Europe will not be included in peace talks for Ukraine, President Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy said on Feb. 15 after sending a questionnaire to European capitals asking what they could offer in security guarantees for Kyiv.

As The Epoch Times’ Jacob Burg reports, on Sunday, France said it will host a summit of European leaders on Monday to discuss the Russia–Ukraine war and European security after retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, didn’t include Europe in negotiations over Ukraine’s future following years of war with Russia.

France President Emmanuel Macron “will convene the main European countries to discuss European security,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told France Inter radio. Barrot described the meeting as a working session and emphasized it should not be “overdramatized.”

The office of the French presidency has not yet announced the meeting.

Macron has invited at least Britain, Germany, Poland, Italy, and Denmark, representing the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, the European Union leadership, and the NATO secretary general, according to six European diplomats. They said the purpose of the meeting is to discuss what immediate help can be given to Ukraine and the role Europe can play in providing both security guarantees to Kyiv and Europe at large.

Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin last week before consulting European or Ukrainian leaders, saying peace talks had begun.

The Trump administration is pushing European allies in NATO to take a primary role in security guarantees for the region as the United States prioritizes border security and counters Chinese political and military influence.

At a global security conference in Munich, Kellogg said the United States would act as an intermediary in talks between Ukraine and Russia.

“I’m [from] a school of realism,” Kellogg said, regarding Europe having a seat at the table during negotiations. 

“I think that’s not going to happen.”

In trying to reassure Europeans, Kellogg said it doesn’t mean “their interests are not considered, used, or developed.”

Some European leaders pushed back on being sidelined for talks.

“There’s no way in which we can have discussions or negotiations about Ukraine, Ukraine’s future or European security structure, without Europeans,” Finland’s President Alexander Stubb told reporters in Munich.

“But this means that Europe needs to get its act together. Europe needs to talk less and do more.”

The questionnaire Kellogg sent to Europeans “will force Europeans to think,” Stubb said.

Kaja Kallas, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, was more explicit stating that “if somebody agrees something and I mean, everybody else says ‘okay fine!’ you have agreed, but we will not follow this!”

She added that EU’s position is “our importance” trumps any peace!

🇪🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🚨‼️ THE EU OPENLY SAYS THEY WILL SABOTAGE PEACE IN UKRAINE IF THEY’RE NOT AT THE TABLE.

Kallas: “if somebody agrees something and I mean, everybody else says ‘okay fine!’ you have agreed,but we will not follow this!”

-> EU’s position is “our importance” trumps any peace! pic.twitter.com/CMsYIpi6Q6

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) February 16, 2025

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte urged Europeans to get involved.

“And to my European friends, I would say, get into the debate, not by complaining that you might, yes or no, be at the table, but by coming up with concrete proposals, ideas, ramp up [defense] spending,” he said.

Kellogg said that territorial concessions from Russia and targeting its oil revenues could be included in the talks over ending the war between it and Ukraine.

“Russia is really a petro-state,” he said, adding that the West needs to do more in adequately enforcing sanctions against Russia.

U.S. and Russian officials will meet in Saudi Arabia in the coming days for continued peace talks, according to Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas). After meeting with Vice President JD Vance in Germany on Feb. 14, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his nation was not invited to the talks in Saudi Arabia and that Kyiv would consult with strategic partners before engaging with Russia.

“This is the war in Ukraine against us, and it is our human losses,” President Zelensky told Meet The Press this morning.

“We are thankful for all the support, unity in the USA around Ukraine support, bipartisan unity, bipartisan support,” adding that “we are thankful for all of this, but there is no leader in the world who can really make a deal with Putin without us, about us.”

🚨🇺🇦 ZELENSKY: I WOULD NEVER ACCEPT ANY DECISIONS BETWEEN THE U.S. AND RUSSIA ABOUT UKRAINE

“This is the war in Ukraine against us, and it is our human losses.

We are thankful for all the support, unity in the USA around Ukraine support, bipartisan unity, bipartisan support.… pic.twitter.com/a8F2MaLl3J

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) February 16, 2025

“I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine. Never,” he exclaimed.

Trump told Zelensky that he believes Putin is serious about peace talks. So Zelensky’s strategy to undermine those talks is tell Trump that Putin is not serious and is really just “afraid” of Trump.

You can tell by this desperate reverse psychology, and his body language, that… https://t.co/jpCPlIzB0U

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 16, 2025

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and White House Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Saudi Arabia, McCaul said.

The talks are meant to arrange a meeting between Trump, Putin, and Zelensky to “finally bring peace and end this conflict,” he said.

House Republicans are drafting articles of impeachment against Democrat judges that have blocked various actions by the Trump administration, including those who have halted efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

According to The Hill:

Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) said he is drafting articles of impeachment against Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York, who in a ruling last weekend temporarily restricted Musk and DOGE aides from accessing a Treasury Department payment system.

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) is working on an impeachment resolution against Rhode Island District Judge John McConnell Jr. over his ruling halting the Trump administration’s freeze on federal funding.

And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), chair of the House Oversight Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee, pledged in a hearing this week while referencing Engelmayer that “We will hold this judge and others who try to stop the will of the people and their elected leaders accountable.”

“Our case for impeaching Judge Engelmayer is basically that he’s an activist judge trying to stop the Trump administration from, you know, executing their, you know, Article 2 powers to make sure that the laws are faithfully executed,” Crane told former Rep. Matt Gaetz earlier this week.

Greene, meanwhile, said that she would support Engelmayer’s impeachment – arguing that judges can’t simply take power away from Cabinet secretaries.

“They can’t do that, especially when they have a serious record of Democrat activism and being hardcore against President Trump,” said Greene, adding “So, yeah, judges like that, they definitely should be impeached.”

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that “district court judges in liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump’s basic executive authority.“

Engelmayer initially blocked everyone at the Treasury Department – including Secretary Scott Bessent, from accessing the agency’s database, however another judge overseeing the case later said that the order would not apply to Bessent.

Rep. Clyde announced that he was working on impeachment articles, saying in a post on X that Judge McConnell Jr. is “a partisan activist weaponizing our judicial system to stop President Trump’s funding freeze on woke and wasteful government spending.”

I’m drafting articles of impeachment for U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr.

He’s a partisan activist weaponizing our judicial system to stop President Trump’s funding freeze on woke and wasteful government spending.

We must end this abusive overreach. Stay tuned. https://t.co/ARp7KBjK9u

— Rep. Andrew Clyde (@Rep_Clyde) February 12, 2025

It would take near-unanimous support from House Republicans to impeach one of the judges assuming no Democrats support the measure, while Democrat support would definitely be required to clear the 2/3 threshold to convict in the Senate.

So basically, this is going nowhere.

“Up till last Congress, the Speaker of the House had never been fired before,” said Crane. “I’m not a wait-and-see kind of guy — look around, hope somebody’s going to do something. I’m going to take action. And like I said, If this isn’t how we get to the, you know, the place that we need to be, I’m fine with that. But I’m not going to sit around and just, you know, watch these individuals stop President Trump from doing exactly what he told the American people he was going to do.”

*  *  *

Special Offer: Buy at least 2 bags of ZH Coffee and get 5% off plus a free vacuum insulated ZH Tumbler (white) from ZH Store! Buy 3 or more and get 10% off, free shipping, and free tumbler. Subscribe & Save for another 10% off.

Via The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation,

Key Points:

• Germany’s energy policies have led to electricity costs that are four times higher than in the U.S.

• The country’s industrial sector, especially the auto industry, is suffering due to high energy costs and green regulations.

• Germany’s military has been significantly reduced, with only 180,000 active soldiers and minimal military assets.

• The country’s fertility rate is dangerously low, and immigration policies have led to a large foreign-born population.

• Germany’s self-inflicted decline mirrors the Morgenthau Plan’s intended de-industrialization and depopulation of post-WWII Germany.

Hi, I’m Victor Davis Hanson, today I’d like to talk about the crisis facing Europe, specifically its self-implosion across the spectrum—energy, population, fertility, defense. 

Germany, for example, has been systematically shutting down its nuclear plants and, for a while, its natural gas electrical generation plants.

It’s relying, believe it or not, more on oil and coal. But the net result of all of this deliberate turn to wind and solar, at the expense of fossil fuels and nuclear, is that it costs about four times more to use electricity in Germany than it does on average throughout the United States. That’s not the only problem.

Germany is deindustrializing. And by that I mean it’s losing about 200,000 jobs in its auto industry due to these high energy prices and regulations. Its green mandates, especially electric vehicle mandates, have revolutionized the car industry, in the sense that they’re not selling abroad as they did in the past.

In addition to that, Germany’s disarmed. They only have about 125 attack aircraft. They have very few armored vehicles. Their active military is only about 180,000 soldiers.

They have 84 million people in the country. The fertility rate is getting very close to 1.4. I know we have problems here in the United States at 1.6, but 1.4.

