Image shows a young woman receiving surgical procedure at Jeffrey Epstein’s apartment. Photo via Department of Justice
Citizen and professional journalists more motivated than Donald Trump lackeys at the Department of Justice continue to uncover disturbing items in Epstein files released to date. Among them, photographs that the DOJ should have been redacted but missed, “including pictures of a young girl kissing Jeffrey Epstein on the cheek and personal data on passports and drivers’ licenses,” CNN found.
The New Jersey mother of four is among hundreds of citizen-journalists, or sleuths, absorbed by the material connected to the late Jeffrey Epstein. She’s determined to learn the stories behind his illicit sex ring and relationships with some of the world’s most powerful people — and publish what she finds on Substack.
[…]
With all that, there’s plenty of room for people like Leonard. She’s been journalism-adjacent for much of her career, running a business that offered transcription services until AI rendered it largely obsolete. She worked briefly in education and wrote about politics and social issues on her Substack, The Panicked Writer.
But after seeing the interest generated when she started looking at Epstein documents a few months ago, she began devoting all of her professional time to it.
[…]
Journalist Wajahat Ali, who runs the Left Hook Substack, said he admires Leonard’s work and often features her on his site. Some of the Epstein citizen journalists gather on livestreams to talk about what they’ve found.
Over the past decade, Ali has watched the growth of a subculture of people obsessed with true crime stories who love to comb through evidence and advance their own theories.
The Epstein files are “the mother lode,” he said. “If you love conspiracy theories, if you love true crime, this is the ‘Citizen Kane’ of true crime. It is the unfortunately sordid gift that will keep on giving.”
These sleuths are Trump’s worst nightmare as well as for the men and women not yet publicly named in connection with Epstein or who had their names “helpfully” redacted by the Trump DOJ. They’ve escaped American justice for crimes committed with Epstein while overseas counterparts to U.S. policing are “eager to examine the American documents as part of criminal investigations into potential wrongdoing,” the New York Times reports:
In Britain, two arrests have taken place, of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, and of Peter Mandelson, a former ambassador to Washington. Both were arrested on suspicion of the same offense: misconduct in public office. It’s a broad, centuries-old common law offense that makes it a crime to act with “wilfull abuse or neglect of the power or responsibilities of the public office.”
“We don’t have those sort of generic, open-ended kinds of crimes in the United States,” said Paul G. Cassell, a professor of law at the University of Utah. For a decade, he represented Virginia Giuffre, who accused Mr. Epstein of trafficking her to his friends, including Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor, in the early 2000s.
As in the United States, the Epstein files have forced some firings or resignations outside of the criminal justice system.
In Britain, the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, and his communications director, Tim Allan, stepped down amid ongoing questions about how much they were aware of connections between Mr. Epstein and Mr. Mandelson, the man they pushed to be Britain’s ambassador to the United States. Neither Mr. McSweeney nor Mr. Allan has any known ties to Mr. Epstein.
CNN worked with Visual Layer, an Israeli software company that uses artificial intelligence to analyze massive sets of images, to review 100,000 photos that the DOJ released related to Epstein, the late convicted sex offender who was accused of abusing hundreds of girls. Those images were among millions of pages of documents and videos released by the DOJ.
These previously unreported findings add to a growing list of botched redactions in the DOJ releases. This includes multiple videos showing women’s faces, documents that named a survivor of Epstein’s abuse, footage showing an undercover FBI agent on the job, and at least one court filing in which sensitive material could be unredacted via copy-and-paste.
CNN reached out to the DOJ on Monday about the problematic images that were still viewable on the government site. After CNN’s inquiry, DOJ uploaded new versions of these images with proper redactions, covering up private data and faces of women and minors.
“Our team is working around the clock to address any victim concerns, additional redactions of personally identifiable information, as well as any files that require further redactions under the Act, to include images of a sexual nature,” a DOJ spokesperson told CNN in a statement on Tuesday.
The transparency law that Congress passed last year requiring the files’ release said the DOJ could withhold or redact images depicting child sexual abuse or any materials that would lead to an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” especially for victims.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in January said that his document team had redacted every woman in images except for Ghislaine Maxwell. They undertook “painstaking” efforts redact “personal identifying information” as well as all “victim information.”
Apparently not painstaking enough. What’s helped keep such images hidden in plain sight is a terrible search engine on the government’s site:
CNN used Visual Layer’s technology to find unredacted items that simpler searches on the Justice Department’s database may have missed. The company’s founder, Danny Bickson, said the Justice Department website has a “basic search engine” that can find text in Epstein’s emails and court filings, “but if you need to search for an image or video, it’s impossible.”
