‘I don’t like you!’ Trump state meeting goes off rails as he attacks Australian ambassador
President Donald Trump insulted Australian Ambassador to the U.S. Kevin Rudd to his face during a meeting with the country's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
During a Monday appearance with Albanese at the White House, a reporter asked Trump if he was concerned with "things the ambassador said about you in the past."
"I don't know anything about him," Trump said of Rudd, who was sitting across the table from him. "I mean, if you said bad, then maybe he'll like to apologize. I really don't know."
"Did an ambassador say something bad of me?" the U.S. president asked Albanese. "Don't tell me. Where is he? Is he still working for you?"
"Yeah, yeah," Rudd volunteered.
"You said bad?" Trump asked.
"Before I took this position, Mr. President," the ambassador replied.
"I don't like you either," Trump fumed. "I don't, and I probably never will."
Rudd, himself a former Australian Prime Minister, has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump, describing him as a threat to democratic institutions.
‘Not allowed to break that!’ Trump freaks as camera bangs priceless White House mirror
While meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Monday at the White House, President Donald Trump chided a reporter for apparently bumping into a mirror with a camera.
“You gotta watch that! You're not allowed to break that, that mirror is 400 years old!” Trump said as the White House reporters crammed into the room ahead of the president’s meeting with Albanese.
“The camera just hit the mirror... Ay ay ay! I just moved it up here from the vaults and the first thing that happens, a camera hits it. Hard to believe, isn't it? But these are the problems in life.”
It’s unknown what mirror the reporter had bumped into, though it could possibly be a gilded English pier mirror made in the late 18th century and donated to the White House in 1946, which the White House Historical Association made reference to in a past social media post.
Trump’s meeting with Albanese was arranged, in part, to “talk about trade” and “submarines,” Trump said, along with a rare earths minerals deal between the two nations as the Trump administration seeks an off ramp to its dependence on China.As millions protested, a separate big Trump demonstration sent an appalling message
The U.S. Marine Corps — under the watchful eyes of Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — staged a demonstration on Saturday in southern California.
It wasn’t a No Kings demonstration, though. It was more like a Yes Kings demonstration.
Some of the Marine Corps’ shells that were fired by M777 howitzers across California’s Interstate 5 prematurely detonated, sending shrapnel down on what could have been hundreds of motorists.
Why the hell did the Marine Corps fire artillery shells over Interstate 5 anyway?
Interstate 5 is the largest and most-traveled north-south freeway in California.
The military demonstration was part of an exercise marking the Marine Corps’ 250th anniversary.
Beforehand, the military predicted that the exercise would be safe, but California Governor Gavin Newsom disagreed.
“Firing live rounds over a busy highway isn’t just wrong — it’s dangerous,” Newsom said last week.
Newsom was so concerned about the plan that he ordered a 17-mile stretch closed of the freeway closed between Los Angeles and San Diego — which caused significant backups on that portion of the interstate, used by approximately 80,000 people daily.
Before the mishap, Vance’s office disputed Newsom’s claim that the live rounds were dangerous, saying the Marine Corp’s demonstration was “an established safe practice.”
“If Gavin Newsom wants to oppose the training exercises that ensure our Armed Forces are the deadliest and most lethal fighting force in the world, then he can go right ahead,” Vance’s communications director said in a statement. “It would come as no surprise that he would stoop so low considering his pathetic track record of failure as governor.”
After the round prematurely exploded on Saturday, the whole exercise — which was expected to include the firing of approximately 60 155-millimeter shells — was terminated.
An active-duty Marine artillery officer and a former Marine artillery noncommissioned officer who spoke to the New York Times described the exercise as “unusual.”
They said the only howitzer training they had previously observed at Camp Pendleton had taken place at approved artillery ranges on the main side of base, east of the interstate, which they said were a much safer option for training.
A highway patrol official based in the area also described it as “unusual and concerning.”
Tony Coronado, the highway patrol’s border division chief, said in a statement that “it is highly uncommon for any live-fire or explosive training activity to occur near an active freeway.”
So what’s going on here? Why did the Marine Corps decide to fire live artillery shells across California’s major interstate freeway on Saturday?
Could the decision have had anything to do with the planned No Kings demonstrations in California on Saturday — the heart of anti-Trump country — and the well-known fact that Trump hates California?
Just asking.
- Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
- Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.
Red state GOP threatened with legal war as election maps described as ‘surgical racism’
Calling the North Carolina Republican Party’s new congressional district map “surgical racism with surgical precision,” Bishop William J. Barber II of Repairers of the Breach was in Raleigh Thursday, announcing a lawsuit challenging the redistricting effort—pledging that the state’s voters will “challenge gerrymandering in the courts, in the streets, and at the ballot box.”
“This is a direct attack on the state’s Black Belt district and marginalized communities,” said Barber at a news conference announcing the legal challenge, a day after the state House of Representatives approved the new map in a party-line vote.
The new map, which was passed by the state Senate earlier this week and cannot be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein under state law, will likely give the GOP an additional seat in the US House after the 2026 midterm elections.
President Donald Trump has called for mid-decade redistricting efforts by the GOP in states including Missouri and Texas, as well as North Carolina, with state Republicans heeding his demands.
North Carolina’s new map will likely give Republicans 11 of the state’s 14 districts by moving some Black voters out of the 1st District and into the 3rd District. Had the new map been in place in 2024, Trump would likely have won 55% of the vote in the new 1st District in 2024, up from the 51% he won.
Barber denounced the redistricting efforts across the country as “political robbery” by a party that wants “to rob people of their rights through this racially based gerrymandering... so that they can give power or keep power in the US Congress to engage in political violence,” including by cutting healthcare and blocking the passage of living wages.
“We’ve seen this pattern before—the use of redistricting and voting laws to divide, diminish, and deny,” said Barber. “But the truth is simple: When you steal people’s representation, you steal their healthcare, their wages, and their future. That’s why we will fight back... to make clear that in North Carolina, and across America, the people’s will cannot be gerrymandered out of existence.”
Barber said Republicans in the state Legislature are “gambling” to win another seat, instead of trying to win over voters.
“They’re saying, ‘Let’s move this county over here, let’s move this county over here,’ he said at the press conference. ”Black voters in Congressional District 1 make up approximately 40% of the population, and there’s a growing Latino population that makes up 7%... Black communities, Latino communities, and rural, working-class, poor white voters, if the districts are fair, have the power to build a fusion electorate that can overcome the greedy oligarchs’ will to control elections in our state.“
Along with filing a legal action against state lawmakers to challenge the legality of the map, Barber said Repairers of the Breach will hold a ”Mass Moral Fusion Meeting“ and public hearing on November 2.
”If they won’t hold public hearings, we will,“ said Barber. ”This is our Edmund Pettus Bridge moment... Black, white, and brown together—because our democracy is not for sale.“
