(Steve Karnowski/AP photo)

A federal judge has thrown out Justice Department grand jury subpoenas targeting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) after ruling they were part of a revenge campaign by the Trump administration.

U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, tossed the subpoenas on Monday, calling them “blatantly unlawful.”

“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action-particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take-is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand-jury process,” the ruling reads.

The document goes on: “The only question, then, is whether the challenged subpoenas were issued for one of these forbidden purposes. The Court has no doubt that they were.”

Walz and Frey — along with Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her (D), and officials in Ramsey and Hennepin counties — were subpoenaed back in January as part of a Department of Justice obstruction probe related to immigration enforcement in the state.

In a statement posted to X after the judge’s ruling, Walz said it was “a victory for the rule of law and our democracy.”

“An independent judiciary is a pillar of our democracy,” Walz said. “It’s one reason why the U.S. has been that shining city on the hill for nearly 250 years.”

Frey told the Associated Press that the probe into him and the other officials was “never about justice, law, and order, but the absence of it,” adding, “Subpoenaing political opponents because they spoke on behalf of their constituents violates the core tenets of our democracy and human decency.”

The subpoenas were issued a week after President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act if the “corrupt politicians of Minnesota” failed to “stop” widespread and ongoing ICE protests across the state.

“If the corrupt politicians of Minnesota don’t obey the law and stop the professional agitators and insurrectionists from attacking the Patriots of I.C.E., who are only trying to do their job, I will institute the INSURRECTION ACT, which many Presidents have done before me, and quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place in that once great State,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time.

The post ‘Blatantly Unlawful’: Federal Judge Tosses Walz and Frey Subpoenas After Finding Trump Admin Was Harassing Political Opponents first appeared on Mediaite.

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I generally love my Whoop band, but there's no question that the company's subscription-only model isn't for everyone. A few weeks ago, a hobbyist created an app that can connect to your old Whoop 4.0 strap. I loved the idea, since an independent app sounds like a great way to keep your data private and to make use of an otherwise obsolete piece of hardware. But as I worked through the steps of compiling and testing the freshly posted code, I noticed more apps like it popping up on Reddit and Github.

Since then, some of these Whoop-compatible apps have been taken down, at least one of those at the request of a Whoop executive. Here is what I learned in talking to several of those apps’ developers, and whether I think independent Whoop apps have a future. (Tentatively: yes.) 

Are these independent Whoop apps legal?

“In cases that violate our IP, trademarks, or terms of use, we have reached out to individuals to take down their apps,” a Whoop spokesperson said to me in a statement. The developers that I’ve spoken to, for their part, believe that what they’re doing is legal and ethical.

Whoop’s position is that the value of the Whoop platform is in its proprietary analysis and features, which others have tried to imitate but cannot directly replicate. The company makes an API available to developers, through which they can access the data Whoop has processed. Using the API requires working through Whoop’s system—meaning the user must have a Whoop membership and allow the company to process their data. This is a different scenario than what’s going on with the independent projects I’m writing about today. These new projects aim to let individuals use Whoop hardware without any contact with the company itself, and without ever having had a subscription.

But before I get into why I’m excited about the independent projects, I’d like to include Whoop’s entire statement to me, so you can see where they’re coming from: 

“WHOOP is always excited to see how passionate our members are about using data to better understand their health and performance. WHOOP is designed as an integrated hardware, software, and data platform. It is not possible to access WHOOP proprietary health insights, coaching, analytics, or signature metrics and features—including Recovery, Strain, Sleep scoring, Stress Monitor, Healthspan, and WHOOP Coach—outside of the WHOOP membership experience. The value of WHOOP comes from turning continuous physiological data into validated, personalized, and actionable insights.

“We support third-party app development with our developer APIs and have even created an easy-to-use developer platform. However, not all third-party apps or independent tools are created, reviewed, or authorized by WHOOP.”

The promise of independent Whoop apps

Whoop has always been a high-end product. It’s a screenless fitness tracker, now in its fifth generation, that you wear as a wristband. It captures your heart rate and motion data, and sends that to an app on your phone, which in turn sends it to the cloud to be processed. You pay for this service—$239/year is the typical price—and in turn Whoop gives you detailed analysis of how well you’re recovering from your exercise.

Whoop’s app is good, in my opinion; it goes well beyond basic tracking, and I still think it’s worth the money if you’re a devoted athlete or you really like to nerd out about how well your body is handling the stress you put it under. 

