Karoline Leavitt Archives - The Automatic Earth

"Pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States."

President Trump floats a dramatic move involving the strategically critical waterway as he says Iran is being "very badly defeated." pic.twitter.com/zXJhCfOIqH
— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 14, 2026

https://twitter.com/mcafeenew/status/2088356232801427540?s=20 https://twitter.com/BoLoudon/status/2087988353522192691?s=20

Who says they can? Why would you say that? When they’re not trying?! What’s your point?

• “US Can’t Bomb Its Way To Victory ” (Scotiabank)

Bessent said Friday that Washington would announce unprecedented economic-isolation measures next week, warning that the coming pressure campaign would be unlike anything “seen in the history of economic isolation on a country.”For clarity on Bessent’s upcoming economic-isolation operation against Iran, Derek Holt, head of Capital Markets Economics at Scotiabank in Toronto, provided clients with an assessment in which Bessent’s warning could signal a move well beyond sanctioning shadow tankers and refiners, toward dismantling the entire financial network supporting Iranian oil exports.

Holt explained: WHAT COULD BESSENT MEAN? What could Bessent do to economically isolate Iran further that has “never been seen”?
• Target China and India: China is the main buyer of Iranian oil and is involved in undermining US sanctions. The US sanctions some individual Chinese entities and, in April, announced sanctions against Chinese “Teapot” refineries (here). The US could step up its actions by sanctioning all Chinese banks, this time including large institutions, and blocking their access to the US and global financial systems. That would push China further away from the SWIFT system and block access to correspondent and other forms of banking. It could block access to US dollar funding markets. This would very likely enrage China and risk multiple forms of retaliation and escalation.
• Broaden the scope of sanctions on Iran: This would extend the scope to any global group, company or entity involved in buying, financing, insuring or shipping Iranian oil. Looking at you, global banks, currency exchanges, commodity traders, shippers, etc. Actions under this category would aim to entirely thwart the sale of oil from Iran to China in yuan and its conversion into dollars and other currencies via exchange houses in Iran and elsewhere. You target other Middle Eastern nations facilitating this trade by blocking their access to dollar funding and global banking markets, such as Dubai’s one-foot-in-and-one-foot-out stance on the war, which continues to facilitate Iranian transactions. Dubai fancies itself a financial center; you destroy such ambitions.
• Target Iranian crypto assets: This Treasury announcement last month targeted individuals and entities under a specific Iranian person’s name. The US could broaden this action to include freezing access to all Iranian global holdings of crypto, gold, real estate, foreign accounts, etc.
• Target global ports: Any foreign port that facilitates trade and transactions with shipping companies that transited Iranian ports could be targeted.
He continued: “And there may well be other creative options in scale and scope. The broad point is to escalate the economic and financial blockade of the Iranian economy and financial system by enveloping all parts of the global economy, namely China, and the global financial system that allow Iran to continue to sell oil and access funding markets.” Would it work? I’m not sure. Iran knows suffering. Iran is used to being a pariah. Iran still has friends in low places. Iran has its own means of escalating, including unleashing unspeakable terror.
The consequences to the global economy and financial system could also limit or entirely thwart the chances of success. I’m sure they know the risks, but Treasury would sharply amplify tensions with China and India and could potentially cripple individual banks while not ruling out increased systemic risk within the broader financial system. Cutting off access to dollar funding markets could destabilize major players in the financial system. The spillover effects through a complicated web of connections shouldn’t be treated lightly.
The US is finally getting that it can’t just bash and bomb its way to victory against Iran. I’m not sure it gets the limitations and risks that could be associated with escalating broader measures at an all-encompassing global level. It could well take a bungled war that the US and Israel entered without much thought, without a strategy and without an exit plan, while not consulting Congress or allies, and compound the missteps even further and potentially more seriously.”
For context, China buys more than 90% of Iran’s oil exports, making it the most likely target in any effort by Bessent to cut Tehran’s energy revenues. But the escalating economic war would carry significant risks. Sanctions on large Chinese companies or financial institutions could escalate tensions with Beijing ahead of a planned meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping. Also removing discounted Iranian crude from the global market could also tighten supplies and push already elevated Brent and WTI prices higher.

How absurd and idiotic is the “news” coming out of Kiev?

As I’ve said a thousand times.

“It’s like me telling you that right now there’s a gorilla in your bathtub playing chess, and all your neighbors believe it.”

• Ukraine Celebrates Launching Largest Attack Drone Swarm of the War (CTH)

Approximately six days from now I will share a great deal of information on World War Reddit. I took the insert picture about a week ago as a Ukraine drone struck a venue 500 meters from my location. Suffice to say, I’m not reporting information to you based on propaganda media, seriously skewed alt-media or misinterpreted/intercepted Telegram channel discussion; there’s an information war on that platform also.

Almost everything being told, shared and sold about the Russia vs Ukraine conflict is entirely made-up nonsense that has zero basis in reality. My goal has been to find out why there is this much effort toward twilight-zone level propaganda being pushed by unified interests in western media. Honestly, it’s beyond crazy. According to Ukraine/NATO media, and probably soon to be shared by President Trump, “Russia suffered 42,860 battlefield casualties in July, its highest monthly losses since January 2025.” This type of stuff is so far beyond silly no one can figure out where they come up with the ideas for the rates.
In media headlines you might have read that Ukraine is celebrating the biggest launch of drones against Russia in a single day, Sunday. The Russian media counter by saying they have shot down 822 drones, with 600 of them targeting the Russian capital of Moscow. Inside Russia, none of this stuff is happening; however, the govt of Putin finds some sort of purpose/value (personally I think it is just Russian humor) in countering the Ukraine nonsense by accepting the claim and then reiterating it in their claims of interception.
It’s all an illusion. First, the illusion makes it look like Russia is under bombardment (western happy), and then the Federation flips the script (it is indeed a script) and uses the claim as evidence of their exceptional capabilities at interception of the non-existent. If you are suddenly cross-eyed, yes, that’s the level of crazy I’m talking about.
(VIA CBS) – Ukraine launched hundreds of drones across Russia Sunday, killing at least six people in one of Kyiv’s largest aerial attacks of the war. Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that it had destroyed 822 Ukrainian drones overnight. Some 600 drones were detected headed toward the Russian capital, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, with a third of those destroyed over the Moscow region itself. An 83-year-old man was killed after a Ukrainian drone hit a private home in the Moscow region, local Gov. Andrey Vorobyov said. He also confirmed that a Ukrainian attack had sparked a blaze at a Wildberries warehouse in the town of Podolsk.
A drone attack targeted three towns in Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, killing five people, local Gov. Yury Slyusar said. The attack, with more than 150 drones, damaged several homes and a railway station and sparked a forest fire. Kyiv has stepped up its attacks on Russia this year, with long-range missiles and swarms of drones increasingly targeting military industries and energy facilities. It has also increasingly pummeled giant Wildberries depots, burning billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise belonging to the Russian online retail giant and bringing the war home to the Russian public nearly four and half years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (read more)
It is accurate that Ukraine drones have hit about a half dozen Wildberries distribution centers. Think about Wildberries as if you combined Amazon with E-Bay. What would life be like in America if a dozen (out of 1,300) Amazon distribution centers caught fire? Well, that’s the sum of the disruption. All those stories of gasoline refineries taken offline(?). More nonsense. Gasoline shortages(?), total gibberish – beyond silly. Beyond the overstated drone attacks all this stuff about military industrial centers, energy facilities and infrastructure being damaged is non-existent. So, why is this such a common thing to read about? Factually, I have no idea. It’s like me telling you that right now there’s a gorilla in your bathtub playing chess, and all your neighbors believe it.
Somewhere there is also a story about a new FP-9 Ukraine ballistic missile about to go into operation (next 60 days). They are supposedly working out an issue with the rocket engines. However, where they are being built is not easy to determine. All indications are in Europe somewhere. The FP-9 is part of a rushed missile and defense system from a company called Fire Point {citation} that is hoped to replace the missing U.S. Patriot Missile (defense) and Tomahawk missile (offense) that Ukraine and Germany have desperately been seeking. As the story is told, the funding comes from Ukraine, the targeting system from Germany and the build operations are taking place somewhere unknown.

This is not just a missile.
It is Ukraine's entry into the strategic league

Look at that beauty — FP‑9, Ukraine’s home‑grown ballistic missile.
Suspended like a predator ready to strike. Not a prototype anymore

. A promise.
And the promise is clear: The first ballistic strikes… pic.twitter.com/ACfUSMYLlw
— Jarl Finland (@jalle51) August 16, 2026

I don’t have it all figured out yet, but from what is visible on the surface is there appears to be a plan to drag out the conflict as long as possible, often with as outlandish claims as needed, in order to structure some kind of narrative that will eventually bring Europe -maybe NATO- into a direct combat operation against the Russian Federation.

“.. the radicalism of the Democrats in the age of Trump Derangement Syndrome—lawfare, de-balloting, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and calls to destroy the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, and the filibuster—helped give birth to the socialists.”

• Not Winning? Just Change the Rules (Victor Davis Hanson)

Kamala Harris speaks to AOC one day before the 2024 election

What binds the new Democratic Party to the new democratic socialists is a set of shared issues and values. That is, the radicalism of the Democrats in the age of Trump Derangement Syndrome—lawfare, de-balloting, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and calls to destroy the Electoral College, the nine-justice Supreme Court, and the filibuster—helped give birth to the socialists. But the overriding commonality among those on the new Left is that if they do not get their way, they blame the “system.” Then they seek to change the rules, no matter how hallowed those laws and conventions may have been or how much they themselves benefited from them in the past.

When the Left lost the White House, Congress, and, for the most part, the Supreme Court, it began clamoring to change the system. For left-wing Democrats, that angst also translated into calls to bring in two new blue states, weaponize the FBI and the Justice Department, ally with social media to suppress the news, and spy on congressional representatives. All the socialists and communists did was up the ante in destroying norms by calling for the end of the presidency, the Senate, the border, the police, and the Pentagon.
By 2021, it was time to destroy the southern border and welcome in some 10 million illegal immigrants—without audits, English proficiency, health checks, or the ability to support themselves. Had Kamala Harris been elected in 2024, we would have had another four years and another 5 million illegal aliens. And perhaps America would have gone from 50 million foreign-born residents to 60 million, or about 18% of the population. In this regard, the Left sees California as our most liberal—and most ideal—state and perhaps concludes that the reason is that 28% of its resident population is now foreign-born, with the majority arriving with vast needs for health, education, housing, and food subsidies.
Today, 50% of all births in California are paid for by Medi-Cal, which serves 40% of the population. When second-generation immigrants are added to the foreign-born population, the two groups together comprise roughly 45% of California’s current population. This demographic transformation is one of the most profound in American history and came at a time when traditional civic education stressing assimilation, acculturation, integration, and knowledge of American traditions, history, and values was nearly nonexistent in California public schools.
So one way of achieving radical change was to alter the demography and welcome as many immigrants as possible who, in the first or second generation, might follow the examples of Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, or Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
They represent an entirely new sort of immigrant who arrives—or is born to immigrant parents—with both complaints against and dependence on their host country. They can see only the sins of America, never the catastrophes of their homeland that drove them or their parents here. This strange demand to change the rules whenever they do not bode well for angry and aggrieved parties permeates every possible manifestation of the Left but is especially egregious when demanded by immigrants who came originally as uninvited guests but almost immediately damned their magnanimous host.
It is strange for so many new immigrants to act on an elemental desire to reach America—only on arrival to profess that it is full of toxic, sinful people, living and dead. Yet the damned hosts have inexplicably welcomed total strangers like themselves, and have allowed them to share in the freedom, security, and prosperity created by the dead whom the newcomers nonetheless endlessly slander and smear.
If particular minorities statistically did not do as well on the SAT as Asians and whites did on average, the solution was certainly not SAT tutorials in the inner city or K-12 SAT outreach, demands for tougher classes in grammar, math, and analytics, or a return to the melting pot rather than the current salad-bowl tribalist model.
Instead, after the George Floyd riots, the call went out to abolish the SAT entirely—as if there had never been a purpose behind its creation. In fact, merit-based SAT exams were designed in the 1920s and 1930s to allow anyone, regardless of race, gender, region, or class, to enter college through meritorious performance on the tests—and, in particular, to overcome old-boy insider preferences and regional and ethnic prejudices.
Yet when the SAT was mostly abolished for four or five years, higher education thought it had solved the problem of minority underrepresentation. In fact, its racialist war on standards only magnified its dilemmas. The SAT had once informed admissions officers not only about applicants’ qualifications but also whether admitted students could do the work once enrolled. But soon liberal professors learned that many of the newly admitted cohorts lacked the K-12 training necessary to do customary university coursework. Yet if professors maintained their regular courses, requirements, and grading, they might soon be labeled racists once particular minorities were shown to do less well than Asians and whites.
So universities inflated grades. They introduced new remedial and gut courses. And they reduced the required coursework. But again, racialism is never a solution to problems. Instead, it is a catalyst that fuels them—as we have seen with the new notion that plagiarism is not an actionable offense when the culprit can plead victim status, whether a former president of Harvard or a current professor at Cambridge. But there are ancient laws and norms that insist intellectual theft is a crime and should be punished, not rewarded or ignored.
Soon employers noticed that the reading, writing, and analytical skills of graduates from prestigious schools were proving dismal. Alumni complained both that the reputations of their almae matres were in decline and resting on the fumes of the past and that their own children, who had prepared diligently to ensure suitably competitive grades and SAT scores for admission, were being rejected solely on the basis of their race.

“AOC has spent a decade cultivating an image as the insurgent outsider fighting the establishment. Conway just pointed out what should have been obvious all along: the insurgent outsider has become the establishment, and yet she has nothing to show for it.”

• This Might Be the Most Brutal Diagnosis of AOC You’ll Ever Hear (Margolis)

Kellyanne Conway appeared on Fox News’s The Five this week and gave a blunt yet extremely fair assessment of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.): she’s not actually doing her job. v”AOC stands for Always On Camera,” Conway said. “She is a performer, not a reformer. She went to Washington to legislate; that’s her job. She’s a pontificator, not a legislator.”Conway piled on by pointing out that, in four years under President Joe Biden, AOC passed one bill. One.

Conway’s point was simple: if you’re not good at legislating, you find something else to be good at, like living online, playing with your hair, and giggling every time someone asks whether you’d be fit to serve as commander-in-chief. Conway didn’t think that was funny. With the whole world watching, she said, that kind of response would be “embarrassing and a disaster.” Just watch The Brink of War and imagine AOC in a similar situation. You can’t, because she’s an absolute joke. But I digress.
AOC has tried to distance herself from her old positions by claiming her rhetoric from years ago doesn’t reflect where she is today. Conway found that laughable. Five years isn’t ancient history, and she made the point with a sharp comparison: does AOC’s position change with the seasons, too? If it’s raining, does she flip? If it’s October instead of April? Conway called the whole excuse disgraceful, and said both failed Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong and AOC had proven themselves untrustworthy to voters.
Conway also gave AOC credit for one thing. She started as a bartender who knocked off longtime incumbent Joe Crowley in a primary nobody saw coming. That, Conway said, was the best thing AOC ever did. Everything since has traded on being the fresh face, the disruptor. But by 2028, AOC will have spent ten years in Washington voting the party line, while also proving herself to be extremely radical. For example, she was also one of only ten Democrats to vote against a resolution condemning the October 7, 2023 attack, just eleven days after it happened.
And Conway wasn’t finished with the receipts. She explained how 2024 was a disaster for AOC’s political brand. Kamala Harris spent over a billion dollars and lost anyway. AOC endorsed Jamaal Bowman in his primary, and he lost. She endorsed Cori Bush, and she lost, too.

“AOC stands for Always On Camera!" @KellyannePolls calls AOC a “performer, not a reformer,” arguing the congresswoman is more focused on viral moments than delivering results for voters. pic.twitter.com/3KaYx0nkm1
— The Five (@TheFive) August 15, 2026

Make no mistake about it, Conway’s larger argument wasn’t really about policy. It was about authenticity, or the lack of it. She called AOC a “performative progressive,” someone running “stunts and grunts” to sway voters, rather than legislating on their behalf. Conway doesn’t think Americans are buying it anymore. Voters who tweet first and think third and fourth, she said, will pay a price for it.
She’s right. AOC has spent a decade cultivating an image as the insurgent outsider fighting the establishment. Conway just pointed out what should have been obvious all along: the insurgent outsider has become the establishment, and yet she has nothing to show for it.

