How Trump Is Using Truth Social to Concoct and Spread Conspiracy Theories

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2 years ago

October 29, 2024

How Trump Is Using Truth Social to Concoct and Spread Conspiracy Theories

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Distracted and Bogged Down, Trump and Xi Enter a Summit of Reduced Ambitions

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14 minutes ago

May 12, 2026

Press Room

Distracted and Bogged Down, Trump and Xi Enter a Summit of Reduced Ambitions

This is not how President Trump wanted to arrive in China.

When he delayed his long-awaited trip to Beijing by six weeks, Mr. Trump was betting he would arrive in Beijing this week having forced the Iranians to capitulate to his demands. He anticipated that by now the shattered Iranian leadership would have agreed to turn over its nuclear stockpile, forgo its atomic ambitions and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The message to President Xi Jinping would have been clear: Chinese declarations of a superpower in decline were premature.

Instead, Mr. Trump will arrive on Wednesday with many in China wondering how he got bogged down by a far lesser power in a war he started. Iran’s nuclear stockpile is exactly where it was, still under the rubble of an American bombing raid last June. The Strait of Hormuz, through which China gets more than 30 percent of its oil and a bit less of its natural gas, remains closed, with no obvious plan to pry it open again.

And Mr. Trump looks, as Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany said two weeks ago, “humiliated” by a smaller power, having entered the conflict “with no truly convincing strategy.”

But the war is also tricky for Mr. Xi. For all of China’s global ambitions, he has been unable and unwilling to come to the aid of Iran, a political partner and key supplier, and has offered no plan of his own to resume the vital flow of China-bound oil and gas.

The result is that this is a summit like few others. The world’s two major superpowers, eager to demonstrate their dominance, are both bogged down and uncertain about how the Iran conflict will play out in the context of their struggle for military, economic and technological dominance.

The result is that the ambitions for this summit have been greatly scaled back. The honor guards and celebrations will remain intact, and Mr. Trump is bringing a dozen or so of America’s most powerful business executives with him, from Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX to Tim Cook, the soon-to-retire chief executive of Apple, to the top executives of Citi, BlackRock, Blackstone, Boeing and Goldman Sachs.

But the early hopes that Mr. Trump will finally begin to address the larger issues that threaten to drive the two nations into a new Cold War competition are quickly fading. The Iran war has been so all-consuming at the White House that, beyond trade and other economic issues, very little has been prepared in advance.

The chief negotiator with China leading up to the trip here has been Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, evidence of how central Mr. Trump regards the bilateral trade and economic relationship. But turning to the Treasury secretary to take the lead would have been unthinkable in most previous administrations, where the secretary of state and the national security adviser — both jobs currently held by Marco Rubio — would insist on purview over the entirety of the complex relationship.

“For the first time since Kissinger,” R. Nicholas Burns, a longtime American diplomat who was ambassador to China under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., “the secretary of state and national security adviser are not driving the relationship with China.” (Kissinger also held both jobs.)

That may reflect Mr. Trump’s own shifts on China after he came to office for a second term. He ran as a China hawk, denouncing its trade practices and accusing it of stealing American jobs and intellectual property. His first national security strategy, published in 2017, described China and Russia together as challenging “American power, influence and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity.” His second, in 2025, described them as potential partners.

That shift will likely be on display this week. Administration officials concede that their Chinese counterparts have refused to talk about their remarkably rapid nuclear weapons expansion, much less the new arms control debates swirling around artificial intelligence. Early hopes for a broad trade framework that gets at the critical issues tearing at their relationship — who controls supply chains, and what kind of investments each nation is willing to tolerate in the other — may get short shrift.

Mr. Rubio will be along. And so will Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, an unusual, apparently last-minute participant.

Of course, there will be announcements on sales of billions of dollars in American soybeans, which the Chinese need to buy anyway, and doubtless billions in Boeing airplanes and parts. Mr. Xi learned early that the key to dealing productively with Mr. Trump is to start with a full order book for American goods, all the more important because the American trade deficit with China has continued to surge, propelled by China’s overproduction of manufactured goods, which has prompted deflation in Beijing.

As in Mr. Trump’s first term, the rest of the conversation is still something of a mystery, with much left to the private meetings between Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi. Robert Hormats, who helped prepare for some of Kissinger’s first meetings with the Chinese, noted this week that “most of a summit’s outcome should be embedded in the draft communiqué, meticulously crafted by senior advisers and pre-agreed by the two leaders.” The purpose was to “leave no room for misunderstandings or differing characterizations between the two sides in the aftermath.”