But for as long as Whoop has been around, there have been people wondering if they could use the device for their own purposes. While we finally have competing devices with no required subscription (like the Fitbit Air), there are also a lot of old Whoop devices out in the world. Nearly everyone who had a Whoop 4.0 has probably since upgraded to the 5.0 (seeing as the company sends out the newer version for free), leaving their old strap as e-waste. What if there was a way to repurpose that old hardware? 

That’s the idea behind apps like Noop, Goose, Wearable, and more. These newer apps aren’t the only ones compatible with Whoop hardware, but they appeared recently and they quickly overtook several older, long-simmering projects that had been working on the same question: How can an independent app read data from a Whoop device? Because if a free app can read the device’s data over Bluetooth, you could use the hardware for your own purposes without the Whoop app or subscription service.

How a non-Whoop app can talk to a Whoop band (and why it’s taken so long to get here)

Screenshots from the Noop app Credit: Beth Skwarecki/Noop

The idea of an independent app for a Whoop band isn’t new. Several projects have tried it over the years, with varying levels of success. One I found useful was called Whoomp, and it was simple to use: you load a special web page in your browser, and your computer begins communicating with the Whoop device over Bluetooth. (A public version of Whoomp used to be available here.) The first time I tried it was a thrill: I put on an old Whoop 4.0 device and saw my heart rate on my computer screen. I could press a button on the web page and feel the device buzz on my wrist. The device hadn't been connected to my phone for years; I felt like Dr. Frankenstein bringing the dead to life through the power of technology.

As several developers told me, a Whoop device, fresh out of the box, communicates certain things over Bluetooth. If a computer or phone communicates back in the right way, the two devices can become paired and bonded, and send data and commands back and forth. To have a functional Whoop-like app, the phone has to know how to hold up its end of the conversation.

The Whoop device uses BLE, or Bluetooth Low Energy. That’s a type of connection that many other wearables and devices also use. But Whoop has not publicly released instructions for exactly how phones or computers can access Whoop’s features over BLE. The official Whoop app knows what to say to the device to get it to bond and to transfer data, but independent developers had to figure out, through trial and error, how to decode the language that the device “speaks.” This was a slow process, and until recently, programs like Whoomp were for people who wanted to tinker with the device, knowing that they only had partial functionality. A project like Whoomp could read your heart rate, sure, but it’s not a drop-in replacement for the official Whoop app or subscription. 

How the independent Whoop apps appeared (and disappeared)

A few weeks ago, developer Johnathan Middleton posted on the Whoop subreddit that he had managed, with the aid of Claude Code, to decode more of the Whoop 4.0 communication protocol than had previously been known. He posted the code for an iPhone app and a server that you can run on your own computer to process the data. The project was on the software repository Github under the name "my-whoop," which has since changed to "Wearable." It is still available here, but to use it, you’ll need to know how to compile and sideload an iPhone app—not a beginner-friendly process. 

I spoke with Middleton on a video call. He’s a software engineer in his day job, and says he created the Wearable project over a weekend. He used Claude Code to automate some of the more tedious tasks, like sending signals to the device and checking how it responded. Middleton’s work built on the decoding work accomplished with earlier projects, which he credits in his notes. (That’s how I found out about Whoomp, one of the projects cited.) The resulting app looks a bit like Whoop’s, with scores and analysis that Middleton calculates based on published algorithms; they won’t necessarily match Whoop’s proprietary scores.

Middleton announced his project on the Whoop subreddit on May 30. On June 2, another developer announced a project called Goose, which is meant to work with the newer 5.0/MG bands. On June 7, yet another developer posted the first of many announcements about a project called Noop that builds off both Wearable and Goose to communicate with both types of bands. 

I’ve been in touch with Noop’s developer over email; he indicated his pronouns but did not disclose his name. In the initial announcement, he said proudly that he used $1,500 worth of AI tokens to develop the app. More Reddit posts followed, and the code has been updated hundreds if not thousands of times in the short time the project has been online. Redditors on the Whoop forum have been rolling their eyes at “all these vibe coded apps” because, yes, more have popped up since then. (Here’s Bandmate from June 4,  Seraph from June 11, a modified version of Goose also from June 11, and Edge from June 13.)

On June 17, I noted that Noop’s code was gone from Github (the platform that hosts code for pretty much all these projects). Noop’s developer said that he hadn’t heard anything from Whoop directly, but that Github took it down. He appealed the decision and the repository was reinstated. In the meantime,  he set up a mirror of the code here.