“.. Then Gets Hit With a Brutal Fact Check “

• Jen Psaki Calls Karoline Leavitt a Liar (Teri Christoph)

Well, this is rich. Upon hearing the news that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt would be stepping away from her role at the end of the month to focus on her young family, former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki used the occasion to trash Leavitt and call her a liar. Yes, really, the woman whose inane and repeated “circle back” responses during her own tenure behind the White House briefing podium – she was Biden’s first press secretary – made her a laughingstock both in and outside of Washington, D.C., now wants to lecture Karoline Leavitt about how a press secretary should behave.

Psaki apparently has a show on MS NOW and let loose on the Thursday night episode, saying Leavitt didn’t engage the media “in good faith” and “reshaped” the White House Briefing Room “into her own personal safe space.” “The relationship between the press and the White House is supposed to be adversarial by design,” Psaki said on MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, where she was hired after her performance on then-President Biden’s behalf from 2021 to 2022.
“I mean, the press in the room are supposed to push for more access, for more information. And there are times when it’s absolutely appropriate for the press secretary to push back. But Karoline Leavitt didn’t want to engage in good faith with those reporters and their tough questions. “And so, instead, she did everything she could to reshape that briefing room into her own personal safe space where she rarely had to answer a tough question, hardly ever. I mean, she only briefed once or twice a week, max.”
https://twitter.com/TVNewsNow/status/2088295754242625539?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2088295754242625539%7Ctwgr%5E51a5118d96cbec2591a5d28cf11329865172c856%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fterichristoph%2F2026%2F08%2F14%2Fformer-biden-spox-attacks-karoline-leavitt-n2205622
Psaki wasn’t done there and “accused Leavitt of lying repeatedly in her role and said she only served one man: Trump.”“It’s been about telling the version of the truth according to the serial liar who sits in the Oval Office. Reporters in the room don’t matter. The American people who rely on the reporting from the reporters in the room [don’t] matter, she’s never seen her job as working for the American people as a public servant,” Psaki said, adding she had damaged the job.
As a reminder, Jen Psaki spent years helping sell the fiction that Joe Biden was mentally sharp and physically vigorous, once claiming that the then-78-year-old president was so energetic she sometimes had trouble keeping up with him; even after leaving the White House, she insisted she had never witnessed any diminished capacity. She’s hardly in a position to cast judgment on anyone with that resume. Wid Lyman, an independent journalist who often attended Leavitt’s briefings, served up a brutal fact check on Psaki, revealing that, behind the scenes, the media has appreciated the increased access to the president, describing Leavitt’s entire team as “first class.”

Jen Psaki recently said the White House press briefing room “has massively changed” under the Trump administration and @karolineleavitt.

If you talk to anyone who has worked in media at the White House this is undoubtedly true.

Two comments I have heard recently:

"There is… pic.twitter.com/8HTTdqX1p1
— Wid Lyman (@Wid_Lyman) August 14, 2026

“Jen Psaki recently said the White House press briefing room “has massively changed” under the Trump administration and @karolineleavitt. If you talk to anyone who has worked in media at the White House this is undoubtedly true. Two comments I have heard recently: “There is way, way more going on during this administration compared to the last.” “The entire press team is first-class.” Karoline Leavitt not only fostered a more open atmosphere for multiple types of media in the briefing room, but she also created an environment where her staff was professional and courteous.
The 49 permanent seats in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room are allocated to legacy and major news organizations, but standing room only crowds of unseated journalists regularly attend the briefings. I routinely hear how much more crowded the room is compared to other times. Thank you for the opportunity to give our readers and followers a voice. God bless in all things.”
White House spokesman Davis Ingle had a very simple response to Psaki’s attack on Leavitt: “Jen ‘Circle Back’ Psaki couldn’t hold a candle to Karoline Leavitt.” Leavitt leaves the White House having expanded press access and earned praise even from journalists outside the conservative media bubble. Psaki left after helping hide Joe Biden’s obvious decline from the American people. If she really wants to have a conversation about who disgraced the podium, by all means, let’s have it.

“.. the GOAT of White House Press Secretaries”

• A Love Letter to Karoline Leavitt (Scott Pinsker)

From predicting Donald Trump’s victory in 2024 to nailing the Democrats’ Graham Platner bait-and-switch a month before everyone else, my predictive hit rate is among the best in the punditry biz. (And just this week, 48 hours after I hailed AOC’s “woke” pivot as a PR masterstroke, she shot to the top of the prediction markets. Booyah!) No, I haven’t gotten everything right, but to be fair, I’ve taken some very yuuuge swings. (Go big or go home, amiright?)
I’d guesstimate my accuracy is about 75%. But one of my proudest prognostications was less a prediction than an observation: Almost immediately, I hailed Karoline Leavitt — the youngest White House press secretary in history — as a frickin’ rockstar, and the greatest to ever serve President Trump.From March 18, 2025:
“We’re now eight weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, and two things are perfectly clear: 1) His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, is an absolute rockstar. 2) The mainstream media hates her.
The difference between Karoline and, say, Sean Spicer — Trump’s original press secretary — is night and day. Look, I don’t want to be unkind to Spicer, but her charisma, charm, and intellectual dexterity leave him in the dust. It’s the difference between chicken salad and chicken [EXPLETIVE].
Personally, I think she’s the best press secretary President Trump’s ever had”It took the rest of the media a little bit longer to catch up. People forget, but Leavitt was initially dismissed as a dumb blonde bimbo who only got the job ‘cause she’s young and hot.

Karoline Leavitt is an idiot and airhead https://t.co/4PJsf3Js0U
— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) January 21, 2025

THE VIEW'S JOY BEHAR: Karoline Leavitt was only hired by Donald Trump because she's a '10.' You know that what it is.

How disrespectful.pic.twitter.com/bwjXQY8yIB
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) January 29, 2025

Ain’t that a kick in the head: Within 20 months, Karoline Leavitt went from an “airhead” to irreplaceable! Yet her biggest legacy will be how she transformed the position of White House press secretary. Pre-K.L. and post-K.L. are gonna be night and day. What once was an afterthought is now a PR priority. She turned White House press secretary into a prestige position.In the past, it was hit and miss. Sometimes, the White House press secretary was competent; sometimes, he/she wasn’t. Either way, nobody gave it much thought. (And at least one president clearly prioritized DEI box-checking over PR talent.)
But the era of appointing uncharismatic lumps such as Robert Gibbs, Jay Carney, Karine Jean-Pierre, and Dee Dee Myers to the position is over. It’ll NEVER happen again. That’s because Leavitt redefined the political — and personal — utility of being White House press secretary. It’s a byproduct of our media age: Voters consume content in quick bites, conflict sells, and viral moments are manna from heaven. Some of the top conservative podcasters and media personalities (including Charlie Kirk) had to manufacture conflict by traveling to college campuses, debating left-wingers, and uploading the most viral encounters to YouTube.
Kirk and others invested in this strategy because it moved the needle — repeatedly.But the White House press secretary doesn’t have to travel anywhere. Whenever she wants, she can go to the podium, whack reporters around like a piñata, and become an instant social media sensation.It’s an ambitious politician’s passport to fame and stardom!
Pre-K.L., someone such as Scott Jennings would have had no interest in being the White House press secretary. Why would he? He’s already kicking [tush] on CNN as the network’s top conservative counterweight; why deal with the headache of pushy left-wing reporters? Why hitch your wagon to the lame-duck Trump administration when you’re doing just fine on your own? (CNN pays him with real money, y’know.) Now, it’s a very real possibility — because Karoline Leavitt went from MEETING the press to BEATING the press.

CNN pundit Scott Jennings is reportedly in the running to become White House press secretary when Caroline Leavitt steps down from the podium at the end of the month. https://t.co/2tgrIcpzRV
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) August 13, 2026

With the D.C. press corps’ blistering hatred of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, the purpose of the White House press secretary changed out of necessity. The goal, after all, of the mainstream media wasn’t to report “without fear or favor,” but to cheerlead for the Democrats and undermine the Republicans. In such a climate, a by-the-books, dispassionate PR presentation would be a disaster.You can’t treat a bad-faith question like a good-faith question. It just doesn’t work. Which is why Karoline Leavitt didn’t try:

The purpose of the position has changed. Instead of serving as the media’s punching bag, Leavitt reversed the equation, flipped the narrative, and leveraged the media’s idiocy to punctuate her own political points — manufacturing viral moments by the barrelful. Best of all, she instinctively mirrored her boss’s ethos: Trump is a fighter; so is Leavitt. If you come after Trump with a hammer, he’ll fire back with a torpedo. His tolerance for stupidity is famously thin.Same goes for Leavitt.
Plus, she had fun with the gig. Her joy was genuine; it leaped through the screen. Whether the next press secretary is Scott Jennings, Kari Lake, Spencer Pratt, or someone else, Leavitt created the blueprint that her successor will surely follow.Post-K.L., the primary job of a Republican White House press secretary is to produce viral moments by out-sparring D.C. reporters. Each day you’re behind the podium, your goal is the same: Defend the president by excoriating his detractors — and exposing their left-wing bull[feces]. It’s now a debating position, not an information desk.
Which, in all honesty, is way more fun: Not too many elite political talents would sign up to be the media’s punching bag ‘til the end of 2028… but getting two solid years of primo media facetime? Going one-on-one against America’s most famous journalists? Your top moments uploaded to X? Smashing reporters on a daily basis? Hooboy! The media is our perfect foil. Just 28% of Americans trust it — and for Republicans, it’s just 8%. We couldn’t ask for a better enemy. Post-K.L., the position of White House press secretary could elevate a current media star such as Scott Jennings to the next level for superstardom.
After leaving D.C., Karoline Leavitt will have plenty of options. If Fox News is wise, it’d load a Brink’s truck and make her an offer — as should CNN, Newsmax, and the major networks. She’d also be a helluva pick-up for The Daily Wire (assuming they could afford her). Or she could launch a digital network of her own, a la Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Megyn Kelly. She has the name I.D. and political credibility to draw millions of eyeballs right out of the gate. Everyone knows her; everyone respects her. She’s about to be the hottest free agent in all of political media!
Or maybe she’ll take some time off and be a full-time momma for the next few years. Lord knows she’s earned the right to rest — and focus on her babies. She’s still only 28. Because, unlike most members of the media, she doesn’t have to strike when the metal is hottest. We won’t forget her — and her career won’t suffer. She can afford to take her time. Because she’s simply too talented. Congratulations, Karoline. You’re the GOAT of White House press secretaries. You were so damn good, you changed how the entire game is played. We salute you.
And it was the easiest prediction of my career.

Lock him up until he’s there?!

• Fauci Refuses Senate Appearance (Fox)

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Friday declined a request to voluntarily appear before a second Senate panel, opening another front in Republicans’ investigations into the former public health official’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. An attorney for Fauci rejected the request from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, arguing that compelling Fauci to testify again after his contentious July 29 Senate hearing would “impermissibly harass or degrade Dr. Fauci for political purposes.”

Johnson has been conducting a parallel investigation into Fauci and the federal government’s response to COVID-19, including the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. The refusal comes after Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted along party lines last week to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 100 times during the July hearing. Committee chairman Rand Paul, R-Ky., has sought to send the contempt referral directly to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia, bypassing a full Senate vote.
“It’s a good legal discussion, and we will make those legal points to DOJ in sending the referral over,” Paul told Fox News Digital ahead of last week’s contempt vote. At issue is whether Fauci can invoke the Fifth Amendment after former President Joe Biden issued him a preemptive pardon before leaving office. Paul has argued that Biden’s pardon removed Fauci’s risk of federal prosecution and therefore undermined his basis for refusing to answer lawmakers’ questions. Fauci and his attorneys have disputed that position.
Paul has spent years investigating Fauci’s role in the government’s response to COVID-19 and has accused the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director of funding “risky” research that led to an alleged lab leak of the COVID-19 virus in China. Paul has repeatedly called for Fauci to be prosecuted.
Johnson’s subcommittee has separately obtained records related to Fauci and the government’s pandemic response. Fox News Digital previously confirmed that the Department of Health and Human Services sent the subcommittee a copy of Fauci’s pandemic-era cellphone. The broader Homeland Security panel also received more than 1,000 pages of Fauci’s personal diary before his July hearing.Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson’s office to ask whether he intends to subpoena Fauci following the refusal. Fox News Digital also sought reaction from Paul’s office and asked Fauci attorney David Schertler whether Fauci would comply with a subpoena compelling his testimony.

“It’s going to get much worse before the Midterms. As I said, these people don’t care about the country..”

• 2026 Midterms Very, Very Tight Election – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is out with a new report (more than 100 pages) that takes a deep dive on the “2026 Midterm Elections” in November. Armstrong says, “The computer is showing this is going to be a very, very tight election. It’s a 50/50 deal where we didn’t see either party coming in with a landslide. The bottom line looks like the Democrats can take the House, but not the Senate. So, you will have a 50/50 divided government. You are going to get a lot of the crazies on the Democrat side. Even the conservative Democrats are getting very nervous. You recently had (Democrat) James Carville talking about how the party is going to split, which was our forecast in 2024.

So, this is where we are heading. By the Dems taking the House, you will see all kinds of investigations, there will be another impeachment of Trump, etc. They will be real obstructionists. They don’t give a crap about the country. If Trump says the sky is blue, they have to say it’s red. This is the way politics degenerated.”The implications for the Democrats will be long lasting and not in a good way. Armstrong says, “If the Democrats take the House, they will basically make this a real shit fight. Our computers show for 2028 something very, very interesting. I have never seen it do this, and it’s showing the Democrats will lose dramatically. On the Republican side, it shows they win even slightly above 70%.
You take the two favorites from both sides, which would be Vice President Vance against AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), Vance would blow her out, yes. I think the Democrats need to take the House to show the world how screwed up they really are. There will be a check against them from Trump and the Senate. They can do an impeachment, but the trial has to be in the Senate, and it’s not going to go anywhere. . .. It’s going to get much worse before the Midterms. As I said, these people don’t care about the country. This has turned into a bloodsport. This is part of what the computer has been projecting. By 2032, we are looking at the collapse of Republican forms of government.”
On the war in Ukraine, Armstrong says, “I am not optimistic. It looks like it goes off the boards by 2030 or so. Even the EU looks like it’s going to collapse after 2029 and break up again.” With the Iran war, Armstrong says, “China is using Iran to drain our resources, which has happened. It takes two to three years to replace the missiles. Taiwan is up in arms saying to the US, you don’t have the fire power to protect us. . .. You see the same thing with Russia and Ukraine. They say Russia is weak. They can’t take Ukraine, and Ukraine has seriously weakened Russia. That is what Ukraine is doing. That’s the whole purpose of this, and that was to drain Russia. Iran is doing the same thing to America.”
Armstrong says don’t expect the stock market to crash anytime soon as money is flowing into and not out of America. Armstrong also is forecasting a new gold bull market in 2027.
Extra:

I did check the date to make sure it’s recent.

• Newsom’s High Speed Train to Nowhere is Not Arriving Anytime Soon (Turley)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been frantically trying to restart a presidential campaign that appears moribund, with polls showing him losing in some states to figures such as Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In his absence, his multibillion-dollar high-speed train also seems to be going nowhere fast. A new report from the state inspector general revealed that the train will be delayed again and that the public is being kept in the dark about ongoing problems with Newsom’s signature project. Oh, and one more thing: the project will run out of money by December 2027.

Benjamin Belnap’s report revealed the project is again running out of money. It found missing details in the project’s 2026 business plan, and concluded that the project will again be out of money by next year. The state has already spent $18 billion, but it will need at least another $18 billion to finish the first segment. It could take roughly $200 billion more actually to complete the original San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line. Even with billions more, the current segment will not be completed until 2034.
Voters approved a $9.95 billion bond issue in 2008 under Newsom’s predecessor after absurdly low cost estimates. Newsom has been a champion of the project. Influential figures and companies stood to make a fortune, and the key was to secure a “buy-in” worth billions, so that it would become increasingly difficult to abandon the project as overruns and delays sent costs soaring. Now the official estimate of future ridership has dropped by 25%, and it demands billions more to complete a project delayed by decades. Remember that this entire project was meant to create a rail line of only 171 miles.
One would think that the California voters would be marching to the capital with pitchforks and torches over such breathtaking incompetence and waste. However, they appear to have been conditioned to accept the lowest level of performance from their public officials.
The response of Democratic leaders is crushingly predictable: they are pledging to seek a federal bailout to cover their own incompetence. The Democratic nominee for governor, Xavier Becerra, is promising to fight to get back federal funds that were cut off by the Trump Administration. While promising to seriously review any problems in the project (as if they are not obvious), no one has been held accountable for this financial train wreck. Instead, all Democrats can do is demand that citizens around the country help bail out their boondoogle.
Yet, the Inspector General is describing a failure of leadership where no one is making any real decisions: “Exploration of specific financing mechanisms is a positive step, but because the Authority might run out of funding as soon as December 2027, and the financing strategy the Authority uses has the potential to significantly affect the amount of interest it will need to repay, the Authority and state lawmakers have little time for delay in deciding upon a strategy and implementing it.”
Belknap indicated that those in control are simply shrugging off the problem, noting that “[b]ecause the Authority has thus far not demonstrated a willingness to establish and reinforce a process that ensures accuracy and transparency in project reporting, we have directed our report recommendations to the Board.”
In the meantime, the state will continue to creep along with a project that is sucking billions into a project that has become a national disgrace. Beccera’s pledge to seek bailouts shows that the problem remains the political culture in California. There is little accountability left in a one-party state where companies and individuals have made fortunes off this debacle. The only people being taken for a ride are Californian citizens and it is not the ride that they bargained for.