So, Bickson imported the full original DOJ dataset onto his platform, and “it was pretty easy to find, in a few minutes, problematic content,” he said.
So while Trump is ordering the U.S. military to throw up a massive Epstein smokescreen in Iran, people obsessed with the obvious coverup are poring over the documents and making connections that redactions fail to hide. And it is not simply pedophile men, but a stable of medical professionals with flexible ethics that Epstein kept on informal “retainer” to ensure his girls were sexually fit. (Follow gift link.) The amateurs will keep digging. They will ensure that this scandal keeps unfolding for years. Trump is almost powerless to stop them. Almost. But more careers will come crashing down. He’ll be fine with that so long as it’s not his.
If it comes down to it, Trump will throw the world under the bus to save himself.
An old Soviet-era joke goes “There is no truth in Pravda, and no news in Izvestia”.
Pravda (Truth) was the official newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party. It now publishes three times per week, mostly online (Wikipedia). Izvestia (News) was the mouthpiece of the government and published by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Izvestia is now Russia’s national newspaper. The wry joke Soviet citizens told acknowledged that theirs was a country awash in official propaganda.
Here in the U.S., Republicans in leadership are also propagandists and lead by a pathological liar at best averse to truth in advertising. Daily Beast’s Michael Daly sees the irony:
What better dodge is there for draft-dodger Donald Trump than to get elected as the “peace president,” promise an end to forever foreign wars, then hype the founding of a “Board of Peace” while contriving to slap his name on the United States Institute of Peace.
The president delivered the opening address at the renamed The Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace on Feb. 22.
“What we’re doing is very simple,” Trump said. “Peace. It’s called the Board of Peace, and it’s all about an easy word to say but a hard word to produce. Peace. But we’re going to produce it, and we’ve been doing a really good job.”
Six days later, barely two months since removing the leader of Venezuela in an unsanctioned military strike (leaving the rest of the Nicolás Maduro government in place), the peace president started an illegal war with Iran aided by Israel. Someone with comedy chops needs to write Americans a Pravda/Izvestia joke about that. Watch Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert on Monday night. Maybe one of theirs will catch on.
When Mr. Trump ran for president in 2024, he boasted of starting “no new wars,” and asserted that if Kamala Harris won, “she would get us into a World War III guaranteed,” and send the “sons and daughters” of Americans “to go fight for a war in a country that you’ve never heard of.”
Barely a year later, Mr. Trump is racing to topple foreign regimes, and is sending American sons and daughters to wage another war in the Middle East. The self-declared “president of PEACE” has chosen to become the president of war after all, unleashing the full power of the U.S. military on Iran with the explicit goal of toppling its government.
Baker sees no explanation in Trump’s statements to date for why Iran and why now the peace president is suddenly the regime-change president.
“One way or the other, his allies were already talking about it being a legacy moment for Mr. Trump,” Baker concludes. “What kind of legacy is not yet clear. But it will not be the one that he originally promised.”
The “truth in advertising president” Trump is not and has never been. He still means to have his Nobel Peace Prize if he has to kill, maim, and destroy his way to one. If the imperial monster has other reasons for starting a war with Iran, he’s not telling. But as always with Donald Trump, follow the money. Who stands to gain?
The Iran attack is a helluva distraction from Epstein files revelations that keep leading to Trump’s doorstep and, when he leaves office, potentially to jail. His mind is an open tweet. The “projection president” has a history of accusing enemies of what’s swirling in his fetid brain.
@BarackObama will attack Iran in order to get re-elected.
Trump biographer Michael Wolff believes Trump may not himself grasp where his recent paroxysms of violence lead, except to scratch an immediate itch. He discussed the Iran action on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast.
Co-host, Joanna Coles reflected on Trump’s early morning video announcing “major combat operations in Iran.”
“He basically gives a potted history of Iran,” Coles noted. “It’s almost as if he’s giving it to himself as much as to anybody else—but reminding people of the American hostages, which is such a Boomer moment. It’s probably perhaps the moment most seared in Boomers’ memories in terms of foreign policy. Jimmy Carter tried to release them, absolute disaster. Reagan swings into power and immediately they’re released.”
She added, “I wonder if that’s at the back of Donald Trump’s head, too.”
“There’s always a mishmash of factual, semi-factual, and historical references that he doesn’t quite understand and that he skimmed over,” Wolff said.
But Epic Fury, amirite? How big-swinging-dick is that? Made for TV by a made-for-TV president.
The familiar pool of Trump critics are aghast: “former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, far-right figure Alex Jones,” manosphere influencer Andrew Tate, Sen. Rand Paul, and Rep. Thomas Massie.
