Trump hails ‘great and very brave’ UK soldiers after slamming NATO allies’ Afghanistan service
President Donald Trump praised the soldiers of the United Kingdom who served alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan on Saturday, clarifying his previous criticism of NATO allies.
Trump had earlier criticized NATO troops who served in Afghanistan, arguing they had stayed “a little bit back” from the frontlines during the conflict. His statement was met with outrage in the U.K., however, where Prime Minister Kier Starmer called it “insulting and frankly, appalling.”
“The GREAT and very BRAVE soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America! In Afghanistan, 457 died, many were badly injured, and they were among the greatest of all warriors,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“It’s a bond too strong to ever be broken. The U.K. Military, with tremendous Heart and Soul, is second to none (except for the U.S.A.!). We love you all, and always will!” he continued.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S UK VISIT SHOULDN’T BE UNDERESTIMATED
The social media post partially walks back his previous criticism of NATO, made during an interview on Fox Business.
“We have never really asked anything of them,” he said. “You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that, and they did. They stayed a little back, little off the front lines.”
Starmer’s office says the prime minister raised the issue with Trump during a phone call this weekend.
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“The Prime Minister raised the brave and heroic British and American soldiers who fought side by side in Afghanistan, many of whom never returned home,” a spokesperson said. “We must never forget their sacrifice.”
Trump’s initial remarks also drew a direct rebuke from Prince Harry, who served two tours in Afghanistan.
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“I served there. I made lifelong friends there. And I lost friends there,” Harry said.
“Those sacrifices deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect, as we all remain united and loyal to the defense of diplomacy and peace,” he added.
Zelenskyy touts ‘constructive’ trilateral talks between the US, Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday described recent trilateral talks between the United States, Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi as “constructive,” saying the meetings marked the first format of their kind in some time and focused on potential parameters for ending Moscow’s war.
Zelenskyy said the talks, which were hosted by the United Arab Emirates over two days, involved political and military representatives from all three sides and addressed security-related issues, including the need for American monitoring and oversight.
“A lot was discussed, and it is important that the conversations were constructive,” he wrote on X, noting the delegations could have further meetings as early as next week. “As a result of the meetings held over these days, all sides agreed to report back in their capitals on each aspect of the negotiations and to coordinate further steps with their leaders.”
The Abu Dhabi talks followed a meeting in Moscow on Thursday between Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Josh Gruenbaum, the head of the Federal Acquisition Service.
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Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said the “extremely frank” discussions lasted roughly four hours and included U.S. officials updating Moscow on their recent conversations with Ukrainian and European leaders.
“Importantly, the participants in the conversation between the President of Russia and the Americans reaffirmed the fact that bringing about a lasting settlement would be unlikely without addressing the territorial issue based on the formula as agreed in Anchorage,” Ushakov said, according to a summary of the meeting from the Kremlin.
Territorial issues remain a key obstacle in the negotiations, with Moscow pressing Kyiv to relinquish parts of eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that Russian forces do not fully control.
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The diplomatic efforts come as Russia continues its strikes across Ukraine, targeting the country’s energy sector, critical infrastructure and residential areas.
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Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russian forces launched more than 1,700 attack drones, over 1,380 guided aerial bombs and 69 missiles in the past week alone.
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The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, said ahead of the trilateral talks that it was deploying 447 emergency generators to help restore power to hospitals, shelters and critical services, as more than one million Ukrainians face outages amid freezing temperatures.
“The EU will not let Russia freeze Ukraine into submission and will continue helping Ukrainians get through this winter,” the commission said.
Lindsey Graham says there’s ‘strong consensus’ to protect Kurds as Syrian forces advance on territory
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo both issued dire warnings about the pressing need to protect the endangered Syrian Kurdish population under attack by government forces in the war-torn nation.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who earlier this month ordered his army, which reportedly has a large jihadist element, to conquer territory controlled for more than a decade by the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF.)
Writing on the social media platform X, Graham declared, “There is strong and growing bipartisan interest in the U.S. Senate regarding the deteriorating situation in Syria. There is strong consensus that we must protect the Kurds who were there for us in destroying the ISIS caliphate, as well as many other groups.”
