“All hell is going to break out.“

That’s what President Donald J. Trump had to say in a press conference Monday about what will happen if all remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza are not released by noon this coming Saturday. Asked to elaborate, Trump responded, “Hamas will find out what I mean.”

Ending the cease-fire, Trump said, would ultimately be Israel’s decision. But in comments made a few hours after Hamas announced it was delaying the prisoner release scheduled for this Saturday, Trump indicated that he was disturbed by the condition of the hostages being released and frustrated by Hamas’ delaying tactics:

I can tell you that those people [the hostages] have been badly hurt. Both mentally and physically. And I’m talking about the young women that came out also, previously. And I think one of the reasons they [Hamas] are doing this is because they’re probably sending the best. What you see is probably the best, because they want to send people that look at least healthy. And that’s not healthy. These people have been badly hurt. … And I think Hamas is looking and saying, “Well, it’s not going to get much better than that.”

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed with Trump’s deadline, saying that if the hostages aren’t released by Saturday, then Israel would resume its offensive in Gaza, Reuters reports.

Trump’s visceral, emotional response to seeing the trauma and starvation inflicted upon the Israeli hostages—and his anger at the perpetrators and willingness to use force to bring them to heel—stands in stark contrast to the Biden administration’s instincts to “de-escalate” at all costs. Tablet’s Lee Smith told The Scroll that he was particularly heartened by having a president willing to allow empathy to guide foreign policy decisions:

Trump doesn’t like to see children hurt. We know that because of how he responded after he saw children gassed by Bashar al-Assad. Trump wanted to kill the Syrian dictator and had to be talked out of it by then Defense Secretary James Mattis. Also, he’s angry because Jews play a large role in his life and family. He acts like any normal human being would seeing the pictures of the hostages, and all normal people felt what he felt: anger and disgust. Americans are proud to have a leader who represents our own thoughts like that in public. I’m proud to have an American president like that. And the American president can do something about it; when POTUS, the leader of the free world, says something, it is by definition important. Then we remember this is a man who has escaped death, who was nearly killed in public. A man who has stared down death has a very special kind of authority when it comes to speaking about matters like this, matters of life and death. Combine these two facts and this source of language, it becomes very powerful. When the president puts those kinds of thoughts into words, it takes on a power all its own.

Trump has a history of following his emotional instincts to guide policy decisions. When he saw pictures of the Syrian chemical attack in 2018 that resulted in the deaths of children and women, Trump called Bashar al-Assad “an animal,” according to CBS, and later said that he wanted to kill him, according to Politico. In 2019, after Iran shot down an American drone, Trump called off missile strikes on three Iranian locations when he learned the strikes would kill 150 people, overriding the suggestions of and alienating then National Security Advisor John Bolton in the process, Foreign Policy reported.

Trump’s Gaza plan also calls for the Palestinians there to be relocated to countries such as Egypt and Jordan, and on Monday, Trump said that he could cut aid to those countries if they didn’t agree to take in the Palestinians. On Tuesday, Trump met with Jordanian King Abdullah II; as soon as the king and his son arrived, according to Reuters, reporters were rushed into a meeting in the Oval Office, where Trump again repeated his intention to take over Gaza, resettle the Palestinians, and rebuild the territory. “We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it, we’re going to cherish it,” said the president. “We’re going to get it going eventually, where a lot of jobs are going to be created for the people in the Middle East.” The Jordanian king, who previously said that he would reject any plan to move Palestinians or annex land, today said that he would do what was best for his country and that the Arab nations would come back to Washington with a counterproposal. Trump has said he’s confident that his threats to withhold aid to Egypt and Jordan could lead to a deal.

If Trump’s past displays of decision-making are any indication, perhaps the plan is less about sticking it to the Palestinians and more about ending perpetual bloodshed and preventing the deaths of children. As The Scroll’s Park MacDougald put it on X:

The Rest

→President Trump pardoned former Democratic Governor of Illinois Rod R. Blagojevich Monday, following up on a commutation of Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence that Trump signed in 2020, which allowed the former governor to be released from a Colorado prison after serving eight years for corruption.

“It’s my honor to do it,” said Trump before signing the pardon. “He was set up.”