I am opposed to this War.
This is not “America First.”
When Congress reconvenes, I will work with @RepRoKhanna to force a Congressional vote on war with Iran.
The Constitution requires a vote, and your Representative needs to be on record as opposing or supporting this war.
Trump’s base voters have a history of saying, “Yes, sir, how high?” when Trump demands that they pivot like a windsock to his whims. Will they this time? Have they finally realized that they’ve been conned? Pray that this action will blow up in Trump’s face (with as few casualties as possible) by November and not in ours.
Now a note to the President, and the Government, and the judges of this place We’re still waitin’ for you to bring our troops home, clean up that mess you made ‘Cause it smells of blood and money and oil, across the Iraqi land But its so easy here to blind us with your united we stand
Israel and the US have launched a war on Iran, unleashing waves of air attacks across the country in an attempt to bring about regime change and plunging the region into a conflict that could last weeks or months.
The sudden offensive triggered Iranian retaliatory strikes throughout the day across a swathe of the Middle East, with explosions reported in Israel, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
In a televised address, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, indicated that the strikes had killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei has not been heard from since the strikes began and satellite imagery has shown that his secure compound was heavily damaged in the initial barrage. “There are many signs that [Khamenei] is no longer alive,” Netanyahu said on Saturday evening. Netanyahu said that Israeli strikes had also killed “several leaders” involved in the Iranian nuclear programme and that strikes against sites linked to the programme would continue in the coming days.
The remarks, which stopped short of confirming Khamenei’s death, were the strongest official indication yet that the missing leader is dead. Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, had earlier claimed to NBC News that Khamenei and president Masoud Pezeshkian were alive “as far as I know”.
In a televised address, Donald Trump claimed Operation Epic Fury would end a security threat to the US and give Iranians a chance to “rise up” against their rulers. Netanyahu in his evening address called on Iranians to “flood the streets and finish the job”.
Iranian officials said they had not been surprised by the US attacks and that the consequences would “be long lasting and extensive. All scenarios were on the table including ones that were not previously considered.”
Sorry I asked.
With the 25th twin anniversary of September 11th and America’s “war on terror” coming up this Fall, and in light of today’s concomitant developments in the Middle East, I thought I might peruse my 20 years of Hullabaloo movie reviews for some perspective. As I plumbed the archives, I was surprised at the number of documentaries and feature films related to our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan that I have covered. Collectively, these films not only paint a broad canvas of these endless wars themselves, but put the full spectrum of humanity on display, from “the better angels of our nature” to the absolute worst (mostly the worst).
So in lieu of a 3,000-word dissertation, I’ve culled 9 films that perhaps best represent what’s gone down “over there” (and on the home front) since the World Trade Center towers fell, and one film that serves as a preface. It doesn’t feel appropriate to call this a “top 10” list, so let’s just call it, “food for thought”.
Pray for peace.
Charlie Wilson’s War – Aaron Sorkin, you silver-tongued devil, you had me at: “Ladies and gentlemen of the clandestine community…”
That line is from the opening scene of Charlie Wilson’s War, in which the titular character, a Texas congressman (Tom Hanks) is receiving an Honored Colleague award from the er-ladies and gentlemen of the clandestine community (you know, that same group of merry pranksters who orchestrated such wild and woolly hi-jinx as the Bay of Pigs invasion.)
Sorkin provides the snappy dialog for director Mike Nichols’ political satire. In actuality, Nichols and Sorkin may have viewed their screen adaptation of Wilson’s real-life story as a cakewalk, because it falls into the “you couldn’t make this shit up” category.
Wilson, known to Beltway insiders as “good-time Charlie” during his congressional tenure, is an unlikely American hero. He drank like a fish and loved to party but could readily charm key movers and shakers into supporting his pet causes and any attractive young lady within range into the sack. So how did this whiskey quaffing Romeo circumvent the official U.S. foreign policy of the time (1980s) and help the Mujahedin rebels drive the Russians out of Afghanistan, ostensibly paving the way for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War? While a (mostly) true story, it plays like a fairy tale now; although in view of recent events we know the Afghan people didn’t necessarily live happily ever after. (Full review)
Fair Game – Doug Liman’s slightly uneven 2010 dramatization of the “Plame affair” and the part it played in the Bush administration’s “weapons of mass destruction” fiasco may hold more relevance now, with the benefit of hindsight. Jez and John-Henry Butterworth based their screenplay on two memoirs, The Politics of Truth by Joe Wilson, and FairGame by Valerie Plame.