At the end of this week, White House officials say, there may be no communiqué at all. Aside from trade and tariffs, which are likely to dominate the summit, here is a look at some of the most contentious issues:

A Growing Nuclear Arsenal

When the last remaining major nuclear arms control agreement, New START, expired between the United States and Russia in February, Mr. Trump said it made sense to negotiate a new treaty only if China — which now has the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal, and the fastest-growing — was a party to a new accord. In January, in an interview with The New York Times, he said that he planned to bring that up with Mr. Xi, and that the Chinese were open to the idea.

They are not. White House officials say that in the lead-up to the summit, China’s private position was the same as its public one: There is no reason to enter negotiations with Washington and Moscow until Beijing has an arsenal comparable to those of the two other powers. The United States and Russia each have about 1,550 weapons deployed, the limit under New START, but with the treaty’s expiration, they are both free to expand those numbers. According to the Pentagon’s public estimates, China has around 600 weapons, a number expected to rise to 1,000 by 2030 and ultimately to 1,500.

Mr. Trump is likely to raise the topic, one of his senior aides told reporters on Sunday. But don’t expect Mr. Xi to say much.

Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence

Eleven years ago, President Barack Obama and Mr. Xi stood in the Rose Garden of the White House and described what amounted to a first accord between the two countries on limiting state-sponsored cyberattacks. Mr. Xi said. “Confrontation will lead to losses on both sides,” Mr. Xi said.

The impetus had been the theft of more than 20 million sensitive personnel records from the Office of Personnel Management. Yet the accord was already unraveling within two years, as China turned to outside contractors to conduct the attacks, and reserved the most sensitive operations for its Ministry of State Security.

In recent times, China has embedded itself into American networks with two very different kinds of cyberintrusions. One is apparently aimed at shutting down American power grids and water supplies in case of a conflict over Taiwan, another at sophisticated espionage that bored deep into the Justice Department’s secret systems, among others.

Now the artificial intelligence competition between China and the United States is making the cybersecurity problem even harder. If there is any technological development that should prompt both leaders to tackle this issue, it is the sudden shock of Mythos, the Anthropic model that has not been released to the public because it is expert at finding vulnerabilities in the computer code in a matter of milliseconds, speeding up hacking. That is a deeper threat to the systems that control everything from electric grids to missile targeting systems.

Mr. Trump is considering an executive order that would require all such new models to undergo a government review before they are released, a reversal of the administration’s approach so far. But American experts believe a Chinese equivalent may only be months away, and the only arms control that might work in this arena is one in which the two countries work together.

So far the only agreement in recent times on artificial intelligence came between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi, who agreed in 2024 not to allow A.I. products to control nuclear weapons. And that basic, common-sense accord took months.

Taiwan

The White House says to expect no significant changes on Washington’s policy toward Taiwan, dismissing talk that Mr. Trump might be persuaded by Mr. Xi to be more explicit in opposing Taiwanese independence.

Chinese officials have been urging Mr. Trump to change the wording American officials use, from saying that the United States “does not support” Taiwan independence to actively “opposing” it.

It is unlikely that change will happen, at least in any formal way. But Mr. Xi may be counting on Mr. Trump using informal language to speak about a subject in which every word is parsed and measured. Looming over the discussions: what would happen to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which makes most of the chips that go into building A.I. models and that power the iPhone and countless American weapons systems.

Supply Chains

Past generations of diplomats who dealt with China struggled with questions like how a non-market economy could integrate with a market one. Now the question is how to deal with two countries that believe they are overdependent on each other.

Mr. Trump’s administration is intensifying a drive to hunt down and replace every source of Chinese supply for critical American systems, particularly weapons. That means building new sources of everything from rare earth processing to the manufacturing of many kinds of semiconductors.

China is doing the same, seeking to wean itself from relying on U.S. technology. And while the two sides insist they are seeking to “de-risk” rather than “decouple” their economies, these projects are clearly intended to prepare for a day when the two nations are in a deep Cold War, or a hot one. Washington’s limits on sending the fastest semiconductors to China, and Beijing’s on rare earths mined chiefly in China, could be just a start.

But presidents do not usually talk supply chains. And that is unlikely to change.

“Gone is any pretense of solving the major structural issues at the heart of the world’s most important bilateral relationship: China’s mercantilist economic model, its designs on absorbing Taiwan and its active support of U.S. adversaries such as Iran and Russia,” Michael Froman, the U.S. trade representative during Mr. Obama’s second term, wrote last week. “As such, the summit is unlikely to alter the character and course of the U.S.-China relationship long-term. It is about managing for stability, not solving outstanding concerns.”

Politics

Pelosi, other Dems, and former Rep MTG dogpile on Trump over inflation, Iran war

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1 hour ago

May 12, 2026

Press Room

Pelosi, other Dems, and former Rep MTG dogpile on Trump over inflation, Iran war

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Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., other Democratic lawmakers and former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene targeted President Donald Trump while speaking out about inflation and the Iran war on Tuesday after the U.S. released new Consumer Price Index data.

