Trump Rants About “Comfort Women” While Meeting with Foreign President

President Donald Trump’s meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took an unexpected turn Monday when the U.S. leader decided to bring up the topic of forced prostitution.

The White House meeting spanned several geopolitical issues, including potential unification of South Korea and North Korea, economic partnerships between South Korea and the U.S., as well as South Korea’s political stability, which has been on shaky ground since former President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in December.

But then Trump dropped a seemingly unrelated doozy into the afternoon conversation: Japan’s sex-based war crimes.

“The whole issue of the women. Comfort women,” Trump remarked, seated beside Lee. “Very specifically, we talked and that was a very big problem for Korea, not for Japan. Japan was, wanted to go, they want to get on. And—but Korea was very stuck on that, you understand.”

The term “comfort women” was a euphemism coined by the Japanese military to describe women or girls who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II, according to the Association of Asian Studies. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of women were victimized by Japan and forced into military sex slavery during the war, which amounted to the largest case of government-sponsored human trafficking in modern history. The continued use of the phrase “comfort women” has been roundly criticized for minimizing the harm and gravity of Japan’s actions.

The topic is still a heavily charged political issue for the two nations, especially as surviving victims seek formal recognition of the atrocities by Tokyo.

But as Trump attempts to push his numerous ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein into the rearview, it’s no surprise that he doesn’t understand why South Korea would have a difficult time moving past the abuse. The president has, after all, been found liable for sexually abusing women in the past.

In 2015, Japan apologized to the South Korean victims and reached an agreement with the conservative leadership in South Korea at the time to give 1 billion yen—or $6.8 million—in reparations.

Regardless, Lee called the matter a “heartbreaking issue” for South Koreans last week, noting that the 2015 arrangement was “very difficult to accept” for many victims in the country, but that it was nonetheless “undesirable to overturn it.”

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee on Monday sent a to subpoena the estate of deceased serial sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.

“It is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Epstein and [his former partner Ghislaine] Maxwell,” Oversight Committee Chair James Comer wrote in a letter alongside the subpoena. “It is our understanding that the Estate of Jeffrey Epstein is in custody and control of documents that may further the Committee’s investigation and legislative goals.

The subpoena demands things like Epstein’s infamous 50th “birthday book” that includes a letter from Trump, flight logs, bank information, anything that “could be reasonably construed to be a potential list of clients,” and more. Comer’s committee has already spoken to William Barr, who was attorney general when the Justice Department indicted Epstein in 2019, and Alex Acosta, who as federal prosecutor in 2007 refused to press charges against Epstein, giving him the sweetheart plea deal that allowed him to continue his sex trafficking.

This subpoena has the potential to cede new information, an opportunity that hasn’t been raised since Trump’s Justice Department conveniently declared the case closed in July. Trump, who has spent all of his time trying to convince the public that none of this matters despite having a well-documented close friendship with the infamous serial abuser, has yet to comment on the Oversight Committee’s subpoena.

As questions swirl about recurrent bruising on the back of Donald Trump’s right hand, the 79-year-old president’s injury was clearly visible—without the daub of mismatched makeup with which it’s usually covered—during his public appearances early on Monday.

The bruising was spotted repeatedly during a Monday morning executive order–signing, and again during an afternoon meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. While Trump has previously sought to hide the mark with a (quite conspicuous) smear of concealer, observers noticed on Monday that it was exposed, despite apparent efforts by the president to hide his bruised hand from view.

In Trump’s second term, the bruising has been spotted regularly, in at least February, April, June, and July, thus giving rise to speculations about the president’s health—including as to whether he is receiving undisclosed intravenous treatment.

Such concerns mounted in July, as images circulated of the hand bruise as well as of swelling in his ankles. At the time, the White House attributed the swollen ankles to “a benign and common condition,” chronic venous insufficiency.

As for the bruising, the White House cites “frequent hand shaking and the use of aspirin”—a dubious line, given that the mark appears on the part of the hand subjected to the least, if any, pressure during a handshake.

This can be seen in a video, posted by a communications staffer, of Trump greeting Lee Jae Myung outside of the White House. The South Korean president shakes Trump’s right hand, making contact only with the area around the bruise. When Myung goes to rest his left hand on the back of Trump’s right, he abruptly grabs the president’s sleeve instead, perhaps to deliberately avoid touching the empurpled part.

More than 180 employees at the Federal Emergency Management Administration sent Congress a letter Monday, warning that President Donald Trump’s efforts to phase out the agency could make way for another Hurricane Katrina-level environmental disaster.