Sean Penn and Naomi Watts bring their star power to the table as the Wilsons, portraying them as a loving couple who were living relatively low key lives (she more as a necessity of her profession) until they got pushed into a boiling cauldron of nasty political intrigue that falls somewhere in between All the President’s Men and Three Days of the Condor.
Viewers unfamiliar with the back story could be misled by the opening scenes, which give the impression you may be in for a Bourne-style action thriller. The conundrum is that the part of the story concerning Valerie Plame’s CIA exploits can at best be speculative in nature. Due to the sensitivity of those matters, Plame has only gone on record concerning that part of her life in vague, generalized terms, so what you end up with is something along the lines of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
However, the most important part of the couple’s story was the political fallout that transpired once Valerie was “outed” by conservative journalist Robert Novak. Liman wisely shifts the focus to depicting how Wilson and Plame weathered this storm together, and ultimately stood up to the Bush-Cheney juggernaut of “alternative facts” that helped sell the American public on Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Full review)
The Kill Team – In an ideal world, no one should ever have to “go to war”. But it’s not an ideal world. For as long as humans have existed, there has been conflict. And always with the hitting, and the stoning, and the clubbing, and then later with the skewering and the slicing and stabbing…then eventually with the shooting and the bombing and the vaporizing.
So if we absolutely have to have a military, one would hope that the majority of the men and women who serve in our armed forces at least “go to war” as fearless, disciplined, trained professionals, instilled with a sense of honor and integrity. In an ideal world. Which again, this is not.
In 2011, five soldiers from the Fifth Stryker Brigade, Second Infantry Division (stationed near Kandahar) were officially accused of murdering three innocent Afghan civilians. Led by an apparently psychopathic squad leader, a Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, the men were all members of the 3rd Platoon, which became known as “The Kill Team”.
Artfully blending intimate interviews with moody composition (strongly recalling the films of Errol Morris), director Dan Krauss coaxes extraordinary confessionals from several key participants and witnesses involved in a series of 2010 Afghanistan War incidents usually referred to as the “Maywand District murders“.
This is really quite a story (sadly, an old one), and because it can be analyzed in many contexts (first person, historical, political, sociological, and psychological), some may find Krauss’ film frustrating, incomplete, or even slanted. But judging purely on the context he has chosen to use (first person) I think it works quite well. (Full review)
The Messenger – I think this is the film that comes closest to getting the harrowing national nightmare of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “right”. Infused with sharp writing, smart direction and compelling performances, The Messenger is one of those insightful observations of the human condition that sneaks up and really gets inside you, haunting you long after the credits roll. First-time director Owen Moverman and co-writer Alessandro Camon not only bring the war(s) home but proceed to march up your driveway and deposit in on your doorstep. Ben Foster, Samantha Morton and Woody Harrelson are outstanding. I think this film is to the Iraq/Afghanistan quagmire what The Deer Hunter was to Vietnam. It’s that good…and just as devastating. (Full review)
Son of Babylon – This heartbreaking Iraqi drama from 2010 is set in 2003, just weeks after the fall of Saddam. It follows the arduous journey of a Kurdish boy named Ahmed (Yasser Talib) and his grandmother (Shazda Hussein) as they head for the last known location of Ahmed’s father, who disappeared during the first Gulf War.
As they traverse the bleak, post-apocalyptic landscapes of Iraq’s bomb-cratered desert, a portrait emerges of a people struggling to keep mind and soul together, and to make sense of the horror and suffering precipitated by two wars and a harsh dictatorship.
Director Mohamed Al Daradji and co-screenwriter Jennifer Norridge deliver something conspicuously absent in the Iraq War(s) movies from Western directors in recent years-an honest and humanistic evaluation of the everyday people who inevitably get caught in the middle of such armed conflicts-not just in Iraq, but in any war, anywhere. (Full review)
Standard Operating Procedure – I once saw a fascinating TV documentary called Nazi Scrapbooks from Hell. It was the most harrowing depiction of the Holocaust I’ve seen, but it offered nary a glimpse of the oft-shown photographs of the atrocities themselves. Rather, it focused on photos from a scrapbook (discovered decades after the war) that belonged to an SS officer assigned to Auschwitz.
Essentially an organized, affably annotated gallery of the “after hours” lifestyle of a “workaday” concentration camp staff, it shows cheerful participants enjoying a little outdoor nosh, catching some sun, and even the odd sing-along, all in the shadow of the notorious death factory where they “worked”.
If it weren’t for the Nazi uniforms, you might think it was just a bunch of guys from the office, hamming it up for the camera at a company picnic. As the filmmakers point out, it is the everyday banality of this evil that makes it so chilling. The most amazing fact is that these pictures were taken in the first place.
