President Trump has said many things about “Saturday Night Live” over the years. Few of them are favorable, highlighting his disdain for the late-night sketch comedy show, though his previous stints as host would suggest otherwise.
The president hosted the show in 2004 and in 2015, shortly after announcing his first run for president. The decision to have him host “SNL” in 2015 was controversial at the time, but NBC’s top brass defended the move, citing his front-runner status among Republicans and the high ratings it produced. “At the end of the day, he was on the show for 11 minutes and … it wasn’t like the Earth fell off its axis,” said then-NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt during the Television Critics Assn. press tour in 2016. He would later call Trump “toxic” and “demented.”
Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly said he believes the show is unfunny, lacks talent and is “just a political ad for the Dems” nowadays. The sentiment echoes comments he’s made about late-night talk show hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and their respective shows, each known for skewering Trump. With Season 51 of “Saturday Night Live” set to begin Saturday, and recent settlements with media outlets and tech companies making headlines — YouTube settled a Trump lawsuit for nearly $25 million Monday over the suspension of his account — a renewed focus will be on the show and how it spoofs the president and his policies.
Colbert’s series was canceled by CBS in July and will conclude its 10-year run next year in May. While CBS cited financial reasons for its decision to end Colbert’s show, the host was a vocal critic of both Trump and CBS’ parent company, Paramount, which had recently settled a lawsuit with Trump just before the Federal Communications Commission approved its merger with Skydance Media (Colbert called the settlement “a big fat bribe”).
Kimmel was benched by ABC in September after the head of the FCC, a Trump appointee, threatened the network over the host’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer. Kimmel has since returned to the air, and used his first episode back to defend free speech. Colbert and Kimmel also appeared as guests on each other’s shows Tuesday, expressing mutual support and cracking jokes at Trump’s expense. Trump has also called for NBC to ax its late-night hosts Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, both of whom are “SNL” alums.
Now, “SNL” could be the next target of the administration’s scrutiny. Trump’s posts on social media have previously aired his disapproval for how the series mocks and satirizes him and his administration, and he has suggested investigating NBC as result.
“Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!,” Trump tweeted in February 2019, during his first term in office. “Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!”
Donald Trump in 2015, the year NBC cut ties after he made comments about undocumented Mexican immigrants.
(Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images)
Over the years, Trump has had a contentious relationship with the network that once aired “The Apprentice,” the show that made him a reality TV star, and his Miss Universe pageant. In 2015, NBC cut ties with Trump over comments he made about undocumented Mexican immigrants.
“Saturday Night Live,” which celebrated its 50th anniversary earlier this year with multiple specials, has been churning out political parodies for decades, and its comedy has targeted leaders from all political backgrounds.
The first time Trump was portrayed on “SNL” was in 1988 by then-cast member Phil Hartman. Since then, a host of actors and cast members have cycled through with their Trump impressions, with one of the most memorable being Alec Baldwin, who took over from Darrell Hammond in 2016 ahead of the presidential election.
Trump disliked Baldwin’s portrayal, and wrote in 2018 that Baldwin’s “dying mediocre career was saved by his terrible impersonation.” Baldwin won an Emmy for supporting actor in 2017 for playing the president.
The “30 Rock” actor’s stint as Trump on “SNL” lasted through 2020, and he made appearances as Trump even when the show was filming remotely during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of his most memorable moments impersonating the president were in cold opens that mocked the debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Alec Baldwin in 2017 as President-elect Donald J. Trump during a “Saturday Night Live” cold open sketch.
(Will Heath / NBC)
In March 2019, Trump wrote that “SNL” continues “knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of ‘the other side.’” The episode that aired the weekend he wrote that tweet was a rerun. “Like an advertisement without consequences,” he went on.
According to reports from the Daily Beast, Trump took a step beyond airing his grievances over Twitter that time. He reportedly asked advisors and lawyers in early 2019 about what the FCC, the court system, and even the Department of Justice could do to look into “SNL” and other late-night comedy figures who had mocked him. That inquiry did not amount to any actions, according to the outlet.
In 2022, Trump said the show’s ratings were “HUUUGE!” when he hosted, but that they’ve since tapered off. The most recent season of “SNL” was the most-watched in three years, with a season average of more than 8 million viewers.
He went on to write that creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels is “angry and exhausted, the show even more so. It was once good, never great, but now, like the Late Night Losers who have lost their audience but have no idea why, it is over for SNL — A great thing for America!”
Michaels, who rarely gives interviews, reflected on the cancellation of Colbert’s show and what it means for late-night television in an August conversation with Puck News. Michaels said he was “stunned” by CBS’ cancellation of “The Late Show,” but added, “I don’t think any of us are going to ever know” if the decision was political.
“Whatever crimes Trump is committing, he’s doing it in broad daylight,” Michaels went on to say. “There is absolutely nothing that the people who vote for him — or me — don’t know.” He also called Trump a “really powerful media figure” who “knows how to hold an audience.”
“His politics are obviously not my politics, but denouncing [him] doesn’t work,” he added.
While many cold opens and “Weekend Update” segments have been dedicated to skewering the president, often making him the butt of jokes, the cold open in the episode immediately following the 2024 election had a different approach. Trump’s opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, had appeared on an episode just days before the election, but after Trump’s victory, the cast promised they had “been with [him] all along,” adding that they all voted for him and supported him.
“If you’re keeping some sort of list of your enemies, then we should not be on that list,” they said before debuting their new Trump impression, “Hot jacked Trump,” which featured impressionist James Austin Johnson in a muscle tee and a headband.
Johnson began portraying the president on the series in 2021, and Michaels said he will continue in the role for Season 51. His portrayal mirror’s Trump’s speech patterns and his tendency to veer into tangents about pop culture. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, the cold opens have zeroed in on Trump, focusing on his relationship with Elon Musk and his policies.
The “Weekend Update” segment, hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che, tends to take sharper jabs the president’s policies and comments, as well as other administration officials.
In the Puck interview, Michaels implied the show wasn’t going to back down, and when he was asked whether political comedy will be tougher in the current climate, Michaels said no.
“I don’t think anybody knows what Michael Che’s politics are,” he said, “but they do think he’s funny.”
