration of what “no highways” actually costs a rider in a city built around them.

Tesla’s robotaxi still avoids the freeway

This is the part that doesn’t make it into the launch videos.

Waymo, the clear leader in the space, already runs fully driverless rides on freeways. Tesla’s vision-only system stays on lower-speed surface streets inside a tight geofence, where a mistake plays out at 35 mph instead of 65. We’ve made the case before that the long routes and weird reroutes point to a safety bottleneck: Tesla’s fleet crashes roughly once every 57,000 miles, about four times worse than an average human driver.

A car that reroutes around train tracks and can’t merge onto MoPac isn’t a general-purpose autonomous vehicle yet. It’s a demo experiment that happens to charge $20.

A rough opening act for the Cybercab

The timing doesn’t help. The steering-wheel-free Cybercab only started carrying public riders in Austin on September 3, and NHTSA opened an audit the same day into how Tesla self-certified a two-seater with no steering wheel or pedals. Days before that, one of Tesla’s Austin robotaxis drove straight through a set of bollards.

The 70-minute detour applies to the whole fleet, not just the new car. Tesla runs the same surface-street-only software on its Model Y robotaxis and the Cybercab, so any rider in Austin can draw the same route.

Electrek’s Take

The “held hostage” framing is funny, and it’s not fair — nobody was trapped. But jokes aside, you’re left with a real data point about how far Tesla’s autonomy is from the product Elon Musk has been selling for years.

Musk pitched the robotaxi as a car that goes anywhere a human can, cheaper. What Austin actually has is a taxi that can’t take the highway, won’t cross a train track, and can turn a five-mile trip into an hour with no one at the wheel. It’s simply not ready for primetime, but Tesla is not new to releasing half-baked features.

That’s not a knock on the engineers keeping it inside its limits. It’s the honest picture of where the tech is.

https://electrek.co/2026/09/14/tesla-cybercab-70-minute-austin-detour/

‘People Are Very Unhappy’: Podcaster Presses JD Vance on Trump Launching Iran War and Not Getting Inflation ‘Under Control’

Sean JamesSep 16th, 2026,

Vice President JD Vance had to grapple with a few tough questions when he joined the All-In podcast for a live interview, with co-host Jason Calacanisasking Vance why President Donald Trump launched the Iran War, despite his campaign promises there would be no foreign conflicts.

Calacanis also pressed the vice president on the administration’s failure to get inflation “under control” during the Tuesday virtual interview, which happened at the podcast’s All-In Summit in Los Angeles. The host told Vance the MAGA base was “extremely frustrated” about both issues.

“You promised us you wouldn’t start a foreign war, you promised us you wouldn’t start a foreign war in the Middle East specifically,” Calacanis said. “And then, you promised you would get inflation under control. You haven’t been able to get inflation under control, still 3-4% this year. It’s not looking good.”

“Americans, specifically the people who voted for you, Mr. Vice President, are very upset about starting this war,” he continued. “What is your message to them. How do these two issues get resolved? Because people are very upset about it.”

“On the war specifically, what I would say is, look, the president came in and yes, he wanted to keep the United States of foreign entanglements. He also said he was committed to Iran not having a nuclear weapon, and I think wanting to keep the United States out of foreign entanglements does not mean that you can never use the military to accomplish the American people’s objectives.”

Vance continued:

Now all that said, despite the fact that we did accomplish a substantial destruction, not just of their nuclear program but also of the Iranian military, we have seen the Iranians shooting at commercial shipping, even in the midst of peace negotiations.

And I think the president has actually done the responsible thing here, which is to try to ensure world energy markets, despite Iranian terrorism, continued to get that flow of oil and gas.

So what I would say to anybody who’s frustrated right now is, the alternative here, which is the United States effectively says to the Middle East, “you’re on your own,” would mean necessarily a worldwide energy crisis, so long as the Iranians keep on shooting at shipping, which we know that’s exactly what they would do.

So I think the president is taking the responsible course of action — he’s protecting America’s assets in the region, while also ensuring that world energy markets continue to get a supply of oil and natural gas.

Their exchange on the war comes two years after Trump said at the Republican National Convention, “With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness, and chaos will be over. I don’t have wars.”

Trump doubled down on his claim at a rally a month later, pledging, “We will have no more wars, no more disruptions” if he was elected again.