What were they thinking?
This is the same rhetorical question posed by one of the interviewees in this documentary about the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal from renowned filmmaker Errol Morris. The gentleman is a military C.I.D. investigator who had the unenviable task of sifting through the hundreds of damning photos taken by several of the perpetrators.
Morris makes an interesting choice here. He aims his spotlight not so much on the obvious inhumanity on display in those sickening photos, but rather on our perception of them (echoes of Antonioni’s Blow-Up). So just who are these people that took them? What was the actual intent behind the self-documentation? Can we conclusively pass judgment on the actions of the people involved, based solely on what we “think” these photographs show us? A disturbing, yet compelling treatise on the fine line between “the fog of war” and state-sanctioned cruelty. (Full review)
Stop/Loss – This powerful and heartfelt 2008 drama is from Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce. Co-written by the director along with Mark Richard, it was one of the first substantive films to address the plight of Iraq war vets.
As the film opens, we meet Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Phillippe), an infantry squad leader leading his men in hot pursuit of a carload of heavily armed insurgents through the streets of Tikrit. The chase ends in a harrowing ambush, with the squad suffering heavy casualties.
Brandon is wounded in the skirmish, as are two of his lifelong buddies, Steve (Channing Tatum) and Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). They return to their small Texas hometown to receive Purple Hearts and a hero’s welcome, infusing the battle-weary vets with a brief euphoria that inevitably gives way to varying degrees of PTSD for the trio.
A road trip that drives the film’s third act becomes a metaphorical journey through the zeitgeist of the modern-day American veteran. Peirce and her co-writer (largely) avoid clichés and remain low-key on political subtext; this is ultimately a soldier’s story. Regardless of your political stance on the Iraq War(s), anyone with an ounce of compassion will find this film both heart wrenching and moving. (Full review)
W – No one has ever accused Oliver Stone of being subtle. However, once you watch his 2008 take on the life and times of George W. Bush (uncannily played by Josh Brolin), I think the popular perception about the director, which is that he is a rabid conspiracy theorist who rewrites history via Grand Guignol-fueled cinematic polemics, could begin to diminish. I’m even going to go out on a limb and call W a fairly straightforward biopic.
Stone intersperses highlights of Bush’s White House years with episodic flashbacks and flash forwards, beginning in the late 60s (when Junior was attending Yale) and taking us up to the end of his second term.
I’m not saying that Stone doesn’t take a point of view; he wouldn’t be Oliver Stone if he didn’t. He caught some flak for dwelling on Bush’s battle with the bottle (the manufacturers of Jack Daniels must have laid out serious bucks for the ubiquitous product placement). Bush’s history of boozing is a matter of record.
Some took umbrage at another one of the underlying themes in Stanley Weisner’s screenplay, which is that Bush’s angst (and the drive to succeed at all costs) is propelled by an unrequited desire to please a perennially disapproving George Senior. I’m no psychologist, but that sounds reasonable to me. (Full review)
A War – This powerful 2015 Oscar-nominated drama is from writer-director Tobias Lindholm. Pilou Aesbaek stars as a Danish military company commander serving in the Afghanistan War. After one of his units is demoralized by the loss of a man to a Taliban sniper while on recon, the commander bolsters morale by personally leading a patrol, which becomes hopelessly pinned down during an intense firefight. Faced with a split-second decision, the commander requests air support, resulting in a “fog of war” misstep. The commander is ordered back home, facing charges of murdering civilians.
For the first two-thirds of the film Lindholm intersperses the commander’s front line travails with those of his family back home, as his wife (Yuva Novotny) struggles to keep life and soul together while maintaining as much of a sense of “normalcy” as she can muster for the sake their three kids. The home front and the war front are both played “for real” (aside from the obvious fact that it’s a Danish production, this is a refreshingly “un-Hollywoodized” war movie).
Some may be dismayed by the moral and ethical ambivalence of the denouement. Then again, there are few tidy endings in life…particularly in war, which (to quote Bertrand Russell) never determines who is “right”, but who is left. Is that a tired trope? Perhaps; but it’s one that bears repeating…until that very last bullet on Earth gets fired in anger. (Full review)
Zero Dark Thirty – “Whadaya think…this is like the Army, where you can shoot ‘em from a mile away?! No, you gotta get up like this, and budda-bing, you blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit.”
