Karoline Leavitt Admits Trump Is Begging Leaders to Make Trade Deals

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt inadvertently admitted Tuesday that Donald Trump, having failed to make any actual trade deals with other countries, has resorted to pleading with world leaders to come to the negotiating table.

Reuters reported earlier in the day that the administration has sent a letter to multiple countries urging them to provide their best offer on tariff negotiations by Wednesday. In a draft seen by Reuters, the U.S. asks countries to provide their best proposals in key areas, including quota offers to purchase American products and plans to resolve any non-tariff barriers. It is not clear which countries received the letter.

When asked in a press briefing about the letter, Leavitt said she could “confirm the merits in the content of the letter.”

The U.S. trade representative “sent this letter to all of our trading partners just to give them a friendly reminder that the deadline is coming up,” she said.

Leavitt said that multiple officials are currently engaged in trade talks, and that “this letter was simply to remind these countries that the deadline is approaching and the president expects good deals.”

The Trump administration has come a long way from promising to make 90 deals during the 90-day pause on Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs. So far, only one actual deal has emerged, with the U.K.—and when Trump announced that deal, it sounded more like the concepts of a plan than an actual agreement.

The administration was also in talks with China, but those negotiations have publicly (and dramatically) stalled. As for other countries, they appear to be biding their time. Many countries reportedly saw that Beijing’s tough negotiating strategy landed them a much better deal, indicating that waiting for Trump to suffer backlash for the tariffs at home and ultimately cave is a better tactic than trying to reach a compromise with him.

It’s unclear how much longer Trump’s tariffs will be in place. Last week, two separate courts ruled that his tariff policy is illegal. The administration is appealing at least one of those rulings.

On Tuesday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene confessed that she had not read all of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act before voting for it. She also noted there was a provision on AI she wouldve voted against if she had taken the time to actually look at the piece of major legislation she’s spent weeks pushing. 

“Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the OBBB that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years. I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there,” the Georgia representative wrote on X. “We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states hands is potentially dangerous. This needs to be stripped out in the Senate.”

The provision states that:

No state or political subdivision thereof may enforce, during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act, any law or regulation … limiting, restricting, or otherwise regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems entered into interstate commerce. 

“When the OBBB comes back to the House for approval after Senate changes, I will not vote for it with this in it. We should be reducing federal power and preserving state power. Not the other way around,” Taylor Greene continued. “Especially with rapidly developing AI that even the experts warn they have no idea what it may be capable of.”

Taylor Greene’s post underscores both a competence issue on her end and the greater lack of Republican cohesion on the details of this One Big Beautiful Bill Act. While MTG threatens to recast her  future vote, the Senate’s more traditional fiscal conservatives like Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, and Susan Collins look to hem it in over cuts to Medicaid and a sharp deficit increase.  

Subscriptions to the Kennedy Center have dropped by more than a third since Donald Trump took over the arts institution and promised to remake it in his image.

Sales are down by about $1.6 million, or roughly 36 percent, compared to this time last year, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. By June 2024, subscription sales had produced $4,413,147.

But so far this year, the Kennedy Center has only made $2,656,524 from subscription sales, as well as an additional $155,243 from a special deal, according to internal data shared with the Post by former Kennedy Center staffers. A current staff member anonymously confirmed the numbers.

Subscriptions are just one source of revenue for the Kennedy Center. Others include donations, individual ticket sales, and government funding. But the current staffer said it was important to provide an indication of what is going on behind the center’s closed doors.

“We understand providing information like this can be seen in a bad light,” the current staffer told the Post. “But we feel that it is necessary to show that mismanagement by the new leadership is becoming a real problem for the health of the organization.”

The employee said that the new Trump-installed leadership has ignored staff opinions and even fired people who disagreed. As a result, “we feel that we no longer have a choice but to force complete transparency with the public.”

Trump took over the prestigious arts organization earlier this year, saying he plans to “bring it back” from disrepair—meaning get rid of any performances he deems too “woke.” So far, multiple productions have already backed out of performing at the center in protest against Trump.

Interestingly, though, one of the shows Trump has apparently approved to run at the Kennedy Center is Mrs. Doubtfire, which famously features a man in drag.

When asked about Trump’s effect on the Kennedy Center’s popularity, the new leaders pointed to large audiences at events such as a fireworks show by artist Cai Guo-Qiang and a screening of the animated film The King of Kings. Both of those events were free, according to the Post.

The Democratic National Committee will be distributing free tacos on Tuesday in reference to the new TACO slogan inspired by Donald Trump: “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

The DNC has commissioned a taco truck that will be parked outside the Republican National Committee’s Washington, D.C., headquarters from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. The address, for those who want free tacos, is 310 First Street SE.

The truck will also come with a graphic of Trump in a chicken suit and the “Trump Always Chickens Out” slogan.

“With his idiotic trade policy, he talks a big game, caves, and then leaves working families and small businesses to deal with the fallout,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement to Axios.

Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined the term TACO last month to describe Trump’s tendency to announce massive tariffs before suddenly changing his mind, as he has done over and over again. The term has become common among Wall Street traders trying to predict the market.

When asked by reporters about the term last week, Trump clearly had never heard of the nickname before. Once a reporter explained it to him, he lashed out. “Don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question. To me that’s the nastiest question,” he said.

It would certainly be nice if the Democrats had a plan to fight fascism beyond distributing free tacos. On Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries struggled to come up with an answer when he was asked how Democrats will respond to ICE agents handcuffing an aide to Representative Jerry Nadler inside his office—what seems to be part of a disturbing trend of the Trump administration targeting Democratic lawmakers.

Far-right MAGA influencer and professional bigot Laura Loomer held a private meeting with Vice President JD Vance at the White House on Tuesday morning, according to three sources who spoke with CNN.

The sources would not tell CNN what the two discussed, but it’s still a notable meeting in multiple ways, beyond the fact of who Loomer is and what she stands for. First, as CNN’s Alayna Treene noted, the last time Loomer was in the White House was in April, when she directly met with Donald Trump. After the meeting, the White House fired several people at the National Security Council whom Loomer had been calling disloyal to the MAGA agenda, including National Security Agency Director Mike Waltz of SignalGate fame.

Loomer took credit for Waltz’s ousting, claiming that she sowed doubts about his loyalty to Trump during their meeting. (Recall that Waltz isn’t totally gone from this administration, though, as Trump has nominated him to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.)

Loomer’s Tuesday meeting with Vance is also interesting given that it comes one day after Wired reported that Trump’s team is getting fed up with her. Multiple Trump advisers told Wired that “while they have seen a certain utility in Loomer, even if they find her tiresome and off-putting, their mutually beneficial arrangements may be coming to an end,” the magazine reported.

“Oh, I think she’s on ice,” one Republican who earlier gave Loomer credit for Waltz’s firing told Wired. “With the president.”