President Donald Trump took questions from reporters on Monday outside the White House and added some additional details to previous comments he made claiming that the U.S. sent guns into Iran earlier in the year.

Over the weekend, Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst reported that Trump told him the U.S. tried to arm the protestors in Iran.

“President Trump told me the United States sent guns to the Iranian protesters. He tells me: ‘We sent them a lot of guns. We sent them through the Kurds,’ and the president says he thinks the Kurds kept them,” reported Yingst on Fox & Friends Weekend.

Trump added some more details to the report, “And the only reason they’re not out protesting — you know that — is because they were informed that if they protest, like the wrestler and his friends, if they protest, they will be shot immediately.”

“And that’s an edict that’s in writing. If they protest, if they go out in the streets, they would be immediately shot. They don’t have guns. You know, we sent some guns. But the group that we’re supposed to give — which I said would happen, I said it to my people, I called it exactly — we sent guns, a lot of guns,” Trump continued, concluding:

They were supposed to go to the people so they could fight back against these thugs. You know what happened? The people that they sent them to kept them because they said, “What a beautiful gun, I think I’ll keep it.”

So I’m very upset with a certain group of people and they’re gonna pay a big price for that. But the Iranian people will fight back. As soon as they know they’re not going to be shot, and as soon as they can get weapons — if they had weapons, not many of them, if they had weapons — that would go the other way, and you know what would happen?

Iran would give up in two seconds because they wouldn’t be able to take it. But in Iran, they have absolutely no weaponry, and they’ve been told point blank: if you come out, if you came out to the streets, you would be killed. As of this morning, and we have this on pretty good information, 45,000 protesters have been killed. Pretty bad.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

The post ‘They’re Gonna Pay a Big Price’: Trump Wildly Claims US Guns Sent to Iran Were Kept by the Wrong People first appeared on Mediaite.

After months of rhetoric about possible war crimes in Iran, Donald Trump upped the ante on Sunday morning, publishing an unhinged threat to his social media platform in which he explicitly vowed to target Iranian power plants and bridges. As Easter Sunday progressed, the president did brief interviews with several media outlets to echo that point.

The New York Times reported soon after that, according to legal experts, historians and former U.S. officials, “No other recent American president has talked so openly about committing potential war crimes.”

A day later, Trump fielded questions from reporters — first at a White House Easter Egg Roll event, then at a White House press conference — who pressed the Republican on his willingness to target Iranian infrastructure, in defiance of international law.

It didn’t go well.

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Backlash over Trump’s threat toward Iran

President Trump’s recent statements warning of action against Iran have drawn public criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. Lawmakers and public figures raise concerns over the language and possible legal ramifications, while some supporters defend his approach.

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'Vile.' Trump's threat to Iran's infrastructure enflames MAGA tensions

The president, who must have realized he’d face these questions and had plenty of time to huddle with his aides and prepare coherent answers, peddled three distinct responses to the line of inquiry.

1. Refuse to talk about his plans for possible war crimes. MS NOW’s Lindsey Pipia asked, “Are you committed to committing a war crime in this war with Iran?” Trump heard the question but refused to answer it. “What else?” he said to no one in particular, as if the question wasn’t worth his time or consideration.

2. Change the definition of “war crime.” As part of a separate exchange, Trump was asked whether he considered hitting civilian infrastructure to be a war crime. “You know what’s a war crime?” he responded. “Having a nuclear weapon, allowing a sick country with demented leaders to have a nuclear weapon. That’s a war crime.”

Except this was gibberish. He can’t simply redefine words and phrases to suit his own purposes (though he certainly keeps trying), and Iran, by the White House’s own estimates, wasn’t close to having a nuclear weapon before Trump launched the war for reasons he’s long struggled to explain.

3. War crimes are fine, because Iranian leaders are bad. Asked how U.S. military strikes on Iranian civilian infrastructure wouldn’t be a war crime, Trump pointed to the Iranian government killing Iranian protesters. “They kill protesters,” the president said, claiming Tehran had slaughtered tens of thousands of its own people. “They’re animals.”

Or, put another way, as far as the Republican sees it, the United States would be justified in committing war crimes because Iran deserves it — a line that is every bit as morally abhorrent as it appeared.

This is not simply an academic exercise: Trump has set a deadline for 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday by which he expects Iranian officials to accept his demands. If not, in the words of the American president, he’s prepared to “blow up the whole country.”

With roughly 12 hours remaining before his arbitrary deadline, the Republican published a new message to his social media platform, which read in part, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. … We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”

The post Pressed on possible war crimes, Trump peddled 3 answers. They were all unacceptable. appeared first on MS NOW.