Whoomp disappeared from GitHub even earlier, on June 10. Its developer, John Fitzgerald, told me that Robert Johanson, Whoop’s VP of software, reached out to ask him to take the project down. Johanson also reached out to Middleton, the developer of Wearable, with a similar request, but Middleton kept his code available, and so far it’s still online. 

Goose was supposed to launch its app over TestFlight (a beta testing platform for iPhone apps) on June 13, but never did. I have not been able to get in touch with the developer. The code is still available on Github, but archived as read-only, suggesting that the project is dead.

How you run an unofficial Whoop app

When I decided to test Wearable—Middleton’s app, which was the first I came across—I faced quite the learning curve. Apple doesn’t allow hobbyists to compile apps and share them widely, at least not without a lot of extra steps. This makes sense from Apple’s perspective, since a mystery app could do all kinds of things to your iPhone you may not want it to. (For one thing, Apple requires that an app be signed by a developer, so you know who it came from.)

Bigger developers will often distribute an app for testing through a platform called TestFlight. You may have used this if you’ve ever beta-tested an iPhone app. Eventually, of course, such a developer might aim to have the app available on the real App Store. But if you just want to tinker with some code you downloaded, you need to be able to compile the app with Xcode, then sideload it (that is, transfer it locally, usually over a USB cable). To do that, well, let’s just say there were a lot of steps I had to figure out. I managed to build Wearable and load it onto my iPhone; later, when I was testing Noop, I found an unsigned .ipa (app) file that another hobbyist had created from Noop’s code, and I installed it via Sideloadly, which shortcut the process a bit—although that’s still risky, because it isn't easily confirmed that the .ipa contains the app I think it does.

The process is simpler on Android, but again, risky. Someone can give you an .apk file, which is already compiled and ready to install. Installing is as simple as clicking a link to the .apk from your Android phone, and tapping a button to say that, yes, you know you probably shouldn’t install this, but you want to anyway. 

But do these apps work?

Screenshots from Wearable as I was trying to connect to the device Credit: Beth Skwarecki / Wearable

I tried out several of the apps I’m writing about, with varying levels of success. Wearable detected my 4.0 strap and showed my live heart rate, but never managed to fully sync all my data. Noop, tested on an Android, managed to work with my 4.0 for a short time, but then I started getting errors. Noop on my iPhone was able to read data from my MG strap. Nothing I tried was 100% functional 100% of the time. 

That’s not unusual when you’re trying out code that’s still under development. Maybe I screwed up somehow, or maybe the apps are just buggy. It would take more methodical testing on my part to narrow down why I’m getting the problems I am. I’ve seen posts on Reddit from people who had more success than I did in getting Wearable and Noop working; Middleton showed me his phone with Wearable working smoothly.

If I took the time, I could possibly figure out what’s going wrong on my end and contribute some fixes to the code. That’s a nice thing about open source development: People work together to test and develop something that everyone can use. If the projects can survive Whoop’s legal threats, and if the developers stay interested enough to maintain the projects over time, we may have some useful, robust Whoop-alternative apps in the future. 

I’m looking forward to that. Reverse engineering, as these projects are called, is generally legal as long as the developer is not directly copying the company’s work or violating its terms of service. But most hobbyist developers aren’t prepared to fight legal battles even if they would theoretically win them, so takedown requests can often be enough to chill development. Aside from Noop, the projects I mentioned haven’t seen active development in at least the past week or so. I haven’t seen any new copycat apps on the subreddit, either. Feels pretty chilly to me.

Why I don’t think this is the end of alternative Whoop apps

For years, Whoop was the only device of its type. I wrote more about the state of smart bands here, but to summarize, there’s nothing special anymore about having a heart rate sensor on a wristband. Whoop’s branding and its top-notch app are the only advantages it has as a device; plenty of folks seem willing to abandon the platform if they can get an app for free, a device for cheap, or both.

Whoop surely knows this. The company is no longer pinning its business model to a single device (or app subscription), but has been branching out into the healthcare space. They now offer blood tests, which are pricey and repeatable. Earlier this year, Whoop joined Medicare’s ACCESS program. The Mayo Clinic and medical device company Abbott have both invested in Whoop, according to Forbes. The Whoop device and app may be the company's best-known products, but they're not the only way the company plans to make money.