What is this? Communiusm? There’s only one possible opinion?

• War On Rowling Continues (Sans Facts) (Christian Toto)

Journalists love to ask two questions spun from the same unhinged premise. Do you support trans women in women’s sports, and do you agree with author J.K. Rowling’s “anti-trans” views?The former bullies athletes for passing Biology 101. The latter targets the Harry Potter author at every possible turn. We’re seeing both in action of late. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham is under media assault for sharing a simple truth about men in women’s sports, a fact supported by science at every turn. “She’s MAGA Barbie,” select outlets cry!

Rowling is under a fresh attack from an actor lucky enough to snag a role in HBO Max’s hotly anticipated Harry Potter TV series. Bel Powley, who plays Petunia Dursley in the upcoming series, told The Telegraph that she “strongly disagrees” with Rowling’s position on trans issues.”I strongly disagree with J.K. Rowling’s views on gender. I think that the trans community deserves safety and dignity and respect and total acceptance … but I love Harry Potter. I grew up with the books. I am from that first generation of readers and, again, I love magic and spookiness.”
That’s why Powley took the gig. That, and the paycheck, of course. It’s likely that The Telegraph asked Powley about the Rowling issue and that the actress didn’t bring it up on her own. Either way, it’s part of a larger, disturbing media trend. Reporters describe anyone who doesn’t embrace the whole activist trans agenda as “anti-trans.” And they never ask the person in question to share specifics on what they’re criticizing or recite the actual comments by the “villain” du jour. For Cunningham, that means her critics won’t admit the obvious. Men have clear, distinct biological advantages that don’t vanish if they embrace “womanhood” or take hormones. Cunningham spoke very clearly on the issue. She did so without malice or political rhetoric.
The media and the Left, but we repeat ourselves, targeted her anyway. Rowling also has been very careful in her language on trans issues. She doesn’t wish the trans community harm. Her initial statements on the subject were kind and hardly alienating. She simply understands the need for separate spaces for biological women while acknowledging the physiological differences between male and female athletes. Oh, and she’s faced frequent death threats for sharing her commonsense opinions. Here’s what Rowling wrote in 2020, responding to the very early stages of the Left’s war on the beloved author.
“Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk…I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.” Does that sound cruel or hateful? Hardly. Did Powley read Rowling’s long, personal essay on the subject back in 2020? Has she read it lately? Unlikely.
The same is likely true for John Lithgow. The veteran actor plays Professor Dumbledore in the series, and he, too, has been coaxed into savaging Rowling for her trans views. They’re “inexplicable,” Lithgow said. Has he tried speaking with her directly? She’s a key player behind the scenes of the new HBO Max show.
Why not start there? Has he read everything she’s said on the matter? Where does he agree or disagree? It’s fine to disagree, of course, but he must know the intense cancellation movement she’s faced in recent years. Or does he realize that the “safe” position in Hollywood for anyone, let alone an 80-year-old actor, is to slam Rowling and leave any critical facts out of the conversation? To be fair, the legacy media does just that, too.

If Washington were the capital of a piece of land named Turkey, someone would do something about it too.

• It’s Spelled ‘Turkey,’ Not ‘Türkiye” (A.J. Christopher)

I noticed that when media outlets write about the country Turkey, they’re now spelling it “Türkiye.” Have you noticed it, too? Did you get the memo on this? Because I sure didn’t.
But apparently the United Nations did. At the request of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the United Nations in June 2022 agreed to use the spelling “Türkiye” to refer to the country. The State Depa
rtment also must have gotten the memo, because in January 2023, it followed suit. Naturally, the Western media was only too happy to play its polished role as court eunuch to Biden’s autopen, and it slipped into the usage of “Türkiye” with nary a peep.
So why did Erdogan make the request? Because “Turkiye” is how the country is spelled in its native Modern Turkish alphabet, and Erdogan’s rebranding of its spelling is part of his larger nationalistic, anti-Western agenda. Erdogan is also well aware of the West’s Achilles’ heel, which is the insatiable addiction of white liberals to pander to anything they feel counters Western influence. Erdogan is a president in name only. In reality, he lords over an increasingly repressive Islamist dictatorship that has been busying itself for over a decade with decoupling from the West and aligning with Russia and Iran. One would think that Western liberals would recoil from taking direct orders from a man who cozies up to the oppressors of women, the murderers of gays, and the architect of the Ukraine invasion.
Ah, but that would require them to stand on their stated principles. And it turns out their stated principles are not really their principles at all. It’s more important for them to denigrate their own culture and language — hence their eager and willing use of the word “Türkiye” – than to make common cause with “workers of the world” or “indigenous communities” or whatever their catchphrase of the week is. White liberals do this effortlessly with other linguistic overlaps as well. This is why they pronounce Spanish-originating words with faux-accents. They’ll pronounce the word Latino as (Lah-TEE-no), and they’ll over-accentuate the double E. Or they’ll pronounce the word Mexico as (Meh-hee-co), and pronounce the X as an H.
Liberals do this partly to brag about how cultured they think they are. They do this partly because they think it makes them sound exotic and diverse. But they do it more so as a direct criticism of the English language and American culture, as if by pronouncing these words with Spanish accents and pronunciations, they are disavowing their own native language as inferior. This is pandering, and it’s embarrassing to watch. It reeks of desperation. And the attempt doesn’t flatter the minority whose rear end the groveling white liberal is desperately trying to kiss. He’s rather insulted. You don’t get into people’s good graces by poorly mimicking their accent. You don’t impress them by flaunting the half a dozen or so words you know of their native language.
One particularly asinine example is that of the Micmac Indians, a Native American tribe in the American northeast, formally changing their name to the Mi’kmaq to appear less “colonial.” The left, of course, duly did what they were told and began using the word Mi’kmaq. It solved none of these Indians’ problems and changed nothing of history, but it made everyone feel woke and special.I find this particular example silly for two reasons. First, let’s be honest. None of us even knew the Micmacs were an Indian tribe until the movie Pet Sematary hit the theaters in 1989. And second, there is nothing colonizing about the spelling of the word Micmac.
Do you know why? Because there was never a written native version of the word which could be “colonized.” Do you know why? Because the Micmac Indians had no written language. That’s why. They were that primitive. And it amuses me that a culture which appropriated the concept of written language from us now tries to dictate to us how to use that language. Sorry, not sorry. I’m spelling it as Micmac. And if you continue to insist on taking the word and making it Mi’kmaq? Fine. You can take that word back. And I will take back electricity and indoor plumbing and modern medicine and literacy and the wheel.
The worst, though, is when white liberals do this with Islam. It starts, again, with their pronunciation of the word itself. In English, we pronounce it as (IZ-lam). But the pandering white liberal will try to adapt an Arabic accent and pronounce it as (Is-LAHM). It’s subtle, but it’s unmistakable when you hear them do it. And it sounds like nails on a chalkboard. Because it’s such shameless pandering. But they have to outdo each other to show whose most woke. And so they refer to the religion’s founder Mohammed as the Prophet Mohammed. As if he were an actual prophet, and not a schizophrenic, incestuous warlord. And you’ll notice they never extend this respect to any other religion. They never refer to Moses as the Prophet Moses. They never refer to Jesus as Jesus the Messiah.
But with Islam? They trip over one another rushing to fasten the shackles to their own wrists. So let’s get a few things straight. Without apology, I will continue to pronounce every word I speak, regardless of that word’s origin, with an American accent, just as people of other languages will continue to speak their words using their own accents, without anyone trying to guilt trip them for it. Without apology, I will continue to spell every word I write using phonetic English, just as people of other languages will continue to write their words using their own phonetics without anyone trying to guilt trip them for it.
And without apology, I will never refer to Mohammed as a prophet. Because he wasn’t one. He initiated a death cult which rivals only leftist ideology in the amount of sheer human suffering it inflicts wherever it goes. I’m American, and I speak and write based on the culture in which I was raised. I’m proud of that. And because of my cultural self-confidence, I feel no need to insist that strangers halfway across the globe pronounce and write the word “America” the same exact way I do. And if some dime store Islamic thug like Erdogan thinks he has a say in how I speak my language in my country, I’d like to see him try to enforce it.
Hey Erdogan, you know that city you call Istanbul? The proper pronunciation is actually “Constantinople.” And you want us to spell your country as Türkiye? The proper spelling is actually “Byzantium.” You might not be aware of that now.

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2088335459713716536?s=20 https://twitter.com/cb_doge/status/2088368087536169145?s=20

TRUMP JUST REPOSTED JFK’S MOST TERRIFYING SPEECH — AND THE DEEP STATE IS PANICKING

JFK saw it coming. In 1961. And now, Trump has just made sure 300 million Americans see it, too. pic.twitter.com/Af6TR5g7kP
— Kelly Marie Brady (@KellyMarieBrady) August 14, 2026

https://twitter.com/WakeUpPatriott/status/2088014520602022365?s=20 https://twitter.com/AmericaPartyX/status/2088347581705302441?s=20

If Tesla and SpaceX merge, you’ll have AI (Grok), Physical AI (FSD), Robots (Optimus/Cybercab), Energy, Chip Manufacturing, and Rockets all under one umbrella.

Game over. https://t.co/Ii2y4CJOVX pic.twitter.com/Fmg2q5Eeg4
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) August 14, 2026

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

Debt Rattle August 14 2026

Aug 142026

August 14, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:51 am Finance Tagged with: FBI, ICE, Ilhan Omar, Karoline Leavitt, Newsom, Secret Service 37 Responses »

Rembrandt The Descent from the Cross 1634

• Iran’s Military Command To Be ‘More Aggressive’ (ZH)

• Skepticism Over Iranian Plot Against Trump In Turkey (ZH)

• FBI Listed Bill Barr, Mike Pence and Other Reps as Russian “Conduits” (Turley)

• FBI’s Approach of Attack: Aggressive on Trump, Protective on Biden (JTN)

• Left Has Followed Every Play in Weaponization Playbook (Victor Davis Hanson)

• ICE Refuses To Disclose Records On Ilhan Omar Fraud Probe (JTN)

• Watch: UK PM Wants EVERY Area In Britain To House Migrants (MN)

• The Foundations Are Eroding (Paul Craig Roberts)

• California’s Rail Boondoggle Nears a Reckoning (Stepman)

• The Dems’ Great White Hope Just Got Humiliated in Michigan (Stephen Green)

• Karoline Leavitt Raised the Bar for All White House Press Secretaries (O’Brien)

https://twitter.com/gaye_gallops/status/2087526716755292204?s=20

THE JUSTICE LEAGUE has descended into polling locations across Minnesota and this form of journalism is about to hit Minneapolis election workers like electroshock therapy. @camhigby @anthonyjrubin @Savsays @choeshow @ctznjusticelg

We’re back… https://t.co/teegk5Sl8k
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) August 12, 2026

This political satire is priceless. Glad you didn't pass on the assistant—I noticed her qualifications too—but the pizza-basement joke was galaxy-class snark…https://t.co/BkEy8j28EF
— Dave Collum (@DavidBCollum) August 13, 2026

Heating up the empty air,

• Iran’s Military Command To Be ‘More Aggressive’ (ZH)

Oil prices have spiked Thursday on emerging reports that the Houthis have freshly targeted an Aramco refinery in Saudi Arabia’s Jizan with two drones, according to regional Saba News Agency. It seems this is part of Iran’s ‘counter-pressure’ playing book against Washington and its Gulf allies, given the Houthis have long been a proxy arm of Iran. The Houthi group is in the midst of a ‘siege for siege’ war on Saudi shipping and energy.

The Hormuz stalemate is meanwhile continuing, given War Secretary Pete Hegseth now says that the US military can maintain a blockade on Iranian ports for as long as needed.“Indefinitely the United States Navy can maintain a blockade like that because we’ll rotate ships in and out, as we have, and we’ll continue to,” Hegseth told reporters. But Iran is also vowing to outlast and keep up the military pressure, enforcing its own strait management protocol based on the Oman deal.
Attrition Game Outlasting US Politics
Top adviser to the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohammad Reza Naqdi, has been signaling Iran’s more aggressive stance in media appearances this week, also following a significant reshuffling of top military leadership. “Look, we have to attain deterrence so that the enemy never dares to attack us, so we can live with security,” Naqdi said in an interview with PBS. “One way is to prolong this war until we get to the next term of the presidency and cause attrition, so that if anyone else wants to attack Iran, they will know there is a cost.”
Alluding to the recent military reorganization, he described: “Whenever the conditions are favorable and the order is issued, we must be able to take the operation into enemy territory” – while contrasting the approach with a pre-war doctrine “primarily based on defense and the preservation of the country.”Military.com underscores that “Iran has reorganized its military to be more aggressive abroad as talks on ending the war with the U.S. remain mired in stalemate, a sign that Tehran is preparing for a protracted era of regional conflict.”
As a reminder, this is after Tehran’s obvious pivot away from negotiations, and toward a more permanent state of military resistance. The Wall Street Journal previously pointed out: “Now, the new supreme leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, is putting his own stamp on the country’s national-security policy amid a confrontation with the U.S. that could last months or even years.”
“Seasoned Hardliners” in Command
According to more of the analysis: In a sweeping overhaul of the government’s top echelon on Sunday and Monday, Iran named seasoned hard-liners to run the country’s security policies and institutions of repression. It marked the most significant government reshuffle under Mojtaba Khamenei, who hasn’t been seen in public since the war began. U.S. intelligence agencies say he is alive but severely injured, and top Iranian cabinet members say they have never met him since he took office. Iranian officials say he was injured but in good health.
Analysts said the appointments signaled Khamenei’s determination to hold fast in a showdown with President Trump, who is seeking concessions on Iran’s nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz. “The regime is preparing for a more confrontational posture at home and abroad,” said Kasra Aarabi, an expert on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a powerful paramilitary force, at United Against Nuclear Iran, a policy organization that opposes Iran’s government. And some fresh insight from Michael Stephens, a senior associate fellow at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI):
Nearly six months since the beginning of the war, Iran is now convinced that the US is not willing to conduct a ground invasion. “That existential threat is gone,” Stephens said. “So they want to up the tempo and maybe make the pain a little bit more acute for President Trump. And the best way to do that is to drag this out.”Prior to the US-Israeli attack on February 28, the widely held belief was that the Iranian government would readily collapse, after enduring months of civil disobedience and unrest during major demonstrations in late December and January.
“That doesn’t seem to be the case now, and I’m not really sure the US has any tools in the bag to force the regime to do what they want,” the analyst said. Iranians can “live in this stalemate at the moment – it hurts them, but it’s not existential, and I think that’s the problem the US has now”. Iranian leadership continues boasting of squaring up against the much larger American foe…
❗️ Iran says the US military is weaker than expected

“The longer this war continues, the more experience we gain.

We have never had a war like this to gain real experience and learn how to fight America.

Over these five months, we have learned this. We have also seen that the… pic.twitter.com/Yfz5T2pIkj
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) August 12, 2026

It’s easy to mock the Secret Service. Easier than it is for them to protect Trump.

• Skepticism Over Iranian Plot Against Trump In Turkey (ZH)

US mainstream media has this week been dominated by claims that an Iranian assassination threat prompted President Donald Trump to secretly switch planes while flying out of Turkey last month, with Air Force One serving as a decoy while he flew out on a smaller military aircraft. The details of the ‘escape’ from alleged danger are wild, and continue to be subject of widespread scrutiny and questioning, given the American president was actually covertly transferred into a catering container, which then ferried him to a small C-32A aircraft, according to reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times.

BBC: Donald Trump secretly switched planes when he was returning from a Nato meeting last month in order to avoid a threat to his life from Iran.

The claim was that Iranian covert forces could target Air Force One at the airport in Ankara using shoulder-fired rockets, or MANPADS, from perhaps just one kilometer away Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Thursday while speaking of the broader war and the status of the Hormuz Strait appeared to gently mock the ordeal and controversy surrounding it. He referenced “fake intelligence” in the broad comments.
Importantly the words come as some like Turkey are accusing Israel of feeding Washington ‘fabricated’ intelligence, which then led to the dramatic Trump plane-switching escapade. FM Araghchi asserted that the United States has “has long miscalculated due to intelligence failures,” especially when launching its war on Iran. But that’s when he could be interpreted as mocking the Air Force One drama, continuing on X: “Worse than fake news is fake intelligence.”
Some analysts have questioned why at this point in the conflict, when Iranian government and armed forces have clearly survived nearly six months of everything the US military has thrown at it, Iran would even see the need to assassinate a head of state. Such an action would only invite a much greater military response than has been seen before, and the Islamic Republic seeks to keep its current leverage over Hormuz, wanting to keep things at a low-burn headed into US midterm elections.