And they don’t have borders. They have had a million to 2 million illegal aliens just prance into Germany, especially during the last years of the Merkel chancellorship. In terms of percentage of foreign-born, Germany has more foreign-born than does the United States, which doesn’t have a border in the south, at least until Donald Trump comes in. Twenty percent of the German population is foreign-born.

Why am I mentioning all of this? 

Because Germany represents the powerhouse, traditionally, of the European economy, and even culture, and it’s starting to implode. The euro, the benchmark of European financial health, is about, right now as I speak at the end of December, one dollar to one euro, and sometimes even less for the euro.

That’s very strange because when I used to run a travel company to go to Europe—I remember in 2008, the euro was 1.6, almost 1.7 per the dollar. So what’s happening is that Germany is, I guess we would call it, undertaking a slow-motion suicide.

But here’s the irony.

In September 1944, at the height of World War II, the secretary of the treasury under the Roosevelt administration, Henry Morgenthau, had a plan for postwar Germany when it was defeated.

He didn’t want another war—the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, World War I, World War II. He said, “Enough.” So what did he do? He submitted a plan that was going to deindustrialize Germany, depopulate Germany, change its borders. It was almost as if he was trying to turn it into something like Tacitus’ description of first-century A.D. Germany, as a pastoral, agrarian society. In fact, he explicitly said that.

When Joseph Goebbels heard about this, he said, “Oh my God, this is a gift. We’re losing the war. We’ll tell all of the German people they want us to be permanently pastoral. We’ll starve to death. And even if they don’t like the Nazis, as we’ve destroyed the country, you’re losing more, they’ll fight.”

Thankfully, George Marshall, chief of staff of the Army; ex-President Herbert Hoover; and others went to the Roosevelt administration and said, “If you institute this plan, they’re going to fight to the death. And we have bombed Germany. So when we get into Germany, you’ll see that it’s almost depopulated now.”

The net result was they canceled the Morgenthau Plan that would have permanently made Germany depopulated, disarmed, deindustrialized.

What’s my point in bringing up this historical example? 

We the victors of World War II thought imposing a plan of deliberate deindustrialization, depopulization, disarmament, open borders, destroyed borders would be too Carthaginian, and so we backed off. And now we’re here 80 years after the rejection of the Morgenthau Plan and the German people, or the German leadership, have essentially updated it and inflicted it on themselves willingly, not by coercion. That’s a tragic irony and it’s something we should all take a very close look at.

*  *  *

In conclusion, Hanson argues that Germany’s present crises are not due to external forces but are the result of self-inflicted policies. He likens this to “a slow-motion suicide” as Germany’s political and economic elites implement policies that are eroding the country’s economic power, military strength, and demographic stability. His commentary offers a sobering view of the future, warning that these trends, if not reversed, could lead to Germany’s further decline within Europe and the world.

*  *  *

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

The news must come as a shock to most, but it turns out that liberal women in the US are very unhappy.  A recently released poll from the American Family Survey held in 2024 shows that only 12% of liberal women are satisfied with their lives and that they are three times more likely to experience loneliness compared to conservative women.

The data reinforces a number of surveys over the years which reveal a continuing plunge in relative happiness among progressive western women despite their admission that they have more independence than ever before.

Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia and fellow at the Institute for Family Studies who analyzed the survey’s data, said he believes there are a couple of reasons why conservative young women are more likely to be happier than their liberal counterparts. 

“We’ve seen in the research that conservative women tend to be more likely to embrace a sense of agency and to have the sense that they are not, in any way, the victim of larger structural realities or forces,” he told Fox News Digital.  “They’re also less likely to catastrophize about public events and concerns,” and “more likely to think of themselves as captains of their own fate,” Wilcox added.

The survey also notes that conservative women are more likely to accept biological and social differences between males and females.  The ideal was thought to be common sense for thousands of years but has come under fire from feminists in the past decade as a “social construct of the patriarchy”.  The deconstruction of societal norms has been so pervasive, governments across the western world have tried to encode intersectional feminist taboos into law and punish people who remain skeptical.  

One side effect of the rise of feminist authority that liberals apparently did not expect is the decline in relative happiness of women.  The issue was fist noticed around 2009 when a study out of the University of Pennsylvania stunned the mainstream media – Despite decades of greater access to the jobs market, institutional influence and life options since the 1970s, young women have become increasingly less happy compared to their counterparts of past generations.  Though the study avoids addressing the problem of feminism directly, it does suggest that modern constructs may play a major role in creating anxiety for women.  