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC who has been in the headlines for his role in Kimmel’s benching, wrote in 2020 that political satire is one of the “oldest and most important forms of free speech.”
“From Internet memes to late-night comedians, from cartoons to the plays and poems as old as organized government itself — Political Satire circumvents traditional gatekeepers & helps hold those in power accountable,” he continued. “Not surprising that it’s long been targeted for censorship.”
Aug. 26 (UPI) — President Donald Trump‘s wish to end mail-in voting is only part of his grander vision for fundamentally changing the election process, experts say.
Mail-in voting has been the target of the president for years and it is again garnering his attention. As president he does not have a direct role in election administration but by sowing mistrust in the results he is still capable of ushering in change.
“The president has no role with respect to election administration or setting election rules of anything of that nature,” Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships with Campaign Legal Center, told UPI. “The Constitution is crystal clear that the primary responsibility for setting election rules lies with the states, subject to modifications from Congress.”
Trump alleges that mail-in voting is rife with fraud, a claim that has routinely been disproven by election audits and federal investigations, Diaz said.
“His own Department of Justice during his first term said there was no evidence of any widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election,” Diaz said. “Countless studies and investigations and attempts have turned up virtually nothing. Isolated incidents that haven’t affected the outcome of elections at most. There is no basis to support any of the president’s views on vote-by-mail or the integrity of our election system in general.”
About one-third of voters participated in the 2024 general election by casting mail-in ballots.
Universal vote-by-mail
When Trump takes to social media or the podium to air his grievances with voting by mail, he does so in broad terms. Charles Stewart, director of the MIT Election Lab and professor of political science, told UPI that Trump’s issue is actually with universal vote-by-mail.
Eight states and Washington, D.C., conduct universal vote-by-mail, meaning they send mail-in ballots to all registered voters without requests. Those states are California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Utah. Whether a voter intends to vote by mail or not, they still receive a ballot.
Universal vote-by-mail expanded to California, Vermont, Nevada, Hawaii and Washington, D.C., in 2020 or later. Stewart said some of the expansion was in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There ended up being a bit of a back-and-forth in the early days between Democratic activists and Republicans about whether everybody in America should be mailed a ballot,” Stewart said. “That has morphed over the years into this kind of partisan divide over this practice of mailing everybody a ballot.”
Utah, the only universal vote-by-mail state that leans Republican, passed a bill earlier this year to change its mail-in voting process. Voters will no longer automatically receive a ballot in the mail beginning in 2029. Instead, they must request one.
“Thus far, for all the political talk at the top about discouraging vote-by-mail, once voters have taken a bite of that apple, they like the apple,” Stewart said. “Once the candidates and their advisers, their campaign advisers, have learned to campaign with mail being a predominant part of the election they also have a hard time giving it up. In Utah they’re going to roll back mail voting but there’s still going to be a lot of mail voting.”
Challenges for administrators and voters
Whether Trump hopes to see an end to universal vote-by-mail or mail-in voting in general, he cannot achieve either through executive order. It would require an act by U.S. Congress.
Ending vote-by-mail in any fashion would be a major disruption for election administrators at the state level, Stewart said.
“It would certainly be a great reevaluation of how they administer things,” he said. “They would have to very quickly turn on a logistical dime to make it work. They did it in 2020 on the other side.”
Some of the logistical challenges that universal vote-by-mail states and states with heavy mail-in voting participation would face include finding additional poll workers and polling places, along with the costs associated with these additions. This would raise the costs of election administration for taxpayers.
“Many of these places will have some memory of doing elections in person but they will not have the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of local voting locations that will be needed on Election Day,” Stewart said. “They will have to recruit and deploy on Election Day, so there will be a real, major scrambling to make this happen. They will have no choice in the matter but it will be very expensive and very disruptive.”
Losing access to the option to vote by mail would also be consequential for many voters who otherwise may not be able to participate in their elections.
Sophia Lin Lakin, director ACLU Voting Rights Project, told UPI that mail-in voting is crucial for people with disabilities and mobility issues, seniors and people who lack reliable access to transportation.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, voters who are 65 and older voted by mail at the highest rate of any age group in the 2022 midterm elections. About 38% voted by mail.
Mail-in voting also levels the playing field of participation for voters across the socioeconomic spectrum. Voters with family incomes ranging between under $10,000 and more than $150,000 per year voted by mail at similar rates, between 24% and 36%.
“Many Americans juggle multiple jobs or irregular schedules and mail-in voting provides the flexibility needed for those voters to participate in democracy without sacrificing a paycheck,” Lakin said. “Ending it would disenfranchise many communities that already face systemic barriers to voting.”
Trump administration’s other election changes
The Trump administration has already taken other measures to change the election process in the United States while continuing the pattern of sowing doubt in the election he lost in 2020.
In March, Trump issued an executive order to restrict the acceptance of mail-in ballots received after Election Day and tighten the proof of citizenship requirements for voter eligibility. It also threatened to withhold federal funding from states that fail to comply.
A federal judge granted an injunction to stop the proof-of-citizenship requirement from taking effect.
Trump’s order charged the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Government Efficiency with scanning state voter registration rolls and federal immigration databases in an effort to identify foreign nationals.
The president has applied political pressure to lawmakers in Texas and other states to redraw their congressional maps to be more favorable for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm election.
Trump’s legislative agenda, passed in July, reduced funding for national cybersecurity, raising concern that U.S. elections, among other things, could be more vulnerable to interference from bad actors. The Trump administration has fired more than 100 employees from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the federal government’s chief cybersecurity arm.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has cut the leadership and many of the employees working in the voting section of the Civil Rights Division. The voting section enforces federal voting rights laws including parts of the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, Help America Vote and the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
The voting section has halted all investigations into potential Voting Rights Act violations.
Voting section
Pamela Karlan, professor of law at Stanford Law School, told UPI that the Trump administration’s overhaul of election law enforcement is unlike anything ever seen in American history.
Karlan served as the former principal deputy assistant attorney general under former President Joe Biden‘s administration.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a time where they just outright stopped enforcing the Voting Rights Act,” Karlan said. “There has been more vigorous enforcement during some administrations than others. That has not traditionally been a partisan issue. But I don’t think we’ve ever had an administration that was outright not committed to enforcing any part of the Voting Rights Act.”
