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Could Trump have handled the Epstein issue any worse?
“When they’re running you out of town, get in front of the crowd and make it look like you’re leading the parade,” Ian says of Trump’s Sunday-night flip.
Now Republicans can safely vote to release what’s legally permissible, while Trump’s DOJ delays disclosures by launching new investigations into Democrats named in the files.
It caps a rough stretch for Trump: election losses in multiple states, slipping poll numbers, and public feuds with longtime allies. But when it comes to the Epstein documents themselves, Ian is clear: they will likely contain embarrassing details for Trump, but he does not expect they will show illegal involvement, or the Biden administration would have already acted.
Trump shifts on Russia: From carrots to sticks in Ukraine war
For years, US policy toward Russia’s war in Ukraine has swung between extremes. Under Biden, “all stick, no carrot.” Under Trump, “all carrot, no stick.” Ian Bremmer says both approaches failed to change Vladimir Putin’s calculus.
What’s different now? Trump himself admits his personal diplomacy with Putin has failed—a rare concession. Instead, he’s pushing oil pressure: urging Hungary, Turkey, and India to cut Russian crude purchases, and exploring deals with Ukraine on drones and long-range missiles.
“The US is closer today to the Ukrainian and European position than Trump was months ago,” Ian notes. “That’s a shift worth watching.”
Putin loved the Jake Tapper book
On Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping's podcast, This Authoritarian Life, the Russian president reveals why he was so inspired by the book "Original Sin." #PUPPETREGIME
Check out more episodes of GZERO's award-winning PUPPET REGIME series!
President Joe Biden at an event with Kamala Harris on lowering drug costs for America.
HARD NUMBERS: Biden diagnosed with cancer, Russian drones hammer Ukraine, Israeli forces enter Gaza, Pope Leo gets political, UK and EU are friends again, Austria wins Eurovision
9: Former US President Joe Biden, 82, has been diagnosed with prostate cancer that has metastasized to the bone. Biden’s cancer has a “Gleason score” of 9 out of 10, which means it is highly aggressive, but since it requires hormones to grow, may respond to treatment that deprives the tumors of hormones. Both US President Donald Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris expressed their sorrow on social media and wished the former president a successful recovery as he and his family review treatment options.
273: Russia launched 273 drones in the Kyiv region of Ukraine Sunday, killing one woman and causing widespread damage in its biggest drone attack of the war. Ukraine accused Russia of also intending to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, but Moscow did not comment. The escalation comes ahead of US President Donald Trump’s calls with the presidents of Russia and Ukraine on Monday, to broker a ceasefire deal.
140: Palestinian health officials say Israeli air strikes killed over 140 people in Gaza Sunday, raising accusations of ethnic cleansing by the UN. Israel subsequently began a ground offensive in the territory after peace talks stalled in Qatar, with officials saying that the strikes were part of its plans to “achieve all of the war goals in Gaza” and establish “operational control” of parts of the territory.
200,000: An estimated 200,000 well-wishers, including a slew of world leaders, packed St. Peter’s Square in Rome for the first sermon of Pope Leo XIV - and the pontiff didn’t leave out the politics. Leo stated that his role is to serve without “yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat,” remarked on Ukraine being “martyred,” and deplored the people of Gaza being “reduced to starvation.”
12: The United Kingdom and the European Union have decided that there are plenty of fish in the sea for them to share: London granted EU boats access to UK waters for the next 12 years in return for fewer checks on British food exports to the 27-country bloc. The deal also includes a significant security pact. It’s a significant moment for UK-EU relations, just nine years after their infamous divorce.
160 million: Austria took top prize in the 69th Eurovision song contest Saturday, with classically trained countertenor JJ wowing an estimated 160 million viewers with his soaring pop-opera ballad, Wasted Love. Second place went to Yuval Raphael of Israel with a moving trilingual performance of New Day Will Rise, while Tommy Cash of Estonia came in third with his frothy fast-dancing confection, Espresso Macchiato.Graphic Truth: Is Donald Trump signing more executive orders than normal?
He has issued 66 executive orders so far, more than double the number of executive orders Joe Biden signed in the first month of his presidency, and more than five times the number Trump signed during the first 30 days of his last term in 2016.
While executive orders are effective for hitting the ground running and fulfilling those infamous “first 100 days” campaign promises, critics point out that they are easily overturned, as seen on Trump’s first day in office, when he issued 26 executive orders, but also overturned 78 of Biden’s.