Pompeo responded to Graham’s post, stating, “Turning our backs on our Kurdish allies would be a moral and strategic disaster.”
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The Trump administration is facing criticism from its long-standing ally, the Syrian Kurds, who played a crucial role in the defeat of the Islamic State in the heartland of the Middle East after a U.S. government announcement on social media that seemed to hint that the partnership had ended this past week with the Kurdish-run SDF in northern Syria.
The SDF formed as a bulwark against the rapid spread of the Islamic State’s terrorist movement in 2013. ISIS created a caliphate covering significant territory in Syria and Iraq. Al-Sharaa was a former member of the Islamic State and al Qaeda.
Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department regarding U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who also serves as the special envoy for Syria, for a response to his recent statement on X that indicated the U.S. partnership with the SDF was over.
Barrack wrote, “The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by Kurds, proved the most effective ground partner in defeating ISIS’s territorial caliphate by 2019, detaining thousands of ISIS fighters and family members in prisons and camps like al-Hol and al-Shaddadi. At that time, there was no functioning central Syrian state to partner with — the Assad regime was weakened, contested, and not a viable partner against ISIS due to its alliances with Iran and Russia.
“Today, the situation has fundamentally changed. Syria now has an acknowledged central government that has joined the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS (as its 90th member in late 2025), signaling a westward pivot and cooperation with the U.S. on counterterrorism.”
TURKEY SAYS SYRIA USING FORCE IS AN OPTION AGAINST US-BACKED FIGHTERS WHO HELPED DEFEAT ISIS
Iham Ahmed, a prominent Syrian Kurdish politician, told Fox News Digital, “We really wished to see a firm position from the U.S. The Kurdish people are at the risk of extermination. The U.S. does not give any solid or tangible guarantees.”
Ahmed cast doubt on statements like Barrack’s, warning the “Syrian army is still consisting of radical factions that no one can trust. Alawites, Christians, Sunnis and Druze cannot trust these factions. We could face massacres, which happened in other Syrian cities.”
When asked by Fox News Digital if the SDF wants Israel to intervene to aid the Kurds as it did to help the Syrian Druze and other minorities last year, Ahmed said, “Whoever wants to help us should do so. Today is the day.” She said “the Islamic State is showing itself in the image of an official army. Everyone is threatened now.”
She urged a “special status for the Kurdish region” in northeastern Syria.
Ahmed accused the Erdoğan government of nefarious involvement.
“Turkey stands behind the attacks on our region. Turkish intelligence and small groups are leading attacks. Statements from Turkey are encouraging the extermination of our people,” she claimed.
Fox News Digital sent a press query to the Turkish embassy spokesman in Washington D.C.
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The influential president of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, wrote on X, “Sen. Graham is right. I’ve been discussing the situation in NE Syria with Republican House leaders. It is not in America’s interest for Islamist forces to seize territory once governed by trusted U.S. allies who protected minorities and advanced religious freedom.
“Yet this is happening as Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa’s forces move into northeast Syria, displacing the Syrian Democratic Forces — our partners in the fight against ISIS, who lost thousands of fighters, guarded U.S. bases, and detained ISIS prisoners.
“Before we place trust in al-Sharaa, a former al Qaeda insurgent who fought U.S. forces in Iraq and was held at Abu Ghraib, he has to show he is trustworthy. So far, he is failing the test.”
Sinam Mohamad, the representative of the Syrian Democratic Council to the U.S., had harsh words for the administration, telling Fox News Digital, “American officials continue to describe the SDF as a reliable partner in that narrow mission. Washington avoids framing the relationship as a political alliance. The U.S. never intended a long-term political commitment to the Syrian Kurds. It was a military partnership without political guarantees. From Washington’s view, that’s consistency. From the Kurdish view, that’s betrayal.”
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She added there has been an announcement of a 15-day extension of a ceasefire.
“But both the SDF and outside observers noted continued [Syrian] government troop buildups near Kurdish-held areas, signaling that conflict could resume. The Kurds want to have peace and stability through negotiations.”
Iran Revolutionary Guard commander says regime has ‘finger on the trigger’ as US warships head to Middle East
The head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned the U.S. Saturday that the paramilitary force is “more ready than ever, finger on the trigger” as American warships head toward the Middle East.
