Marco Rubio Knew Terrifying Truth of Trump’s Ukraine Peace Plan

Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly revealed that President Donald Trump’s disastrous 28-point peace plan for Ukraine is really just Russia’s “wish list”—and not a U.S. plan at all. It suddenly makes so much more sense why the plan appeared to be translated from Russian!

Last week, reports began to emerge of a sprawling peace plan that would require Ukraine to give up Donbas—an industrial region in the east sought by Russia—reduce the size of its armed forces, and agree not to use certain weapons, making it significantly harder for Ukraine to defend itself from Russian military incursion. Those concessions caused shock waves through Europe and Ukraine, as Trump demanded Kyiv respond by Thanksgiving.

Original reports claimed that the plan was drafted as the result of a meeting between Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev—but now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is telling lawmakers that the United States had nothing to do with it at all.

Speaking Saturday, independent Maine Senator Angus King said that Rubio had clarified the plan was “not the administration’s position, it is essentially the wish list of the Russians that is now being presented to the Europeans and to the Ukrainians.”

Republican South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds said at the same press conference that Rubio had clearly distanced the U.S. from the proposal. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan. It is a proposal that was received. And as an intermediary, we have made arrangements to share it,” Rounds said.

Two European diplomats told Axios that when they pressed the Trump administration for clarification, they were specifically told it was not a “Trump plan.”

The implication of Rubio’s latest revelation seems to be that after months of negotiations, the United States is simply a mouthpiece for Russia’s unchanging desire for more territory and control.

But some are calling B.S. on the backtracking—including those at the State Department.

“This is blatantly false,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott wrote on X Saturday. “As Secretary Rubio and the entire Administration has consistently maintained, this plan was authored by the United States, with input from both the Russians and Ukrainians.”

Rubio also pushed back on the claims from lawmakers about their discussion with him. “The peace proposal was authored by the U.S. It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations,” he wrote on X Saturday. “It is based on input from the Russian side. But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”

In a statement Sunday, King clarified that it “has now been established” that the plan was “endorsed” by the Trump administration but maintained that it still “favored the interests of Russia.”

Last week, Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly read the plan line by line to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. But now, U.S. officials have started to refer to the plan as merely a “framework.”

This story has been updated.

Senator Mark Kelly, one of the Democratic lawmakers targeted by President Donald Trump for his role in a video advising military personnel to respect the Constitution over the president’s orders, had some strong words for the president.

“[The president] tries to intimidate Congress, he looks at government accountability as a nuisance,” Kelly said, speaking to CBS News’s Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation on Sunday.  “The message he sent a couple days ago was, he declared that loyalty to the Constitution was now punishable by death. Those are serious words, coming from the president of the United States. He’s trying to intimidate us. But Margaret, I’m not going to be intimidated.”

 “You’ve just heard Jason Crow, he’s not going to be intimidated either,” Kelly continued. “We both served our country, we swore an oath, all we said was we reiterated what’s basically the rule of law, which is that members of the military should not, can not, follow illegal orders.”

Kelly is a retired astronaut and Navy veteran, and the other Democrats in the video also had military or intelligence backgrounds. 

After the lawmakers released the video last week, the president posted several rage-filled rants about the video, saying that it was seditious and “punishable by DEATH.”

Almost all of them have received bomb threats after the president’s online attacks.

On Friday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke to reporters about Trump’s language and violent rhetoric in the wake of the video.

“It’s not just shocking, it’s not just offensive, it’s bizarre, it is erratic, it’s volatile. I think it indicates a mental state that we should all be questioning right now,” she said.

She continued, saying that the lawmakers had “a very clear message to U.S. service members, which is that you do not have to obey an illegal order, and I think that’s an important message to reiterate, because this administration seems to be increasingly trying to go down that path.”

Breaking a year-long ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, Israel struck the suburbs of Beirut on Sunday, killing at least five people and wounding 28 others, according to the BBC and Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Israel says it killed a senior Hezbollah official, Haytham Tabtabai, in an attack aimed at discouraging the militant group from rearming.

Hezbollah has not attacked Israel since the ceasefire began last November, according to the AP.

In a statement, Lebanon’s President Joseph Aoun accused Israel of refusing to implement its side of the deal, post-ceasefire. He asked the international community to “intervene with strength and seriousness to stop the attacks on Lebanon and its people.”

This is not the first time Israel has broken its ceasefire with Hezbollah, nor has the country kept its ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

According to the Gaza Government Media office, Israel has violated the ceasefire with Gaza nearly 500 times in 44 days, killing hundreds of Palestinians, reported Al Jazeera.

Yesterday in Gaza, Israel launched airstrikes that killed at least 24 people. One strike targeted a vehicle, killing 11 people and wounding over 20. Hospital director Mohamed Abu Selmiya told reporters that most of the victims were children.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that it launched the strikes after a Hamas fighter shot at Israeli soldiers in Israeli-occupied Gaza, none of whom were hurt. Earlier in the week, Israeli strikes killed at least 33 other Palestinians.

Israel has mounted more and more attacks on Gaza and on Lebanon in recent weeks, despite ceasefire agreements. The intensified strikes come at the same time as the U.N. Security Council endorsed President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, which would create a “Board of Peace” to oversee the future of the region.

But as Israel continues to kill civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, despite existing ceasefires, it’s hard to find hope that Trump’s new peace plan will do much of anything at all.

FBI Director Kash Patel has come under fire for using taxpayer-funded resources like government planes and SWAT protection for personal reasons.

When his girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, performed at an NRA convention, she had an FBI SWAT team as her bodyguards. The agents were members of a special unit trained to rescue hostages and penetrate barricaded buildings, according to The New York Times. Once the team had secured the convention center, they departed. But Patel didn’t like that.

He reportedly lambasted the team’s commander for leaving Wilkins without protection while she chatted with fans on the convention floor.

It’s only the latest incidence of Patel using taxpayer-funded resources for his own personal activities. He’s been treating specialized FBI agents like his and his girlfriend’s private security detail, as well as jet-setting across the globe on government planes, according to the Times.

Former FBI agent Christopher O’Leary criticized Patel’s actions, telling the Times that his use of the private plane and SWAT agents for his girlfriend’s detail “are indicative of his lack of leadership experience, judgment and humility.”

And Patel’s right-wing allies aren’t happy either: “Is she considered Kash’s spouse?” asked Grace Chong, an influencer who works for Steve Bannon, on X. “Is that why she’s getting protection because if not then why are we paying for this?”

Patel claims that Wilkins is getting this level of protection because she’s received death threats. But that doesn’t explain his extensive travel—to see her, and for other personal and business-related reasons.

An FBI spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that Patel had taken nearly a dozen personal trips since becoming FBI director in February, compared to former FBI Director Robert Mueller’s itinerary of 10 personal flights over a four-year period.

After his surprisingly warm meeting with President Donald Trump, NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani reiterated that yes, he still believes Trump is a fascist.

During an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Kristen Welker pressed Mamdani about the recent event at the White House. By all accounts, the two had gotten along unexpectedly well, and the president had beamed at the press conference afterwards. Trump also posted several photos of the two together on his Truth Social account.

The unexpectedly friendly vibes turned the meeting into somewhat of a public spectacle, and Welker referenced an exchange with a reporter that took place about Mamdani’s previous usage of the term fascist. She asked if he still believed that the president was one.

“That’s something I’ve said in the past, and I say it today,” Mamdani said.

“Do you still believe President Trump is a threat to democracy?” Welker followed up later.

“Everything that I’ve said in the past I continue to believe,” Mamdani said. “That’s the thing that I think is important about politics, is we don’t shy away from where we have disagreements, but we understand what brings us to that table.”

Later in the interview, Welker tried again, raising a valid point.

“I think that some of your supporters would be curious to know … you say you stand by your past statements, that yes he’s a threat to the democracy, how do you square working with someone who you still think is a threat to the democracy?”

“I think working for the people of New York City demands that you work with everyone and anyone—and that you always look to find those areas of agreement while not overlooking the places of disagreement,” Mamdani said.

The friendly meeting between two politicians who had insulted each other for months (Trump has called Mamdani “my little Communist,” among other things) shocked and irritated Trump’s MAGA base, including far-right activist Laura Loomer, who denounced the event on social media.

While Trump and Mamdani, who is a democratic socialist, disagree on nearly everything, the two seem to have bonded over affordability, and their shared love of New York City.