They get along! At least, Donald J. Trump and Zohran Mamdani did on their first in-person meeting Friday in the Oval Office. “He said a lot of my voters actually voted for him, and I’m OK with that,” the president said (per NYT). Watch MTG's resignation video HERE.
11/24 UPDATE: MTG, Comey & Letitia James – First, the last two. Federal Judge Cameron McGowan Currie has dismissed criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney Gen. Letitia James “within weeks of Trump publicly calling on Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi to prosecute several of his prominent critics,” The Wall Street Journal reports.
The judge dismissed the case against Comey not, because as US District Judge Michael Nachmanoff established last week, US Attorney Lindsey Halligan failed to release Comey’s indictment to the full grand jury deciding the case, but rather, Currie dismissed the cases against Comey and James because as President Trump’s insurance attorney, Halligan was improperly appointed US attorney.
Whew.
It’s not surprising that Comey and probably James have several issues over which their cases would have been thrown out.
Meanwhile, MTG … Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) released an 11-minute video Friday -- the same day her erstwhile political hero, President Trump, was making nice with New York City mayor-elect and Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani -- in which she announces her resignation from Congress in January, leaving a full year on her third term.
“Americans are used by the political industrial complex of both parties, election cycle after election cycle after election cycle in order to elect whichever side convince Americans to hate the other side more,” MTG says in her video.
Trump turned on “Marjorie Traitor Greene” after MTG called for release of all the Epstein Files and said he would support a primary challenger to her in next year’s midterms. MTG says that for Trump, loyalty is a “one-way street.”
The Wall Street Journal’s take on all this is that MTG’s resignation is proof that Trump has full control of the GOP. But many pundits figure that MTG is now a major threat to Vice President JD Vance’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2028.
In The Atlantic conservative never-Trumper pundit David Frum evokes Jack Abramoff’s posit that there are two kinds of people in Washington: Those who get “the joke” that all the talk there of ideas and principles is “flimflam to conceal self-enrichment at the expense of the public’s experience” and those who don’t.
MTG ran for her Georgia House seat in 2020 as one of those who do not get “the joke,” and has since become one of those in Washington who does, according to Frum.
‘The Joke II’ … One is probably not in on “the joke” if one believes that Trump’s playing nice with Mamdani on the same day that MTG announces her resignation is a coincidence; Is Trump about to gain better control of the Democratic Party, too? – TL
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FRIDAY 11/21/25
•Watch Democrats’ video calling on US Military to reject unlawful orders HERE.
Peace Deal? – President Trump hosts New York’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani at the White House Friday afternoon. The mayor-elect hopes the two will find some common ground in working to ease the cost of living in Manhattan and the rest of the US, NPR’s Morning Edition reports.
“I have many disagreements with the president, and I believe that we should be relentless and pursue all avenues and all meetings that could make our city affordable for every single New Yorker,” Mamdani says.
“Look,” Trump responds, “we don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation.”
He’s no communist … Trump’s effort to Make America the ‘50s again recalls the Joe McCarthy era when the label (not referring to any official Communist party member) was used to call out any American who identified as left of center. Mamdani is aligned more with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who identifies as lower-case democratic socialist.
This makes us think of all the independent American voters who over the past eight or nine years have expressed support for both Sanders and Trump. Perhaps Trump might want to try and be friendly toward Mamdani when they meet at the White House, now that he has lost Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) fervid support.
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No Peace Deal – If President Trump remains upset with Russian dictator/President Vladmir Putin, it doesn’t show in a 28-point peace plan US officials handed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy Thursday, in which Moscow gets just about everything it has demanded all along. Art of the deal indeed.
The key point in the plan, according to The Kyiv Independent is that Ukraine gives up the entirety of the Donbas region, including portions it never lost to Russia.
The negotiations are considered “urgent” because of Ukraine’s dire energy situation and a senior US official says some reported elements could still change. But European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has reiterated that no deal involving the future of Ukraine can be made without participation of Ukraine, the BBC reports.
“Ukrainian officials and lawmakers describe the proposal as unrealistic and dangerous, warning it could harm civilians and embolden Russia,” according to The Kyiv Independent.
Upshot: Surely if Ukraine were required to cut its army in half, it would not take long for Russian military occupying Donbas to take over the rest of the country.
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‘Seditious’ Democratic Video? – Major uproar in Washington is President Trump’s reaction to a video posted by six Democratic lawmakers calling on US military to “refuse illegal orders,” as the Constitution requires of them.
The 21 known US strikes killing at least 83 Venezuelans accused of smuggling drugs comes to mind. A fleet of warships, including the USS Gerald R. Ford supercarrier now occupy the Caribbean off the coast of Venezuela. And of course, there has been deployment of National Guard in major US cities.
Trump Truth Socialed this in reaction to the video, according to The New York Times: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR punishable by DEATH!”
The president is not threatening the six Democratic congressmembers with execution, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told a presser, though Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stood up to say, “Trump’s threats amount to calls for execution of elected officials,” The Guardian reports.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), an ex-CIA analyst who served in Iraq, organized the video. She was joined by Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly (AZ), a former astronaut, and Democratic Reps. Chris Deluzio (PA), Jason Crow (CO), Maggie Goodlander (NH) and Chrissy Houlahan (PA). – Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa