Ahmed Baba

Scott Pelley said he was asked to inject falsehoods into a story and that new CBS management is trying to curry favor with Trump. Instead of capitulating, Pelley spoke truth to power and stood up to the right-wing attack on the Fourth Estate and America’s info infrastructure.

If you run the madman theory but have no theory, you’re just left with a madman. Trump’s unpredictability has no strategy behind it. Now, the key objective of the Iran War negotiations is to solve a problem created by the war itself: reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iran War has been used as a pump & dump scheme. Trump made 3,700 stock trades in Q1. He owns defense contractors while waging a war that benefits them. Reuters found $7B in oddly timed oil trades right before Trump’s fake “Iran deal” announcements. Insiders profit while Americans struggle.

Leadership matters. Role models matter. I grew up with Barack Obama as president. Young men over the last decade have grown up with Donald Trump’s style of depravity dominating politics. That will impact their worldview and how they choose to embody masculinity. We have to set a better example.

If Trump's $1.776B fund was really for "victims of DOJ weaponization," it wouldn't be for MAGA. What about the millions of Black people targeted by the war on drugs? We got reparations for MAGA insurrectionists before Black people.

Trump is distracting his base with grievances so he can enrich himself and his cronies. The $1.776 billion DOJ slush fund for his allies. Billions in crypto. 3,600 stock trades this year. All while raising your prices as he legislates for the top 1%. That’s the real agenda.

Trump influenced the GOP primaries in 2022 from exile in Mar-a-Lago. His election denier candidates won those primaries, then lost key races across battleground states. Trump's extreme primary picks could backfire once again this year.

Trump keeps touting 100% support among MAGA Republicans. What he won't tell you: that same NBC poll previously found the number of Republicans who identify as MAGA is shrinking. It dropped 7 points to 50%. Congratulations, Donald. You have 100% of a shrinking pie.

Lindsey Graham is the personification of the GOP’s descent into amoral sycophancy In 2016, he said if the GOP nominated Trump, it would destroy them. Now, he says Trump is the GOP. He was right. Graham, like other Trump loyalists, didn't betray their principles. They never had any to begin with.

Xi called America a nation in decline. Trump, not reading the diss, agreed. China aims to become the world's superpower by 2049 & Trump is helping them get there. He's ceded the renewable energy industry to China & weakened US global leadership. I talked about this on MS NOW:

Trump has used the White House as just another asset on the Trump family balance sheet. Billions in grifts. And now the DOJ might settle Trump’s IRS lawsuit for $10B in taxpayer dollars that Trump would, in his own words, pay himself. This would be the single biggest robbery in US history.

Trump is the most openly anti-Black president in modern history. Gerrymandering away Black majority districts. DEI rollbacks and mass federal layoffs targeting the heavily Black federal workforce. Rising Black unemployment. It’s all connected, and it was all a part of the plan.

Trump had Project 2025. But China has a Project 2049 to become the world's superpower. Trump is playing into China's hands. He's eroded America's soft power. He's ceded the renewable energy industry to China. He's weakened US global leadership, and China will exploit that.

We’re living in the culmination of decades of right-wing engineering of the judiciary to force forward right-wing policies. The Federalist Society’s legal pipeline and the Heritage Foundation’s policy playbooks have shaped American life. Democrats need long-game responses to this.

Southern states moved fast to eliminate Black-majority districts after the SCOTUS ruling, proving why the VRA was needed in the first place. Alito and Roberts argued that the country has evolved beyond the need for the Voting Rights Act. They were immediately proven wrong.

Remarkably, Pope Leo has become the most prominent moral voice speaking out against the Trump Admin’s Christian Nationalism in the world.

Trump’s white nationalist rhetoric isn’t new. He’s the culmination of the GOP’s Southern Strategy, with the mask ripped off. But the dog whistles can only take you so far. You can’t scapegoat brown people for your base’s problems while you’re the one raising their prices. The con is failing.

Right-wing figures are claiming that political violence only comes from the left. That is a shameless lie. The CATO Institute found that 63% of politically motivated murders came from the right, and just 10% from the left, between 1975 - Sept 2025 (excluding 9/11). I laid this out on CNN last year

There's a reason a supermajority of Americans oppose Trump's handling of the war. We now have a more extreme Iran eager to deploy a more powerful deterrent than a nuclear weapon: short-circuiting the global economy with the Strait of Hormuz. Trump owns this. And now JD Vance owns it too.