Some also argue that they are a sign of weakness – a cop-out used instead of passing lasting legislation through a perpetually gridlocked Congress. The deluge of legal challenges in response to Trump’s executive orders also shows how they can be stalled, or smacked down, by judges.
World leaders give Valentine's advice
Need Valentine's Day tips? Don’t ask these world leaders. Trust us. #PUPPETREGIME
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Biden signs with a talent agency
The ex-president has reached a deal with CAA, one of Hollywood's most storied agencies.
What projects can we expect from the Kid from Scranton? #PUPPETREGIME
Is the TikTok threat really about AI?
Four years after President Donald Trump’s initial unsuccessful attempt to ban TikTok on national security grounds, Congress succeeded in passing bipartisan legislation to force the app's removal, which former President Joe Biden signed into law. The ban, requiring mobile app stores, cloud hosts, and internet service providers to drop TikTok, was upheld by the Supreme Court on Friday despite challenges from TikTok, content creators, and free speech advocates who argued it violated the First Amendment.
Yet TikTok’s presence in America continues through an unusual turn of events. After briefly going offline in the US late Saturday, the app resumed service on Sunday ahead of President Trump’s inauguration on Monday, with the new president issuing an executive order late Monday to keep TikTok operational for another 75 days. This executive intervention, however bizarre since Trump initiated the effort to ban TikTok during his first term, also raises complex legal questions about presidential authority to override — or ignore — congressional legislation.
Throughout this political saga, a fundamental question remains: What exactly is TikTok’s threat to national security? Critics typically focus on two main concerns: China’s potential access to American user data and its ability to influence public opinion through the app’s content algorithm.
While TikTok stands as one of the world’s most sophisticated implementations of artificial intelligence in social media, its role in the broader US-China AI competition is nuanced. The platform’s AI capabilities, though powerful, operate largely parallel to rather than directly within the ongoing technological rivalry between the two nations, which is more focused on large language models, generative AI, and the advanced chips that power these systems.
“TikTok is AI, but not the kind that is fueling today’s global AI race,” explained Tinglong Dai, a professor at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. “Its recommendation engine is more akin to reinforcement learning, the AI technique behind AlphaGo, the DeepMind system that mastered the board game Go by training against itself. Unlike generative AI models like ChatGPT, TikTok's AI isn’t about creating – it’s about optimizing engagement and influence.”
This distinction is important. While attention has focused on TikTok’s data collection practices, experts suggest the more significant concern lies elsewhere. After all, TikTok collects about as much data from users as any other social media app.
Kenton Thibaut, senior resident China fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, said that data collection would become a bigger issue if the US were to enter formal conflict with China. “Should the US end up in a conflict with China, it is the device-level compromises that the app represents” — such as collecting real-time location data — “that, in my opinion, pose a much greater potential threat than the data-gathering or algorithmic manipulation concerns that are currently at the fore of the conversation surrounding the app,” she said.
But TikTok’s algorithm is more relevant to the AI race than the data it collects, according to Xiaomeng Lu, director of geo-technology at Eurasia Group. “That’s why China indicated that ByteDance can’t sell TikTok’s AI recommendation algorithm without government approval last time around, and is very likely still holding that view,” she said.
The potential value of this algorithm hasn’t gone unnoticed by the private sector. Perplexity AI’s recent bid to merge with TikTok’s US operations, reportedly valued at “well north of $50 billion,” suggests that TikTok’s recommendation system might be valuable for advancing the capabilities of an AI search engine like Perplexity.
However, Anton Dahbura, executive director of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute, offers a more skeptical view: “I have no reason to doubt that TikTok’s algorithm is very good, but given the state of many software technologies today, it isn’t irreproducible,” he said. “However, controlling the flow of information on such a scale and for nefarious purposes by any company should be recognized as unethical, irresponsible, and hopefully someday, illegal.”
The real concern, according to Dai, extends beyond mere technology: “The bigger story isn’t TikTok’s data or even ByteDance's dominance — it’s Xi Jinping’s global ambitions. TikTok gives China an unprecedented ability to shape what Americans see, think, believe, and even dream.”
With TikTok poised to survive in the United States under President Trump’s conditional approval, pending a potential partial sale, the platform represents an unprecedented scenario in American media: Never before has such an influential platform, powered by sophisticated AI and used by millions of Americans, remained under the potential influence of an adversarial nation. But politics makes the strangest bedfellows: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew attended Trump’s inauguration on Monday, an assurance that Trump will rewrite the typical bounds of the US-China relationship, perhaps even softening his stance on China if he feels like it serves him well.