The warning comes after weeks of pressure from President Donald Trump amid widespread anti-regime protests and a violent government crackdown in which the IRGC played a key role.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard and dear Iran stand more ready than ever, finger on the trigger, to execute the orders and directives of the Commander-in-Chief,” IRGC Gen. Mohammad Pakpour said, The Associated Press reported. It cited Nournews, a news outlet close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
IRAN WILL RETALIATE ‘WITH EVERYTHING WE HAVE’ IF US ATTACKS, SENIOR DIPLOMAT WARNS
Pakpour also reportedly warned the U.S. and Israel “to avoid any miscalculation,” according to the AP. This warning comes after another last week from an Iranian ambassador who said the U.S. and Israel were responsible for “political destabilization, internal unrest and chaos.”
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have expressed their support for the Iranian protesters. Netanyahu said his country was “closely monitoring” the situation. He also vowed that once Iran was “liberated from the yoke of tyranny,” Israel would be prepared to be a partner in peace.
On Tuesday, Iran warned Trump not to take action against Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Trump knows that if any hand of aggression is extended toward our leader, we not only cut that hand, but also we will set fire to their world,” Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, a spokesman for Iran’s armed forces, said, according to the AP.
On Thursday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One he was moving warships toward Iran “just in case” he wants to take action.
“We have a massive fleet heading in that direction, and maybe we won’t have to use it,” Trump said, according to the AP.
A U.S. Navy official told the AP the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and other warships traveling with it were in the Indian Ocean.
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Anti-regime protests started Dec. 28 as Iranians took to the streets to voice their displeasure with the economic woes facing the country, which has become more isolated internationally. Since then, despite an internet blackout, reports of violence against protesters have emerged.
When the protests began, Trump warned the regime the U.S. was “locked and loaded” and ready to act if it used violence against protesters.
Trump put out a Truth Social post Jan. 16 in which he claimed the Iranian regime had canceled over 800 scheduled hangings.
However, Iran’s top prosecutor, Mohammad Movahedi, said Friday, “This claim is completely false; no such number exists, nor has the judiciary made any such decision,” the AP reported.
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The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported Friday that the confirmed death toll had reached 5,137, while 7,402 people were seriously injured. HRANA also said the total number of arrests had risen to nearly 28,000.
On Wednesday, the Iranian government offered its first death toll, saying that 3,117 people had been killed. It said 2,427 were civilians and security forces and labeled the rest as “terrorists,” according to the AP.
Another Christian community at risk in Africa as extremists and war take their toll
Christians in Sudan are facing daily hunger, misery and terror. The new Open Doors World Watch List for 2026, which ranks the worst countries in the world for the persecution of Christians, placed the country at No. 4, up one place from last year’s report.
There are an estimated 2 million Christians in the conflict-ridden northeastern African country. Sudan’s civil war has raged past the 1,000-day milestone with 150,000 people reportedly killed and more than 13 million displaced. Christians have lived in Sudan since the late first century.
Many of Sudan’s Christians live in the Nuba Mountains, part of the Kordofan region.
Rafat Samir, general secretary of the Sudan Evangelical Alliance, told Fox News Digital that the “Nuba Mountains now, where the majority of our church members are coming from, is under siege and bombing every day for the last six months or seven months. Last week, after Christmas, they bombed our church, hospital and school.”
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Adding to the misery, a report by MEMRI citing Christian Daily international, said 11 Sudanese Christians were killed as they took part in a procession to their church for a religious celebration on Christmas Day by a drone operated by the government’s Sudanese Armed Forces. Eighteen others were injured in the attack. MEMRI reported the SAF are backed by the Muslim Brotherhood.
A State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital, “Since the April 2023 outbreak of conflict in Sudan, we have witnessed significant backsliding in Sudan’s overall respect for fundamental freedoms, including religious freedom. This backsliding especially impacts Sudan’s oppressed ethnic and religious populations, including Christians.”
In a Fox News Digital report last year, Christians were said to be eating grass to survive. Samir says the situation is even more bleak in 2026.
