Trump Tried to Brag About Black Friday. The Truth Is Far More Grim.

President Donald Trump may want to celebrate a record number of Black Friday sales as a sign of a flourishing economy—but there’s a lot he’s not telling you.

The president shared an article on Truth Social Monday from conservative blog Just the News predicting that the 2025 holiday shopping season, which lasts between November 1 and December 31, would be the “first quarter trillion dollar season online in U.S. history.”

According to Adobe Analytics’s 2025 Holiday Shopping Report, U.S. shoppers spent a record $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, a 9.1 percent increase in online sales from the same day the previous year.

That’s a promising sign for Trump’s economy, right? Wrong.

Rising costs, driven by steadily rising inflation and the president’s disastrous tariffs, prevented retailers from offering better deals and kept discounts flat compared to 2024, Reuters reported. So while consumers spent more money on Black Friday than in previous years, shoppers checked out with far fewer items, according to Salesforce.

But that’s not all. Adobe also reported a significant increase in the use of Buy Now Pay Later, or BNPL, services, a financing option that allows consumers to pay off purchases in installments. The increased prevalence of services that accumulate consumer debt is nothing to celebrate, as it indicates Americans are experiencing mounting financial strain.

Adobe predicted that over the course of the holiday shopping season, American consumers would spend $20.2 billion using BNPL, an 11 percent increase from 2024. Consumers have already spent an estimated $7.5 billion using these services since the beginning of November.

Klarna, a popular BNPL service, announced Monday that sales using its “flexible payments” had increased 45 percent year-over-year between November 1 and Black Friday.

BNPL isn’t just for the holiday season—it’s already spread into routine, everyday spending. One economic survey from April found that 25 percent of Americans were using BNPL to pay for groceries, up from 14 percent in 2024 and 21 percent in 2023.

The choice to pay in installments may come crashing down on consumers’ heads soon. In June, FICO announced it would begin including BNPL loans in credit reports—meaning that a short-term splurge, like indulging in a few Black Friday “sales,” could potentially become a long-term mark on a borrower’s financial record.

The Trump administration is shifting blame for the “kill everybody” order behind a second strike order on an alleged drug boat, killing all survivors, from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Commander Frank “Mitch” Bradley.

“In his social media posts, Secretary Hegseth didn’t go into details about that strike, he just said U.S. operations in the area were lawful, and he said that the story and media reports were fabricated,” a reporter said to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at her Monday briefing. “Does the administration deny that that second strike happened, or did it happen and the administration denies that Secretary Hegseth gave the order?”

“The latter is true, and I have a statement to read for you here,” Leavitt replied before reading off a statement. “With respect to the strikes in question on September 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed, and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”

This is the first time the White House is confirming a Washington Post report from Friday detailing an order that could be considered a war crime.

“The critical thing here is that Leavitt is distancing Hegseth from the final act of delivering the ultimate order for the strike that killed the two men in the water,” The New Republic’s Greg Sargent wrote. “She only acknowledges that Hegseth directed the initial destroying of the boat.”

The timing is impeccable: Republican House and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairs Mike Rogers and Roger Wicker—along with congressional Democrats—are moving to have Bradley in for a classified briefing to clear up exactly what happened.

The U.S. government’s September 2 attack on a boat off the coast of Trinidad, the first of dozens of strikes on what the Trump administration has claimed are drug-trafficking vessels, is drawing increased scrutiny after reports that an immediate, second missile strike was ordered to kill survivors.

ABC News reporter Rachel Scott asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at a Monday briefing whether the Pentagon’s policy had changed, noting that in a subsequent October Caribbean Sea airstrike, survivors were rescued instead of targeted.

“Was there a decision to handle survivors differently after these airstrikes?” Scott asked.

“Not to my knowledge,” Leavitt replied.

The answer is chilling, as it doesn’t clear up anything about what policy or legal method governs the airstrikes, which have continued for nearly three months. According to a Washington Post article, which Scott referenced in her question, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth made the order to kill everybody in the September airstrike, which the White House denies.

The Trump administration’s legal justifications for striking boats in the waters around Central America have repeatedly been questioned by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, foreign governments, and the United Nations. The Defense Department’s own Law of War Manual prohibits declaring “no quarter” or conducting operations “on the basis that there shall be no survivors.”