The Washington Post’s @DanLamothe, who broke the news of Trump’s secret plane switch via a catering truck, joins OutFront to share new reporting that the CIA had “low confidence” in Israeli intel that Trump was facing a threat from Iran: “Given the seriousness of the issue… they… pic.twitter.com/CPROjMMFhG
— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) August 13, 2026

In the meantime there are fresh reports that the US intelligence community itself is skeptical of the assassination plot claims: US intelligence officials were skeptical of an alleged Iranian assassination threat against President Donald Trump during his trip to Turkiye for the NATO summit, which prompted a secretive plan to fly him out of the country in an alternative military aircraft. The assassination threat was relayed by the Israeli government to the CIA, where analysts did not view the intelligence as compelling and conveyed that skepticism to Trump administration officials, Washington Post reported, quoting current and former US officials familiar with the intelligence said.
Another official called the reports of threats against Trump’s life “Israeli-derived, not US-generated, and viewed as low confidence,” Washington Post added. However, the Secret Service is trained to take basically every threat seriously and move fast, especially while the president is traveling through foreign countries, or in potentially hostile environments. More and more skepticism has emerged of late across the political spectrum related to official Washington claims related to the Iran conflict…

The story of Trump secretly switching airplanes is actually a great example of how we got into the war with Iran…

“Israeli-derived, not U.S.-generated, and viewed as low confidence” by our own intelligence agencies. pic.twitter.com/zWKkWxYBat
— Joe Kent (@joekent16jan19) August 13, 2026

Republicans are “Conduits of Misinformation”.

While George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and John Kerry were “targets” for Russian disinformation.

Do we realize how insane this was/is?

Also: most FBI agents are still in their job.

• FBI Listed Bill Barr, Mike Pence and Other Reps as Russian “Conduits” (Turley)

Well, this explains why, whenever Bill Barr and I met for breakfast, he would order the Borscht with Biscuits. Various media sites are now reporting that the FBI allegedly listed Barr, Michael Pence, and other Republicans as “Russian conduits” while listing leading Democrats as the victims or targets of Russian disinformation or misinformation. It would be comical if it were not so concerning. In addition to the absurd listing of these figures, the task force is being accused of burying a significant number of witnesses alleging influence peddling and corruption by the Biden family.

Newly declassified documents from the White House transparency task force reportedly show that the FBI ran a counterintelligence operation called Round River to “neutralize certain narratives.” The operation was carried out by the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force in the lead-up to the 2020 elections.
The declassified documents identified Republicans, including other high-ranking officials such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the late Lindsey Graham, as conduits for Russian misinformation. At the same time, figures such as George Soros, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and former Secretary of State John Kerry are “targets” for Russian disinformation.
What is bizarre is that the FBI was aware by that point that Clinton had secretly funded the Russian collusion hoax and helped launch the greatest political hit job in history with a cooperating media. Notably, American intelligence had concluded that the infamous Steele dossier funded by the Clinton campaign may have been the conduit of Russian disinformation. Yet, here is the FBI listing Clinton as the target for misinformation while listing virtually every prominent Republican as conduits for misinformation, according to these reports.
At the same time, the Round River reportedly declared “confidential human source files” revealing alleged corruption by the Biden family “to be Russian disinformation.” The Administration is looking into the task force and why it “did not go in and try to determine the merit of the allegations, or to examine if they were factually true, or consult with the agents working those informants. They simply designated them as foreign intelligence threats and designated their files as such.”
Congress should also look into these disturbing reports. The inclusion of Barr is particularly absurd, as one of the hawks who have long pushed for the toughest measures to combat Russian threats. Presumably, his inclusion is based on someone spotting him spreading Russian dressing on a salad. That would have been a stronger basis for the task force than the apparent counterintelligence analysis of the Round River investigators.

“The FBI is opening a full investigation based on an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United State..,”

• FBI’s Approach of Attack: Aggressive on Trump, Protective on Biden (JTN)

The federal government’s most powerful investigative agency spent four years applying double standards to two investigations of presidential candidates. At the same time, they were floating as credible allegations against one that its own agents doubted, yet treated corroborated tips about the other as foreign disinformation. No one has been seriously held accountable for the disparity. The FBI led multiple operations prior to the 2020 election that helped politically and financially damage President Donald Trump and, at the same time, protect then-presidential candidate Joe Biden from law enforcement.

Two operations – Crossfire Hurricane and Oxferd Comma – served to undermine Trump and paint him as a Russian operative by zealously investigating unsubstantiated allegations pushed by Democrats. Running in tandem with those investigations was Round River, which was designed to fight “malign foreign influence” by ignoring actual evidence of corruption and crimes involving the Biden family and paint any Republican who questioned that family as a conspiracy theorist or Russian asset.
Crossfire Hurricane targeted Trump over Democrat paid-for allegations
Crossfire Hurricane involved the abuse of surveillance rules during the Obama administration allowing the FBI and other intelligence agencies to target the Trump campaign under the guise of fighting foreign influence. Based on unsubstantiated allegations pushed by the Clinton campaign, the investigation involved undercover informants infiltrating the Trump campaign to try and lure out incriminating evidence – which never came. An Inspector General report from the Department of Justice released in 2019 admitted some of that surveillance was “unlawful.”
The Inspector General report found that the FBI altered evidence against Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in order to investigate him, leading to FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith pleading guilty in 2020 to falsifying an email for the purposes of obtaining a FISA warrant. That warrant authorized spying on Page and his interactions with the Trump campaign. Page had worked with the CIA dealing with Russians in the early days of the Obama administration, but Clinesmith altered an email to make it appear as though Page had never worked with the agency.
Declassified records released by the FBI and obtained by Just the News show Stefan Halper, an informant who also worked as a Pentagon researcher, was directed to meet with Page at a Virginia farm in October 2016, to try to elicit information about the campaign’s possible ties to Russia. Other declassified documents show that Halper was paid nearly $1.2 million by the FBI over three decades.
The FBI also sent an undercover operative to meet with Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos while posing as a research assistant named Azra Turk, according to reporting from The New York Times in 2019. The investigators attempted to get Papadopoulos to falsely admit the Trump campaign was working with Russia. Halper was also asked by the FBI to speak with Papadopoulos about alleged Russia collusion, records show.
Special Counsel: “No criminal conspiracy between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Trump campaign.” Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s massive investigation into Russia collusion determined there was no criminal conspiracy between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Trump campaign.=A second Special Counsel, John Durham, went even further, concluding during the Biden administration that the Obama-era FBI and DOJ had no basis to open an investigation of Trump-Russia collusion.”Neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham wrote in a 300-plus page report sent to Congress in spring 2023.
Declassified documents pertaining to Crossfire Hurricane released in April 2025 revealed that the FBI had doubts about the authenticity of the allegations against Trump, but pursued the president anyway. Oxferd Comma began eight days after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey in 2017. The FBI knew that the firing had nothing to do with Russia, but investigated the sitting president anyway.
“The FBI is opening a full investigation based on an articulable factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald J. Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Government of the Russian Federation which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States,” reads the electronic communication, approved by then-FBI General Counsel James Baker and then-Assistant Director for Counterintelligence William Priestap.
“The goal of the investigation is to determine if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation in a manner constituting a threat to the national security of the United States and/or a violation of federal criminal statutes,” the memo added. “In addition, this investigation will also seek to determine whether President Trump and others yet to be named obstructed and/or conspiracy to obstruct any associated FBI investigation.”
The memo went on to make clear the investigation was tied to Crossfire Hurricane, even though in both instances, the FBI knew or had doubts about the authenticity of the allegations against Trump. In contrast to the two above investigations into Trump, the Round River operation sought to discredit anyone suggesting corruption amongst members of the Biden family – and actively suppressed information that confirmed that corruption.
As Just the News reported Wednesday, the FBI had 14 informants with information on Biden family corruption but worked to portray Biden and other Democrats as victims of Russian disinformation from conservative news sites, painting every story as “Russian disinformation.” Prominent Republicans were labeled as “conduits” of Russian disinformation. Confidential Human Sources (CHS) reported concerns about the Biden family and its ties to Ukraine beginning in 2015, but labeled former Attorney General Bill Barr’s investigation into that corruption as a conspiracy theory and Barr himself as a conspiracy theorist or Russian asset.
Other agencies helped Biden and undermined Trump, media played same game
In addition to the FBI and IRS, others helped Biden in 2020 and undermined Trump, including 51 former intelligence officials who signed a now infamous letter claiming a bombshell report from The New York Post about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation. The officials knew this was not true, but coordinated with the Biden campaign and then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken to release the letter prior to Biden’s debate with Trump, so Biden could dismiss a major Trump talking point. When Trump came back into office in 2025, he revoked the security clearances of the former intelligence officials who signed the letter.
The FBI under Biden also pressured social media sites to censor the laptop story, with former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey later admitting that censoring the story was wrong. Facebook executives also suppressed the story to gain favor with the Biden administration, the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on the weaponization of government found in 2024.

“.. the 2016 election? Hillary Clinton, she lost the Electoral College. She won the popular vote. What did she say almost immediately? That Donald Trump was not legitimately elected. In other words, he wasn’t our real president. Was she an outlier? No. Former President Jimmy Carter said that Donald Trump was not a legitimate president. “

• Left Has Followed Every Play in Weaponization Playbook (Victor Davis Hanson)

Recently, the Left in general and Democrats in particular have been criticizing a lot of things that this administration has done. This came up with the confirmation hearings of Attorney General Todd Blanche, and people suggested that, though he may have been qualified, he had too close a relationship as a personal attorney, or he acted in a legal capacity with [President] Donald Trump, and therefore there would be an incestuous relationship between the [Justice Department] and the White House.

But who broke that standard? I think it was broken during the JFK administration. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic president, appointed his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general. They conferred daily. If we were worried that that was an aberration, remember Eric Holder bragged that he was, quote, Obama’s wingman. So, the Democrats have had a long history of a close relationship between the DOJ and the White House.
We’ve been told that the Democratic Party is very angry because some local, i.e., state or county or municipal, prosecutors might take a look at Anthony Fauci and see if he had criminal exposure other than federal exposure. And people said, well, what business do these local prosecutors have looking at Anthony Fauci, who was a federal bureaucrat? And if he did anything wrong, it would be a federal offense. You can’t have freelancing prosecutors all over the United States going after—yes, you can. We established that principle with Donald Trump.
Remember that Letitia James went after him for a real estate deal in which Deutsche Bank, the lender, had no problem with the loan as it was conducted. She was the attorney general of New York. Alvin Bragg could not get Donald Trump on anything other than to bootstrap a federal campaign violation that even federal prosecutors didn’t want to touch. He was just the municipal DA of Manhattan.
Fani Willis met her paramour, Nathan Wade, who was part of her legal team. He met in the White House with Joe Biden, and she was only a Fulton County prosecutor. So, long ago, we dispensed with the idea that regional or local or state or county prosecutors can’t go after a high-profile federal official, and there’s nobody more high-profile than the United States president.
Then we heard last week that they were worried that Donald Trump’s IRS may be too partisan. I think they destroyed that barrier as well. Do you remember Lois Lerner? She was pretty much conducting special audits of Tea Party groups and other conservative-affiliated groups to make sure they did not get nonprofit status, and that was going into the election year 2012.
Do we remember the New York Legislature when Donald Trump’s tax returns were released illegally by the federal IRS? The Legislature in New York piled on and said, we’ll pass a bill that says anybody this year, i.e., Trump, who is under federal audit and whose tax returns are subpoenaed by a congressional committee, once they saw them, we’re going to turn over his confidential state records as well. That was about as weaponizing the state and federal IRSs as you could imagine. How about election denialism?
Hillary Clinton. You remember, anybody, the 2016 election? Hillary Clinton, she lost the Electoral College. She won the popular vote. What did she say almost immediately? That Donald Trump was not legitimately elected. In other words, he wasn’t our real president. Was she an outlier? No. Former President Jimmy Carter said that Donald Trump was not a legitimate president. He was an election denialist. Stacey Abrams, you remember her? She ran for governor of Georgia and lost by 50,000 votes. She toured the country for two years and said she was the real governor of Georgia, she won that election. She was really an election denialist.
Do we remember in 2000, when George W. Bush beat Al Gore? Al Gore said that he really didn’t lose the key swing state of Florida. Later, The New York Times conducted an affiliated investigation of the county returns that Al Gore had sued to get a hold of. They looked at them, and guess what? George W. Bush did win Florida and, with Florida, won the election. Did that stop the Left? No.
They said that George W. Bush was selected. He was not elected. Do you remember that? Do you remember the 2004 election, when a large contingent of the Democratic House refused to honor the vote in Ohio and voted not to accept George Bush’s popular-vote victory in Ohio that put him over the top? So, that bar was destroyed a long time ago, and it’s pretty low or nonexistent that you don’t deny an election result. That’s what the Left taught us, at least.
We were told that the Supreme Court of the United States is too weaponized, too consistently conservative, voting in a bloc. There’s been a lot of studies. One of them showed that the six-justice majority votes anywhere from 60% to 64% in line with their conservative philosophy in cases that come up with an ideological theme to them. And how about our three left-wing, Democratic judges? The same study found that they are a little bit more partisan. Up to 70% of ideological cases, they vote consistently with the Left. In other words, if you believe in a weaponized Supreme Court, the greatest offenders are the three liberal justices, which you don’t hear.
We’re talking about a weaponized FBI a lot. Kash Patel has weaponized the FBI. I don’t think he has, but if he were to weaponize it, he would be tutored by James Comey. You remember James Comey? He, 245 times before a House Oversight Committee, said he couldn’t remember, or he didn’t know, or he had amnesia. He inaugurated the bogus Operation Crossfire effort to promulgate the lie that Donald Trump was a Russian asset. That was during the campaign. Had that lie been widely publicized and widely believed, it would have affected the election. Donald Trump wouldn’t have won.
No sooner had Donald Trump been elected than, with Operation Two that was Oxford Comma, they tried to suggest the sitting president had Russian ties. That was a lie, too. Andrew McCabe, his interim successor, lied four times under oath on ideological or political matters. His lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, forged a document and submitted it to a FISA court. That was an FBI lawyer. I could go on with Robert Mueller, the Mueller investigation, claiming under oath he didn’t know what the Steele dossier was, even though it prompted his very appointment. I would say the FBI was pretty weaponized and politicized by the time Kash Patel got there.

“It’s All in the Family: The agency claims that releasing documents related to an investigation into the lawmaker’s alleged immigration fraud would, under the law, interfere with “enforcement proceedings.”

“In 2002, Omar applied for a marriage license to marry Ahmed Hirsi, but did not marry him civilly, only in a Muslim ceremony. In 2008, she separated from Hirsi and a year later married Elmi. In 2011, Omar and Elmi separated with a Muslim divorce, and a year later she began another relationship with Hirsi. After her election to the Minnesota house, she filed for a formal divorce from Elmi in 2017. She married Hirsi in 2018. ”

• ICE Refuses To Disclose Records On Ilhan Omar Fraud Probe (JTN)

The federal government is refusing to turn over records related to an investigation conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement into allegations of immigration fraud by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., citing a legal exemption for ongoing investigations. Just the News filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the records in January, seeking the records pertaining to any investigations conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement into the allegations that Rep. Omar, who represents Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, married a relative in order to help him remain in the country.