While men’s personal happiness has also been in sharp decline in recent decades, their financial opportunities have remained relatively static.  For women, financial and social opportunity has skyrocketed (along with access to college education), but their decline in happiness is even more dramatic than men. 

The American Family Survey helps to clarify the source of the happiness decline by separating out women according to their ideological leanings.  It’s not conservative women that are dragging those numbers down, it’s leftist women. 

It makes sense.  Before the 1970s the role of men as breadwinners was well established while women’s primary concerns focused on the household and family.  Men are more psychologically inclined to compartmentalize problems associate with risk and anxiety, especially when in the role of provider and protector.  The thing that drives men to unhappiness is not hard work and sacrifice, but not being able to fulfill the roles they are designed for.  

By extension, it may be that liberal women today are suffering from a similar affliction; they are unhappy because they are not fulfilling the roles they are biologically designed for.  In other words, both men and women were happier under the “patriarchy”, when men protected and provided while women took care of the home and nurtured their children.    

Authored by Thaddeus McCotter via American Greatness,

After years of battlefield defeats, on November 10, 1942, Winston Churchill’s resolute voice filled the Mansion House during the Lord Mayor’s Luncheon to announce the outcome of the Battle of El Alamein: “Now, however, we have a new experience. We have victory—a remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers, and warmed and cheered all our hearts.”

One cannot help but wonder if Republican-populists and/or MAGA supporters felt the same way upon learning of the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) revelations regarding the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) unconscionable expenditures and, subsequently, President Trump and Secretary of State Rubio’s swift shuttering of what constituted the Democrat Party’s taxpayer-subsidized, over $32 billion (2024) international and domestic political slush fund.

But USAID is not the only taxpayer-subsidized slush fund the Democrats enacted to fuel their party and, indeed, the entire political infrastructure of the left. One need only look at the multi-trillion-dollar spending spree, including bills such as the deceptively named “Inflation Reduction Act,” to understand how the then-Democrat majority and Mr. Biden skyrocketed both the federal debt and inflation for their own partisan gain at the expense of the American people.

As the unearthed revelations cascade into the avalanche that felicitously sweeps and buries USAID in the dustbin of history, one can limn the outline of the monster it created. Over the past several years, the public has become increasingly aware of how the Democrats have weaponized the police and surveillance powers of the state against their political enemies for partisan gain. Within this public awakening, the focus has been understandably upon which powers and positions the Democrats had weaponized. What DOGE has done with USAID is to commence closing the loop by investigating how the Democrats and their Deep State have weaponized government funds.

The emerging contours of USAID’s unaccountable and injurious weaponization of public funds for progressive aims are a repulsive entity using the American people’s money to wage war against Americans and our allies around the world. Using passthroughs, both internationally and domestically, USAID has foisted progressive imperialism upon our more culturally traditional nations, including the United States; interfered in elections and otherwise destabilized allies who were not leftist enough; created media echo chambers by subsidizing leftist information outlets; and even underwriting groups designated as extremist/terrorist organizations. In sum, USAID has knowingly, willfully, and deliberately abetted the undermining of America’s domestic unity, prosperity, security, and tranquility, and that of many of our allies.

Eyes welling with crocodile tears and cynically cradling the poor as props to shield their rampant malfeasance, the paymasters of USAID claim removing their control of these tens of billions of dollars will wreak havoc on indigent peoples. It will wreak havoc on USAID’s NGOs and sundry Democrat Party cohorts’ taxpayer-subsidized funding streams. But the harsh truth is that USAID’s multibillion-dollar laundry mat of passthroughs and unconscionable expenditures cheats the poor and the hungry. Every dollar USAID’s now-fired partisan political progressive hacks siphoned off for their faddish left-wing projects at home or to foment instability in an ally of America abroad was another dollar’s worth of food stolen from the mouths of starving children in a developing nation.

Perhaps it is a tender mercy that these administrative state mountebanks’ hubris renders them immune to self-awareness. For if they were capable of it, they would die of shame.

Nonetheless, these brazen zombies of the Deep State lumber into the federal courtrooms of their judicial activist cronies and beseech them to forestall the destruction of USAID, to allow them to keep their grubby, self-entitled mitts on your hard-earned money; and to persist in reigning supreme and impervious over the sovereign citizenry.

Consequently, carrying the historical analogy further, in the struggle to reassert the sovereignty of the citizenry over their servant government, by creating and directing the DOGE, President Trump has won a battle against a well-entrenched bastion of the Administrative State. But, as with the Battle for North Africa, other engagements in even more well-fortified theaters remain to be stormed.