This article was originally published on ms.now

Claim:

U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned former nursing home owner Joseph Schwartz, who was convicted of a $39 million fraud scheme.

Rating:

In March 2026, social media users claimed U.S. President Donald Trump had pardoned a former nursing home owner at the center of a fraud scheme. (A pardon provides full forgiveness for a crime, relieving the pardoned person of associated legal consequences.)

A post on X (archived) claimed a fraud scheme involving Joseph Schwartz, the man Trump allegedly pardoned, totaled $39 million. According to the post, Trump issued the pardon three months into Schwartz's sentence.

Other posts amplified the rumor, with one claiming Schwartz paid $1 million to "Trump lobbyists" before the pardon. Snopes readers searched the website seeking to confirm whether the claim was true.

The rumor stemmed from a ProPublica report published March 30, 2026. The news outlet reported that Trump had pardoned Schwartz in November 2025 after he pleaded guilty to failing to pay the Internal Revenue Service taxes he withheld from his employees and failing to file a financial report for his employees' benefit plan.

Separately, following several lawsuits, courts ordered him to repay millions to the families of former nursing home residents, ProPublica reported. In 2023, Schwartz was ordered to pay $15.7 million to the family of Zelma Grissom, an 81-year-old Arkansas woman who died of sepsis after suffering untreated bedsores at one of his facilities, according to lawyer John Martell Landis, news reports and an obituary. ProPublica said his pardon made it less likely for the families to recover the funds.

According to the ProPublica report, Trump granted the full pardon after Schwartz paid lobbyists nearly $1 million to advocate on his behalf to the White House, the Justice Department and Congress. The report did not say he or a member of his family had donated this amount directly to Trump.

Federal records confirm that Trump pardoned Schwartz, whose federal indictment accused him of a $39 million fraud scheme, on Nov. 14, 2025, after he served three months of his three-year prison sentence. A lobbying disclosure form also shows he spent nearly $1 million advocating for a presidential pardon before his release. Therefore, we've rated this claim true.

On April 17, 2025, a federal judge sentenced Schwartz, who owned Skyline Healthcare nursing homes, to 36 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to "willfully failing to pay over employment taxes withheld from employees of his company and willfully failing to file an annual financial report (Form 5500) with the Department of Labor for the employee 401K Benefit Plan Schwartz sponsored." 

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Court records show a judge's order granted a request from Schwartz's attorney allowing him to report to prison on Aug. 18, 2025.

The publicly available lobbying disclosure form showed Schwartz paid two lobbyists, Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, $960,000 during the second quarter of 2025 — presumably after his sentencing — to seek a federal pardon that Trump ultimately granted on Nov. 14, 2025, roughly three months after Schwartz reported to prison.

Skyline, which operated more than 100 nursing homes across 11 states, collapsed between 2017 and 2019. Many of the company's nursing homes shut down due to mismanagement. Some nursing homes ran out of money, while others shuttered due to documented neglect, NBC News reported.

Despite Trump's pardon, a judge ordered Schwartz in December 2025 to report to an Arkansas prison to serve out the remainder of his one-year state sentence for Medicaid fraud and tax evasion, according to the Arkansas Advocate. (Presidents cannot pardon people for state crimes.) However, he was granted parole less than a month later, news reports said.

For further reading, Snopes previously covered the story of Philip Esformes, a nursing home operator convicted of massive Medicare and Medicaid fraud in 2019 whose sentence Trump commuted in 2020.

Sources:

cengiz.yar@propublica.org. "A Nursing Home Owner Got a Trump Pardon. The Families of His Patients Got Nothing." ProPublica, 30 Mar. 2026, www.propublica.org/article/joseph-schwartz-trump-pardon-skyline-nursing-home-patients. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.

"Former Owner of Collapsed Nursing Home Empire Sentenced to 36 Months' Imprisonment for $38 Million Tax Fraud Scheme." Justice.gov, 17 Apr. 2025, www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/former-owner-collapsed-nursing-home-empire-sentenced-36-months-imprisonment-38-million. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.

"LD-2 Disclosure Form." Senate.gov, 2025, lda.senate.gov/filings/public/filing/e741a1c5-7644-4f1e-8590-db11669460c9/print/. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.

Rascouët-Paz, Anna. "Unpacking Claim Trump Pardoned Man Who Stole More than Alleged Somali Fraudsters in Minnesota." Snopes, Snopes.com, 1 Jan. 2026, www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-pardon-fraud-minnesota-somali/. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.