“The idea that the voting section isn’t in the game is really troubling, because the voting section has brought and won some of the most important voting rights cases in our history,” she continued.
Reducing the staff in the voting section and its overall capabilities greatly puts overseas voters and deployed military service members at risk of not being able to participate in elections.
“Almost every election cycle the voting action has had to deal with problems of getting ballots to overseas voters and to military voters in a timely manner,” Karlan said. “Almost every federal election cycle, the department has a bunch of UOCAVA responsibilities and really nobody else is going to enforce that.”
Karlan sees little opportunity for recourse if the voting section does not enforce election laws or actively protect the rights of voters, short of action by Congress. She still expects most election administrators will follow the law but the small few who do not will present significant problems.
“For the most part, state and local jurisdictions comply with the law,” she said. “Prior to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act we had rampant violations of the Constitution when it came to voting rights. Massive disenfranchisement. Purposeful vote dilution and the like.”
“Most election officials want to comply with federal law,” she continued. “But when it comes to the outliers, the lack of any federal enforcement is deeply problematic.”
If he wins the general election in November, Zohran Mamdani could become New York City’s first South Asian mayor and the first of Indian origin.
But the same identity that makes him a trailblazer in United States politics has also exposed him to public outcry in India and within its diaspora.
Ever since Mamdani achieved a thumping win in the Democratic mayoral primary on June 24, his campaign has weathered a flood of vitriol – some of it coming from the Hindu right.
Experts say the attacks are a reflection of the tensions that have arisen between supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and critics of the human rights abuses under his leadership, particularly against religious minorities.
A number of those attacks have fixated on Mamdani’s religion: The 33-year-old is Muslim. Some commenters have accused the mayoral hopeful of being a “jihadi” and “Islamist”. Others have called him anti-Hindu and anti-India.
Kayla Bassett, the director of research at the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), a Washington-based think tank, believes the attacks against Mamdani are a vehicle to attack the Muslim community more broadly.
“This isn’t just about one individual,” she said. “It’s about promoting a narrative that casts Muslims as inherently suspect or un-American.”
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faced criticism for the treatment of religious minorities in India [Jermaine Cruickshank/AP Photo]
Backlash from Modi’s party
That narrative could potentially have consequences for Mamdani’s campaign, as he works to increase his support among New York voters.
Mamdani will face competition in November from more established names in politics. He is expected to face incumbent mayor Eric Adams in the final vote. His rival in the Democratic primary, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, has also not yet ruled out an independent run.
The mayoral hopeful has vocally denounced human rights abuses, including in places like Gaza and India.
That unabashed stance has not only earned him criticism from his rival candidates but also from overseas.
Members of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for example, have been among the voices slamming Mamdani’s remarks and questioning his fitness for the mayor’s seat.
BJP Member of Parliament Kangana Ranaut posted on social media, for example, that Mamdani “sounds more Pakistani than Indian”.
“Whatever happened to his Hindu identity or bloodline,” she asked, pointing to the Hindu roots of his mother, director Mira Nair. “Now he is ready to wipe out Hinduism.”
Soon after Mamdani’s primary win, a prominent pro-BJP news channel in India, Aaj Tak, also aired a segment claiming that he had received funding from organisations that promote an “anti-India” agenda.
It also warned of a growing Muslim population in New York City, an assertion it coupled with footage of women wearing hijabs.
But some of the backlash has come from sources closer to home.
A New Jersey-based group named Indian Americans for Cuomo spent $3,570 for a plane to fly a banner over New York City with the message: “Save NYC from Global Intifada. Reject Mamdani.”
Mayoral candidates Andrew Cuomo, Michael Blake, Zohran Mamdani and Whitney Tilson participate in a Democratic mayoral primary debate on June 4 in New York [Yuki Iwamura/AP Photo]
A critic of human rights abuses
Much of the pushback can be linked to Mamdani’s vocal criticism of Hindu nationalism and Modi in particular.
In 2020, Mamdani participated in a Times Square demonstration against a temple built on the site of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya that was destroyed by Hindu extremists in 1992. He called out the BJP’s participation in and normalisation of that violence.
“I am here today to protest against the BJP government in India and the demolition of the Babri masjid,” he said.
Then, in 2023, Mamdani read aloud notes from an imprisoned Indian activist ahead of Modi’s visit to New York City.
That activist, Umar Khalid, has been imprisoned since 2020 without trial on terrorism charges after making speeches criticising Modi’s government.
More recently, during a town hall for mayoral candidates in May, Mamdani was asked if he would meet with Modi if the prime minister were to visit the city again. Mamdani said he wouldn’t.
“This is a war criminal,” he replied.
Mamdani pointed to Modi’s leadership in the Indian state of Gujarat during a period of religious riots in 2002. Modi has been criticised for turning a blind eye to the violence, which killed more than a thousand people, many of them Muslim.
In the aftermath, Modi was denied a US visa for “severe violations of religious freedom”.
“Narendra Modi helped to orchestrate what was a mass slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat, to the extent that we don’t even believe that there are Gujarati Muslims any more,” Mamdani told the town hall. “When I tell someone that I am, it’s a shock to them that that’s even the case.”
Protesters in 2014 gather to mark the anniversary of the violence in the Indian state of Gujarat [File: Ajit Solanki/AP Photo]
Barriers of class and religion
It’s that “fearless” and consistent criticism of Modi that has made Mamdani the target of outrage from the Hindu right, according to Rohit Chopra, a communications professor at Santa Clara University.
“Among the Hindu right, there is a project of the political management of the memory of 2002. There’s this silence around Modi being denied a visa to enter the US,” said Chopra.
The professor also said class fragmentation among Hindu Americans may also fuel scepticism towards Mamdani.
Hindu Americans are a relatively privileged minority in terms of socioeconomic status: The Pew Research Center estimates that 44 percent Asian American Hindus enjoy a family income of more than $150,000, and six in 10 have obtained postgraduate degrees.
That relative prosperity, Chopra said, can translate into social barriers.
“They don’t necessarily even identify with other Hindu Americans who may come from very different kinds of class backgrounds – people who might be working as cab drivers, or dishwashers, or other blue-collar jobs,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Suchitra Vijayan, a New York City-based writer and the founder of the digital magazine Polis Project, has noticed that many lines of attack against Mamdani centre on his identity.