Omar has denied the allegations. No court records, DNA evidence, or other documentary proof has ever substantiated that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, Omar’s legal husband from 2009–2017, was her biological brother. “ICE has determined that the information you requested is being withheld in full pursuant to Title 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(A). Disclosure of any responsive records at this time could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings,” ICE told Just the News in response to the FOIA in May.
The FOIA exemption cited by the agency “applies to records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes when their release could disrupt such proceedings,” the reply reads. The Department of Justice guidelines for invoking exemption 7(A) say that doing so requires a two-step assessment. “First, there must be a ‘reasonable likelihood’ of a pending or contemplated law enforcement proceeding,” the guidance says. “Second, release of the information must be reasonably expected to cause some articulable harm to that proceeding.”
Some say it’s an open-secret known about as early as 2016
Harm includes things such as exposing the case to witness tampering or tipping off suspects, according to the guidance. The exemption makes no distinction between criminal, civil, and administrative cases. Trump administration border czar Tom Homan first said in December last year that the Department of Homeland Security was investigating whether Omar committed immigration fraud by allegedly marrying her brother, Just the News reported. “We’re pulling the records, we’re pulling the files,” Homan said in an interview with Newsmax last year. “We’re looking at it […] I’m running that down this week.
Earlier this year, Vice President JD Vance confirmed that the Justice Department was reviewing the allegations. “I don’t want to prejudge an investigation,” Vance said. “It certainly seems like something fishy is there. If we think that there’s a crime, we’re going to prosecute that crime, and that’s something the Department of Justice is looking at right now.” The allegation that Omar’s second husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, is related to her, or even her brother, first surfaced during her 2016 election campaign for a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives. At the same time, allegations emerged that when she married her second husband she was still married to her first.
Omar denies allegations related to her matrimonial status
Omar’s campaign vehemently denied both allegations. “Allegations that she married her brother and is legally married to two people are categorically ridiculous and false,” said then-campaign spokesman Ben Goldfarb. The timeline of Omar’s relationships, however, is not in dispute. Omar was born in Somalia and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to the United States in 1995.
In 2002, Omar applied for a marriage license to marry Ahmed Hirsi, but did not marry him civilly, only in a Muslim ceremony. In 2008, she separated from Hirsi and a year later married Elmi. In 2011, Omar and Elmi separated with a Muslim divorce, and a year later she began another relationship with Hirsi. After her election to the Minnesota house, she filed for a formal divorce from Elmi in 2017. She married Hirsi in 2018.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly invoked the claim that Omar “married her brother” in order to get him into the country, accusing her of committing immigration fraud. “She married her brother in order to get in, right? She married her brother. Can you imagine if Donald Trump married his sister?” He also called for her removal, saying, “We ought to get her the hell out,” Trump said at a December 2025 rally.

Next! (they don’t have anyone anywore, it’s over)

• Watch: UK PM Wants EVERY Area In Britain To House Migrants (MN)

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has decided that “all parts of the country need to play their part. ”That means middle-class families and leafy villages must now accept large numbers of asylum seekers so the poorest areas are no longer the only ones carrying the load. This approach obviously does nothing to stop the root of the problem, the sheer number of migrants washing up in boats. It simply advertises better accommodation to the next wave of illegal arrivals.

‘All parts of the country need to play their part.’

Prime Minister Andy Burnham addresses the village of Piddington, which is facing a migrant detention centre being built in its community. pic.twitter.com/uo0XsKZUsD
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 11, 2026

Burnham’s comments came in direct response to the ongoing revolt in the Oxfordshire village of Piddington. Residents there face plans to house up to 1,250 single adult male asylum seekers on a former military site near a community of roughly 400 people. The numbers would leave locals heavily outnumbered. Children have written letters pleading with the Prime Minister not to destroy their village. Families held a symbolic independence referendum in which 96 percent voted to leave the United Kingdom in protest.
Seven-year-old Rex Perkin said his family had lived in the village for over 100 years and that he walked to his sister’s grave. He worried he would no longer be able to do that. Other children begged to keep their park, their dog walks, and the quiet life they knew. Parents described the prospect of being so outnumbered that daily life would change completely. Burnham told GB News he understood concerns and would look into the issues raised by “the good people of Piddington.”
He then made the wider point clear: “We cannot have a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers. I do believe all parts of the country need to work, to play their part. ”Borders minister Anna Turley doubled down, defending the plan to impose the numbers on the tiny village and insisting the policy was about “fairness” and a “more fair and equitable system.”

Borders minister defends imposing 1,200 migrants on an Oxfordshire village of just 400 people after PM said middle class areas must accept more asylum seekers https://t.co/k0aBSANsG9
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) August 12, 2026

She said the men would be “contained” on the site but still allowed out. The message to anyone watching from the French coast is straightforward: break into Britain and you may end up in a secure facility near a prosperous English village rather than a rundown hotel in a deprived town.

The parts of the UK with no asylum seekers mapped as Andy Burnham vows to make middle-class areas take more migrants https://t.co/RBRd3pjyZh
— Daily Mail (@DailyMail) August 12, 2026

The Centre for Migration Control put the core problem bluntly:

Telling migrants that if they break into Britain they will be housed in Kensington or the Cotswolds is hardly going to deter them from crossing the Channel.

The government simply does not understand the pull factors driving the crisis. pic.twitter.com/NS5oqgDWU5
— Centre for Migration Control (@migrationCtrl) August 12, 2026

Labour MP Graham Stringer, speaking on TalkTV, rejected the idea that opposition was rooted in racism. GB News coverage highlighted the demographic reality. Certain areas could see locals outnumbered three to one if the redistribution continues on this scale.

'They're going to be outnumbered three to one'.@forster_k highlights how certain areas could leave locals outnumbered if the Government follow through with Andy Burnham's premise that middle class areas should take in more migrants. pic.twitter.com/k5m84faW7Q
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 12, 2026
.

At his age, one’s foundations are always eroding.,

• The Foundations Are Eroding (Paul Craig Roberts)

Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Oz, a dual citizen of Turkey and the US, is head of Medicaid, a federal program that provides health care for the uninsured poor. He announced last Tuesday that Medicaid, as directed by President Trump, would no longer pay for change of gender surgeries for children and for hormone therapies to counteract their natural gender.

(During the George W. Bush/Cheney/zionist neoconservative regime, joint Israeli-US citizens held high appointments in the Defense Department, State Department, and National Security. This power over America exercised by citizens of other countries has now been provided to Turkish/US joint citizens. How exactly is America American when citizens of foreign countries are in high US federal offices?)
The question that occurred to me is why was Medicare, a program for the health care of uninsured poor, paying with Americans’ tax dollars change of gender surgeries. In what sense is surgical change of gender a health issue?
I lived for many decades in the US prior to the emergence of the transgender ideology that people were suffering because they had been born in the wrong bodies. How exactly do you get into the wrong body? The advent of the transgender ideology seems to me the sudden appearance of a satanic practice of overturning God or nature. If people have been suffering from living in the wrong bodies, how come we only recently heard about it?
If being born into the wrong body is historically common, why suddenly is a new generation unable to cope without complaint and surgical intervention when previous wrong body persons were able to live with their condition? Have we simply become a weaker species that cannot even cope with our nature-given, God-given gender?
While thinking about this I read, yet again, that US Navy personnel on one of our US aircraft carriers stationed missile distance from Iran could not cope with being deployed away from the comforts of home for six and one-half months without both sailors’ morale collapsing and their families complaining of the strain. The sailors are trying to jump overboard in order to be honorably discharged for mental health reasons. One doesn’t sense strength resonating from the US Navy’s human resources. Wherever one looks, Americans are unable to cope. Sexual perverts can’t cope with Christian disapproval. Zionist Jews cannot copy with criticisms of Israel’s policies. It is so hurtful to be held accountable.
Black American students, most of whom are half white (so why are they called blacks?) are too fragile to go to schools named after Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, two citizens of Virginia who did not own slaves or commit war crimes, unlike Abraham Lincoln who has a memorial in Washington and an aircraft carrier named after him. Lincoln’s solution to the “negro problem” was to send them back to Africa or to somewhere in Central America, which would have been the case if Lincoln had not been assassinated. The tariffs imposed on the South by the North’s war victory would have paid for it.
Jews are so fragile that in order to ensure their ability to continue to exist they have to be protected by criminalizing all criticisms of Israel and its all powerful lobbies, so powerful that they control the President, Congress, media, and financial system of the United States.
We see all over the Western world extreme weakness. Governments are unwilling to prevent immigrant-invaders from overrunning their countries and from raping the ethnic population’s women and children. The Spanish prime minister’s response to the recent overrunning of a Spanish city of 80,000 by 60,000 immigrant-invaders was to say that as Spain was a former colonial occupier, it had to show empathy for the victims of its occupation. This is straight out of The Camp of the Saints, a forecast of the end of all white ethnic countries.
Who are the real oppressed? White heterosexual ethnic American males who have been second class citizens in law since the Jew Alfred Bloomrosen at the EEOC stood the 1964 civil rights act on its head and created a system of racial and gender preferences. These preferences are now being extended to immigrant-invaders. The American tower of babel now has animal sacrifice, calls to Muslim prayer over loudspeakers in the capital of Minnesota, demands of unassimilated communities for Sharia Law, Spanish as a second official language. The people whose this country is are powerless. In a few more years they will be a minority and will be pushed aside to be dealt with later.
Wherever you look in America it is the immigrant-invaders who are confident. They can count on the guilt of white American liberals to hand over to them all power. The few white Americans who understand the situation are demonized as conspiracy theorists and white supremacists.
A narrative has been constructed for whites by whites that denies whites the ability and will to protect themselves from marginalization. Wherever you look in America whites are working around the clock to give power over them to immigrants-invaders. As I posted yesterday, the Massachusetts state government is creating a commission for the unconstitutional purpose of favoring the promotion of Muslims to positions of power in the state government.
The MAGA movement to restore America failed, because Trump and his regime represent Israel, not America. Trump’s failure has likely demoralized many if not most of his supporters, and they, demoralized, will just give up, leaving the field to the leftish Democrats.
It is likely, though not certain, that the future belongs to the rising left in the Democrat Party. Their first targets are the established corrupt Democrats elected and reelected by the campaign contributions from donors they service legislatively. As I currently read it, the leftist Democrats are not aiming at just occupying the same corrupt position as traditional Democrats. The leftists are aiming at overthrowing the system. Establishment Democrats might be able to keep the leftists from power for a while by stealing elections as they appeared to have done in Milwaukee. Polls showed Francesca Hong with a large lead and she lost. Evidence has emerged of vote fraud. In America it is easy for establishments to steal elections.
The left won’t quickly win, as the Democrat primaries have shown. But they will win in the end, because only they are armed with the disgust, the determination, and the will to prevail.

Can he run at all for anything after that?

• California’s Rail Boondoggle Nears a Reckoning (Stepman)

California’s high-speed rail boondoggle may finally be running out of money. It’s bad news for Gov. Gavin Newsom, possibly good news for the people of California. I’ve been opining about why the California bullet train will never succeed since I wrote my very first column as a young college pup. But even my accurate (though not difficult) prediction about its certain failure didn’t quite capture the sheer depth of the wasteful insanity this project has achieved. There now may be a glimmer of hope, though a faint one, that the “project”—a word I use loosely in this case—may mercifully starve to death after fattening itself on taxpayer cash for nearly two decades.

According to a recent review by the Office of the Inspector General, the California High-Speed Rail project “will exhaust its current funding resources as soon as December 2027 if it does not secure financing.” The inspector general warned that the high-speed rail faces a $9.5 billion funding gap over the next five years and there is currently no plan to fill it. Even more damning is the inspector general’s note that there are “significant concerns” regarding transparency and that completion projections have been a moving target.
The only reason the high-speed rail was even keeping close to its already massively bloated budget numbers was due to just lopping off parts of the planned line. “Ultimately, the major cost savings observed in the Merced and Bakersfield extensions are not due to increased efficiency—which we define as delivering equivalent scope for less cost—but are instead the result of planning to build less,” the report explained. The report noted that the Merced-to-Bakersfield line, the pitifully shortened and getting shorter segment of what was once sold as a connection between San Francisco and Los Angeles, now has a projected completion date of September 2034.
I’d love to go back in time to my college campus and tell students who bought into the fast, “green” train that was going to connect the whole state that what they were ultimately getting was a short line in the Central Valley that might finish construction closer to their retirement than graduation—if they are lucky.On top of everything else, the inspector general wrote with seeming exasperation that the High-Speed Rail Authority tasked with overseeing the project “has obscured basic facts about the project, hindering lawmakers’ ability to provide effective oversight of the project.”
I’d argue that if the lawmakers and powers that be in the state cared about the high-speed rail’s viability, they would have taken action to shut it down and untangle the mess long ago. A few lone voices, including Republican Rep. Vince Fong, have been pointing out red flag after red flag for years, but they’ve mostly been ignored. Fong, like poor Sisyphus, did so again after the IG report came out.“California’s High-Speed Rail is the quintessential example of government mismanagement,” he wrote Tuesday on X. “I’ve called it out since day 1. Californians were promised a completed rail 6 years ago. Today we’ve spent billions and billions, for a total of zero trains. Gavin Newsom owes us an explanation. And an apology. It’s beyond time to shut this down.”
Fong is right. Not only should the California bullet train to nowhere be shut down, but taxpayers also deserve a full accounting of what went wrong here.We don’t even know the depths of failure outside the shifting budget projections and the visible lack of evidence that a functioning train is likely to come online any time soon.Every piece of information that drips out of the high-speed rail project is about delays, increased costs, deceptive practices, and total unaccountability.
Even basic things, like buying the trains, are behind schedule with no explanation. Newsom and other California Democrats blamed President Donald Trump for the recent hiccups on the removal of $4 billion in federal funds. However, according to a recent investigation by CBS News, the delay in buying trains, which was supposed to be done by the end of last year, had nothing to do with the lost federal funding. And, of course, the California government has provided no explanation for the hold up.
California quietly withdrew its lawsuit against the federal government over the pulled funding at the end of 2025, which was the right call given that it can’t meet basic deadlines. What this means is that the high-speed rail project—which I’d argue has been operating as a slush fund for bureaucrats and fake jobs for some time—might truly be put on full pause soon. The Trump administration isn’t going to hand them a penny now or ever again.
Private investors have mostly stayed far away. The best they’ve got on that end is some companies “exploring” the viability of the project, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they are just trying to find ways to gobble up some of the remaining public money. And without public subsidies that would have to be approved by voters, it’s hard to see where the money will come from to keep the thing rolling. Well, not rolling at all, actually. It’s shameful that this charade has gone on for so long. I truly hope this report will be the beginning of the end of this long, expensive, pointless scam that the people of California have endured for too long.

“..whose national ambitions — thankfully for those of us who don’t live in California — appear permanently stymied by his conspicuous corruption and incompetence.”

• The Dems’ Great White Hope Just Got Humiliated in Michigan (Stephen Green)

Pity poor Gavin Newsom, whose national ambitions — thankfully for those of us who don’t live in California — appear permanently stymied by his conspicuous corruption and incompetence. The latest evidence comes from Michigan, where the would-be Democrat presidential contender was just humiliated in the state’s deepest indigo of blue enclaves. Calling it Newsom’s “swing (and miss) state tour,” Politico reported on Wednesday that his “buzzy X posts and vertical videos” from Michigan “this week suggest a slam dunk trip to an early nominating state.”

But even though Newsom’s social media feed racked up “a million views of a 65-hour tour,” Politico noted that “the posts may also be the latest sign that social media is not real life.” Translation: It was a trip notable mostly for bad execution and embarrassing turnout. Rep. Debbie Dingell, “the Downriver doyenne largely responsible for nearly securing Michigan’s status as the fifth 2028 nominating state,” told the magazine, “I didn’t hear from the governor. I didn’t expect to: I’m a car girl.” That’s likely in reference to Newsom’s 2035 mandate banning new ICE vehicle sales in California.
Newsom snubbed Virgie Rollins, whom Politico described as “the influential chair for the DNC’s Black Caucus. “There’s more:Some Michigander politicos pointed out that Newsom canceled a fundraiser with state AG nominee Eli Savit that included the controversial host Kelly Neumann, according to an invite obtained by POLITICO and circulated to some Democrats who didn’t realize the event was canceled when Newsom’s team was made aware of Neumann’s background. Newsom initially planned two competing fundraisers in Ann Arbor on Sunday, one for Savit and one for the state House Democrats.
When the latter found out about the Savit fundraiser they pulled out, citing a small Ann Arbor donor base. Saying Ann Arbor has a small Democrat donor base is like saying you couldn’t spot any tech bros in Palo Alto. “He had a lot of good meetings,” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel told Politico, adding Newsom was a big hit at a local barbecue.I believe this was the barbecue:

Gavin Newsom pulling a massive crowd of 17 septuagenarians in Michigan. Yeah he's DEFINITELY gonna be the nominee for President. LMAO. pic.twitter.com/GrLf3Ebc2X
— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) August 11, 2026

Yikes, how the mighty have fallen. Then again, “Newsom huddled for nearly an hour with Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed,” if you want to know the governor’s current priorities. Politico argued that “it’s also true that some of the hard feelings may underscore just how much Newsom is in demand,” but I’m not sure I see it. nI wouldn’t be too surprised if Newsom 2028 ended up following a similar path to Kamala Harris 2020. It makes me smile every time I remember that the Dems’ Queen of Summer 2019 ended up dropping out of the race in December, weeks before the Iowa caucuses — her polls cratering almost as quickly as her coffers.
It’s no coincidence that they’re both from California. As my partner in thoughtcrime, Stephen Kruiser, and I have discussed several times over the years, the Golden State is maybe the nation’s worst breeding ground for Democrats with presidential ambitions. Once a Dem woos the right money people — particularly Nancy Pelosi, but she’s now fading — they never really have to compete. Or even learn how to compete. Taking a Democrat like Harris or Newsom out of California is like taking the Boy in the Bubble out of confinement and directly into Wuhan Institute of Virology on a particularly leaky day.
Besides, as conservative Hollywood scribe George MF Washington put it on X this morning, “The energy of his party is done with straight white men.” Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Newsom has learned the lessons Harris never did. Maybe he really is the Democrats’ Great White Hope. But I didn’t see much evidence of that in Michigan.