–from The Godfather, screenplay by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola
If CIA operative Maya (Jessica Chastain), the partially fictionalized protagonist of Zero Dark Thirty had her druthers, she would “drop a bomb” on Osama Bin Laden’s compound, as opposed to dispatching a Navy SEAL team with all their “…Velcro and gear.” Therein lays the crux of my dilemma regarding Kathryn Bigelow’s film recounting the 10-year hunt for the 9-11 mastermind and events surrounding his take down; I can’t decide if it’s “like the Army” or a glorified mob movie.
But that’s just me. Perhaps the film is intended as a litmus test for its viewers (the cries of “Foul!” that emitted from both poles of the political spectrum, even before its wide release back in 2013 would seem to bear this out). And indeed, Bigelow has nearly succeeded in making an objective, apolitical docudrama.
Notice I said “nearly”. But if you can get past the fact that Bigelow or screenwriter Mark Boal are not ones to necessarily allow the truth to get in the way of a good story (and that The Battle of Algiers or The Day of the Jackal…this definitely ain’t), in terms of pure film making, there is an impressive amount of (if I may appropriate an oft-used phrase from the movie) cinematic “trade craft” on display.
While lukewarm as a political thriller, it does make a terrific detective story, and the recreation of the SEAL mission, while up for debate as to accuracy (only those who were there could say for sure, and keeping mum on such escapades is kind of a major part of their job description) is quite taut and exciting. The best I can do is arm you with those caveats; so you will have to judge for yourself. (Full review)
Minutes after Donald Trump announced that the US and Israeli governments had launched a “major combat operation” against Iran in the early hours of Saturday morning, disinformation about the attack and Tehran’s response flooded X.
WIRED has reviewed hundreds of posts on X, some of which have racked up millions of views, that promote misleading claims about the locations and scale of the attack. Elon Musk’s social media platform is a verifiable mess: In some cases, alleged video footage of the attack shared in posts on X are actually months or years old. In several posts, video footage of apparent attacks have been attributed to incorrect locations. A number of images shared on X appear to be altered or generated with AI. Other posts attempt to pass off video game footage as scenes from the conflict.
Almost all of the most viral posts reviewed by WIRED on Saturday came from accounts with blue check marks, meaning they pay X for its premium service and could be eligible to earn money based on how much engagement their posts generate, even if the content is false. While some posts with disinformation have a community note appended beneath them to correct the record, they remain up on the site, and it’s unclear how many people viewed them before the notes appeared.
No surprise of course. When it comes to actual news, you have to go to great lengths and only look at very trusted sources for anything. In a crisis, like war, it’s so permeated with propaganda that it’s completely useless.
President Donald Trump has launched a capricious and personal war on Iran that is more ambitious, politically and militarily, than any past U.S. campaign in the perpetually volatile Middle East. In an eight-minute video released in the wee hours of Saturday morning, while most Americans were still asleep, he announced that his goals are the abolishment of the theocratic regime, total capitulation by its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—or else the death of its members at U.S. hands—and an end to the country’s controversial nuclear program.
Trump called for Iran’s ninety-two million people to rise up in popular resistance and form a new government. “For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it,” he told the Iranian people. “Now you have a President who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.” It is an audacious gambit, undertaken in coördination with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of Israel, that has no clear outcome. For a man who hungers for the Nobel Peace Prize, this war of choice borders on delusion.
They have apparently killed the Supreme Leader and we know that Trump will be bleating about this killing as if he did it with his own hands. So that will be tiresome. But that is not the end of the story. (BTW, the Ayatollah was 86, so he wasn’t going to be around much longer anyway.)
Most analysts seem to think that the regime will fight hard for its survival and they will not be like the Venezuelan leaders who are willing to make deals with the devil. Iran is not just a government, it’s a theocratic government that clings to power with religious zeal. And they have the ability to inflict a lot of damage throughout the region and yes, here is the United States. (I know I’m looking forward to another round of terrorist threats for which I’d like to thank Donald Trump.)
Maybe Trump will get lucky and the regime will give him a convenient off-ramp in order to take credit for bringing peace to he middle east —- again. He does have a way of wriggling out of trouble. But this move is the riskiest yet and despite his crowing about being the greatest military leader since Alexander the great, we have no way of knowing how this is going to play out. We just have to hope that massive numbers will not have to lose their lives before we find out.
In case you were wondering about the war powers act, this is from former congressman Justin Amash:
The paid grifters, partisan hacks, and bots are out in force—misleading people about the Constitution and the law—to defend Trump’s unconstitutional war.
Here’s an important Iran war PSA: Contrary to what you may have heard about the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. §§ 1541–1550), it does not allow the president to take military action for any reason for 60–90 days without congressional approval so long as the president notifies Congress within 48 hours.