“Mamdani is an elected leader who is unabashedly Muslim,” she said.
She pointed out that other Muslim politicians, including US Congress members Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, have sparked similar backlash for reproaching Modi over the Gujarat violence.
But Mamdani’s family ties to the region make the scrutiny all the more intense.
“In Mamdani’s case, he’s Muslim, he’s African, but also his father is of Gujarati descent and has openly spoken about the pogrom in Gujarat,” Vijayan said.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani waves to supporters at an event on July 2 [David ‘Dee’ Delgado/Reuters]
A ‘seismic’ victory
Despite the online backlash, experts and local organisers believe Mamdani’s campaign can mobilise Indian American voters and other members of the South Asian diaspora who traditionally lean Democratic.
The Pew Research Center estimates that there are 710,000 Indians and Indian Americans living in the New York City area, the most of any metropolitan centre in the US.
Preliminary results from June’s mayoral primary show that Mamdani scored big in neighbourhoods with strong Asian populations, like Little Bangladesh, Jackson Heights and Parkchester.
A final tally of the ranked-choice ballots was released earlier this week, on July 1, showing Mamdani trounced his closest rival, Cuomo, 56 percent to 44.
“I’ve heard his win described as ‘seismic’,” said Arvind Rajagopal, a professor of media studies at New York University. “He can speak not only Spanish but Hindi, Urdu, and passable Bangla. A candidate with this level of depth and breadth is rare in recent times.”
Rajagopal added that Mamdani’s decision to own his Muslim identity became an asset for him on the campaign trail, particularly in the current political climate.
With President Donald Trump in office for a second term, many voters are bracing for the anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies that accompanied his first four years in the White House.
Back then, Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, saying they represented an “influx of hatred” and “danger”.
“The moment of Trump is something that Mamdani answers perfectly,” Rajagopal said. He called Mamdani’s success “a big reality check for the Hindu right”.
Whatever backlash Mamdani is facing from Hindu groups, Jagpreet Singh is sceptical about its influence over New York City.
“I can assure you – it’s not coming from within the city,” said Singh, the political director of DRUM Beats, a sister organisation to the social justice organisation Desis Rising Up and Moving.
That group was among the first in the city to endorse Mamdani’s candidacy for mayor.
Since early in his campaign, Singh pointed out that Mamdani has reached out to Hindu working-class communities “in an authentic way”.
This included visiting the Durga Temple and Nepalese Cultural Center in Ridgewood and speaking at events in the Guyanese and Trinidadian Hindu communities, Singh pointed out. During his time as a state assembly member, Mamdani also pushed for legislation that would recognise Diwali – the Hindu festival of lights – as a state holiday.
At a Diwali celebration last year, Singh said Mamdani “took part in lighting of the diyas, spoke on stage, and talked about his mother’s background as being somebody who is of Hindu faith”.
To Singh, the message was clear. South Asian groups in New York City, including Hindu Americans, “have adopted him as their own”.
The ceasefire between Israel and Iran is already showing signs of strain – and has triggered frustration, and a televised expletive, from United States President Donald Trump, who accused Israel of undermining the deal just hours after its announcement.
The ceasefire, brokered by the US and Qatar, came into effect late Monday following days of intensive missile barrages between the two foes. Israel’s last wave of strikes targeted Iranian military infrastructure near Isfahan, prompting retaliatory drone launches by Tehran.
Iran violated the ceasefire, “but Israel violated it too”, Trump told reporters on the White House’s South Lawn on Tuesday as he departed for the NATO summit.
“So I’m not happy with them. I’m not happy with Iran either. But I’m really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning.”
“I’ve got to get Israel to calm down,” he said. “Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before.”
As he prepared to head to a NATO summit in The Hague in the Netherlands, Trump’s anger flared on the White House Lawn: “We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.”
A day earlier, Trump boasted on his Truth Social app that “the Ceasefire is in effect!”
“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s unusually public display of anger at Israel saw the US leader apparently trying to force his ally to call off warplanes in real time on Tuesday.
Earlier the same morning, he had posted on Truth Social: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS” – without it being clear which bombs he was referring to.
“IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to quickly accede, with his office saying in a statement on Tuesday that Israel still carried out one more attack near Tehran after Trump’s appeal, but is refraining from “further strikes”.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz had said earlier on Tuesday that he had ordered the military to mount new strikes on targets in Tehran in response to what he claimed were Iranian missiles fired in a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire.
Iran denied launching any missiles and said Israel’s attacks had continued for an hour and a half beyond the time the ceasefire was meant to start.
For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that his country would not fire at Israel if it was not fired upon, but that a “final decision on the cessation of our military operations will be made later”.
Despite the rocky start, Trump voiced support for the ceasefire itself, clarifying he is not seeking regime change in Iran, after some mixed messaging in recent days, and insisting that the ceasefire remains in effect.
If it holds, the truce would be a big political win for Trump in the wake of his risky gamble to send US bombers over the weekend to attack three nuclear facilities in Iran that Israel and the United States claim were being used to build an atomic bomb in secret.
US intelligence and the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog had previously recorded no indication Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem said Iranian officials appeared to welcome Trump’s remarks, viewing them as a potential opening for diplomatic engagement.
“It might give the impression that Trump is serious about this ceasefire,” Hashem said.
In Washington, Al Jazeera’s Phil Lavelle, said Trump is feeling “quite annoyed” at and perhaps “betrayed” by Netanyahu violating the ceasefire.
“He was angry with both Israel and Iran. But you could really tell some of the extra anger there, the extra fury was aimed at Israel,” Lavelle said.
The US leader had said the truce would be a phased 24-hour process beginning at about 04:00 GMT Tuesday, with Iran unilaterally halting all operations first. He said Israel would follow suit 12 hours later.
Israel has been bombing Iran in an offensive that began June 13. The US joined the attack with a mission starting overnight Friday to Saturday against the deeply-buried and hard-to-access Fordow complex and two other sites.
Iranian officials say more than 400 people have been killed in air strikes. Retaliatory missile strikes have killed 28 people in Israel, the first time large numbers of Iranian missiles have penetrated – and on a daily basis – its much vaunted air defence systems, which mainly the US has provided.