Don Lemon: “MAGA is cooked” after Trump’s handling of the Iran War

Trump threatened to wipe out "a whole civilization" tonight. That is genocidal rhetoric from the President of the United States. Full stop. And it should be called out as such. @adammockler.com and I break down where we stand and what could happen next: www.ahmedbaba.news/p/adam-mockl...

Pam Bondi is an example of the one-way street of loyalty with Trump. It doesn’t matter if you prosecute his political targets, embarrass yourself, or try to cover up the Epstein Files for him. Trump will always throw you under the bus rather than re-evaluate his own behavior.

Pam Bondi got fired while Don Lemon and I were live. Don's reaction was priceless.

Trump is throwing out different Iran War narratives to see which will stick. But this isn't a marketing company where you A/B test Facebook ads. This is the US government. This is war.

Trump just embarrassed Pete Hegseth in front of the entire Cabinet.

Trump’s team is briefing him daily with 2-minute montages of only the successful Iran strikes. Trump’s Cabinet glazes him non-stop. The GOP is making up fake awards for him. This wartime President’s fragile ego is being managed like he’s a child, and we’re supposed to pretend this is normal?

Trump can’t keep his Iran War story straight. Trump says the war is won, but the Strait of Hormuz is still closed and we need more troops. Their nuclear capabilities were obliterated, but the threat was imminent. We had talks, but not actually. We're living in the volatility of Trump’s mind.

Trump is everything a President shouldn’t be. He's impulsive, egomaniacal, dishonest, and chaotic in a job that requires thoughtfulness, empathy, honesty, and stillness. His ego is so fragile that his team has to feed him propaganda about the war. He has no grip on reality.

Tulsi Gabbard said Iran's nuclear enrichment program was obliterated in the June strikes and there was no effort to rebuild it. That directly contradicts Trump's justification for this war. This is like if the top intel official revealed there were no WMDs three weeks into the Iraq War.

Trump's war in Iran is already creating the conditions for ISIS 2.0. We see surging civilian casualties and a migration crisis. We've seen this before in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Destabilizing a region produces a generation with a grievance, and extremism resurges.

Don Lemon says the media should not treat these like normal times. They should not be giving false credence to Trump's shifting justifications for the Iran war. They should tell harsh truths. And they should be covering the strike on an Iranian school like the atrocity it is.

There should be universal outrage over the 165 Iranian girls who were killed by what evidence indicates was a U.S. strike. Instead, Trump lied about it, and we’re just supposed to move on? These were children. If Iran bombed a school near a U.S. military base, it would be our new Pearl Harbor.

Republicans are going to try to use Kristi Noem's firing to deflect from ICE's cruelty ahead of the midterms. Don't let them. She didn't design the agenda. Stephen Miller and Donald Trump did. Firing the face doesn't absolve the people who built the machine.

Don Lemon says Karma is catching up with Kristi Noem. But changing the face at DHS changes nothing about the cruelty behind it. Don Lemon and I break down Kristi Noem’s firing and what it means in our latest conversation. Watch it in full here: www.ahmedbaba.news/p/don-lemon-...

Anthropic refused to let the Pentagon use its AI for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. Trump Admin retaliated by designating them a supply chain risk. But consumers rewarded their resistance. They're now #1. Other companies should take note: Decency is good business.

Iran was complying with the JCPOA. Trump tore it up because he was jealous of Obama and wanted to tarnish his legacy. Enrichment accelerated. And now Trump is waging a regime change war. Trump creates problems, then pretends only he can solve them.

Trump killed shame and rewired the incentives of politics. When he proved shamelessness was profitable, many indecent Republicans realized they no longer had to pretend to be decent to gain power. They didn't abandon their principles. They never had any principles to begin with.

I know a lot of people are exhausted by the Trump Admin. Trump wants us to feel powerless, but the truth is, he’s weaker than he projects, and we're stronger than we realize. Americans are pushing back. Trump is losing the information war, losing the culture war, and losing at the ballot box.

Former Prince Andrew arrested. Peter Mandelson is under criminal investigation. Careers are collapsing abroad. Meanwhile, in the US, powerful Epstein-linked figures, like Donald Trump himself, face no consequences. The accountability gap is outrageous.