Section 1541(c) of the War Powers Resolution states clearly: “The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”
Of the three cited authorities, not one indicates a presidential power to take unilateral (without Congress’s approval) offensive military action. The first two authorities allow the president to take offensive military action but only with Congress’s express approval (Article I of the Constitution grants Congress the exclusive power to declare war). The third authority allows the president to take defensive military action without Congress’s approval in the event of a specific type of national emergency, a sudden unforeseen attack on the United States (happening too quickly for Congress to meet) necessitating immediate action to protect Americans.
It’s for this last situation (or for situations in which the president introduces forces into hostilities unlawfully) that the War Powers Resolution provides for the oft-mentioned 48-hour report to Congress (§ 1543) and 60-day (up to 90-day) timeline (§ 1544). If there’s an attack in progress on the United States (i.e., currently happening), we expect the president to respond swiftly to neutralize the attack and protect Americans—and then we will hold the president to account.
The Framers of the Constitution agreed at the debates in the federal convention of 1787 that the president should have the “power to repel sudden attacks” but not the power to otherwise introduce forces into hostilities without congressional approval.
The War Powers Resolution does not confer any new authority on the president to take offensive military action without congressional approval—nor could it under our Constitution. It instead checks the president when, as the Framers contemplated, the president introduces our Armed Forces into hostilities to repel a sudden attack. The fact that previous presidents have violated both the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution does not—and cannot—change the law or make any present military action lawful.
Not that it matters anymore. He does what he wants and frankly, all presidents have been taking some form of unilateral actions for decades. Trump’s just not bothering to pretend otherwise.
Trump has just started a war in the middle east from Mar-a-lago. Apparently, he can’t even take on week-end away from his golf game. He made the announcement wearing a baseball cap.
In fact, they’re running the whole war from his golf club:
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine are monitoring the U.S. operation in Iran from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where Trump is currently located, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.
It’s probably smart when you think about it. Gotta make sure our Dear Leader has his binky.
To anyone still gullible enough to fall for scummy media hoaxes: Trump said warmongering neocons love sending your kids to die for wars they would never fight themselves. Liz Cheney is Kamala’s top advisor. Liz wants to invade the whole Middle East. Kamala = WWIII. Trump = Peace.
He’s so far gone that he isn’t even pretending that there’s an actual reason for going to war in the middle east. He’s doing it because he can and he loves to demonstrate that. No doubt he believes that he will once again come out on top because he always does so he needn’t bother to explain himself. He is omnipotent.
In a more than 100-minute State of the Union on Tuesday, just a few days ago, Trump didn’t bring up Iran until more than one hour and 20 minutes into the speech, and even then, he offered no explanation for why an attack was in America’s national interest.
Surreally, Trump said in June 2025, when the U.S. military first attacked Iran (also with no effort by Trump to explain his decision to Americans beforehand), it “obliterated” the country’s nuclear weapons program. If that were true, it would suggest that an attack on the same program nine months later makes little sense. Trump said, “They [Iran] want to start it all over again and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions,” but offered no evidence or, if it is true, why there is an urgency to attack now. Indeed, even U.S. officials acknowledge that Iran has not actively resumed its uranium enrichment program after last year’s joint U.S. and Israeli attack.
The only argument that Trump could muster for why Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose a threat to the United States is that Tehran has “already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.”
So the threat to America is a nuclear bomb that doesn’t exist, perched on an intercontinental ballistic missile that isn’t close to being built?
Yeah, they’re said to be at least a decade away from that possibility.
Well, he did give one rationale for war. They haven’t said some magic words. Except they have:
Perhaps the most bizarre part of the approximately three minutes that Trump spent talking about Iran was the president’s claim that Tehran wants to make a deal, “but we haven’t heard those secret words, ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon.’” Iranian officials have repeatedly said that they have no intention of building a nuclear weapon. After Trump’s speech, the country’s foreign minister said it again.
This is the new way. He uses the military the way he uses tariffs: to blackmail, threaten and punish anyone who doesn’t do his bidding exactly the way he wants them too, sometimes completely on a whim.
The age of the imperial presidency, which began after World War II and the advent of nuclear weapons, has led to a steady decline in national deliberation about the use of military force. But we’ve never had a situation like the one we have today with Iran. Trump isn’t even pretending to try to make the case for war. If anything, this is the imperial presidency on steroids — as Trump decides to go to war with zero input from Congress (no congressional hearings) and zero effort to rally public opinion.
He knows the GOP will back him to the hilt and is so sure of his invincibility that he simply doesn’t think he needs to. He know he will be triumphant. In the end, he always is.