Looking to the future, I hope that the Whoop-compatible apps stick around, and I think it’s likely that they will be legally able to. But will there be enough hobbyist developers with enough enthusiasm to debug, maintain, and distribute the apps, especially knowing that Whoop is watching over their shoulder? Will people who have old Whoop straps take a chance on these apps when they could just buy a Fitbit Air for $100 and a lot less hassle? 

Those are the questions I’m pondering. I’d love to have a reliable, free alternative to the Whoop app, or even to the Google Health app. Wearable devices are incredibly personal—they know every time your heart beats—and I don’t love that the only way to use these devices, in most cases, is to share that personal data with a large corporation. I think we should have independent apps, especially ones that work with abandoned tech. Here’s hoping they stick around, and keep improving.

Photo by: Jeff J. Newman/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

A wild new story on former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and her Hare Krishna guru’s influence on her policy actions has sent shockwaves through social media.

Sunday’s Washington Post article by investigative journalist Jon Swaine comes just days after Gabbard stepped down to manage her husband’s cancer treatments.

Swaine wrote that Gabbard grew up in “eccentric religious leader” Chris Butler’s breakaway Hare Krishna group that has been described by some ex-members as a “cult,” although the group denies that characterization.

Swaine set out on a year-long investigation to learn whether the “reclusive guru been secretly trying to steer Gabbard’s actions as a public official.” He reviewed tends of thousands of documents, declaring that “Their content was extraordinary.”

“Dozens of attached memos appeared to document directives and advice for Gabbard from her time in Congress. Some contained instructions on what legislation she should propose, which policies she should embrace and how she should conduct herself on television. They had an air of authority,” Swaine wrote.

Research fellow Kareem Rifai wrote on social media, “This is an utterly insane story: 25,000 documents reviewed by WaPo indicate that throughout Tulsi’s career, her political moves were controlled by her guru, cult leader Chris Butler. This woman was leading the world’s largest intelligence apparatus.”

The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum wrote, “So @jonswaine @washingtonpost has seen hundreds of documents containing evidence that Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, was directed throughout her career by the leader of the cult she grew up in.”

The Atlantic’s Shane Harris hailed Swaine’s “Extraordinary new reporting,” while former WaPo reporter said Swaine’s investigation, “presents powerful evidence that director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was deeply under the sway of her lifelong guru, a cultic leader who told her what to say and how to say it.”

Former WaPo reporter Marc Fisher wrote that Swaine’s investigation “presents powerful evidence that director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was deeply under the sway of her lifelong guru, a cultic leader who told her what to say and how to say it.”

More reactions below:

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The post ‘Utterly Insane!’ WaPo Story On Tulsi Gabbard’s Link to Religious ‘Guru’ Who Allegedly Guided Her Career Sends Shockwaves first appeared on Mediaite.

(Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images)

A New Washington Post exposé raises questions about former National Intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard and her Hare Krishna guru’s desire to shape world politics.

Investigative journalist Jon Swaine published his findings Sunday in a lengthy feature for the Washington Post about Gabbard’s relationship with Chris Butler, “the eccentric religious leader Gabbard once described as her guru.”

Swaine wrote that “Gabbard grew up in Butler’s breakaway Hare Krishna group” and that “Her parents held senior positions in the organization.”

“Butler’s followers practice a form of Hinduism that involves devotion to a single deity, in their case Krishna, and certain expectations around meditation, yoga and diet,” Swaine wrote. “Some former members, however, have called the group a cult and said disciples were isolated from the outside world, characterizations the group has denied.”

Swaine said he set out on a year-long investigation to learn whether the “reclusive guru been secretly trying to steer Gabbard’s actions as a public official” — first as a Democratic member of Congress, then as an independent, and most recently as a Republican Trump administration official.

Those two times, Gabbard took the oath of office on the sacred Hindu text the Bhagavad-Gita, “and has said she was proud to be the first Hindu American member of Congress,” Swaine wrote.

Gabbard, just days ago, officially stepped down from the Trump administration, saying she’s caring for her husband who’s battling cancer.

A former member of Butler’s sect turned over internal records to Swaine, “because she felt Gabbard misled voters about Butler’s role and his influence on her decision-making,” Swaine wrote. He also noted that some former members “have called the group a cult.”

Swaine said he reviewed thousands of emails and documents while reporting his story.