Republicans: “Obama was the most divisive president in history!” President Obama:

In the UK, Peter Mandelson’s ties to Epstein are toppling top aides and threatening the UK Prime Minister's power. Meanwhile, in the US, people with ties to Epstein (Trump, Lutnick, Bannon, Musk) are avoiding any accountability. The contrast in accountability levels is stark.

Don Lemon vows to keep telling the truth: "I only know one way… to tell the truth… This is my mission, is to tell the truth and to bring light to dark places… Without the 1st Amendment, the other amendments don't stand. It's the bedrock of our Constitution… of our republic."

The biggest lie the far-right has ever told: Immigrants, brown people, or other out-groups are to blame for your economic pain. The truth: Right-wing policies enrich the wealthy and create economic inequality they then exploit to redirect anger toward people with the least power.

I just spoke to Don Lemon, in one of our recent weekly Substack Lives, about the Trump Admin targeting him. He was fearless and said he stood by his reporting and the First Amendment. We all have to speak out, especially journalists. This is unacceptable and unconstitutional.

The Trump Admin overplayed its hand. The American people pushed back against their morally repulsive cruelty. Now, the Trump Admin is squirming. They're not the all-powerful regime they pretend to be.

At this point, we have to assume DHS is lying until proven true. They keep lying about ICE's victims. Journalists can not take their lies at face value. I had this conversation with Don Lemon a couple weeks ago. I said journalists' M.O. should be "disbelief before quotation."

If the Civil Rights heroes could beat authoritarianism in their era, with far fewer legal protections, surely we can do it in ours. From the end of my MLK day speech at the Wisconsin Capitol this week.

Trump is embarrassing the US on the world stage while recklessly pursuing an imperialistic "re-hemisphering" agenda straight out of Project 2025. This is why Canadian PM Mark Carney's speech was so important. For once, Trump was met with strength.

The Trump Admin targeted @donlemonofficial.bsky.social for simply reporting on what’s happening in Minnesota. He’s unfazed by it.

Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s ICE operations are not only legally dubious, economically damaging, and politically foolish; they’re just plain morally wrong. There aren’t two sides to this story. It’s downright depraved and authoritarian. Had to be said.

Renee Good reacted in a totally rational way to unidentified masked men driving up in an unmarked car cussing at her to get out the car. She tried to drive away. ICE is out of control. Dems need to withhold their votes and refuse to fund DHS until ICE makes major changes.

Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother was killed by an ICE agent. The Trump administration is lying about it. Evidence is being withheld from Minnesota. The cover up is already underway. There was no credible justification for force here. None. There has to be a line. When is enough enough.

In Venezuela, Trump is fulfilling his promise to Big Oil, while betraying his promise of “no new wars” to voters. Page 184 of Project 2025 calls for “re-hemisphering.” Miller wants this to fuel deportations. Rubio thinks this will weaken Cuba. Americans didn’t vote for this.

There’s a reason Trump had his primetime meltdown. Polls have Trump’s approval at a second-term low of 36%, his approval among independents in the 20s, and his support among Republicans falling. This is the fear response of a politically weak, lame-duck president as his movement begins to unravel.

Trump is telling Americans to ignore their lived experience and believe his lies. Actually acknowledging the affordability crisis would require him to admit failure and demonstrate human empathy: Two things Donald is incapable of. I talked about this on MS NOW:

The Trump Admin has a disdain for what makes America truly great: our multicultural democracy. The idea that anyone can come & make something of themselves. The visa restrictions on countries Trump calls "shitholes" aren't about merit or security. It's about white nationalism.

Donald Trump is telling Americans to ignore their lived experience and believe his lies. The reason Trump refuses to have an “I feel your pain” moment on affordability is because that would require empathy and admitting failure - two things Trump is incapable of.

Trump is lying. Prices are up. Even 37% of Trump’s own voters say this is the worst cost of living crisis in memory. Trump, a man born into massive wealth, keeps telling Americans not to believe their own wallets. I pushed back on Trump’s gaslighting on NewsNation:

I went on NewsNation and spread some truth about Trump's affordability crisis. Prices are up, ADP reports Nov job losses, & even 37% of Trump voters say the cost of living is the worst in memory. My co-panelist was given a chance to respond, but the facts spoke for themselves.