“Even the grass is gone now,” he said.
“The conflict is accelerating the erasure of ancient Christian communities and sacred heritage,” Mariam Wahba, research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told Fox News Digital. “These losses will be far harder to reverse than the rebuilding of roads or ministries once the guns fall silent.”
CHRISTIANS TARGETED IN SYSTEMATIC KIDNAPPING CAMPAIGN IN NIGERIA BY JIHADI HERDSMEN, EXPERTS SAY
Ideologically, Sudan’s Christians face a hostile future, Samir said.
“Both sides in the civil conflict are daughters of the Islamist movement in Sudan, and the Islamic ideology of both of them is to not have tolerance for others,” Samir said. “They consider everyone different from them is against them. The Christian is considered their enemy as part of their religious ideology, and opposing them is their religious duty.
“So, whoever does something to harm Christians is considered favorable to the law or to Allah. The country is getting back to the dark ages.”
Repeated and continuing attempts at getting the government’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the opposing militia, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), to reach a ceasefire have failed. Both sides admit they are still fighting and clearly killing civilians with sustained energy, particularly in the central Sudanese region of Kordofan, home to many Christians.
“The United States is committed to ending the horrific conflict in Sudan,” a State Department spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working with our allies and others to facilitate a humanitarian truce and bring an end to external military support to the parties which is fueling the violence. President Trump wants peace in Sudan.
“The suffering of civilians has reached catastrophic levels, with millions lacking food, water and medical care. Every day of continued fighting costs more innocent lives. The war in Sudan is an enduring threat to regional stability.”
The U.N. says fighting is escalating in Kordofan, with U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk telling reporters in Port Sudan Jan. 18, “I am very worried that the atrocity crimes committed during and after the takeover of El Fasher are at grave risk of repeating themselves in the Kordofan region, where the conflict has been rapidly escalating since late October.
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“The Kordofan states are extremely volatile,” he continued, “with relentless military engagements, heavy shelling, drone bombardments and airstrikes causing widespread destruction and collapse of essential services.”
Wahba said that “while the United States remains kinetically active across neighboring theaters, it is unlikely to wade directly into Sudan’s civil war.”
“President Trump”, Wahba added, “has signaled a clear desire to see the conflict resolved — an objective echoed by both Egypt and Saudi Arabia — but translating that consensus into outcomes on the ground has proven far more difficult than the rhetoric suggests.”
“For now,” Wahba continued, “U.S. policy is centered on convening regional stakeholders and pressing for alignment among them, while prioritizing humanitarian corridors, aid delivery and coordination with partners willing to host talks. Washington is acting as a facilitator, not an enforcer.”
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“This posture reflects both constraint and caution. Sudan presents few reliable leverage points, no unified opposition partner, and (there’s) little appetite in Congress or the White House for another open-ended entanglement in a fragmented civil war. The result is a policy that remains fluid and reactive, and is shaped less by strategy than by crisis management,” she said.
Despite everything, the Sudan Evangelical Alliance’s Samir has hope.
“The Holy Spirit is moving and God’s hand is working in our country,” Samir said. ” I can tell you through this evil, this darkness, the light of love of our God is lighting in many hearts. The devil is stealing people to death every day. We pray that (they) let us Christians live for one day more, for one day more to proclaim Jesus’s message.”
DAVID MARCUS: From borders to bombs, 5 times Trump defied experts in Year 1
Donald Trump’s second first year in the presidency will go down in history as one of the most eventful in our nation’s first 250 years, largely because time and again he made experts who doubted his methods look like fools.
For decades, at least since the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, we have seen presidents as caretakers of our democracy, not as drivers of it, but Trump, seeing the caustic caution of a Congress which couldn’t pass a bill to decide where to have lunch, has acted.
These actions have paid dividends, loath though the legacy media is to admit it, and they are reasons to be excited about what his next three years may hold.
ONE YEAR BACK IN THE OVAL OFFICE, TRUMP WHITE HOUSE SAYS EVERY MAJOR CAMPAIGN PROMISE DELIVERED
I’ll give you five examples where the experts said Trump was out of his mind, but, in reality, it all worked out fine.