‘SNL’ is another late-night show that has been a target of Trump’s ire
President Trump has said many things about “Saturday Night Live” over the years. Few of them are favorable, highlighting his disdain for the late-night sketch comedy show, though his previous stints as host would suggest otherwise.
The president hosted the show in 2004 and in 2015, shortly after announcing his first run for president. The decision to have him host “SNL” in 2015 was controversial at the time, but NBC’s top brass defended the move, citing his front-runner status among Republicans and the high ratings it produced. “At the end of the day, he was on the show for 11 minutes and … it wasn’t like the Earth fell off its axis,” said then-NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt during the Television Critics Assn. press tour in 2016. He would later call Trump “toxic” and “demented.”
Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly said he believes the show is unfunny, lacks talent and is “just a political ad for the Dems” nowadays. The sentiment echoes comments he’s made about late-night talk show hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and their respective shows, each known for skewering Trump. With Season 51 of “Saturday Night Live” set to begin Saturday, and recent settlements with media outlets and tech companies making headlines — YouTube settled a Trump lawsuit for nearly $25 million Monday over the suspension of his account — a renewed focus will be on the show and how it spoofs the president and his policies.
Colbert’s series was canceled by CBS in July and will conclude its 10-year run next year in May. While CBS cited financial reasons for its decision to end Colbert’s show, the host was a vocal critic of both Trump and CBS’ parent company, Paramount, which had recently settled a lawsuit with Trump just before the Federal Communications Commission approved its merger with Skydance Media (Colbert called the settlement “a big fat bribe”).
Kimmel was benched by ABC in September after the head of the FCC, a Trump appointee, threatened the network over the host’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer. Kimmel has since returned to the air, and used his first episode back to defend free speech. Colbert and Kimmel also appeared as guests on each other’s shows Tuesday, expressing mutual support and cracking jokes at Trump’s expense. Trump has also called for NBC to ax its late-night hosts Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, both of whom are “SNL” alums.
Now, “SNL” could be the next target of the administration’s scrutiny. Trump’s posts on social media have previously aired his disapproval for how the series mocks and satirizes him and his administration, and he has suggested investigating NBC as result.
“Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!,” Trump tweeted in February 2019, during his first term in office. “Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!”
Donald Trump in 2015, the year NBC cut ties after he made comments about undocumented Mexican immigrants.
(Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images)
Over the years, Trump has had a contentious relationship with the network that once aired “The Apprentice,” the show that made him a reality TV star, and his Miss Universe pageant. In 2015, NBC cut ties with Trump over comments he made about undocumented Mexican immigrants.
“Saturday Night Live,” which celebrated its 50th anniversary earlier this year with multiple specials, has been churning out political parodies for decades, and its comedy has targeted leaders from all political backgrounds.
The first time Trump was portrayed on “SNL” was in 1988 by then-cast member Phil Hartman. Since then, a host of actors and cast members have cycled through with their Trump impressions, with one of the most memorable being Alec Baldwin, who took over from Darrell Hammond in 2016 ahead of the presidential election.
Trump disliked Baldwin’s portrayal, and wrote in 2018 that Baldwin’s “dying mediocre career was saved by his terrible impersonation.” Baldwin won an Emmy for supporting actor in 2017 for playing the president.
The “30 Rock” actor’s stint as Trump on “SNL” lasted through 2020, and he made appearances as Trump even when the show was filming remotely during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of his most memorable moments impersonating the president were in cold opens that mocked the debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Alec Baldwin in 2017 as President-elect Donald J. Trump during a “Saturday Night Live” cold open sketch.
(Will Heath / NBC)
In March 2019, Trump wrote that “SNL” continues “knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of ‘the other side.’” The episode that aired the weekend he wrote that tweet was a rerun. “Like an advertisement without consequences,” he went on.
According to reports from the Daily Beast, Trump took a step beyond airing his grievances over Twitter that time. He reportedly asked advisors and lawyers in early 2019 about what the FCC, the court system, and even the Department of Justice could do to look into “SNL” and other late-night comedy figures who had mocked him. That inquiry did not amount to any actions, according to the outlet.
In 2022, Trump said the show’s ratings were “HUUUGE!” when he hosted, but that they’ve since tapered off. The most recent season of “SNL” was the most-watched in three years, with a season average of more than 8 million viewers.
He went on to write that creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels is “angry and exhausted, the show even more so. It was once good, never great, but now, like the Late Night Losers who have lost their audience but have no idea why, it is over for SNL — A great thing for America!”
Michaels, who rarely gives interviews, reflected on the cancellation of Colbert’s show and what it means for late-night television in an August conversation with Puck News. Michaels said he was “stunned” by CBS’ cancellation of “The Late Show,” but added, “I don’t think any of us are going to ever know” if the decision was political.
“Whatever crimes Trump is committing, he’s doing it in broad daylight,” Michaels went on to say. “There is absolutely nothing that the people who vote for him — or me — don’t know.” He also called Trump a “really powerful media figure” who “knows how to hold an audience.”
“His politics are obviously not my politics, but denouncing [him] doesn’t work,” he added.
While many cold opens and “Weekend Update” segments have been dedicated to skewering the president, often making him the butt of jokes, the cold open in the episode immediately following the 2024 election had a different approach. Trump’s opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, had appeared on an episode just days before the election, but after Trump’s victory, the cast promised they had “been with [him] all along,” adding that they all voted for him and supported him.
“If you’re keeping some sort of list of your enemies, then we should not be on that list,” they said before debuting their new Trump impression, “Hot jacked Trump,” which featured impressionist James Austin Johnson in a muscle tee and a headband.
Johnson began portraying the president on the series in 2021, and Michaels said he will continue in the role for Season 51. His portrayal mirror’s Trump’s speech patterns and his tendency to veer into tangents about pop culture. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, the cold opens have zeroed in on Trump, focusing on his relationship with Elon Musk and his policies.
The “Weekend Update” segment, hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che, tends to take sharper jabs the president’s policies and comments, as well as other administration officials.
In the Puck interview, Michaels implied the show wasn’t going to back down, and when he was asked whether political comedy will be tougher in the current climate, Michaels said no.