“Their content was extraordinary,” Swaine wrote. He added, “Dozens of attached memos appeared to document directives and advice for Gabbard from her time in Congress. Some contained instructions on what legislation she should propose, which policies she should embrace and how she should conduct herself on television. They had an air of authority.”

He continued:

I found a 173-page dossier from 2014 titled “TG Issues.” It compiled advice for Gabbard on dozens of topics — from taxes to the mysterious disappearance that year of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and more. The document was peppered with imperatives. “Start introducing bills,” it said on one issue. “Need to get on it and hit hard. Stop being weak,” it said on another.

“I thought, the documents suggested that someone had been telling Gabbard what to do. And…she appeared to have done it,” Swaine wrote.

“With Post colleague Aaron Schaffer, I compared Gabbard’s remarks in 32 TV interviews between 2014 and 2016 with the talking-points memos intended for them,” Swaine continued. “On 24 occasions, Gabbard used language in the memos almost verbatim. In the eight other instances, Gabbard used different words but promoted some of the same ideas.”

A source told Swaine that “Butler was obsessed with politics and wanted “to rule the world.”

Butler and his organization declined to comment for Swaine’s piece. After repeated requests for comment, Gabbard’s chief of staff sent Swaine a statement saying, the allegations “are a blatant example of anti-Hindu bigotry.”

A spokeswoman added, “I cannot imagine WaPo’s readers would be interested in yet another uncredible, bigoted attack on the DNI’s faith.”

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The post Tulsi Gabbard’s Entire Career Was Guided By an ‘Eccentric Religious Leader’ She Once Called Her ‘Guru’ — Wild Washington Post Story Suggests first appeared on Mediaite.

Joel Rubin, who served as deputy assistant secretary of state under former President Barack Obama, questioned Saturday why Israel and Lebanon aren’t at the peace talks in Switzerland, along with the U.S. and Iran.

Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed earlier Saturday, after Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire, reportedly killing 16 in Lebanon. U.S. Central Command spokesperson Tim Hawkins defiantly told reporters, “Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz. Traffic continues to flow, and U.S. forces are monitoring the situation to ensure this remains the case.”

Vice President JD Vance was expected to head to Switzerland, where Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff are preparing for peace talks with Iran on Sunday.

CNN’s Danny Freeman, in for Fredericka Whitfield, asked Rubin if he thought the talks would be “meaningful” and productive.

“I think talks will begin, but meaningful is a whole other order of magnitude, because, quite frankly, the hot issues that you just described a moment ago — like the fighting inside of Lebanon — that needs to be top of mind,” Rubin answered, continuing:

Yet, the Lebanese and the Israeli government officials to deal with it are not going to be there. They’re going to be here in Washington. And this symbolizes the whole disconnect that we have right now in this diplomacy, which is that it seems like there’s multiple parts that aren’t connecting to each other. And therefore, we’re seeing spoiler opportunities, like Hezbollah attacking Israeli troops and Israel responding. The Strait of Hormuz will be open or closed, it’s up to the Iranians on a daily basis. It’s a really unsynchronized diplomatic process right now.

President Donald Trump’s 14-point memorandum of understanding with Iran calls for an immediate end to military operations in Lebanon — a ceasefire that both the Israelis and Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters have defied. Iran blames the U.S. for failing to keep Israel in check.

Hezbollah controls southern Lebanon, where the majority of the fighting with Israel has taken place. Hezbollah’s leaders have refused to negotiate with Israel, and the Lebanese government has failed to controlled Hezbollah, both of which have made any peace deal difficult to enforce.

Watch above via CNN.

The post ‘Unsynchronized Diplomatic Process’: Former Obama Official Questions Why Lebanon and Israel Aren’t At Peace Talks first appeared on Mediaite.

Mariam Zuhaib/AP Images (Left)/Nancy Mace X (Right)

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) lashed out after facing a wave of mockery and fact-checking over her complaints about American taxpayers supposedly paying for “trans mice.”

“Animals should not be used for radical transgender experiments,” Mace wrote on X this week. “This is not science. This is ideological cruelty paid for by the American taxpayers.”

Included in Mace’s post was an image of a mouse touching a gloves hand with the message: “NO TRANS MICE.”

“Our TRANS MICE Act ends it. No federal funds may be used to conduct, support, or fund research aimed at altering an animal’s biological sex,” Mace wrote. “No hormones. No surgeries. No taxpayer dollars spent mutilating animals in the name of transgender ideology. his legislation brings accountability, ends taxpayer-funded cruelty, and ensures science serves the public, not ideology.”