1. Closing the Border
Prior to Trump taking office, Democrats had assured the American people that the border could not be closed without congressional action, and the experts gravely agreed.
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“A president doesn’t have the unilateral authority to shut down the border,” insisted Alberto Benitez, director of the Immigration Clinic at George Washington University Law School, in 2024, for example.
That has simply, and objectively, turned out to be false. According to Customs and Border Protection, there have been seven straight months of zero illegal immigrants being released into the country, not 1,000, not 100, but zero.
The border is shut. It’s actually incredible, but too often when an incredible thing happens we just accept it as the norm, as if it’s always been. No. Trump made that happen.
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2. Tariffs
On “Liberation Day,” as Trump dubbed it, in the spring of last year, tariffs went through the roof on almost every nation, and the stock market tanked immediately, with pundits predicting the president’s approval ratings would tank just as quickly.
On every TV network and in every serious financial journal we were told that soon stock brokers would be selling apples on the street corner from carts in black-and-white photographs.
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“This is a disaster, and anyone who says otherwise is lying,” the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee posted on X, back then.
In fact, Trump’s “yuge” tariffs were an opening position, and about four gazillion trade deals have been accomplished as a result. Like those deals or not, the stock market today is at record highs, and everyone on Wall Street is still in color.
3. Bombing Iran
Critics of Trump, from both the left and the right, warned that if he were to attack Iran, it could unleash unrest in the Middle East and perhaps even World War III!
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Ryan Crocker, a distinguished chair in diplomacy and security at RAND, said prior to the strike, “… it is unlikely that air power alone will eliminate Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons,” adding, “Perhaps the U.S. force would persuade Iran to agree to such restrictions. If not, it will broaden the conflict and deepen Iranian determination to acquire nuclear weapons, whatever the cost.”
Once again, Trump was right, and the experts were wrong.
What actually happened was that the U.S. military, under the direction of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, neutralized that very nuclear program that Barack Obama and his buddies wanted to contain through appeasement.
Now, Iran’s murderous regime is on the brink of destruction because Trump refused to listen to the experts.
4. Crime in Washington, D.C.
The murder rate in Washington, D.C., dropped 40% last year, second only to Denver at 41%. For almost half of that year, President Trump had the National Guard deployed to protect the city and its citizens.
But what did the experts say at the time about the use of the National Guard?
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David Kennedy, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, had this to say: “When communities don’t feel they’re being policed properly, they stop helping. It’s very common for what’s seen as illegitimate policing to result in spikes of violence. And I’m very concerned about that in this instance.”
The experts insisted that the Guard wasn’t even in the areas where most crime occurred, but Trump, who witnessed former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s miraculous anti-crime transformation of Gotham in the 1990s, knew better.
According to The Trace, improvement was immediate, “From August 11 to October 11 — the first two months of Trump’s takeover — 41 people were shot in Washington, 10 of them fatally. That’s a 62 percent drop in the number of shootings over the same period last year.”
The Trump administration’s broken-windows policing is working. And everybody knows it.
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5. The Cabinet
Whether it was Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Sean Duffy or Pam Bondi, almost all of Trump’s cabinet picks, save maybe Marco Rubio, because everyone likes Rubio, were viewed by critics on the left as sycophantic wannabes who had no business in their roles.
Jonathan Hanson, a political scientist and lecturer in statistics at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, said a year ago, “We’re in untested waters,” going on to say, “It’s true that people’s standards have shifted, but the question is, when does it really cross a line?”
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In practice, Trump’s Cabinet has been one of the most effective and cohesive cabinets in modern history and has delivered on several successes for the president, as listed above. Not only that, but televised, hours-long, cabinet meetings have kept Americans quite informed about what they are actually doing.
The expert class demanded that their own apparatchiks fill these coveted slots and basically make sure that nothing changes very much, even if they use big words to pretend it will.
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That’s not how Trump rolls, at least not in his second term.
The American people must hope that the Trump administration continues to confound the expert class, and the Davos conglomerates of too-skinny billionaires.
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The experts are on tap for Trump, as they should be, but they are not on top. Instead, on top are the interests of America, and time and again, on that score, he always seems to prove the experts wrong.
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