“From the pump to the grocery store, the President’s reckless war of choice in Iran is hurting the American people. With inflation skyrocketing, working families are being forced to pay the price for Trump’s chaos — while he focuses on his billion-dollar ballroom,” Pelosi declared in a post on X.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., asserted in a post, “Trump promised to bring prices down. Prices under his policies are up. Inflation is 3.8 now. It was 3.0 when he started. His betrayal of his base in launching a war in Iran has been an absolute disaster.”

INFLATION CONTINUED TO RISE IN APRIL AS IRAN WAR IMPACTED ENGERY PRICES

U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., listen as President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 24, 2026. (Mandel NGAN / AFP via Getty Images)

Greene, a vociferous Trump critic who had previously been a staunch Trump ally, wrote, “Inflation is rising and gas is over $4.50 per gallon all because Trump went to war with Iran. Not at all what America voted for.”

The former House Republican departed from office in the middle of her two-year term earlier this year after a falling-out with the president.

The AAA national average price for regular gas is currently $4.504, which is below the record of $5.016 set in June of 2022 during President Joe Biden’s White House tenure.

JEFFRIES CALLS OUT TRUMP-ERA GAS PRICES AFTER TELLING REPUBLICANS NOT TO POLITICIZE PUMP PAIN UNDER BIDEN

“Inflation is accelerating because of Trump’s illegal war that is skyrocketing gas prices. We need to stop this war NOW,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., declared in a post on X.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House for comment.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Tuesday said that the consumer price index (CPI) – a broad measure of how much everyday goods like gasoline, groceries and rent cost – rose 0.6% from a month ago and is 3.8% higher than last year. That’s the highest level since May 2023.

GOP SENATOR INTRODUCES BILL TO SUSPEND GAS TAX AFTER TRUMP ENDORSES PLAN

President Donald Trump attends a Small Business Summit in the East Room of the White House in Monday, May 4, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

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The June 2022 CPI report, which was released in July of that year during Biden’s presidency, stated, “The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 1.3 percent in June on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 1.0 percent in May,” noting, “Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 9.1 percent before seasonal adjustment.”

Alex Nitzberg is a writer for Fox News Digital.

Politics

Commentary: Those $1,000 Trump accounts don’t match the hype

Published

2 hours ago

May 12, 2026

Press Room

Commentary: Those ,000 Trump accounts don’t match the hype

Proponents say the Trump accounts will be better than Social Security. Don’t believe them.

Here’s a riddle for you: A conservative Republican senator, a top economic advisor to the Trump White House and a venture capitalist walk into a conference room at a financial conference and claim a new government program will be a boon for all American families.

Question: Do you think these people are looking out for your interests?

If you trust Sen. Ted Cruz, economic advisor Kevin Hassett and millionaire Brad Gerstner to do so, feel free to stop reading here.

Here’s the dirty little secret: Trump accounts are Social Security personal accounts.

— Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) reveals that Trump accounts are designed to threaten Social Security

If you’re skeptical, read on.

But keep in mind that Cruz (R-Tex.) was last seen in these pages promoting yet another big tax break for the 1%, Hassett appeared the other day on Fox Business arguing that while Americans are spending a lot more on gasoline, “they’re spending more on everything else too” on their credit cards, as if forcing households to max out their credit is a good thing; and Gerstner is, well, a millionaire tech investor.

At their panel discussion on May 4 at the annual Milken conference, Cruz, Hassett, Gerstner and their interlocutor, Michael Milken, talked as though the Trump accounts would be so fabulous for average American families that they would obviate the need for Social Security.

“Here’s the dirty little secret,” Cruz said. “Trump accounts are Social Security personal accounts.”

Milken echoed that thought: “Do you have the right to decide where your money goes, or should you be giving it to the government and [letting] them decide where it goes?”

That gave the game away — this is yet another effort by Republicans and conservatives to end a program they’ve been trying to kill, and to give Wall Street firms a bigger bite of your retirement resources.

Let’s start with a primer about the Trump accounts, which were part of last year’s GOP budget bill and will be open to investment starting on July 4.

The headline pitch for these accounts is that they’ll be seeded with a one-time $1,000 government contribution for children born from 2025 through 2028, unless Congress extends the government donation. Accounts can be opened for children born before or after those dates, but they won’t get the government donation.

Families can add up to another $5,000 in contributions every year until the child reaches 18, but those donations won’t be tax-deductible.

The money must be invested in low-cost stock index funds or exchange-traded stock index funds, and can’t be withdrawn for any reason without penalty until age 18. After that, the funds can be withdrawn without penalty for certain purposes such as educational expenses or the purchase of a first home. The accounts eventually become converted to conventional individual retirement accounts, or IRAs, and distributions will be taxed as ordinary income, though family contributions will be returned tax-free.

