TV News LIES

In a spree of posts made to his Truth Social account on Saturday, Donald Trump lauded his administration’s efforts to turn the National Mall’s reflecting pool blue, denounced a judge’s ruling removing his name from the Kennedy Center and announced he will hold an “America Is Back” rally next month to replace a concert series after a number of performers backed out.

After arriving at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, at 11.08am, Trump posted to his social media platform 25 times in the next two hours. The president’s posts included a series of apparently AI-generated images, including one of him playing for the New York Knicks and dunking over New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul; another of him riding a horse alongside George Washington and a Trump-branded race car tearing up the White House lawn; and one depicting the “Obama presidential library” as a huge garbage can holding a giant trash bag.

In two lengthy posts, Trump decried the musical artists who backed out of a summer concert series planned to celebrate the United States’s 250th anniversary, and a judge’s ruling finding that the Kennedy Center memorial cannot be renamed for Trump without an act of Congress.

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Iran launched a short-range ballistic missile targeting the US Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait over the past 24 hours, directly threatening a pending peace agreement. Kuwaiti air defense systems intercepted the Iranian Fateh-110 missile, but falling debris wounded approximately five US service members and civilian contractors, while completely destroying one MQ-9 Reaper drone and severely damaging another.

According to intelligence and military sources, Iran deployed a Fateh-110 short-range ballistic missile targeting the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. The Fateh-110 is a solid-fuel missile capable of carrying a high-explosive warhead weighing approximately 500 kilograms.

Kuwaiti air defense batteries successfully engaged and intercepted the incoming projectile before it could impact its primary target. However, the mid-air detonation caused heavy, mangled fragments of the missile to rain directly down onto the perimeter of the military facility.

The falling debris wounded approximately five people, including both active-duty US military personnel and private civilian contractors working for the US armed forces. All victims reportedly sustained minor injuries and are receiving medical treatment.

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The federal prosecutor who secured an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey for allegedly threatening the life of President Trump in a since-deleted social media post of seashells has stepped down, according to a recent court filing.

A “notice of substitution” filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina on Friday stated that Matthew Petracca would no longer serve as the Justice Department’s counsel on the case and would be replaced by assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Severo.

The filing did not provide any explanation for Petracca’s removal from the case, and the Eastern District of North Carolina did not immediately return a request for comment on Saturday.

Petracca has also dropped off other criminal cases in the same jurisdiction in recent days, according to NBC News, which first reported his departure from the Comey case. The network also reported that Petracca had contemplated leaving the DOJ entirely but decided against it after taking a week off, citing two people familiar with the matter.

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The Israeli combat soldier saw his teammates yelling in celebration, congratulating one another. They had just struck a vehicle of Palestinians driving near the Israeli-controlled part of the Gaza Strip, killing everyone inside.

The reservist said scenes like this had become common after a fragile ceasefire took effect in October. In the weeks he was stationed in Gaza, he said, he saw soldiers relishing the chance to go after those who crossed — or came close to crossing — the so-called yellow line that divides the strip into Israeli-controlled and Palestinian areas.

“It was a jungle,” the soldier, in his 20s, told The Associated Press. “After the ceasefire, the order was: If someone crosses the line, you shoot them.”

As diplomatic efforts to strengthen the deal have stalled, three soldiers described to AP a sense of confusion in the embattled territory, with a lack of clarity on rules of engagement around the yellow line. Some commanders paid lip service to the agreement, the soldiers said, while privately voicing desire for the war in Gaza to continue. Sometimes, troops were too far away or acted too quickly to recognize who they were shooting, one soldier said — a concern echoed in comments from a whistleblower group of veterans.

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At a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in the Israeli government, Congress just proposed tying the U.S. to the Israeli military more than ever before.

Buried in the House's version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Tuesday, is section 224, entitled “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.” The provision would arguably do more to intertwine the U.S. military with the Israeli military than the more than $200 billion (inflation adjusted) in military assistance Israel has received from the U.S. since its founding in 1948.

Section 224 lays the groundwork for bilateral research and development, co-production of weapons, joint ventures, licensing agreements, and seemingly every manner of U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex cooperation. The U.S. and Israel already work together heavily on missile defense, but this provision would greatly expand coordination to seemingly every area of defense tech, including AI, quantum, autonomous systems, directed energy, cyber, biotech, and many more. It also proposes “network integration” and “data fusion.” In other words, the U.S. military’s data could soon be the Israeli military’s data.

If fully enacted, this proposal would provide a higher level of military-industrial integration than the U.S. has with any other country in the world. To be sure, the U.S. has worked closely with its NATO partners on co-production and shared supply chains, most notably via the Defence Production Action Plan. And, as the number one arms dealer in the world, the U.S. provides weapons to militaries across the globe. But that is mostly a one-way street, with the U.S. providing weapons to foreign buyers who only occasionally make parts for those weapons themselves, as in the case of the F-35’s global supply chain.

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Pramila Patten, the United Nations special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, said alleged abuses against Palestinians at the Sde Teiman prison camp were “an emblematic case which shows the total lack of accountability” enjoyed by perpetrators.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Patten said there was “solid evidence of sexual violence” that caused life-threatening injuries to a Palestinian detainee, citing findings documented by a UN commission of inquiry.

Patten said 10 Israeli soldiers were initially arrested over the alleged rape of the detainee, but noted that “five were immediately released within days” while “five others were put on house arrest”.

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Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran's deputy foreign minister, has accused Israel of attempting to evade accountability after the United Nations included it on a list of parties cited over conflict-related sexual violence allegations.

Writing on X, Gharibabadi said, “Instead of responding to the inclusion of its affiliated entities on the UN list of sexual violence in conflict, the Israeli regime has targeted the UN Secretary-General for punishment, a sign of the same dangerous pattern: evading accountability by attacking international institutions.” 

The Iranian official also referred to alleged abuses committed by Israeli security forces against Palestinian detainees and criticised Israel’s military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, arguing that ceasefire commitments had not been upheld.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent diplomatic push into Central Asia yielded high-minded rhetoric but few substantive gains, as Kazakhstan resisted Kremlin pressure on trade and labor, foreign policy expert Paul Goble told Kyiv Post.

Faced with limited returns in Astana, Putin dedicated a significant portion of his post-visit press conference to lecturing Armenia – a move Goble described as a sign of Moscow’s anxiety over its fading influence in the former Soviet space.

The remarks came as Moscow has intensified pressure on Yerevan over its pro-European course. Russia has warned Armenia that it could lose preferential fuel and energy arrangements if it continues its EU path, while the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union has raised the possibility of suspending Armenia over its European ambitions.

While Moscow hoped to secure critical concessions during the high-level talks, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev used his diplomatic experience to protect Astana’s strategic autonomy, Goble said.

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