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Aug 13, 2026 - World

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was raked over the coals on Thursday morning amid reports of horrific conditions that his US military forces face. On MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” co-host Joe Scarborough reacted to reports that the USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed from San Diego for an extraordinary 200-plus days without a port call.With Democrats calling for an investigation after family members of those deployed revealed things have become so bad that some sailors have had to be stopped from leaping off the ship, Scarborough launched into a withering tirade.“This is the longest deployment on a ship like that ever,” co-host Willie Geist explained. "The Secretary of Defense seemed very interested and obsessed with their testosterone levels, but not whether or not they're getting real food aboard the ship as this war drags on.”Scarborough erupted. “This is insane by any measure at all,” Scarborough exclaimed. “And so think about it: we have this happening on the USS Lincoln. We have our sailors being treated like third-class citizens, treated like trash, actually.”“So we're not taking care of job one, which is, again, military readiness,” he continued. “And secondly, we're not even able to keep count of the munitions that we have; Pete Hegseth, the DoD has run out of munitions to fight a hot war with Iran that Pete Hegseth told the president we should start.”Scarborough continued to insult Hegseth's priorities, snapping, "He's sitting around talking about testosterone levels and doing all these stupid promo videos that are supposed to make him look tough." - YouTube youtu.be

Aug 13, 2026 - World

FBI Director Kash Patel pledged to investigate agents who caught Russians trying to frame Democrats before 2020, a new report reveals.According to national security writer Marcy Wheeler, an unsigned, undated letter attributed to Patel is the "centerpiece" of a propaganda push, and she flagged in a Wednesday post on her legal blog emptywheel that it was notably not written on FBI stationery.In the letter, Patel says he "immediately disbanded" the bureau's Foreign Influence Task Force upon taking over as director, and that his team is now probing whether the unit improperly zeroed in on informants tied to the Bidens."We remain concerned that defensive briefings to Congress may have been overly focused on just Biden and Ukraine rather than the balanced picture of all foreign threats," the letter reads.Patel added that although "these alleged activities occurred during a different era within the Bureau," his team is "firmly committed to identifying, investigating, and holding accountable all abuses."The task force is the same unit that flagged efforts by John Solomon and Rudy Giuliani to launder foreign influence operations targeting Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 vote, according to Wheeler. The letter's premise, she wrote, rests on a spreadsheet from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that was released by Bill Pulte. It also revives claims from discredited informants, including Alexander Smirnov.The influence campaign lands as Patel prepares for a reported trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg on October 14-15 and just weeks before the midterms.Wheeler mentioned that a Russian outlet with a history of airing material from the FSB, the Russian security service, published a piece that openly speculated this week about Patel receiving kompromat on Democrats and serving as a backchannel to Vladimir Putin."They're just promising to do Russia's bidding in plain sight," Wheeler wrote.

Aug 13, 2026 - World

A New York Times photographer on Wednesday revealed several suspicious new details in President Donald Trump's plane swap amid a threat.Douglas Mills, a photojournalist who was on Air Force One with the press corps as the group headed back from Turkey after a NATO summit in July with Trump and several administration officials, told CNN's Erin Burnett the incident was "alarming" after learning Trump had left the plane in a catering truck.Burnett mentioned that Mills and other reporters were asked to lower their window shades. And in an interview with reporters after that flight, Trump had commented specifically on window shades."Probably on a dangerous flight because of the sleazebags that we have to deal with, it has to be closed," Trump said. "But if I go, you go, right? Perhaps someday you want to change professions?"Mills said that comment now has a different meaning."In hindsight, I think back on that, wow, if he didn't, why did they just put our shades down and not his shades up in the front of the plane? So that was kind of a red flag to me mentally," Mills said. "I felt like obviously we were a decoy. And in that moment, we didn't know all the facts that we know now."Burnett pointed to the window shades, asking if that was a potential giveaway that something irregular was happening."Maybe that's why they had to put your window shades down, right? Because they didn't want you to see the catering," she said. "That's exactly right," Mills said."By the time we got to the front of the plane, I had taken those pictures of the catering truck on the backside of the plane as we were motoring up," he said. "And I was shooting pictures through the van that we were driving in. And once we got up and looked out and saw the president was already on board, that kind of also said to me something's going on." This foreign visit was atypical, and Trump ditched his usual goodbye."But no, none of that happened this time," Mills said. "He went up the steps and was on there before we ever got out of our cars. It was unusual. And then once we got up on the plane and the shades had to go down, there were just a lot of questions throughout. And now in hindsight, it was one of those things as a reporter, photographer, you know, that we probably should have been asking more questions about because a lot of things didn't fit right."

Aug 12, 2026 - World

Former Republican insider Steve Schmidt argued on Wednesday that President Donald Trump's biggest fear is someone who tries to hold him accountable — like CNN's Kaitlan Collins.In his podcast and video series "The Warning," the co-founder of the anti-Trump organization, The Lincoln Project, compared Trump's "Trojan horse" move in Turkey, where he left journalists and his own aides as "bait on the chum plane" under a credible threat, to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II. He juxtaposed this with the moment FDR learned that a torpedo was fired at the USS Iowa, where he rushed to the rail to see it coming towards the ship. "When he was aboard a presidential aircraft flying with Dwight Eisenhower sitting next to him shortly after giving him command of the D-Day operation with the hydraulics out on the airplane, FDR lit a cigarette, threw his head back and laughed at all of it," Schmidt said, citing a book from Rick Atkinson that describes the incident."He says we'll see how good those Army Air Corps pilots are and has a big laugh," Schmidt said. "That's what courage under fire looks like. That's what cool under fire looks like. But this man, intimidated by Kaitlan Collins, is no FDR. He's no Eisenhower. He's the weakest American president in history, with a yellow stain as wide as his ankles running down the middle of his back. This is a fearful man, and you see it all the time."As Trump made his way off Air Force One with a catering cart, it revealed more about him "as an obese American fascist," Schmidt explained. And his reaction after the reports surfaced was telling."Look at this decaying geriatric sloth trying to make it up these stairs," Schmidt said. "Look at him coming down. Look at the bruising on his hand, the skin color, the preposterous wig. Decrepitude and decay etched all over his body and face. And we, the people, are his prisoners in a dungeon of rot and American decay.""With Pete Hegseth and little Marco as bait and Donald Trump safe on his way back to the loving arms of Melania," Schmidt added, mocking Trump. "What a sick and demeaning moment, perhaps in all the history of the country, the lowest in the history of the degraded American presidency."

Aug 12, 2026 - World

Ángel Aguirre indicted in case that rocked Mexico and became symbol of its brutal cartel violenceThe former governor of Guerrero state in Mexico has been formally charged over his alleged involvement in the disappearance of 43 students in 2014, a case that has become a symbol of the country’s brutal cartel violence and government impunity.Ángel Aguirre, who was arrested last week, is accused of forced disappearance and obstruction of justice for ordering the destruction of surveillance tapes that may have shed light on what happened to the students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college on the night of 26 September 2014. Continue reading...