“I don’t think anybody knows what Michael Che’s politics are,” he said, “but they do think he’s funny.”
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC who has been in the headlines for his role in Kimmel’s benching, wrote in 2020 that political satire is one of the “oldest and most important forms of free speech.”
“From Internet memes to late-night comedians, from cartoons to the plays and poems as old as organized government itself — Political Satire circumvents traditional gatekeepers & helps hold those in power accountable,” he continued. “Not surprising that it’s long been targeted for censorship.”
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Mail-in voting latest target of Donald Trump’s election ire
Aug. 26 (UPI) — President Donald Trump‘s wish to end mail-in voting is only part of his grander vision for fundamentally changing the election process, experts say.
Mail-in voting has been the target of the president for years and it is again garnering his attention. As president he does not have a direct role in election administration but by sowing mistrust in the results he is still capable of ushering in change.
“The president has no role with respect to election administration or setting election rules of anything of that nature,” Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships with Campaign Legal Center, told UPI. “The Constitution is crystal clear that the primary responsibility for setting election rules lies with the states, subject to modifications from Congress.”
Trump alleges that mail-in voting is rife with fraud, a claim that has routinely been disproven by election audits and federal investigations, Diaz said.
“His own Department of Justice during his first term said there was no evidence of any widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election,” Diaz said. “Countless studies and investigations and attempts have turned up virtually nothing. Isolated incidents that haven’t affected the outcome of elections at most. There is no basis to support any of the president’s views on vote-by-mail or the integrity of our election system in general.”
About one-third of voters participated in the 2024 general election by casting mail-in ballots.
Universal vote-by-mail
When Trump takes to social media or the podium to air his grievances with voting by mail, he does so in broad terms. Charles Stewart, director of the MIT Election Lab and professor of political science, told UPI that Trump’s issue is actually with universal vote-by-mail.
Eight states and Washington, D.C., conduct universal vote-by-mail, meaning they send mail-in ballots to all registered voters without requests. Those states are California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Washington and Utah. Whether a voter intends to vote by mail or not, they still receive a ballot.
Universal vote-by-mail expanded to California, Vermont, Nevada, Hawaii and Washington, D.C., in 2020 or later. Stewart said some of the expansion was in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There ended up being a bit of a back-and-forth in the early days between Democratic activists and Republicans about whether everybody in America should be mailed a ballot,” Stewart said. “That has morphed over the years into this kind of partisan divide over this practice of mailing everybody a ballot.”
Utah, the only universal vote-by-mail state that leans Republican, passed a bill earlier this year to change its mail-in voting process. Voters will no longer automatically receive a ballot in the mail beginning in 2029. Instead, they must request one.
“Thus far, for all the political talk at the top about discouraging vote-by-mail, once voters have taken a bite of that apple, they like the apple,” Stewart said. “Once the candidates and their advisers, their campaign advisers, have learned to campaign with mail being a predominant part of the election they also have a hard time giving it up. In Utah they’re going to roll back mail voting but there’s still going to be a lot of mail voting.”
Challenges for administrators and voters
Whether Trump hopes to see an end to universal vote-by-mail or mail-in voting in general, he cannot achieve either through executive order. It would require an act by U.S. Congress.
Ending vote-by-mail in any fashion would be a major disruption for election administrators at the state level, Stewart said.
“It would certainly be a great reevaluation of how they administer things,” he said. “They would have to very quickly turn on a logistical dime to make it work. They did it in 2020 on the other side.”
Some of the logistical challenges that universal vote-by-mail states and states with heavy mail-in voting participation would face include finding additional poll workers and polling places, along with the costs associated with these additions. This would raise the costs of election administration for taxpayers.
“Many of these places will have some memory of doing elections in person but they will not have the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of local voting locations that will be needed on Election Day,” Stewart said. “They will have to recruit and deploy on Election Day, so there will be a real, major scrambling to make this happen. They will have no choice in the matter but it will be very expensive and very disruptive.”
Losing access to the option to vote by mail would also be consequential for many voters who otherwise may not be able to participate in their elections.
Sophia Lin Lakin, director ACLU Voting Rights Project, told UPI that mail-in voting is crucial for people with disabilities and mobility issues, seniors and people who lack reliable access to transportation.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, voters who are 65 and older voted by mail at the highest rate of any age group in the 2022 midterm elections. About 38% voted by mail.
Mail-in voting also levels the playing field of participation for voters across the socioeconomic spectrum. Voters with family incomes ranging between under $10,000 and more than $150,000 per year voted by mail at similar rates, between 24% and 36%.
“Many Americans juggle multiple jobs or irregular schedules and mail-in voting provides the flexibility needed for those voters to participate in democracy without sacrificing a paycheck,” Lakin said. “Ending it would disenfranchise many communities that already face systemic barriers to voting.”
Trump administration’s other election changes
The Trump administration has already taken other measures to change the election process in the United States while continuing the pattern of sowing doubt in the election he lost in 2020.
In March, Trump issued an executive order to restrict the acceptance of mail-in ballots received after Election Day and tighten the proof of citizenship requirements for voter eligibility. It also threatened to withhold federal funding from states that fail to comply.
A federal judge granted an injunction to stop the proof-of-citizenship requirement from taking effect.
Trump’s order charged the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Government Efficiency with scanning state voter registration rolls and federal immigration databases in an effort to identify foreign nationals.
The president has applied political pressure to lawmakers in Texas and other states to redraw their congressional maps to be more favorable for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm election.
Trump’s legislative agenda, passed in July, reduced funding for national cybersecurity, raising concern that U.S. elections, among other things, could be more vulnerable to interference from bad actors. The Trump administration has fired more than 100 employees from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the federal government’s chief cybersecurity arm.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has cut the leadership and many of the employees working in the voting section of the Civil Rights Division. The voting section enforces federal voting rights laws including parts of the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act, Help America Vote and the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.
The voting section has halted all investigations into potential Voting Rights Act violations.
Voting section
Pamela Karlan, professor of law at Stanford Law School, told UPI that the Trump administration’s overhaul of election law enforcement is unlike anything ever seen in American history.