Wonderful write-up,

• Karoline Leavitt Raised the Bar for All White House Press Secretaries (O’Brien)

The contrast could not be more stark. Arguably the worst White House press secretary in the history of the position, Karine Jean-Pierre, was followed immediately by one of the best, if not the best, in Karoline Leavitt.

Because of my profession, I’ve intensely studied every single White House press secretary, the good and the bad, for the past few decades, and based on my own observations, I have to give it to Leavitt. No press secretary has represented a force of nature like President Donald Trump so effectively. You don’t manage a boss like that, and yet, you can’t let him roll over you. Otherwise, you’re doing him no favors. She was probably the only one on the planet able to strike that balance the way she did.
By the same token, the level of vitriol, hostility and outright dishonesty the news media has weaponized against the Trump administration in its second term is unlike any I’ve ever seen. It’s so far out of bounds on a daily basis that just about every member of the White House Correspondents’ Association should be sued for malpractice. That group long ago abandoned any pretense of journalistic professionalism.
When a Democrat controls the White House, they are propagandists and stenographers for the administration. When a Republican is in the White House, they are apparatchiks for the opposition party. And when Trump Leavitt has a supercomputer for a brain. She’s been able to absorb, process, and compartmentalize every conceivable issue and question she might have to face. She’s been able to internalize all of it, and through her own behind-the-scenes work, process it all in collaboration with Trump himself and everyone in the administration.
While I am not privy to specific stories of Leavitt in private meetings within the administration, I know enough to know what’s involved. Privately, she’s likely had to push back on competing interests trying to influence both her and the president on issues and messaging. She’s also likely had to hold her own ground with the president himself on how some topics should be addressed and handled. It’s like being a lion tamer.
https://twitter.com/5dme81/status/1884771869863133638?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1884771869863133638%7Ctwgr%5E0b663f69c57b14f8197e15b9ed46f00f80a3b97b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Ftim-o-brien%2F2026%2F08%2F13%2Fkaroline-leavitt-has-raised-the-bar-for-all-white-house-press-secretaries-to-come-n4956094

This is the pressure cooker in which she has had to operate even before she’s had to face the press. By the time she’s stepped up to the podium in that briefing room, she’s made sure to know every question she might face completely. She’s had every key message and response internalized and sometimes memorized. More often than not, she hasn’t needed to memorize, because she seems to be so much in sync with Trump. She has had this innate ability to know exactly what to say because she knows exactly what Trump would say in just about every situation. The best communicators are able to get inside the heads of those they represent, and she’s the poster child for this.
Leavitt is brass-knuckles tough. She’s the perfect fit for Trump, because while she is completely respectful of him and his agenda, once she’s outwardly facing, she seamlessly adopts a Trump-style toughness that comes up pretty close to the energy and sometimes the combativeness of the man she speaks for. As confrontational as Trump is, I have to guess that he sometimes prefers to take the posture of having to temper the combativeness of his people rather than to always have to try to light a fire under them. He’s never had to light a fire under Leavitt. She’s handled every single interaction with the press from a position of strength. She’s been in control. She been the one who sets the terms. And she’s followed up.

Seriously dude? Lefty reporter gets laughed at after he asks if Karoline Leavitt has any examples of the media calling President Trump racist.

Leavitt: "You're kidding, right?" pic.twitter.com/2unmwVXQVY
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) February 18, 2026

While Leavitt carried a binder to the podium for those press briefings, if you notice, she almost never looked at it. Yet, no matter what she was asked, she launched into a response within a second or two every time. No fumbling through a binder. No awkward pauses. No deer-in-the-headlights reactions. These sorts of behaviors were the hallmarks of both of Joe Biden’s press secretaries. His first press secretary, Jen Psaki, earned the nickname “Circle Back” for her habit of so routinely being unprepared for questions that she often had to tell reporters, “I’ll have to circle back with you on that one.”
Something equally noticeable but which may not get mentioned as much is Leavitt’s positivity. While she gives as good as she gets when skirmishing with the media, her fundamental energy and point of view are very positive and upbeat. Some people come across as naturally pessimistic. Leavitt is the opposite. She comes across as a naturally optimistic and happy person, which is immeasurable and a huge asset for her in terms of connecting with and winning the hearts and minds of the American people.
Relatedly, she is a very confident person, and that’s contagious. In fact, there is something about conservative women in general that makes them more attractive in a purely platonic sense. Positive, smart, self-assured, knowing who they are and who they are not. No apologies. That’s a woman other women and men want to be around. She has all of those qualities in spades.

Want to see a career ended on Live TV?

A Fake News “reporter” just called the ICE agent who defended himself against left-wing attacker Renee Good a murderer…

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt absolutely DEMOLISHED him in less than 60 seconds.

"You're a left-wing hack,… pic.twitter.com/Kk5vZT9c2F
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 15, 2026

Then of course, there’s that other sort of attractiveness Leavitt possesses that drives leftist women and men nuts. She’s good-looking, a very good dresser, and she knows how to carry herself with a level of polish that’s lost on most public figures – men and women – these days.
And finally, there are those values that she has pointed to as the drivers for her decision to step down from her current role at the White House – her family. Not only does she articulate conservative values well, but she lives those values. She’s the real deal, and this decision is proof of that. Her work has been consequential for a whole nation, and yet she was able to have enough perspective to know that at the end of the day, there are two people to whom she is their entire world. And she’s decided not to let them down.
Trump will not find a successor to Leavitt who comes up to her level. She has raised the bar for the position. She rewrote the job description. The country will now expect more of those who follow her precisely because she’s shown what can be done with the position.
But none will match her. It’s just a fact. She’s a rare talent, and she’s using her talents in the best ways possible. She’ll continue to be a member of the Trump inner circle, while taking the opportunity to be an integral part of her kids’ daily lives. Clearly, she knows that the one thing you can give your young children that matters most is time, and she chose wisely. If she’s as good a mother as she’s been a press secretary, these kids are going to change the world when it’s their turn.

How @elonmusk fixed Starlink:

“Starlink was a mess. It was 10X too expensive and they were building 1/10 of how many they needed.

Elon’s like I've had it. This is now the bottleneck. I'm fixing this.

He grabs a team of engineers that he trusts and they fly up to Seattle.… pic.twitter.com/HX0wUlClS5
— David Senra (@davidsenra) August 11, 2026

https://twitter.com/teslaownersSV/status/2087575193606836344?s=20

.@elonmusk on why AI should care about humanity.

"It’s important that we have an AI that cares about humanity, fosters humanity, and helps take us to other planets and other star systems."

Musk says this is why SpaceX needs to succeed in both AI hardware and software.

He… pic.twitter.com/2jcdpRZOQa
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) August 13, 2026

https://twitter.com/AmericaPartyX/status/2087523382933799293?s=20

Elon Musk believes we're living through the singularity right now, where technological growth accelerates beyond human control.

On Peter Diamandis's podcast, he shared 8 predictions about what's coming:

1) We're heading for universal high income and social unrest, together pic.twitter.com/BEQdernmgb
— GeniusThinking (@GeniusGTX) August 12, 2026

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

Debt Rattle August 13 2026

Aug 132026

August 13, 2026 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: Amnesty, Flock Cameras, Hormuz, IRGC, Karoline Leavitt, Lindell, Mohammunist, Zelensky 32 Responses »

Pable Picasso Le Pengouin 1907

• Trump: US Controls Hormuz Strait, ‘I Think We Will Keep It’ (ZH)

• Why We Fight (Kenneth R. Timmerman)

• How Zelensky Misread Donald Trump (Ryumshin)

• The US Is Facing A New Red Menace – From Within (Robert Bridge)

• Patriots Won’t Let Communists Take America (J.B. Shurk)

• The Mohammunist Manifesto – ‘Transitional Phase’ Slaughter (Milli Sands)

• Swedish PM Calls Spanish Illegal Immigrant Amnesty ‘Very Bad Idea’ (ET)

• President Trump Announces Release of Robert Gilman from Russian Jail (CTH)

• The Spendthrift State (Thomas Kolbe)

• Mike Lindell Gets Crushed in Minnesota Primary (CTH)

• Gavin Newsom, the DSA, and the Danton Delusion (Turley)

• Police and Federal Govt Use of Flock Cameras Under Scrutiny (CTH)

• Karoline Leavitt Resigns as White House Press Secretary (Sarah Anderson)

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2086895440008765531?s=20

Good. Just Do It! https://t.co/TMk7JTxejO
— General Mike Flynn (@GenFlynn) August 11, 2026

Breaking: FBI had 14 informants on Biden corruption but ran secret operation to dismiss evidence as disinformation https://t.co/icapd1m6nF
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) August 12, 2026

https://twitter.com/Q_TheStormRider/status/2087196480754880591?s=20

The boa constrictor squeezing its prey:

” Tehran is rationing scarce goods, limiting access to foreign currency, slashing investment and shifting more of the burden onto households while preserving strategic imports and the essential machinery of the state, analysts say. The result will be a deepening economic malaise that leads to rising poverty and dysfunction, but also more room for Iran’s leaders to stall talks with the U.S.”

• Trump: US Controls Hormuz Strait, ‘I Think We Will Keep It’ (ZH)

In his latest Wednesday Truth Social post, Trump issues a familiar refrain (one that will likely be on repeat up to the November midterms), claiming that the USA has “total control” over the Strait of Hormuz and “I think we will keep it”. It’s also yet more confirmation that he’s opting for economic siege warfare as the US military campaign is on halt. He also did his bizarre “Praise be to Allah!” sign off…

Iran’s Military Leadership: ‘Victory is on Our Side’
It has become beyond obvious that there is no broader peace process and that things are in a stalemated situation amid what’s broadly seen as a Washington retreat from military confrontation, leaving Iran to press its own vision of management over the Strait of Hormuz with Oman. While President Trump has settled into a waiting game which once again bets on sanctions and economic warfare to eventually force Tehran to bend, Iranian military leaders are declaring that “victory is on our side”.

The Wall Street Journal has noted that the Islamic Republic has entered a ‘survival economy’ with the country’s rulers “taking time-tested steps to keep their chronically battered economy functioning just enough to resist a drawn-out campaign.” There’s no doubt that infrastructure along with various key industries and the Iranian currency has been severely tested and battered, but the WSJ outlines strategies of this survival mode as follows: Tehran is rationing scarce goods, limiting access to foreign currency, slashing investment and shifting more of the burden onto households while preserving strategic imports and the essential machinery of the state, analysts say. The result will be a deepening economic malaise that leads to rising poverty and dysfunction, but also more room for Iran’s leaders to stall talks with the U.S.
That leaves Trump’s strategy resting on a risky assumption that Iran will crack before Washington does. Mediators have warned their U.S. counterparts that Iran has been living under sanctions for years and betting that Tehran will compromise because of economic pressure won’t likely yield results. Instead, Iran will likely continue to escalate attacks to raise the price for Washington and its allies. Such a ‘risky assumption’ was on display from even the very start of Operation Epic Fury nearly six months ago and nothing has fundamentally changed in terms of the Iranian system ‘cracking’. Within merely the first two weeks of war back in early March, we highlighted some of Washington’s persisting false assumptions in: Escalation Trap: Misreading Iran’s Internal Power Dynamics.
Stalled Talks, Maximum Conditions
Meanwhile, Gulf and regional mediators are still clinging to hope that some form of ceasefire can limp along and be put back in full force, also with efforts to get the US and Iran talking again. As a Wednesday, per Bloomberg: Pakistan said the 60-day deadline for a US-Iran MoU may be extended, but the larger peace process has stalled. Earlier, Donald Trump said the US “totally” controls the Strait of Hormuz. Oil wavered. Neither of these things are true – at this point the MoU is dead with Iran weeks ago having already pulled out while declaring in null. Also, if the US military ‘totally’ controlled the strait then there would be no crisis that must be ‘resolved’ and global oil would be transiting at full tilt again. https://twitter.com/DropSiteNews/status/2087365843621441538?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2087365843621441538%7Ctwgr%5E0f2dd7c340b2d70ae43831ddb04b47bed613fa07%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Firan-rejects-us-pressure-enters-survival-economy-mediators-desperate-restored-mou

If anyone has any doubts as to why we are fighting this war, just think of what the IRGC would do if it actually had operational nuclear warheads.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is a senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work on Iran. His latest work of non-fiction, The Iran House: Tales of Revolution, Persecution, War, and Intrigue, is available from Bombardier Books.

• Why We Fight (Kenneth R. Timmerman)

If it weren’t for the support that Russia and China have been providing Iran, the United States could have gone to the United Nations and invoked Chapter VII of the UN charter that authorizes member nations to use “all necessary measures” — including military action — to restore international peace and security, just as we did twice in wars against Saddam Hussein. We actually tried that in May, with the predictable result that both the Chinese and the Russians threatened to veto any resolution against Iran.

Since then, both the Brits and the French have said they would join an international mine-sweeping force, and then promptly backed out when it became obvious that mines were not only still present in the Strait but that the IRGC was going to attack any ships trying to remove them. So much for the international “order.” And so much for our allies.That leaves President Trump with the course he has followed in recent weeks: apply just enough force to keep the IRGC on its heels, while not triggering a massive spike in oil prices or spooking international markets. He has succeeded on all three counts, extremely significant accomplishments.
But the United States cannot just “walk away and go home” if our diplomacy fails, as Vice President JD Vance suggested recently in his very unfortunate three-hour appearance on the Joe Rogan show. There is that pesky second demand that Iran give up its nuclear ambitions. On Wednesday, reports from Israel resurfaced an earlier claim by the current IRGC Chief, Ahmad Vahidi, that Iran would continue to develop nuclear weapons as long as the United States and Israel possessed them. “If they disarm, we will disarm,” he reportedly said.
There has been some parsing of that quote in recent days. One Iranian commentator claimed that the correct quote was this: “As long as the United States and Israel possess nuclear weapons, activities related to national security will not cease.” Sorry, but in IRGC-speak, that means exactly the same thing.In the end, whether Vahidi made those public comments or not makes little difference. There is no other explanation for the massive expenditures on uranium enrichment, buried nuclear sites, the Iranian regime’s absolute refusal to discuss its nuclear programs, or the recent revelations about Mount Kalang (aka “Pickaxe Mountain”).
The Iranian regime is developing nuclear weapons, and thank God they don’t yet have them, or they would have already used them on Israel or on us, either in direct attacks or in EMP mode to destroy our electric power grid and send us back to the 1880s, when the United States could support a population of between 80 to 90 million. This is a regime that has already acted out its intentions to wipe Israel off the map, and has shown its willingness to destroy the entire civilian infrastructure of its Persian Gulf neighbors, including their desalination plants. If anyone has any doubts as to why we are fighting this war, just think of what the IRGC would do if it actually had operational nuclear warheads.

“Why the carefully planned White House visit was doomed from the start..”

• How Zelensky Misread Donald Trump (Ryumshin)

Another season of the ‘win over Donald Trump’ game has begun, and this time it was Vladimir Zelensky’s turn. Last week, the Ukrainian leader made his first visit to the United States this year, a trip widely billed as potentially decisive. The atmosphere could hardly have been more different from his visits in 2025, when Zelensky travelled to Washington like a man walking toward a firing squad. This time he arrived projecting confidence, buoyed by promises from supporters that a diplomatic breakthrough was within reach.