In December of 2008, a federal investigation fingered Blagojevich, known in Chicago as “Blago,” for attempting to “sell” Barack Obama’s seat in the Senate—a scheme he was caught discussing on tape—and for extorting money from a children’s hospital. He was successfully impeached and then sentenced to 14 years in prison. Trump’s claims that Blagojevich was set up appear to reference a theory that Blago was a “fall guy” for Obama, who was dogged in his first term by the scandal but was never directly implicated in it. In a 2024 interview with Tucker Carlson, Blagojevich said that someone close to him called hospitals on behalf of Michelle Obama to secure her a high-paying job. Outside his home Monday, Blagojevich thanked Trump and said the prosecutors who charged him misused their power. Since his sentence was commuted five years ago, he refers to himself as a “Trumpocrat,” and he supported Trump’s last two campaigns.

→The corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams are to be dismissed, City Stuff reports. Perhaps proving that Adams’ appeals to the Trump administration were fruitful, Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered the dismissal, claiming that the investigation impeded Adams’ ability to devote his time and resources to assisting the Trump administration with the crackdown on illegal immigration and violent crime. A dismissal, however, would have to come in the form of a motion, which has to be passed by a judge. Prosecutors might refuse to carry out that order. Adams’ attorney Alex Spiro says the dismissal affirms what he said all along: Adams never used his position for personal benefit.

→Quote of the Day

I accidentally uncovered some of the most heinous crimes against women imaginable. We’re talking about rape, non-consensual photos, non-consensual videos of women and underage girls, and the premeditated, calculated exploitation of women and girls in my district.

That’s Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-SC) in a nearly hour-long speech on the floor of the House of Representatives on Monday accusing her ex-fiancé, Patrick Bryant, and four of his associates of rape, sexual assault, and voyeurism against her and other women. Mace reportedly found thousands of sexualized photos and videos of women that she says were made without their consent, and claimed she was drugged and raped during the resulting blackout, according to The Hill. None of the allegations have been proven, but Mace insists she has proof. Bryant denied Mace’s claims to the AP. Mace says she made the speech, which she called “Iron Sharpens Iron,” in response to South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson’s alleged “slow walking” of the investigation into Bryant, which Wilson has denied. It’s hard to know what to make of this, really. Mace’s obsession with topics like abuse and transgender women in female bathrooms is so vehement it’s almost disturbing.

→For years now, many have amused themselves with the rumor—one backed by ample circumstantial evidence—that Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar married her brother, British citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, to get him a visa to enter the United States. The Daily Mail has now gotten an old friend of Omar’s, Abdihakim Osman, to go on the record with the claim that Omar told him she was marrying her brother to get him a green card. Omar was married to her brother-cum-second husband in 2009 by a Christian minister—which is odd, because she’s Muslim. Osman told DailyMail.com that no one in the Minneapolis Somali community knew she married Elmi, but believed she was still married to her first husband, Ahmed Hirsi, whom she married in 2002 in a Muslim ceremony and then remarried after her alleged brother returned to the United Kingdom.

→Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa referred to “the state of Israel” in a recent interview. As journalist Hassan I. Hassan points out on X, Sharaa’s usage breaks with former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s longtime insistence on referring to the country as “the Zionist entity”:

→Hoping to prevent the AI nonprofit from transitioning to a for-profit enterprise, a consortium led by Elon Musk has offered to purchase the nonprofit that controls OpenAI for $97.4 billion. The offer is likely to revamp tensions between Musk and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, who in an X post refused Musk’s offer but said that he’d like to buy X for $9.7 billion. Altman got even pithier in an interview with Bloomberg’s Tom Mackenzie, saying that Musk is driven solely by insecurity: “I don’t think he’s, like, a happy guy.”

→Following Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order to declassify all remaining documents related to the killing of JFK, the FBI has uncovered 2,400 records related to the murder. First reported by Axios, the existence of the documents was reported to the White House last Friday. Jefferson Morley, vice president of the nonprofit Mary Ferrell Foundation, the nation’s largest source of Kennedy records online, said the announcement is huge and proves that the FBI is taking Trump’s order seriously. Despite that enthusiasm, Axios claimed that the records are unlikely to prove whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone wolf.

→“Tough, energetic, focused, and effective”

Those are some of the adjectives that the majority of American voters ascribe to Trump in his second term, according to a poll conducted by CBS and released Sunday. Many Americans are saying that Trump is doing even more than they expected him to, and most of them are happy with what they see. Some of his policies, like ending DEI and deporting illegal migrants, are exceptionally popular. CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten found that Trump is overall doing about 10 points better in polling than he was at this point in his first presidential term, and said the positive polling essentially reflects Americans’ belief that Trump is fulfilling his campaign promises.

One area where Trump is seen not to be fulfilling those promises is on the issue of lowering prices on goods, which likely explains the recent articles coming out of legacy media hammering Trump on the prices of eggs, including this one by CNN.