Strickler, Laura, et al. "A Nursing Home Chain Grows Too Fast and Collapses, and Elderly and Disabled Residents Pay the Price." NBC News, 19 July 2019, www.nbcnews.com/health/aging/nursing-home-chain-grows-too-fast-collapses-elderly-disabled-residents-n1025381. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.

Trump, Donald. "Donald Trump Pardons Joseph Schwartz." Department of Justice, 14 Nov. 2025, www.justice.gov/pardon/media/1418296/dl?inline. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.

"Former Owner of Collapsed Nursing Home Empire Admits $38 Million Tax Fraud Scheme." Justice.gov, 18 Nov. 2024, www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/former-owner-collapsed-nursing-home-empire-admits-38-million-tax-fraud-scheme. Accessed 2 Apr. 2026.

Albarado, Sonny. "Nursing Home Owner Pardoned by Trump Ordered to Serve State Sentence | Arkansas Advocate." Arkansas Advocate, 19 Dec. 2025, arkansasadvocate.com/2025/12/19/nursing-home-owner-pardoned-by-trump-ordered-to-serve-state-sentence/. Accessed 6 Apr. 2026.

At Monday's White House briefing on the Iran rescue mission, Donald Trump mocked "Gays for Iran," swiped at AOC and allied progressives, and said Iran "kill[s] the gays" and "throw[s] them off buildings." The line was built to do two things at once: make the war sound morally obvious and make his critics sound ridiculous. It was a good applause line. It was also a brutal self-own, because the cleanest rebuttal to Trump's argument is sitting inside his own government.

Trump is not wrong that Iran is vicious toward LGBTQ people. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both documented systemic persecution of sexual minorities there, and rights groups confirm that same-sex conduct can carry the death penalty. That is not propaganda. Which is exactly why what comes next matters more than the quote itself.

He Never Mentions the Two Gay Iranians His Government Locked Up

Two gay Iranian men — referred to by their attorneys as Ali and Adel to protect their identities — are sitting in separate ICE detention facilities right now. They fled Iran in 2021 after being arrested by the morality police for their relationship and charged with a crime punishable by execution. They traveled through Turkey and Mexico, arrived at the U.S. border in early 2025, and asked for asylum.

Both were denied. Neither had a lawyer. Their attorney, Rebekah Wolf of the American Immigration Council, has called the hearings fundamentally unfair. In one case, she says, the immigration judge made disparaging remarks about the abuse the man suffered because of his sexual orientation. A third person who fled Iran with them and had a lawyer was granted asylum after a 45-minute hearing. Ali and Adel were not that lucky.

They have been nearly deported to Iran three times. ICE staged them at a facility in Arizona, prepared their paperwork, and got them on a flight within hours. Court orders and a medical quarantine stopped it each time. As of last week, CBS News reported that both men remain in ICE detention with final removal orders. DHS told CBS the men "received full due process" and would "remain detained pending their removal." Wolf told reporters she has received no assurances that they would not be put on a plane to Iran if their stays are lifted. One of the men lost 40 pounds in custody and became so frail that other detainees had to carry him to the bathroom.

The Government Won't Even Say It Would Keep Them Here

If Trump wants to invoke persecuted gay Iranians as a moral reason to keep bombing Iran, then what is his moral position when gay Iranians show up at America’s border begging not to be sent back? Right now, it looks less like principle than convenience. On television, they are proof that Iran is barbaric. In detention, they become paperwork.

There is a fair argument on the other side. Governments enforce immigration law. Asylum claims fail. The United States does not owe automatic entry to everyone with a sympathetic story. But that defense only gets Trump so far. He is not making a narrow legal case about asylum standards. He is using gay people in Iran as a wartime talking point while his own administration has left open the possibility of sending actual gay Iranians back there.

And this is not new. In a March interview with Jake Paul, Trump said the U.S. "supports gays" while Iran throws "gays off the buildings." The New York Post also reported that he told viewers the CIA briefed him that Iran's new Supreme Leader might be gay — and reportedly laughed about it. That is the pattern: queer persecution becomes a punchline when the cameras are friendly and a cudgel when the cameras are not.

Compassion at the Podium, Deportation at the Border

Trump is not defending gay Iranians. He is using them to sell a war he already wanted. If this were really about protecting lives, his administration would be making sure no gay asylum seeker gets sent back to the regime he keeps condemning. Instead, the people most at risk are still in detention while the president turns them into a talking point.

That should bother both sides. Conservatives who truly believe Iran is murderous should be the first to say America cannot send gay asylum seekers back there. Liberals who oppose the war can admit Iran’s persecution of LGBTQ people is real and still reject Trump using that reality to market more bombing.