That $1,000 donation is the best feature of the accounts. But that may be their only good feature. For almost all the financial goals confronting average American families, such as saving for college or retirement, they’re inferior to tax-advantaged savings plans already on the books.

Like those programs, they’re much more advantageous for wealthier than to low-income families: Wealthier families typically have the wherewithal to make their annual contributions, and get a larger break from the tax deferrals of investment growth within the accounts because their tax rates are higher.

Though their promoters claim that the accounts will level the economic playing field for all families — “helping the bottom 10%,” Hassett said on the panel — that’s not the case. “Clearly, the program is structured to subsidize savings for those who already have the capacity to save, rather than meaningfully closing the wealth gap,” observes Sheryl Rowling of Morningstar.

Another drawback cited by economists and financial planners is that the accounts are locked into corporate equity investments. Before the beneficiary reaches age 18, the investment mix can’t be adjusted. That’s dangerous because portfolio concentrations in corporate shares are inherently risky.

“A high school senior who plans to enroll in college next year cannot change the investment to a lower-risk portfolio,” say, to a mix of equities and bonds, notes Greg Leiserson of the Tax Law Center at NYU. “If the market crashes the summer before she plans to enroll, the Trump Account is of greatly reduced use.”

Trump account promoters have massively overstated the potential wealth gains for ordinary Americans. At the Milken conference, Cruz said that a child with a Trump account will have about $170,000 in it when he or she reaches 18 and $700,000 at age 35. “And very quickly after that, you get into the millions,” he said.

Cruz did acknowledge that those figures apply to households that “contribute regularly.” In fact, they apply largely to households that contribute the maximum $5,000 every year.

The White House estimates of potential returns are based on questionable assumptions about stock market gains over the 18-year periods in which the accounts will grow on a tax-deferred basis.

According to the government’s own estimates, the account of a family taking the $1,000 seed money but making no contributions beyond that would have as little as $2,577 in their account after 18 years if stock market returns come to 5.4% over that period.

The government estimates, however, that the account would hold $730,395 if the family contributes the maximum every year and the stock market returns more than 18%. Another 10 years of growth at that level, and the account would grow to $1.9 million when the child reaches age 28.

The problem with long-term market estimates, such as the ones offered by the White House, is that they’re highly variable. No 18-year periods are the same. One thousand dollars deposited in a hypothetical account invested in a Standard & Poor’s 500 index fund would grow to about $6,600 if its 18-year lifetime culminated in 2025; if the 18 years ended in 2008, however, that deposit would have grown only to $3,960. In the 18-year period that ended in 1960, the account would have grown only to $2,940. What will the next 18 years bring? Who knows?

Variability like this, along with the sheer uncertainty of stock market projections for the future, helped sink George W. Bush’s 2005 attempt to convert Social Security into private accounts, which was also pitched as a key to minting millionaires by the millions through the magic of the market.

I asked the White House to respond to these criticisms. Spokesman Kush Desai called my questions “both a stupid and out-of-touch take,” asserting that the accounts are “already shaping up to make a generational difference for working-class children.”

The truth is that if Trump were really intent on taking steps to “strengthen the financial security of American workers” and creating a “path to prosperity for a generation of American kids,” as he claims to be, he and his GOP followers in Congress wouldn’t have scissored away the American safety net, which is what they’ve done.

They wouldn’t have imposed new work requirements and narrowed eligibility standards for food stamps, resulting in the exclusion of more than 3 million people from the program, a decline of 8%. They wouldn’t have cut nearly $1 trillion in funding for Medicaid over 10 years, jeopardizing coverage for 3.6 million young adults. They wouldn’t have allowed Affordable Care Act premium subsidies to expire, resulting in a drop in Obamacare enrollments of about 1.2 million Americans this year compared with last year.

If they really cared about educational opportunities for “a generation of American kids,” they wouldn’t have narrowed eligibility for higher education Pell grants, and wouldn’t slash research grants for universities coast to coast.

So how can families better prepare for college and retirement expenses? For education, 529 plans are probably preferable to Trump accounts. The investment choices are more flexible, withdrawals are tax-free at the federal level and sometimes at state levels if used for most education expenses, and there are no federal limits on contributions (contributions aren’t tax-deductible).

For retirement, advisers have been favoring Roth IRAs. Contributions are not tax-deductible, and this year can be made by couples filing jointly with taxable income up to $242,000 ($153,000 for singles) and are limited to $7,500 a year ($8,600 for those 50 and older). But withdrawals aren’t taxed if you’ve held the account for at least five years and you take the money out after you turn 59 1⁄2.

The bottom line, then, is this. Take the $1,000 if your child is eligible. As Rowling wisely advises, “Any time the government offers free money, you should take it.”

As for the rest, treat any claims offered by Trump account promoters as inherently suspect.