As officials admit that they have no idea who is even being killed, the Trump administration continues launching airstrikes with impunity. At the same time, the airstrikes seem to be a precursor for war, with 14 percent of the U.S. Navy fleet already dispatched to the region. Alleged war crimes are becoming the norm in this yet-to-be-declared war.

The White House is still trying to defend Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “no survivors” approach to bombing small boats in the Caribbean.

A live drone feed revealed that the Pentagon mercilessly attacked two people who clung to the wreckage of an airstrike on September 2 in order to comply with the Pentagon chief’s orders to “kill everybody” at the scene, The Washington Post reported over the weekend.

News of the administration’s ruthlessness ruffled feathers across Washington. GOP-led panels in the House and Senate announced that they would dial up their scrutiny of the Pentagon, while Donald Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was choosing to believe Hegseth, who claimed he did not “order the death of those two men.”

But the cover-up was still alive and well back at the White House on Monday, where press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that one of Hegseth’s subordinates was the one truly responsible for the second airstrike.

“Does the administration deny that that second strike happened, or did it happen and the administration denies that Secretary Hegseth gave the order?” asked a reporter, quoting one of Hegseth’s reports in which he claimed that the entire story about the attack had been fabricated.

“The latter is true,” Leavitt said. “President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have made it clear that presidentially designated narcoterrorist groups are subject to lethal targeting in accordance with the laws of war.”

“With respect to the strikes in question on September 2, Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated,” she added.

The attacks have been condemned by U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and foreign human advocates alike, including the United Nations’ human rights chief, who said in October that the strikes “violate international human rights law.”

The White House has insisted the violence is justified, broadly accusing the boats of trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia, though U.S. lawmakers have been more than skeptical—particularly since several of the boats were thousands of miles away in international waters and since the attacks were conducted without prior investigations or interdiction. Pentagon officials reportedly haven’t been concerned with identifying the people on the boats before attacking.

Trump’s careless killing spree has so far killed at least 83 people aboard the tiny watercraft. It has also rallied tens of thousands of Venezuelans in favor of war against the United States.

Trump has attempted to use the attacks to shove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power, something that he tried and failed to do in 2019.

But despite the justifications, Leavitt had no additional details to offer when she was asked to clarify Monday whether the administration was aware that the ship hit on September 2 had survivors aboard.

“Why won’t the administration either confirm or deny or reveal whether or not there were survivors after that initial first strike? And what imminent threat would survivors pose who were clinging presumably to the wreckage of that boat?” a reporter pressed.

“Again, as I’ve said, I think you guys are not listening fully to the statement I provided,” Leavitt responded. “Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was totally destroyed and the threat to the narcoterrorists—to the United States—was eliminated.”

The White House mouthpiece then told the room of journalists to redirect their questions to the Department of Defense, adding that she “obviously wasn’t in the room” when the decision was made.

President Trump dedicated part of his day Monday to attacking Tennessee Democratic House candidate Aftyn Behn, only further confirming that the GOP is desperate for wins as it limps into 2026.

Last week, an Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey of the special election had Behn just behind Republican candidate Matt Van Epps, 46 percent to 48 percent—with 2 percent voting elsewhere and 5 percent undecided. A victory for Behn would be a massive upset to a Republican House majority already on its last legs in the wake of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation announcement—and the impending resignations of various others.

“We have to win this seat. We’ve gotten you the largest tax cuts in history, and the new bill—the Great Big Beautiful Bill—kicks in, as you know, on January 1. It hasn’t even kicked in yet,” Trump told a Van Epps rally while on House Leader Mike Johnson’s speaker phone. “Number one, [Behn] hates Christianity, number two, she hates country music. How the hell can you elect a person like that? … It’s a big vote, and it’s gonna show something. It’s gonna show that the Republican Party is stronger than it’s ever been.”

The president also noted that he’d be doing a telerally for Van Epps on Monday night.

The narrative that Behn “hates Christianity” is one of many falsities that the GOP has pushed in a race where more than $3.3 million has been spent against her. Behn has mentioned that she disapproves of religions being “at the core of everything we do in the legislature” but has never said anything close to what Trump claimed.

Many also noted the urgency that Trump spoke with.

“‘The whole world is watching,’ President Trump says of tomorrow’s special election for Tennessee’s 7th congressional district—which Trump carried by 22 points in 2024,” USA Today’s Joey Garrison wrote.

The special election is on Tuesday. .