Recognizing the hard slog ahead is not meant to diminish the present gleam of victory against the federal Leviathan or chill the warmed and cheered hearts of MAGA supporters and Republican-populists. The Battle of El Alamein was a key step in rolling back and ultimately defeating the Axis.

Thus, it is wise to also recall the caution the Prime Minister advised in the warm glow of an initial victory: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Fight on!

Liberals are frothing at the mouth over Elon Musk and DOGE’s access to sensitive information as they sift through expenditures at the US Treasury, USAID, and other departments.

And after weeks of throwing the most transparently telling tantrums over auditing the US government and slashing waste, fraud, and abuse, the left thought they’d NAILED Musk, DropSiteNews – a spinoff founded by former reporters from “The Intercept” 

According to DropSite, the State Department was “forecast” to pay for a $400 million contract for armored Teslas in 2025, referencing a State Department spreadsheet that referenced $400 million worth of “Armored Tesla” vehicles. The spreadsheet was then mysteriously changed to exclude “Tesla” from the line item. 

The report was soon picked up by NPR and the New York Times,

Except, nobody did basic journalism until it was too late – because it was the Biden administration that originally included the potential procurement, and the spreadsheet was wiped of Tesla references in December 2024 – also by the Biden administration.

And of course, MSNBC‘s Rachel Maddow peddled the lie that “Musk has convinced the government to spend $400 million on armored Tesla’s. Definitely not corrupt and ripping us all off?”

Except, That was all done under Biden.

Watch:

I guess Maddow owes Elon an apology?

She accused Elon of corruption?

What size $$$ lawsuit could be brought against her/MSNBC for defamation of character?

— floridanow1 (@floridanow1) February 14, 2025

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Teddy Roosevelt once said, “profanity is the parlance of the fool.” Democrats appear to be increasingly finding relief from both reality and sanity in profanity. Democratic members have been complaining that left-wing groups have been targeting them to be more aggressive and “fight harder” in the face of the fast-paced actions of President Donald Trump. 

Their response appears to be ratcheting up “rage rhetoric” with profanity and violent language. 

Last week, Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) captured the new norm by yelling at a rally that “I don’t swear in public very well, but we have to f**k Trump. Please don’t tell my children that I just did that.”

The key, it appears, is for her constituents to hear it. She is not alone. (Warning: profane language)

Politicians and pundits have seemingly tried to outdo each other in proving their bona fides to the far left. MSNBC host and former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki pledged on Jon Stewart’s “The Weekly Show” podcast  that she has “retired from the world of Democratic messaging” and ” speaking in a manner that was so academic and Ivory Tower.” She promised to drop “the disconnected academic Ivory Tower elite language that is too often used by Democrats, sometimes on cable television.” Instead, Psaki called on the left to “break some s–t.”

This is not a new trend. Law professors and legal pundits have long struggled to maintain a certain decorum and professionalism. However, during the Trump years, there was a similar race to the bottom as figures like Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe regularly engaging in name calling and profanity.

Just last week, a professor was restored to his teaching duties after being suspended for profane attacks on Trump. It is now considered required virtue signaling to use violent or profane language to show that you are no milquetoast moderate.

Many on the far left like former CNN anchor Don Lemon have turned the same profanity of members of the media who are not sufficiently aggressive and open in opposing Trump.

What is most striking about this race to the bottom is that it is a concession to the far left that writes off any effort to appeal to moderate and independent voters who supported Trump. The Democrats found their party captured by the most extreme elements of their base and alienated most of the country. Now, politicians and pundits are rushing to protect themselves by joining the mob.

In some cases, the effort is painfully awkward like Schumer’s effort to become a rabble-rousing populist. Even CNN has been unable to hold back:

When Democrats are not stringing together lines of profanity, they appear to be creating a new unintelligible language:

George Washington once referred to cursing and swearing as a “foolish and wicked practice” and a “vice so mean and low” that no self-respecting politician would stoop to use such language.

The rise of rage rhetoric is a measure of how politicians are now surrendering to the most extreme voices in their party. It is a matter of simple survival. These politicians believe that they cannot stay in office if they allow anyone to move to the left of their positions. To maintain their power, they are willing to join the mob before it turns on them.

We saw the same pandering with members embracing the violent group Antifa. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump.