He’s even already getting a head start on the monuments he believes will be built to celebrate his greatness. The imperial presidency has its first real emperor.
Will his total immunity from all accountability extend to his henchmen? If history is any guide, no:
Isn't it amazing how @JDVance, @TulsiGabbard, Donald Trump and much of the Trump base suddenly are cheering on war with Iran after they all seemingly were against it?
How can you watch these clips below and not realize that you are getting played? pic.twitter.com/s8b1E1YmKh
Do y’all remember the president who railed against U.S. engagement in endless wars? This guy?
I inherited a total mess in Syria and Afghanistan, the “Endless Wars” of unlimited spending and death. During my campaign I said, very strongly, that these wars must finally end. We spend $50 Billion a year in Afghanistan and have hit them so hard that we are now talking peace…
The United States and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday in a major assault that threatened a broader regional conflict, with President Trump vowing to devastate the country’s military, eliminate its nuclear program and bring about a change in its government.
Large explosions shook the Iranian capital, Tehran, where people reported seeing smoke rising from the district that includes the presidential palace. Witnesses described chaos in the streets as Iranians rushed to seek shelter, find loved ones or flee the city.
Mr. Trump, who had threatened a strike for weeks, vowed that the “massive and ongoing” campaign would target not just Iran’s nuclear program, which was the focus of a U.S. attack last June. Instead, Mr. Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social, the United States would “raze their missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate their navy,” arguing Iran had refused to reach a deal with the United States that would have averted war.
Dozens of U.S. strikes were carried out by attack planes from bases and aircraft carriers around the Middle East, with officials saying the initial focus was military assets. The attack also targeted the Iranian leadership, according to three Israeli security officials briefed on the campaign. Satellite imagery showed a plume of smoke and extensive damage at the compound of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, in Tehran, though his whereabouts were unclear.
I was elected on getting out of these ridiculous endless wars, where our great Military functions as a policing operation to the benefit of people who don’t even like the USA. The two most unhappy countries at this move are Russia & China, because they love seeing us bogged…..
Why are we attacking Iran, exactly? Does anyone know? Is it Trump’s retaliation against the world for not awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize?
Iran has vowed “crushing retaliation.” American casualties in the aftermath will further sour Americans already sour on adventurism like this.
Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, prompting booms as Israeli air defenses sought to repel them. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait — all of which host U.S. military bases — said they had come under attack, as did Jordan. Falling debris from an Iranian ballistic missile attack killed at least one person in the Emirates, according to its government.
Analysts warned that the fighting could easily devolve into a protracted war with no clear exit.
Mr. Trump suggested that the conflict might end with Iranians overthrowing their own authoritarian government after the American assault. “It will be yours to take,” Mr. Trump said, speaking to the Iranian public. “This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
Skeptics of U.S. military intervention expressed doubt that they would ultimately result in an Iran that abandoned its nuclear program. Edward King, the president of Defense Priorities, a think tank that advocates a restrained foreign policy, said diplomacy would have been a better path.
Rosemary Kelanic, a scholar at Defense Priorities, warned that it was easier to start a war in the Middle East than to end one. “The overriding imperative now is for the U.S. to avoid escalation into a prolonged conflict that wastes American power rather than enhances it,” she said.
Lawmakers are calling on Congress to convene earlier than planned next week to vote on a war powers resolution in light of widespread U.S. attacks on Iran.
“Donald Trump has launched a war on Iran and Congress must convene on Monday to vote on [Rep.] Thomas Massie’s [R-Ky.] and my war powers resolution to stop this war,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said in a video posted on X, arguing Americans do not want to be embroiled in an overseas conflict.
What they’re saying: “The Senate should immediately return to session and vote on my War Powers Resolution to block the use of U.S. forces in hostilities against Iran,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said in a statement.
“Every single Senator needs to go on the record about this dangerous, unnecessary, and idiotic action,” he added. Kaine had been planning to force a vote on his war powers resolution next week.
Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) echoed Kaine’s calls, telling CNN on Saturday morning: “We should have Congress immediately go back into session for the War Powers vote to reassert the American people’s will, which, again, they don’t want to be at war. So I’m ready to go right back to the Senate today.”
The House is not expected to return until Wednesday, and the Senate will return on Monday.
A new generation of chicken hawks will line up to cheer. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) will be hot and bothered. Again. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) will be John Fetterman.
But is MAGA good with this? MAGA knows what it was promised, voted for, and didn’t get. MAGA hates being reminded. Trump just stuck his thumb in his base’s eye and killed off his party’s chances for holding the U.S. House in November.