Vance’s interview also came a day after Trump called Nvidia CEO Jensen Huangwhile he was onstage at the conference. Trump immediately went on a rant against people calling for AI to be regulated, which has been a hot topicfor the president this week.

“I know all about AI. I also have common sense about AI. The robots will not be taking over, the AI will not be taking over, the whole thing is a Hoax!” Trump said.

As for inflation, Vance said the administration has made “a lot of progress” since taking over from former President Joe Biden.

“Rome was not built in a day,” he said.

Vance admitted inflation is still higher than he would like right now.

“I guess my pitch to the American people and to your listeners certainly would be: Do you want to reelect the people who have made substantial progress, accepting there is still a lot of work to be done, or do you want to go back to the people who caused the problem in the first place?” he said.

JD Vance on AI, Entitlement Fraud, Iran War, Israel, H-1B Abuse & the Midterms

https://youtu.be/PUcooQRy0PU

(https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/people-are-very-unhappy-podcaster-presses-jd-vance-on-trump-launching-iran-war-and-not-getting-inflation-under-control/

https://youtu.be/PUcooQRy0PU

Trump says he still has confidence in Fed Chair Warsh, demands 1% or lower interest rates

PUBLISHED WED, SEP 16 20264:45 PM1/2

KEY POINTS

• President Donald Trump said he still has confidence in Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, whom he nominated.

• But Trump demanded the Federal Reserve slash interest rates to 1% “or less,” hours after the central bank announced its first rate hike since 2023.

• Trump has rekindled his pressure campaign against the Fed, which had temporarily subsided after Warsh succeeded Jerome Powell as chairman.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he still has confidence in Federal ReserveChair Kevin Warsh, but also said he wants the central bank to slash interest rates to 1% “or less.”

Trump’s comments came hours after the central bank announced its first rate hike since 2023.

Warsh, who was nominated by Trump as Fed chair, had defended Wednesday’s widely expected rate increase of 25 basis points as appropriate.

The decision by the 12-member Federal Open Market Committee to raise benchmark interest rates to a target range of 3.75% to 4% was unanimous.

“I do,” Trump told reporters when asked after arriving on a campaign trip to North Carolina if he still had confidence in Warsh.

“I’m relying on Kevin, but he’s got, you know, a very tough board, he’s got a board that was put there by other people,” Trump said. “And I told, I talked to Kevin, and I said, ‘You might as well vote with the board. It’s not going to matter.’”

Trump’s remarks may undercut his and Warsh’s promises that the Fed has independence from the White House.

“The board is very hostile. They’re very political. They’re doing the wrong thing,” Trump said.

“They’re raising the rates to make Trump do as bad as they can possibly can do,” the president said before heading to a campaign event for Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley.

But asked if he believed Warsh made a decision based on what Trump told him, the president replied, “No, I don’t think so.”

“I want him to be independent, he said.

Earlier Wednesday and after the Fed’s rate decision, Trump, in a Truth Social post, demanded the Fed lower interest rates.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/16/trump-fed-interest-rate-warsh.html

>>25045568

2/2

“We are ‘carrying’ almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer,” Trump wrote.

“LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!”he wrote.

The FOMC, in a statement after the rate hike, said, “Inflation remains elevated.”

Updated projections released Wednesday show a strong majority of Fed officials expect another rate increase could be on the way.

But Trump, who has relentlessly pressured the Fed to drastically lower borrowing costs, insisted in his Truth post that rates in the U.S. “should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World — BY FAR.”

“Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment!” wrote Trump, who has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. has raked in as much as $20 trillion or more during his second term. Fact-checkers say Trump’s figures are false, and the White House on Sept. 9 said, “President Trump has secured more than $11 trillion in new U.S. investment.”

“If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year,” Trump claimed in Wednesday’s post.

Less than two weeks earlier, Trump threatened that if the Fed doesn’t cut rates, he will cut off trade with countries that have trade surpluses with the U.S. That group includes most of the U.S.’s top trading partners, along with dozens of other countries.

That extreme threat poured gasoline on Trump’s years-long pressure campaign against the Fed, which had temporarily subsided after Warsh succeeded Jerome Powell as chairman.

So far, however, Trump and his aides have refrained from attacking Warsh directly.

White House spokesman Kush Desai told Fox News earlier Wednesday afternoon that Trump “absolutely” still believes in the independence of the Fed.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that the president of the United States has a First Amendment right” to speak out “when things go awry,”Desai added.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/16/trump-fed-interest-rate-warsh.html