So the question is not whether Iran persecutes gay people. It does. The question is whether Trump cares once they are no longer useful to his war argument. Right now, his administration’s answer looks like this: dead gay Iranians make powerful rhetoric. Living gay Iranians at the border are somebody else’s problem.

Ordinary Iranians have been responding to US President Donald Trump's threat to destroy Iran's power plants and bridges unless it opens the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump said in an expletive-laden post on social media on Sunday that "Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!."

Iranian officials have mocked his 20:00 ET (01:00 BST Wednesday) deadline, with a presidential aide saying his "insults and nonsense" were out of "sheer desperation and anger".

The BBC has managed to talk to several Iranians - all opposed the current establishment - even though it is very difficult to contact people inside Iran due to an internet blackout imposed by the authorities more than five weeks ago.

Their names have been changed for their own safety.

• Latest updates on the war in Iran

• Trump issues expletive-laden threat to Iran over Hormuz Strait blockage

• How rescue of US airman in remote part of Iran unfolded

• 'We are at the edge of a battlefield': BBC reports near Strait of Hormuz

Kasra, who is in his 20s and lives in Tehran said: "It feels like we're sinking deeper into a swamp. What can we do as ordinary people? We can't do anything. We can't stop him [Trump]. I keep thinking about a scenario where, in a month, I'm sitting with my family with no water, no electricity, nothing. And someone blows out the candle and we go to sleep."

While Iranian state TV has been showing videos of well-stocked grocery shops, the BBC has heard that some people are stockpiling and are worried that the water supply might be disrupted as well.

"My mum is filling every bottle she can find in the house with water," said Mina, also in her 20s and from Tehran.

"I've no idea what we're going to do now. I think more and more in Iran have realised that Trump doesn't care about them at all. I hate him from the bottom of my heart, and hate those who support him too."

In January, when deadly anti-establishment demonstrations swept the country, Trump said that "help is on its way" to the protesters. But he did not intervene when Iranian security forces launched an unprecedented crackdown, killing at least 6.508 protesters and arresting 53,000 others, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana).

Some of those who the BBC has been talking to initially saw the US-Israeli strikes as the help that had been promised to them. But most of them now see attacks on energy infrastructure as a red line.

"I've thanked Israel and the US for almost all of what they've hit so far," said Arman, in his 20s and from Karaj, west of Tehran. Iranian media said 13 people were killed and almost 100 injured when a bridge under construction in Karaj was bombed on Thursday.

"They must have had good reasons for them [sites which have been hit]. But I swear, hitting a power station just paralyses the country. It just plays into the Islamic Republic's hands. I live about a kilometre away from the biggest power station in Karaj, and if they hit it, it'll be nothing but misery for me."

Radin, also in his 20s and living in Tehran, said: "About them hitting energy infrastructure, using an atomic bomb, or levelling Iran. My honest reaction is that I'm OK with all of these.

"Or anything else they might have in mind. If attacking targets in the country brings down the Islamic Republic, I'm fine with that. Because if the Islamic Republic survives this war, it will stay forever."

Many of those that the BBC talked to are worried about the economic impact the war.

Bahman, who is in his 20s and lives in Tehran, said: "I think Trump is scared of what Iran is going to do. I'm sure that Iran will hit everywhere in the region in retaliation."

"When it comes to me, I don't have a routine anymore, and I can't even go to work with the situation because I'm a building superintendent engineer and no-one is building anything right now. Some smaller companies have started to lay off their employees already."

Jamshid, who is in his 30s and runs a restaurant in Tehran, said his business was "not the same as before [the war]. I'm not optimistic about the situation. I estimate that I can hold this up for a month, maybe two, at most. The rent is breaking my back. It's 200m tomans a month [approx. $1,270; £960; €1,100]."

That is high compared to the average monthly salary, which is estimated to be between $200 and $300.

Most of the people that the BBC has talked to are still paying hefty prices for access to the internet. The main route has been via sharing connections through those who have satellite internet Starlink systems.

But, using or possessing Starlink in Iran carries a punishment of up to two years in prison, and authorities have reportedly been searching for the dishes to stop people from connecting.

Internet access is being sold on the Telegram messaging app for around $6 for 1GB of data.

"I feel like I'm losing my mind. I didn't even renew my internet package that I'm paying so much for," said Marjan, in her 20s and from Tehran.

"What's the point if Trump hits energy infrastructure? I'm distressed. My parents too… they argue over the smallest things now. I keep telling myself I'm fine, but I've had three mental breakdowns already today."