The congresswoman was hit with a community note from X that added context about “trans mice,” noting a “transgenic mouse” is not a transgender animal. It is a term used to define mice who have received foreign DNA.

“‘Trans mice’ refers to transgenic mice not transgender mice. Transgenic mice are defined as mice that have incorporated foreign DNA into their genome, allowing for the study of gene function and disease mechanisms, particularly in cancer research,” the community note reads.

Mace pushed back, claiming she wasn’t actually talking about transgenic mice, but “federally funded transgender-related experiments on animals.” She did not deploy the term “trans mice” again.

“This post is not about transgenic mice. It is about federally funded transgender-related experiments on animals,” she wrote. “The bill is called the Transgender Research on Animals Now Stops and Money for Ideological Cruelty Eliminated Act, also known as the TRANS MICE Act. The Community Note addresses “transgenic mice,” which is a completely different topic.”

Critics were quick to roast Mace’s “trans mice” declaration, informing her “transgenic mice” have nothing to do with debates involving anyone being transgender.

“Transgenic mice are laboratory animals that have had foreign DNA, such as a human gene or a specific genetic marker, artificially inserted into their genome. They are used for scientific testing,” journalist Molly Jong-Fast wrote in response.

President Donald Trump claimed last year that taxpayers were funding “making mice transgender,” though he appeared to be referring to the same thing as the medical experiments in question were not studying gender-affirming care. He also had bragged also bragged about the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cancelling such contracts.

“The idea that scientists are making mice transgender is false,” journalist Laura Barrón-López noted for PBS at the time in a fact-check of the president. “The kinds of research experiments that President Trump and the White House were pointing to is basic scientific research. These studies were not studying if gender-affirming care works. That’s a legal medical treatment that’s endorsed by major U.S. medical associations.”

Others also ran fact checks on Trump’s claims, noting the mice-involved research being referenced was used to research asthma, cancer, and more.

The post Nancy Mace Roasted and Fact-Checked Over Post About Supposed ‘TRANS MICE’ Funded By Taxpayers first appeared on Mediaite.

Conservative journalist Jonah Goldberg slammed President Donald Trump on CNN’s Inside Politics for alienating U.S. allies like Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni.

Meloni fired back Friday at Trump’s claim that she “begged” him for a photo at the G7 this week, and that he acquiesced because he “felt sorry for her.”

Host Phil Mattingly, in for Dana Bash, played video of Meloni saying, “Donald Trump’s statements are completely made up. I am frankly astonished. I don’t know why the President of the United States behaves like this toward his allies. It’s not the first time. Moreover, I can only say it is disappointing that he does not show the same determination with the enemies of the west and of the United States, whose leaders he instead treats with far greater indulgence. There is one thing he should remember: neither I, nor Italy, ever beg.”

Goldberg began talking about ally alienation by referencing a sit-down interview Trump had with Axios Thursday, where he claimed he achieved “unconditional surrender” from Iran, and there were “no limits” on his power.

“Let’s go back to the context of that interview where he says, ‘We totally defeated Iran militarily. There are no limits to my power,'” Goldberg said. “The fact that he’s coming out of this week with this deal, saying that there are no limits to his power when he was forced to negotiate ending a blockade to open up the Strait of Hormuz is preposterous.”

Goldberg continued:

And why was the Strait of Hormuz such a problem? They begged to get allies to come in and help with the minesweeping, because our European allies have better equipment for that kind of stuff. Couldn’t get them to do it. Why couldn’t they get them to do it? Because he threatened to militarily take over Greenland, and made himself so unbelievably radioactive. The most brilliant thing Trump did, he was already unpopular in the middle and with the left in Europe. But the Greenland thing made the nationalists hate him, too.

And so, the idea that all these allies were going to jump and help him out in the Strait of Hormuz, when it would be political suicide for any elected leader in Europe to act to save Trump’s bacon about anything. I think his approval rating in Denmark is like 4%, right? So like, those are limits to his power! We would be a much more powerful country if we had allies that were willing to get our back and help us out. Those are limits. What’s disturbing is he’s so delusional he can’t see the limits to his power, and that’s something that’s going to get him into more mistakes.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

The post ‘So Unbelievably Radioactive’: Jonah Goldberg Slams ‘Delusional’ Trump For Alienating US Allies first appeared on Mediaite.