It will not work. Today revolutionaries often become tomorrow’s reactionaries. As rage and violent rhetoric become normalized, the expectations of the far left simply shift to demand greater demonstrations of fealty. As figures like Psaki call for Democrats to “break some sh*t,” the ruin and rampage is unlikely to end with a marginal increase in ratings at MSNBC. At some point, breaking stuff becomes insatiable and uncontrollable.

That is the point, discussed in my new book, where rage rhetoric becomes state rage where free speech is often the first casualty.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

After nearly 500 days in captivity, three Israeli hostages – including an American dual citizen, were released by Hamas on Saturday, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians freed from Israeli prisons.

They include American-Israeli Sagui Dekel-Chen, Russian-Israeli Alexandre Troufanov and Argentinian-Israeli Iair Horn. They were freed in a handover ceremony amid a crowd of Hamas militants and supporters in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis in the sixth such exchange of the ceasefire.

“There’s no place like home,” Dekel-Chen was heard telling medical staff, after being handed over to the Red Cross. Various reports said the freed looked healthier than the last hostages let go, who were very emaciated and gaunt.

But President Trump quickly chimed in after this latest exchange, saying that all Israeli captives must be released from Gaza today.

“Hamas has just released three Hostages from GAZA, including an American Citizen. They seem to be in good shape! This differs from their statement last week that they would not release any Hostages,” he wrote on Truth Social account.

The statement added, “Israel will now have to decide what they will do about the 12:00 O’CLOCK, TODAY, DEADLINE imposed on the release of ALL HOSTAGES. The United States will back the decision they make!“

This timeline has now come and gone. Trump previously warned (Monday) that all “hell” would break out if all captives aren’t freed by noon. But he seems to have backed off this language Saturday, saying instead Washington is ready to “back” whatever future action Israel takes.

But it seems Trump gave Netanyahu political cover to break the ceasefire – though who knows what parallel messages might be being communicated behind the scenes by the White House and US diplomats.

Hamas sends mother of hostage Matan Zangauker an hourglass plaque captioned ‘Time is running out’

Sent to her with released Iair Horn, who is made to display it on stage#Hamas #Israel pic.twitter.com/JwVSYHTlm0

— Global Nexus (@NexusGlobal01) February 15, 2025

Israeli army chief Herzi Halevi said Saturday it remains his and the military’s “duty to bring everyone back” and the IDF is “investing in many efforts for this purpose, and at the same time, we are preparing offensive plans.”

As for the Palestinians freed on Saturday, one told Al Jazeera, “The Israelis told us to ‘Welcome to hell.’ It was a hell,” he said. “From the first day, we were beaten badly. The beatings were brutal, tough and unbearable.”

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

During a joint interview Friday, Elon Musk and President Trump laughed together at how bad the media are at attempting to drive a wedge between them.

The pair sat down with Sean Hannity and expressed amusement at desperate efforts by the press to derail the DOGE train by suggesting Musk is usurping Trump’s authority.

🚨NEW: Trump and Elon Musk sit down with Sean Hannity and address the media’s attempt to break up the bromance

“It’s not working. I’ve seen all the headlines. “President Musk” The thing is, they’re not good at it. If they were I’d never be President.” 🔥pic.twitter.com/mxE9svAMaG

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) February 14, 2025

Hannity reasoned the criticism is an attempt to “divorce” the executive partnership and get the pair to “start hating each other.”

Trump described the attempts to “drive us apart,” noting “I see it all the time… Actually, Elon called me — he said, you know, ‘They’re trying to drive us apart.’ I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

“It’s not working. I’ve seen all the headlines. ‘President Musk’,” he continued.

“It’s just so obvious. They’re so bad at it. I used to think they were good at it. They’re actually bad at it because if they were good at it, I’d never be president,” Trump said.

“You know what I have learned, Elon. The people are smart. They get it,” Trump told Musk, noting that no one is falling for the leftist media bullshit anymore.

The full interview airs Tuesday.

It’s the duo that the legacy media and co feared most which is precisely why they are doing everything they can to disrupt it.

— Klay Thompson (@Thompsonklay) February 14, 2025

Legacy media failed miserably. The sky is the limit for DOGE.

— Brad Lathrop (@BradLathrop) February 14, 2025

Legacy media is so dead

— Guto Guedes |🇧🇷  (@oproprioguedes) February 14, 2025

Legacy media hates the American people.

— RedpillGoku™ (@redpillgoku) February 14, 2025

Elon’s face, calculating what possible memes will be made out of this, is hilarious.

— Aaron Johnson (@johnson_aaronr) February 15, 2025

*  *  *

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