Karlan served as the former principal deputy assistant attorney general under former President Joe Biden‘s administration.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a time where they just outright stopped enforcing the Voting Rights Act,” Karlan said. “There has been more vigorous enforcement during some administrations than others. That has not traditionally been a partisan issue. But I don’t think we’ve ever had an administration that was outright not committed to enforcing any part of the Voting Rights Act.”
“The idea that the voting section isn’t in the game is really troubling, because the voting section has brought and won some of the most important voting rights cases in our history,” she continued.
Reducing the staff in the voting section and its overall capabilities greatly puts overseas voters and deployed military service members at risk of not being able to participate in elections.
“Almost every election cycle the voting action has had to deal with problems of getting ballots to overseas voters and to military voters in a timely manner,” Karlan said. “Almost every federal election cycle, the department has a bunch of UOCAVA responsibilities and really nobody else is going to enforce that.”
Karlan sees little opportunity for recourse if the voting section does not enforce election laws or actively protect the rights of voters, short of action by Congress. She still expects most election administrators will follow the law but the small few who do not will present significant problems.
“For the most part, state and local jurisdictions comply with the law,” she said. “Prior to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act we had rampant violations of the Constitution when it came to voting rights. Massive disenfranchisement. Purposeful vote dilution and the like.”
“Most election officials want to comply with federal law,” she continued. “But when it comes to the outliers, the lack of any federal enforcement is deeply problematic.”
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Zohran Mamdani’s New York primary win sparks the ire of Modi’s supporters | Human Rights News
If he wins the general election in November, Zohran Mamdani could become New York City’s first South Asian mayor and the first of Indian origin.
But the same identity that makes him a trailblazer in United States politics has also exposed him to public outcry in India and within its diaspora.
Ever since Mamdani achieved a thumping win in the Democratic mayoral primary on June 24, his campaign has weathered a flood of vitriol – some of it coming from the Hindu right.
Experts say the attacks are a reflection of the tensions that have arisen between supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and critics of the human rights abuses under his leadership, particularly against religious minorities.
A number of those attacks have fixated on Mamdani’s religion: The 33-year-old is Muslim. Some commenters have accused the mayoral hopeful of being a “jihadi” and “Islamist”. Others have called him anti-Hindu and anti-India.
Kayla Bassett, the director of research at the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), a Washington-based think tank, believes the attacks against Mamdani are a vehicle to attack the Muslim community more broadly.
“This isn’t just about one individual,” she said. “It’s about promoting a narrative that casts Muslims as inherently suspect or un-American.”
Backlash from Modi’s party
That narrative could potentially have consequences for Mamdani’s campaign, as he works to increase his support among New York voters.
Mamdani will face competition in November from more established names in politics. He is expected to face incumbent mayor Eric Adams in the final vote. His rival in the Democratic primary, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, has also not yet ruled out an independent run.
The mayoral hopeful has vocally denounced human rights abuses, including in places like Gaza and India.
That unabashed stance has not only earned him criticism from his rival candidates but also from overseas.
Members of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for example, have been among the voices slamming Mamdani’s remarks and questioning his fitness for the mayor’s seat.
BJP Member of Parliament Kangana Ranaut posted on social media, for example, that Mamdani “sounds more Pakistani than Indian”.
“Whatever happened to his Hindu identity or bloodline,” she asked, pointing to the Hindu roots of his mother, director Mira Nair. “Now he is ready to wipe out Hinduism.”
Soon after Mamdani’s primary win, a prominent pro-BJP news channel in India, Aaj Tak, also aired a segment claiming that he had received funding from organisations that promote an “anti-India” agenda.
It also warned of a growing Muslim population in New York City, an assertion it coupled with footage of women wearing hijabs.
But some of the backlash has come from sources closer to home.
A New Jersey-based group named Indian Americans for Cuomo spent $3,570 for a plane to fly a banner over New York City with the message: “Save NYC from Global Intifada. Reject Mamdani.”
A critic of human rights abuses
Much of the pushback can be linked to Mamdani’s vocal criticism of Hindu nationalism and Modi in particular.
In 2020, Mamdani participated in a Times Square demonstration against a temple built on the site of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya that was destroyed by Hindu extremists in 1992. He called out the BJP’s participation in and normalisation of that violence.
“I am here today to protest against the BJP government in India and the demolition of the Babri masjid,” he said.
Then, in 2023, Mamdani read aloud notes from an imprisoned Indian activist ahead of Modi’s visit to New York City.
That activist, Umar Khalid, has been imprisoned since 2020 without trial on terrorism charges after making speeches criticising Modi’s government.
More recently, during a town hall for mayoral candidates in May, Mamdani was asked if he would meet with Modi if the prime minister were to visit the city again. Mamdani said he wouldn’t.
“This is a war criminal,” he replied.
Mamdani pointed to Modi’s leadership in the Indian state of Gujarat during a period of religious riots in 2002. Modi has been criticised for turning a blind eye to the violence, which killed more than a thousand people, many of them Muslim.
In the aftermath, Modi was denied a US visa for “severe violations of religious freedom”.
“Narendra Modi helped to orchestrate what was a mass slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat, to the extent that we don’t even believe that there are Gujarati Muslims any more,” Mamdani told the town hall. “When I tell someone that I am, it’s a shock to them that that’s even the case.”
Barriers of class and religion
It’s that “fearless” and consistent criticism of Modi that has made Mamdani the target of outrage from the Hindu right, according to Rohit Chopra, a communications professor at Santa Clara University.
“Among the Hindu right, there is a project of the political management of the memory of 2002. There’s this silence around Modi being denied a visa to enter the US,” said Chopra.
The professor also said class fragmentation among Hindu Americans may also fuel scepticism towards Mamdani.
Hindu Americans are a relatively privileged minority in terms of socioeconomic status: The Pew Research Center estimates that 44 percent Asian American Hindus enjoy a family income of more than $150,000, and six in 10 have obtained postgraduate degrees.
That relative prosperity, Chopra said, can translate into social barriers.
“They don’t necessarily even identify with other Hindu Americans who may come from very different kinds of class backgrounds – people who might be working as cab drivers, or dishwashers, or other blue-collar jobs,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Suchitra Vijayan, a New York City-based writer and the founder of the digital magazine Polis Project, has noticed that many lines of attack against Mamdani centre on his identity.