The build-up reflected those expectations, and a carefully orchestrated public relations campaign accompanied the visit as much of the Western mainstream media greeted Zelensky with glowing coverage. Several MAGA-aligned bloggers, previously hostile to Kiev, unexpectedly adopted a friendlier tone, while Republican senators added pressure by reviving Lindsey Graham’s proposed “hellish sanctions” bill after the lawmaker’s death and the EU dispatched Finnish President Alexander Stubb as a visible show of support.
Zelensky also tried to strengthen his hand by raising tensions with Iran to reinforce the image of a common threat, reportedly bringing what was described as valuable intelligence on America’s adversaries to the White House and, for good measure, even abandoning his usual military-style clothing in favor of something closer to a suit.
One can only imagine how much political capital and money Kiev and its allies invested in preparing this visit, but the problem is that the returns appear remarkably modest. The immediate objective may have been achieved, given there was no repeat of the disastrous Oval Office confrontation of February 2025, when Zelensky left Washington after a public clash with US President Donald Trump, but avoiding disaster isn’t the same as achieving success.
The Ukrainian had two principal goals, securing additional American military assistance and persuading Trump to adopt a tougher position towards Russia, but behind those broad aims lay countless practical issues, from Patriot missile production licenses to future weapons deliveries. However, the entire conversation reportedly lasted less than an hour.
That matters, because anyone familiar with Donald Trump understands that formal meeting times can be deceptive, and those who have worked with him have long remarked that discussions often revolve around his own stories and observations, leaving surprisingly little time to address detailed policy questions. Whether or not that characterization is entirely fair, an hour was plainly insufficient to tackle the wide range of issues Zelensky had hoped to resolve, and there was not any meaningful change in Trump’s public position afterwards.
There were no new military aid packages. There was no dramatic escalation of pressure on Moscow and no particularly enthusiastic endorsement of Zelensky himself. Trump simply described the meeting as having gone “very well,” the same formula he routinely applies to almost every high-level conversation.
The impression was that his attention remained focused elsewhere, as on that particular day, the funeral of Lindsey Graham appeared to occupy far more of his emotional and political attention than the war in Ukraine. The only concrete outcome seems to have been an agreement for Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to visit Kiev, and for a trip presented as strategically important, this was a rather modest result.
So why did Zelensky once again fail to persuade Trump? Well, the answer, in my view, lies in the assumptions underpinning the entire strategy. Many in Kiev, and across the Western political establishment, continue to believe that Trump can be manipulated simply by presenting him with carefully selected information. According to this logic, persuade him of the right facts and his policy will change accordingly, but this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the man.
Trump has never been regarded as an intellectual, but he isn’t politically unpredictable in the way his critics often suggest. On many of the issues that matter most to him, his views have remained remarkably consistent for decades. As early as 1987, Trump criticized America’s allies for relying excessively on US military protection and claimed they should pay far more for their own defense, while he also advocated a confrontational policy towards Iran. Nearly forty years later, those positions remain largely unchanged. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded in compelling Trump to attack Iran because it aligned with instincts the American president already possessed, but Ukraine is different.
Trump’s view of Ukraine has always been shaped by domestic American politics as much as by international affairs and, in his eyes, modern Ukraine remains closely associated with Barack Obama and Joe Biden, two political rivals he has spent years attacking. That perception was formed long before the current diplomatic efforts began and cannot simply be erased through a well-managed public relations campaign. There’s also a far more practical obstacle, in that Zelensky is asking Washington to provide resources that America may be increasingly reluctant, or even unable, to supply.
US weapons stockpiles have been depleted by multiple conflicts and expanding production of systems such as Patriot missiles will take years rather than months. Meanwhile, with the United States carrying almost $40 trillion in national debt, further large-scale financial commitments to Ukraine face growing political resistance and Trump also lacks many of the instruments that Kiev hopes he will use against Moscow. For example, additional sanctions may generate headlines, but they cannot by themselves deliver the military or diplomatic breakthrough Ukraine seeks.
Taken together, these realities meant Zelensky entered negotiations seeking outcomes that had always been unlikely to materialize. From Kiev’s perspective, the visit was designed to transform the political landscape, but instead, it produced little more than polite photographs and another promise that dialogue would continue.The battle Zelensky travelled to Washington to win had, in reality, already been lost before his plane landed.

“’A few socialist militants are poisoning the Democratic Party..”

• The US Is Facing A New Red Menace – From Within (Robert Bridge)

Moderate Democrats are damaging their brand by campaigning alongside crazy leftist radicals who openly call for the destruction of the West, White people, and the United States. Democrats are quietly expressing concern that the entire Democratic Party is about to go up in flames as increasingly radical voices are going mainstream. As ZeroHedge put it: “Radical leftists and Islamist activists are increasingly converging inside the Democratic Party as Democratic Socialists of America, forming what can only be described as a ‘red-green alliance.’”

The face of the Democratic Socialists of America radicalization belongs to unofficial spokesperson Turkish-American Hasan Piker, 35, who has called on his followers to “kill capitalists.” “Yeah kill them! Kill those motherf**kers and murder those motherf**kers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their f**king red capitalist blood, dude,” Piker said in a recent live podcast. On another occasion, the revolutionary socialist called for the opening of the border and the extermination of the White race. “We want more immigrants to come into your countries and then they’re gonna f**k your sisters and then your daughters. We’re here to destroy the White Race, b**ch.”
This is the same guy who socialists Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and newly nominated Democrat Senator Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed want fronting the Democrat Party. Scary stuff. Shockingly, instead of denouncing his crude message, Democrats are taking to the campaign trail with this young man. Needless to say, that is a political strategy that only promises disaster. Even Hillary Clinton warned that her party is playing with fire by its affiliation with this man and others like him, and risks opening itself up to devastating attacks by the Republican Party. “The Republican messaging is communist, socialist,” Clinton said.
“It’s going to be a VERY effective attack… All I know is that is the attack that Trump is leading with… They are trying to bring back scare tactics about our followers and candidates.” With individuals like Piker, whose favorite flag is not the American flag but the flag of Hezbollah (with a clenched fist hoisting an AK-47 in the air), it won’t be necessary for the Republicans to employ scare tactics. Individuals like Piker are political gifts from heaven that keep on giving. All they need to do is replay his heinous comments for average Americans to hear.
Even the Democrats will start to ask themselves if this is really the sort of person they want to associate with. It could be enough to make thousands of Democrats switch their political allegiance to the Republicans. At this point, in order to help end the confusion over terms, it might be helpful to define the various arms of the Democratic Party, which can be roughly divided into five groupings.
On the Neoliberal left you have three such groups.
1. The democrats. These are the establishment, focused on incremental reform within capitalism. Mostly corporate-aligned.
2. The liberals. They think the government should solve inequality through policy, not systemic overhaul. Morally driven.
3. The progressives. Want structural reform: Medicare for all, Green New Deal, debt cancellation. They flirt with socialism but don’t want to overthrow capitalism.

Now on the Far Left you have two more.
4. The reformist socialists. These want to overthrow capitalism through electoral politics by getting into the system and making small changes over time. Their goal is post-capitalist society.
5. The revolutionary socialists. They believe capitalism must be overthrown entirely. They reject elections and reformism, advocates for revolution, abolition, and radical restructuring of society.
In addition to Mr. Piker, there is another individual on the left, the progressive Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, who is the Democratic nominee in the 2026 US Senate election in Michigan. On April 7, 2026, El-Sayed held campaign events on several university campuses in Michigan with Piker sharing the stage with him. El Sayed has drawn scrutiny for his questionable affiliations.
Kyle Shideler, the director at the Center for Security Policy, exposed during congressional testimony that El Sayed is connected to terrorists and the Muslim brotherhood. “I look at the connections that his father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, and he has affiliations with two brotherhood-linked groups,” Shideler told the hushed assembly.
Socialists have been in the Democratic Party for years, but it is only now that violent radicals are entering the mainstream spotlight. Coming on the heels of Bernie Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist, was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), a member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America. AOC, who is the face of ‘The Squad,’ an informal group of progressive Democratic members in the US House of Representatives, brought to the United States a tame version of socialism that many Americans could readily relate to. At least she was not calling for the destruction of the country.
She advocates a peaceful progressive platform that includes support for worker cooperatives, Medicare for All, tuition-free public colleges, a jobs guarantee, and a Green New Deal. These are initiatives that do not send shivers down the voters’ spines. Her political program is a vast difference from the deranged world of Mr. Piker and others, who literally want to destroy the United States as we know it. The Democratic Party must be far more selective in who it chooses to align itself with. Their hard-fought for reputation is on the line.

Meet at the Liberty Tree.

• Patriots Won’t Let Communists Take America (J.B. Shurk)

This chapter in American history could be titled, “The Bad Guys Keep Winning Because They Suffer No Consequences for Their Treachery.”

Islamo-fascists and communists have taken over the Democrat Party and threaten to take over the U.S. Congress. Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton has been brought to justice for conspiring with parts of the Intelligence Community to frame President Trump as a Russian spy. The same Ukrainian and British Intelligence agents who helped orchestrate the first ridiculous impeachment against Trump (ostensibly set in motion because the president asked Volodymyr Zelenskyy why Joe Biden’s son was making tens of thousands of dollars each month as a board member of a Ukrainian energy company) continue trying to instigate an all-out war between the Russian Federation and the United States.
The mainstream media and globalist politicians want us all to forget that they used COVID as an excuse to roll out totalitarianism around the planet — justifying widespread censorship, lockdowns, mass surveillance, deadly chemical injections, and the abrogation of God-given rights in the name of “public health.” Our scientific institutions refuse to say clearly that COVID was most likely engineered in a Chinese bio-lab with funding from U.S. taxpayers that Dr. Anthony Fauci had redirected to assist his friends and business associates overseas. Nobody has been prosecuted for any of these crimes, just as nobody was prosecuted when President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder used the ATF to arm Mexican drug cartels, the IRS to target conservatives, and the USA PATRIOT Act to spy on political enemies (including all of the Republican presidential candidates for the 2016 election).
During the Obama and Biden administrations, Christians were prosecuted for being faithful servants of Christ. Parents were put on domestic terror watchlists for objecting to radical infusions of “transgenderism,” pornography, and race-based discrimination in their children’s public school curricula. The Democrat Party nationalized healthcare, used USAID budgets to subvert foreign elections, and redirected trillions of taxpayer dollars into “climate change” slush funds for domestic and foreign political allies. The Obama-Biden regime defamed police officers as inherently racist and disparaged all white Americans as inherently “privileged.” Decades of solid improvement in race relations in the United States were thrown out the window, as Democrats told their voters that white, heterosexual males deserve to be vilified and attacked.
For fifteen years, Antifa goons, BLM rioters, Islamic supremacists, and other violent left-wingers have burned down neighborhoods, destroyed churches, looted businesses, terrorized motorists, and harassed, threatened, and murdered ideological adversaries. Instead of reporting on years of leftist domestic terrorism, corporate news talking heads still pretend that President Trump’s MAGA voters are the biggest threat to the United States. It is easy to list the long train of abuses that have been committed against us and lose hope for the future. Particularly because nobody has been held accountable for any of the serious crimes listed above, a lot of American patriots have begun to wonder whether our country can even be saved.
It can be saved. But doing so will require Americans to get their minds right about the struggles ahead. I often ask American patriots who express premature defeat whether they would give up so easily if this were 1776, rather than 2026. My point is two-fold: First, we are most definitely living through a critical period of American history when, just as was true during the time of our Founding Fathers, the fate of our country rests in our hands. Second, the odds that we shall succeed in saving America today are at least as high as they were two-hundred-fifty years ago.
Sometimes the people who are most proud of America’s past accomplishments are too quick to throw in the towel when it comes to America’s future. But the origin story of the United States is epic because it was so unlikely. The Boston Massacre was in 1770. The Boston Tea Party occurred three years later. By the time the Second Continental Congress declared Independence from Great Britain in ’76, American colonists were still sharply divided over the merits of war. The Revolutionary War continued until ’83. The Articles of Confederation, ratified in ’81, was superseded by ’89.
When the Founders drafted the U.S. Constitution, they effectively tabled the peculiar institution of slavery, knowing that the issue would collapse the Union. During the 1790s, the heavily indebted United States endured severe economic troubles, and many members of Great Britain’s Parliament expected to reacquire their former colonies just as soon as interstate squabbles and economic calamity doomed the young nation. When the British captured and burned much of Washington, D.C., in 1814, they nearly succeeded.

“Both systems promise that a slaughter is necessary but also promise its end. Both systems invariably keep the first promise and violate the second.”

• The Mohammunist Manifesto – ‘Transitional Phase’ Slaughter (Milli Sands)

Image created using AI.

In revealing the commonalities of the Reds and the Greens in the Red-Green Axis, we have elucidated their shared goals of violence, wealth redistribution, inequality before the law, a binary world, monopoly rule by the elites, and controlling the totality of society. Here we explore the promise of transitional phase slaughter. bBoth Islamic political systems and Marxist-Leninist communism make two promises about the violent neutralization of internal rivals. The first is that it will happen: a transitional phase, necessary to secure the new order. The second is that it will end: temporary by design, giving way once the order is secure.

Both systems keep the first promise and break the second. Marxism states both explicitly. Islamic political theory implies them structurally. Neither system’s own history shows the second promise kept. In both, what was authorized as a passing emergency became, in practice, a standing condition, reopened by each generation against a new list of names.
Marx and Engels wrote that between capitalist and communist society lies a transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin, in The State and Revolution, built an entire argument on the promise attached to that dictatorship: it is temporary by definition because the state itself will “wither away” once class antagonism is eliminated and coercion becomes unnecessary. This is not a minor clause. It is the doctrine’s central justification for tolerating the dictatorship at all.
The Bolsheviks began implementing their slaughter within a year of taking power: the September 5, 1918, Decree on Red Terror, which ordered class enemies isolated in concentration camps and authorized summary execution, was issued after the assassination attempt on Lenin and the killing of the Petrograd Cheka chief.
The promised withering away did not follow. Nineteen years later, NKVD Order No. 00447, signed by Nikolai Yezhov on July 30, 1937, launched a fresh purge against former kulaks, clergy, and members of long-banned opposition parties, with an initial quota of 75,950 executions that regional officials repeatedly petitioned Moscow to raise.
Archival research puts executions under this order specifically at roughly 387,000; combined with parallel operations against national minorities and other categories, the wider Great Terror killed roughly 681,000 by the time it wound down in November 1938. Yezhov himself was arrested within a year of signing the order and executed in February 1940.
Mao’s party, founded in 1921 with Comintern backing and built on the same Leninist premise, reached the identical point on its own: three decades after Russia’s promised transition began, the Cultural Revolution reopened the same category of internal enemy under a different flag. The state did not wither.

How much more globalism can the EU take?

• Swedish PM Calls Spanish Illegal Immigrant Amnesty ‘Very Bad Idea’ (ET)

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has called the Spanish government’s amnesty for illegal immigrants a “very bad idea,” warning that it could spark another migrant crisis akin to the one that beset the continent in 2015. The center-right politician, who is running for reelection next month, told the Financial Times in an interview published on Aug. 11 that the Spanish amnesty for more than a million illegal immigrants had caused a “pretty big outcry” at the last summit of EU leaders.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government granted a royal decree on April 14, launching the regularization of people living illegally in the country. The proposal was first presented on Jan. 27 to allow about 500,000 illegal immigrants already living and working in Spain to obtain legal status through an accelerated process. According to figures from the Spanish government, almost 1.2 million applications for regularization were received. The move was controversial, but the migrant surge in Ceuta, a Spanish exclave on the North African side of the Mediterranean at the end of July, compounded concerns.
Kristersson said a knock-on effect from Madrid’s move could pose a serious threat to the European Union’s free movement zone, known as the Schengen Area.”It symbolizes that we still have to be very, very careful not to act in a way that could even come close to what happened in 2015,” Kristersson said. “I think Spain got the message … but it shows the vulnerability.”He said he had told Sánchez that he disapproved of the move. “Having [the amnesty] also creates a possibility for you to use European territory. That is specifically damaging for us because we know from experience that many people coming to Europe prefer to go north. Exactly that happened in 2015,” Kristersson said.
“It is not the time to get relaxed on this … there is a huge majority in Sweden saying they cannot go back to an uncontrolled situation. … Doing things that could jeopardize a stable situation would be a very bad idea.”In 2015, 1.3 million people, mostly fleeing war in Syria and Iraq, sought refuge in Europe, causing the EU’s asylum system to collapse; reception centers were overwhelmed in Greece and Italy, with countries further north erecting barriers to stop illegal immigrants from entering.
The unprecedented influx into Ceuta began on July 30, when an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 people entered the exclave from Morocco by land and sea. Many swam around a border breakwater after social media posts claimed that Spain had opened its border. More than 80 people died on both sides of the border, according to figures released by Spanish and Moroccan authorities. Some drowned while attempting to swim to Ceuta, while others were crushed or trampled during chaotic efforts to climb a breakwater and border fence.
In the wake of that incident, multiple leaders around Europe issued sharp criticism of Sánchez’s government, with Italy temporarily suspending its Schengen Area agreement with Spain. The one-month suspension of border-free travel between Italy and Spain was announced on July 31 by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Deputy Prime Ministers Antonio Tajani and Matteo Salvini, who described the move as necessary for security. France, which shares a land border with the Spanish mainland, also announced an intensification of controls along the border.
Italy’s move was supported by a number of EU member states, including Finland, Denmark, and the Czech Republic, with the governments of all three saying that Brussels should consider closing the Schengen Area to Spain. On Aug. 4, EU interior ministers called for stronger borders, faster returns, and expanded efforts to dismantle migrant-smuggling networks as a result of the Ceuta surge. Kristersson faces an election on Sept. 13, having led the Scandinavian nation since 2022 as head of a coalition comprising his Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats, and the Liberals with additional support from the Sweden Democrats.
Swedish polling company Novus’s poll of 5,726 eligible voters, conducted 6-9 July, gave the Social Democrats 32 percent, the Sweden Democrats 20 percent, and Moderates 17 percent. Sweden tightened its previously liberal immigration and citizenship policies earlier this year because of the vast numbers of immigrants it has taken in over the past two decades.In November, Stockholm launched an inquiry to investigate “parallel social structures” that had emerged in the country.

