TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES:  President Trump ended his cabinet meeting yesterday with an angry rant calling Somalis immigrants in Minnesota, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, “garbage” who should “go back to where they came from.” Trump said: “I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don’t want ‘em in our country.”

  ICE is now prepared to make a surge into Minnesota to round up illegal immigrants.

  Trump opened his last cabinet meeting of the year with a rambling speech claiming to have had the most successful and consequential first year in presidential history. Consequential, certainly. 

  These meetings are held as an opportunity for cabinet members to praise President Trump and tell him they are fulfilling his every wish that makes America and the President greater. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat at Trump’s elbow saying, “Everything this president does is driven by the American people … the motivation is always you, the American people. His audience was the cabinet, the press, and the president. 

  Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth echoed Trump’s claim that Russia never would have invaded Ukraine if Trump had been in office

  Trump repeatedly blamed President Joe Biden for everything he believes was wrong that he’s had to correct and took swipes at the press. “Fake news.” Ad infinitum, Trump said the 2020 election was rigged. He claimed to have “aced” his cognitive exam … “I got every single question right” … which tells you he’s lying because it’s impossible to answer every question and challenge “correctly” in a cognitive test.

  Trump opened by attacking the Democrats on the issue of affordability of living for Americans. Americans are complaining about high prices for food and housing but Trump said dismissively, “The word ‘affordability’ is a con job by the Democrats.”

FOG OF WAR: After first denying that US forces killed survivors in the water, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blamed the “fog of war” for a follow-up attack last September that killed men whose boat was destroyed and were no longer a threat.

  Hegseth said he watched the initial attack on live video back in September but left the room before the second strike that killed survivors of a suspected drug boat that was clearly out of commission.

  In the cabinet meeting Hegseth bragged that, “We’ve only just begun striking narco boats and putting narco boats at the bottom of the ocean because they’ve been poisoning American people.” He said, though, that now they’re having trouble finding boats to sink.

THE GIVING TREE: Tech billionaire Michael Dell and his wife Susan announced the gift of $6.25 billion to 25 million children for the savings and investment accounts to be known as “Trump Accounts” established in the Republican “big Beautifull Bill.” Each kid would get $250 from Dell.

  The federal government is expected to give $1,000 to children born between January 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028. The Dell gift extends to children up to 10 years old, limiting eligibility to those who live in a ZIP code with a median household income below $150,000.

THE REGIME: 

— Former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández was freed from prison in West Virginia after being pardoned by President Trump for his drug trafficking conviction. Federal authorities had said that Hernández ran “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world” that flooded the US with drugs.

  “Well, he was the president, and they had some drugs being sold in their country, and because he was the president, they went after him — that was a Biden horrible witch hunt,” the president told reporters. “A lot of people in Honduras asked me to do that, and I did it.”

  Trump decided to pardon Hernández after receiving a letter in which he addressed the President as “Your Excellency” and described himself as the victim of “political persecution” by the Biden-Harris administration, comparing his legal troubles to those of Trump. Claiming he was convicted on the word of “uncorroborated statements of convicted drug traffickers”  Hernández  said, “I have found strength from you, Sir, your resilience to get back in that great office notwithstanding the persecution and prosecution you faced, all for what, because you wished to make your country Great Again.”

  That did the trick.

  Where Hernández goes to live is unannounced but he would qualify as “the worst of the worst” for deportation. 

— The Costco discount chain sued the Trump administration for a refund of the tariffs it has paid on imported goods in the event that the Supreme Court rules them illegal, becoming possibly the first to filer such a suit.

— The Trump administration this week fired eight New York immigration judges who work under the umbrella of the Justice Department. That makes 14 New York immigration judges fired this year and nearly 100 nationwide.

— Right wing opinionists Laura Loomer and former Rep. Matt Gaetz were among the new members of the alternative “press” that replaced the professionals at the Pentagon’s first press conference since the real reporters refused to sign on to restrictive coverage rules. Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary, said in her half-hour briefing that,  the “legacy media chose to self-deport.” 

THE SPIN RACK: The city of San Francisco sued a list of companies that make colorful cereals, snacks, and assorted junk foods, claiming that ultra-processed foods containing non-natural ingredients put a healthcare burden on the city. It is the first suit of its kind.  — A deep sea search will be resumed for the missing Maylasia ailines jet that went down in March 2014 with 239 people.

BELOW THE FOLD:  A University of Oklahoma graduate-student instructor was put on leave after giving a student a zero on a psychology paper. 

  The assignment was to evaluate a study about popularity among children and “gender typicality.” Student Samantha Fulnecky, a junior, cited only the Bible in her arguments and flunked. Now she’s suing, claiming religious discrimination.  

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