“Mamdani is an elected leader who is unabashedly Muslim,” she said.
She pointed out that other Muslim politicians, including US Congress members Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, have sparked similar backlash for reproaching Modi over the Gujarat violence.
But Mamdani’s family ties to the region make the scrutiny all the more intense.
“In Mamdani’s case, he’s Muslim, he’s African, but also his father is of Gujarati descent and has openly spoken about the pogrom in Gujarat,” Vijayan said.
A ‘seismic’ victory
Despite the online backlash, experts and local organisers believe Mamdani’s campaign can mobilise Indian American voters and other members of the South Asian diaspora who traditionally lean Democratic.
The Pew Research Center estimates that there are 710,000 Indians and Indian Americans living in the New York City area, the most of any metropolitan centre in the US.
Preliminary results from June’s mayoral primary show that Mamdani scored big in neighbourhoods with strong Asian populations, like Little Bangladesh, Jackson Heights and Parkchester.
A final tally of the ranked-choice ballots was released earlier this week, on July 1, showing Mamdani trounced his closest rival, Cuomo, 56 percent to 44.
“I’ve heard his win described as ‘seismic’,” said Arvind Rajagopal, a professor of media studies at New York University. “He can speak not only Spanish but Hindi, Urdu, and passable Bangla. A candidate with this level of depth and breadth is rare in recent times.”
Rajagopal added that Mamdani’s decision to own his Muslim identity became an asset for him on the campaign trail, particularly in the current political climate.
With President Donald Trump in office for a second term, many voters are bracing for the anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies that accompanied his first four years in the White House.
Back then, Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, saying they represented an “influx of hatred” and “danger”.
“The moment of Trump is something that Mamdani answers perfectly,” Rajagopal said. He called Mamdani’s success “a big reality check for the Hindu right”.
Whatever backlash Mamdani is facing from Hindu groups, Jagpreet Singh is sceptical about its influence over New York City.
“I can assure you – it’s not coming from within the city,” said Singh, the political director of DRUM Beats, a sister organisation to the social justice organisation Desis Rising Up and Moving.
That group was among the first in the city to endorse Mamdani’s candidacy for mayor.
Since early in his campaign, Singh pointed out that Mamdani has reached out to Hindu working-class communities “in an authentic way”.
This included visiting the Durga Temple and Nepalese Cultural Center in Ridgewood and speaking at events in the Guyanese and Trinidadian Hindu communities, Singh pointed out. During his time as a state assembly member, Mamdani also pushed for legislation that would recognise Diwali – the Hindu festival of lights – as a state holiday.
At a Diwali celebration last year, Singh said Mamdani “took part in lighting of the diyas, spoke on stage, and talked about his mother’s background as being somebody who is of Hindu faith”.
To Singh, the message was clear. South Asian groups in New York City, including Hindu Americans, “have adopted him as their own”.
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Israel-Iran ceasefire off to rocky start, drawing Trump’s ire after fanfare | Donald Trump News
The ceasefire between Israel and Iran is already showing signs of strain – and has triggered frustration, and a televised expletive, from United States President Donald Trump, who accused Israel of undermining the deal just hours after its announcement.
The ceasefire, brokered by the US and Qatar, came into effect late Monday following days of intensive missile barrages between the two foes. Israel’s last wave of strikes targeted Iranian military infrastructure near Isfahan, prompting retaliatory drone launches by Tehran.
Iran violated the ceasefire, “but Israel violated it too”, Trump told reporters on the White House’s South Lawn on Tuesday as he departed for the NATO summit.
“So I’m not happy with them. I’m not happy with Iran either. But I’m really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning.”
“I’ve got to get Israel to calm down,” he said. “Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before.”
As he prepared to head to a NATO summit in The Hague in the Netherlands, Trump’s anger flared on the White House Lawn: “We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.”
A day earlier, Trump boasted on his Truth Social app that “the Ceasefire is in effect!”
“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt,” Trump wrote.
Trump’s unusually public display of anger at Israel saw the US leader apparently trying to force his ally to call off warplanes in real time on Tuesday.
Earlier the same morning, he had posted on Truth Social: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS” – without it being clear which bombs he was referring to.
“IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to quickly accede, with his office saying in a statement on Tuesday that Israel still carried out one more attack near Tehran after Trump’s appeal, but is refraining from “further strikes”.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz had said earlier on Tuesday that he had ordered the military to mount new strikes on targets in Tehran in response to what he claimed were Iranian missiles fired in a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire.
Iran denied launching any missiles and said Israel’s attacks had continued for an hour and a half beyond the time the ceasefire was meant to start.
For his part, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that his country would not fire at Israel if it was not fired upon, but that a “final decision on the cessation of our military operations will be made later”.
Despite the rocky start, Trump voiced support for the ceasefire itself, clarifying he is not seeking regime change in Iran, after some mixed messaging in recent days, and insisting that the ceasefire remains in effect.
If it holds, the truce would be a big political win for Trump in the wake of his risky gamble to send US bombers over the weekend to attack three nuclear facilities in Iran that Israel and the United States claim were being used to build an atomic bomb in secret.
US intelligence and the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog had previously recorded no indication Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem said Iranian officials appeared to welcome Trump’s remarks, viewing them as a potential opening for diplomatic engagement.
“It might give the impression that Trump is serious about this ceasefire,” Hashem said.
In Washington, Al Jazeera’s Phil Lavelle, said Trump is feeling “quite annoyed” at and perhaps “betrayed” by Netanyahu violating the ceasefire.
“He was angry with both Israel and Iran. But you could really tell some of the extra anger there, the extra fury was aimed at Israel,” Lavelle said.
The US leader had said the truce would be a phased 24-hour process beginning at about 04:00 GMT Tuesday, with Iran unilaterally halting all operations first. He said Israel would follow suit 12 hours later.
Israel has been bombing Iran in an offensive that began June 13. The US joined the attack with a mission starting overnight Friday to Saturday against the deeply-buried and hard-to-access Fordow complex and two other sites.
Iranian officials say more than 400 people have been killed in air strikes. Retaliatory missile strikes have killed 28 people in Israel, the first time large numbers of Iranian missiles have penetrated – and on a daily basis – its much vaunted air defence systems, which mainly the US has provided.
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