“Mr. Gilman joins over 100 Americans whom President Trump has freed during his second term in office.”

• President Trump Announces Release of Robert Gilman from Russian Jail (CTH)

Robert Gilman, an English teacher and Marine Corps veteran, was detained by Russian police while traveling to the U.S. embassy in Moscow in January 2022 and charged with disorderly conduct, drunkenness and assaulting a police officer, which his advocates strongly denied.

Via Truth Social – “I am proud to announce that American Citizen Robert Gilman, a former United States Marine, is coming HOME! In a well known Media story, Robert was imprisoned in Russia in 2022, during the Biden Administration. After my discussions with President Vladimir Putin, Russia has agreed to release him, very much on a Humanitarian Basis. We appreciate this decision, and the fact that Russia asked for no one in return — No exchange took place. Robert will land at Andrews Air Force Base, in Washington, D.C., tonight, where my Representatives, some of whom are on the plane with him, will welcome Robert back to THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!
I just spoke to him, and he had one request — A GREAT cheeseburger when he lands. I will take care of that! During my Administration, we have prioritized bringing home Americans Detained Abroad, and have done so at a level never seen before, returning hundreds of people to their families. We have also freed many non Americans who were under capture in different countries throughout the World. Robert Gilman has been reunited with his wonderful mother, Nancy, who is also on the plane with him, and will soon get to see all of his loved ones.
Thank you to my incredible Team, including Special Envoy for Peace Missions, Steve Witkoff, Special Envoy for Hostage Response, Adam Boehler, Senior Director for Counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, Jared Kushner, and the many others who made this possible. GOD BLESS AMERICA!” ~ President DONALD J. TRUMP.

Via Marco Rubio – “Today, after more than four years of detention in Russia, Robert Gilman is on his way home to be reunited with his family. Mr. Gilman joins over 100 Americans whom President Trump has freed during his second term in office. We thank Russia for working with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to release Mr. Gilman and allowing him to receive the necessary medical treatment here in the United States.
While we appreciate this positive step, we are still seeking the immediate return of all other unjustly detained Americans, including wrongful detainee Stephen Hubbard. The President will not stop until all unjustly detained Americans are home.” [citation]

“Germany has fallen into the socialists’ trap once again.”

• The Spendthrift State (Thomas Kolbe)

Germany’s new experiment in socialism requires the use of every remaining resource available to its citizens. That there would be no real relief should have been obvious for quite some time to anyone taking a realistic view of the reform. Meanwhile, Klingbeil’s troops are working to keep bleeding the citizenry — with small pinpricks carried out beneath the radar of public attention.

The government has promised us €10 billion in tax relief. That would amount to almost exactly one percent of the total tax revenue of the German state apparatus — a sham, a joke, indeed, if not an outright insult to those who grit their teeth and endure the ideological grand experiment of eco-socialism. And even this meager relief, which would not constitute genuine relief in the first place because it would be offset by a higher top tax rate and possible increases in VAT, is now quietly being clawed back elsewhere. The latest move by the Klingbeil camp: tax allowances for associations and certain types of corporate gains are to be abolished.
For example, the existing €5,000 tax allowance for taxable corporations, associations of persons and pools of assets is to be reduced to a €1,000 exemption threshold from next year onward. The distinction between a tax allowance and an exemption threshold is by no means a mere technicality of tax law. With a tax allowance, the amount remains tax-free up to the defined threshold. With an exemption threshold, by contrast, the entire tax benefit disappears as soon as the threshold is exceeded.
In addition, the existing €45,000 allowance for gains from the sale or closure of businesses is to be abolished entirely. The allowance for gains from the sale of shares in corporations is also to disappear. The finance minister expects these measures to generate around €350 million in additional revenue.
A laughable sum, really. But, as the saying goes, even little streams add up. And the Merz government has plenty of them to offer. A growing number of small tax-policy measures are now accumulating in the slipstream of the grand raid, almost escaping notice. Everyone is talking about the CO2 tax, rising social-security contributions, and the looming reform of inheritance and wealth taxation. That is understandable, but it appears to be only half the truth, because the smaller fiscal abuses are being overlooked. And one thing is certain: The raid on the middle class is only now really gathering pace, because the Merz-Klingbeil duo has released the debt handbrake.
Generally speaking, we have to recognize the following: When it comes to the postmodern state of German EU design, the rule is clear: More can never be enough. Officially, 52.5 percent of German economic output flows through the channels of the German state apparatus. Everyone knows that this figure is an outright lie. If we include the bureaucratic burdens imposed on businesses and private households, as well as statistical tricks involving state-owned enterprises, the state share of the economy is likely to be comfortably above 60 percent.
Once again, one has to ask: When, finally, is more enough? State-worshipping naives would probably say: Where is growth and prosperity supposed to come from if the state does not take matters into its own hands? Just remember: It is the very same state that is supposed to perform an economic miracle, the same state that created the migration chaos. The same state that destroyed billions in wealth by shutting down nuclear power and has driven the German economy to the sidelines with its centrally planned energy transition.
This exorbitant achievement is now being confirmed and accelerated in its destructive effect by new borrowing of more than 5 percent and spending increases of 6 percent this year under the aegis of the federal chancellor. As I said: More can never be enough. It is the same state, led by Green-socialist hardliners, that has built a subsidy machine through which around €321 billion in funds flow. Money that is missing from the real economy, where investments, production capacity and innovation are being fought for in the interests of consumers.

“:After Advocating for Illegal Alien Leniency and Amnesty..”

• Mike Lindell Gets Crushed in Minnesota Primary (CTH)

Hopefully this will be a lesson to multiple people, including President Donald Trump. There is no room for softness on the topic of deporting illegal aliens. In one of the biggest examples of a mistake in Republican campaigning, three weeks before the primary election Minnesota Governor candidate Mike Lindell made the fatal mistake of advocating for greater leniency for illegal aliens, with inferred amnesty in his immigration platform. The backlash was fierce, righteous and directly targeted. Lindell was blasted.
https://twitter.com/AlphaNews/status/2080011880735846463?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2080011880735846463%7Ctwgr%5Ed5c5b2f1a1a82a8e982ce3ba66df36bab338d80c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconservativetreehouse.com%2Fblog%2F2026%2F08%2F12%2Fafter-advocating-for-illegal-alien-leniency-and-amnesty-mike-lindell-gets-crushed-in-minnesota-primary%2F https://twitter.com/proamericapol/status/2081179873092284682?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2081179873092284682%7Ctwgr%5Ed5c5b2f1a1a82a8e982ce3ba66df36bab338d80c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheconservativetreehouse.com%2Fblog%2F2026%2F08%2F12%2Fafter-advocating-for-illegal-alien-leniency-and-amnesty-mike-lindell-gets-crushed-in-minnesota-primary%2F
Last night, despite the support and endorsement from President Trump, Lindell was resoundingly defeated by Lisa Demuth, the speaker of the Minnesota House.

“Voters can spot the real thing; AOC is authentically bananas. That is better than a Newsom banana split that is part establishment and part insurgency.”

• Gavin Newsom, the DSA, and the Danton Delusion (Turley)

This week, Gavin Newsom made his latest pitch to the mob by proclaiming himself “an established insurgent.” It was vintage Newsom in trying to be everything to everyone, part of the establishment and part of the revolution. Like a violent pacifist or a preservation arsonist, it makes no sense to anyone else. However, with the victory of radicals across the country, Newsom is trying to join other armchair revolutionaries in seeking to lead the far-left mob. He believes that he can use a class war that will spare him while destroying his enemies. Call it the Danton delusion.

In my book Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I discuss the French Revolution and its decline into what the Framers called a mobocracy. What became known as “The Terror” was started not by the working class, but by educated lawyers, journalists, and even aristocrats as part of the Jacobin movement. One of the central figures was a lawyer named Georges Jacques Danton, a gifted orator and writer.
Danton would become the Justice Minister and later a member of the infamous Committee of Public Safety. The more he facilitated the rage, the more he found himself captured by it. Achieving power at the head of a mob, Danton fed the bloodlust of revolution, sending thousands to the guillotine and allegedly masterminding atrocities such as the September Massacres. Danton secured power by declaring others to be dangerous reactionaries, declaring, “The bell we are about to ring . . . sounds the charge on the enemies of our country.”
Danton struggled to stay ahead of the mob by feeding victims into the grinder of a class war. Eventually, however, the mob had finished off the aristocrats, clergy, and merchants. The most radical Jacobins, led by his ally Maximilien Robespierre, then turned on their fellow Jacobins, including Danton. Before his fall, it was dawning on Danton that there would be no end to the killings. When one supporter excitedly told him of more executions of moderates as guilty of “factionalism,” Danton remarks, “We’re all factious. If they deserve to be guillotined, we all deserve so. Those men in Paris will guillotine the entire Republic.”
And so they did. Danton himself would stand before the “national razor” on April 5, 1794. Notably, the radicals today are also calling for purges of the Democratic Party of moderates and denouncing dissenters as “factionalism.” Yet, Newsom still hopes that he can use the mob for his own ambitions, ignoring Danton’s warning, “Woe betide those who would provoke revolutions.”
Newsom wants to be one of the red aristocrats of the new Democratic Party. By calling for radical changes to our constitutional system, he is hoping that the socialists will ignore his own wealth and privilege. The same is true for Ro Khanna, who is also offering to trash our institutions. He hopes to secure the socialist vote despite being reportedly worth roughly half a billion dollars thanks to his wife’s inheritance.
In Newsom’s case, the proletarian pitch still comes off as more French Laundry than French Revolution. He is trailing in the polls, with some showing him falling behind former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has been promising his own radical changes to our system while campaigning with controversial figures such as Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
The loss of DSA candidate Francesca Hong this week will not change the calculation for Newsom. What he saw was an extremist who came within less than one percentage point of winning the nomination for Wisconsin governor. The far-left gubernatorial candidate Peggy Flanagan did win the primary handily in Minnesota. Other leaders like Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (who previously praised the violent group Antifa) celebrated the infusion of socialists into the party.
After the Hong defeat, socialist influencer and virulent anti-Semite Hasan Piker lashed out against the establishment Democrats and the media, declaring that “The knives will be out.” Newsom believes that there is a pocket of delusional free-market Marxists who are longing for his leadership. If so, they do not live in New Hampshire, where Newsom is being trounced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Voters can spot the real thing; AOC is authentically bananas. That is better than a Newsom banana split that is part establishment and part insurgency.
As Harris and Buttigieg make their own plays for the radical wing, Newsom will likely need to find another institution to offer up other than the Supreme Court. Packing the Supreme Court has become the mere starting ante in the game. Radicals are looking for bona fides of true believers with some calling for the scrapping of the Constitution entirely.
Newsom — “the established insurgent” — is desperately trying to be the next leader rather than the next trophy of the mob. History is not on their side. Well-coiffed hair and a hip podcast are not likely to be enough to keep the mob at bay. From New York to Colorado, the far left is taking establishment heads. In the end, Danton yielded one last time to feed the desire of the mob. When he was finally taken to the guillotine, Danton told the executioner, “Show the people my head. It is well worth seeing.”

“A Flock camera is an automated license plate reader (ALPR) made by Flock Safety. Placed on streets and near neighborhoods, they use AI to log passing cars, recording the license plate, make, model, color, and time. Police and neighborhoods use them to track stolen cars or suspects, but privacy groups worry about mass tracking.”:

• Police and Federal Govt Use of Flock Cameras Under Scrutiny (CTH)

Back in 2013 and 2014 we shared the story of a man returning to Florida was stopped by police in Maryland who asked him for his firearm. When the Floridian asked the Maryland police how they knew he owned a firearm, things got sketchy.The event kicked off a constitutional discussion. A few years later in 2015 the Wall Street Journal reported on a national federal database that was using Automatic License Plate Readers (APLRs) to capture and store the travel of millions of Americans {SOURCE}.

Now we fast-forward a decade and that federal database is now being exploited by local police around the nation to keep track of ordinary persons of interest to their community who travel outside their jurisdiction. This is where the Flock Cameras come into the discussion. The same government interests who dismiss our concerns about privacy are the same govt interests who point out how horrible China and Iran are for monitoring their citizens on CCTV systems.

She’s so young! Hubby’s twice her age.

• Karoline Leavitt Resigns as White House Press Secretary (Sarah Anderson)

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that one of the most popular and visible faces of his administration is stepping down. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will leave her post at the end of August to spend more time with her “beautiful children.” However, Trump says she will continue to be one of his “top outside advisors” and an “influential voice within the Republican Party.” The president did not mention who might replace her. Here is his announcement in full, which he posted on Truth Social:

“Our wonderful White House Press Secretary, and one of my most trusted aides, Karoline Leavitt, will be departing her role at the end of the month so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family, a decision I totally understand and respect! Karoline will now be one of my top outside advisors, and an influential voice within the Republican Party, as we work to defy History, and conclusively win the Midterm Elections. Karoline has been a real leader in the White House, and has done a phenomenal job fighting for Justice, Liberty, and Freedom, since 2018, including our Historic Re-Election Campaign of 2024. Karoline has been one of the best White House Press Secretaries in the History of the Office. Thank you, Karoline, for a job well done!” President DONALD J. TRUMP
Leavitt responded to Trump’s announcement with her own lengthy social media post, which says in part: “Being a mother and welcoming a new baby while working in one of the most demanding jobs in the world has been the most rewarding yet challenging season of my life, to say the least. The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary — and that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life.” You can read her entire message here:

Serving as the White House Press Secretary over the past year and a half has been the honor and adventure of a lifetime. I am incredibly grateful to President Trump for granting me so many extraordinary opportunities, such as working in the West Wing and spending countless hours… https://t.co/4jyW61DGGh pic.twitter.com/xny1yccuBn
— Karoline Leavitt (@karolineleavitt) August 12, 2026

Leavitt announced in December of last year that she was expecting a baby girl. On May 1, she welcomed Viviana “Vivi” Riccio with her husband, Nicholas Riccio. The couple already had a son, Nicholas “Niko” Riccio, who was born in July 2024. With a newborn and toddler at home, it makes sense that Leavitt would want to step back from her work and spend more time with her young family, even though she has long talked about how friendly the Trump White House is toward working moms. In May 2025, a photo of Leavitt feeding a bottle to her son with one hand, while typing on a computer in her office with the other, went viral. Margo Martin, special assistant to the president and communications advisor, posted the picture on X with the caption “Super Mom!”
https://twitter.com/MargoMartin47/status/1920565558388416938?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1920565558388416938%7Ctwgr%5E6d9cbe160632d6b950ec25853a61109a7242bf52%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fsarah-anderson%2F2026%2F08%2F12%2Fkaroline-leavitt-is-resigning-as-white-house-press-secretary-n4956080
Leavitt is still young — she turns 29 years old later this month — so if she wants to return to politics, she should have plenty of time when her children are older. Of course, we wish her the best and will miss watching her take down the fake news media reporters every week from the White House Press Briefing Room.

You are 100 percent correct matey.@JohnCleese pic.twitter.com/7y7NwKQ4jc
— The English Crusader (@andrewc44104127) August 11, 2026

Ron Baron in a new video says each @Tesla Cybercab could generate the company $40,000 in profits per year. He sees Robotaxi generating over $120B in revenue per year in the not too distant future.

"They’re switching to having a car that they’re going to make for themselves,… pic.twitter.com/9TiO1HEKtw
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) August 11, 2026

Ron Baron on @SpaceX’s Starlink in a new video:

"It is the internet of the planet. We think in 10 years, that’s going to be a trillion dollar annual revenue business. 1 trillion in revenue will produce, we think roughly $700-800 billion in profits a year.

The means, in 10… pic.twitter.com/zz6KWEpgiQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) August 12, 2026

Kevin O'Leary: "Very few people at this point would doubt [Elon Musk] on anything. He kind of has mandates and he delivers one way or the other."pic.twitter.com/LtEKbRAFqa

"The thing about Elon is he's the modern Bruce Wayne, there's no question about it."

"There's a lot of…
— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) August 11, 2026

https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2087308220465582114?s=20

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