The letter argued that the Trump administration’s mismanagement of FEMA had undone critical emergency rules, gutted essential federal programs, and saddled the agency with insufficient and inexperienced leadership. “Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,” the letter stated.

More than 150 FEMA employees signed the letter anonymously, while only 36 signed their names. The agency has already lost one-third of its workforce since Trump entered office, who either quit or were fired. FEMA’s former acting head Cameron Hamilton was fired in May after defending the agency Trump claimed he would like to “phase out.” The employees wrote that they wanted better protections from “politically motivated firings.”

“I think the unfortunate reality is that our agency is on such a dangerous trajectory and drastic action is needed,” said one FEMA employee behind the letter, who spoke to The Washington Post under the condition of anonymity. “Congress passed laws after Katrina to protect Americans and FEMA from inadequate leadership, inaction, and unpreparedness, but I don’t think Congress realizes how many of those laws have been broken, been violated.”

Signed into law in 2006, the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act granted FEMA with more power and responsibility—but in its efforts to dissolve the agency, the Trump administration has undone much of this legislation.

The letter advocated that FEMA be removed from the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, and made into an independent Cabinet-level agency. Trump has previously said that he would like DHS to take full control of disaster responses.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem however, was widely criticized for her pitifully delayed response to the deadly flooding in Texas earlier this summer. Noem severely botched FEMA’s Texas response by reportedly failing to renew contracts with companies staffing FEMA call centers, and instituting a policy that required her to personally sign off on all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000.

Noem’s “review of contracts is superfluous, given that FEMA is already required to develop ‘pre-scripted mission assignments’” the letter stated. Noem has been charged with running the agency alongside David Richardson, who has no experience at all in emergency management, and didn’t even know that the United States had a hurricane season.

The Trump administration’s response to the deadly flooding in Texas “proved the inefficiencies, ineffectiveness, and dangers of the processes and decisions put forth by the current administration,” the letter stated. Noem, in denial of her own disastrous work, claimed that the federal response in Texas was a model for what’s to come.

The group of FEMA employees also wrote that the administration’s decision to scrap federal programs related to climate change were particularly dangerous.

“This administration’s decision to ignore and disregard the facts pertaining to climate science in disasters shows a blatant disregard for the safety and security of our Nation’s people and all American communities regardless of their geographic, economic or ethnic diversity,” they said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is ready to throw down in court over his state’s upcoming redistricting referendum.

President Donald Trump vowed legal retaliation against the Golden State Monday, telling reporters during a White House press briefing that his administration would be filing a lawsuit against California “pretty soon” over its plan to put the state’s congressional lines to a vote.

“I think I’m going to be filing a lawsuit pretty soon and I think we’re going to be very successful in it. We’re going to be filing it through the Department of Justice, that’s going to happen,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

Trump also condemned the use of blue slips in the Senate, which allow home-state lawmakers to veto district court nominees as well as appointments to U.S. attorneys’ offices.

“We’re also going to be filing a lawsuit on blue slipping. You know, blue slips make it impossible for me as president to appoint a judge or a U.S. attorney because they have a gentleman’s agreement, nothing memorialized, it’s a gentleman’s agreement that’s about 100 years old, where if you have a president, like a Republican, and if you have a Democrat senator, that senator can stop you from appointing a judge or a U.S. attorney in particular, those two.”

But Newsom was already ready and willing to meet Trump at his level.

“BRING IT,” the governor wrote on X, in response to the president’s comments during the presser.

Newsom announced the Election Rigging Response Act earlier this month, a statewide Democratic gerrymandering plan intended to offset Republican efforts to strip liberal areas around the country of their electoral votes. California will invite residents to vote on whether or not to pursue redistricting in their own state, in reaction to the battle raging in Texas, on November 4.

In July, the president demanded that Texas Republicans create five more House seats by redrawing its congressional map, eliminating a handful of blue districts. The order, and Texas’s subsequent obedience, elicited shock and contempt from two of the country’s most populous regions—California and New York. Both states have launched their own redistricting wars in the wake of the vote.

“This is radical rigging of a midterm election,” Newsom told The Siren podcast Wednesday. “Radical rigging of an election. Destroying, vandalizing this democracy, the rule of law. So, I’m sorry. I know some peoples’ sensibilities. I respect and appreciate that. But right now, with all due respect, we’re walking down a damn different path. We’re fighting fire with fire. And we’re gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”