Tag: media

The Media Made the Midterms About Trump. He’s Taking Them Up on It.

President Donald Trump knows exactly what Democrats plan to run against this November: Orange Man Bad.

So President Trump made a decision that has some political professionals reaching for the smelling salts. MAGA Inc. has roughly $400 million in its political war chest, and Trump wants part of it used for national advertising that tells voters what his administration has actually accomplished.

The strategy is almost embarrassingly logical. Democrats plan to make congressional races a referendum on Trump.

He’s accepting the invitation.

From The Atlantic:

President Trump gathered his top political advisers in the Oval Office early this month to solve a problem of riches: how to spend his super PAC’s $400 million political war chest with fewer than 100 days to go before the midterm elections.

Republican strategists are concerned about Trump’s low approval ratings and voter anxiety about the economy. One person familiar with the Oval Office strategy meeting put it this way: “When the issues that you typically campaign on don’t move voters—or voters are pissed off at you about those issues—the question becomes: What do you campaign on?” Some GOP strategists favor focusing entirely on specific races in an effort to convince voters of the merits of individual candidates and local issues.

But Trump himself has rejected that approach. House and Senate Democrats, the president noted during the meeting, will make their fall campaigns a referendum on him. His advisers told him that the poor polling reflects the fact that the voting public still does not know about many of his accomplishments—the dozens of new stock-market highs, a decline in fentanyl deaths, the “sealed” southern border, the increase in domestic-manufacturing production.

The solution Trump settled on, according to three people familiar with the meeting, was to lean into the Democratic strategy of focusing on himself. The president ordered a series of television advertisements about his own record that will serve as a backdrop to the hundreds of individual House and Senate contests. Trump wanted what one person described to us as “environmental lift” ads—commercials that would focus on nationalizing the midterms broadly around his victories—and he suggested that the ad makers mine his own on-camera statements as building blocks. “Go look at the clips,” the president told his team, according to this person. “I cite accomplishments all the time.”

Critics scream danger! Trump’s approval numbers are weak, voters remain worried about prices, and the president isn’t personally on the November ballot.

Some Republican strategists would rather spend the money entirely on individual House and Senate candidates.

Trump sees a larger problem: voters can’t judge accomplishments they rarely hear about.

Consider the record. His tax law created deductions for qualified tips and overtime, increased the deduction for seniors, and created a deduction for interest on qualifying American-made vehicle loans.

Those are no longer campaign promises: they’re in the tax code.

Then there’s the border. Southwest Border Patrol encounters fell 93% in May 2025 compared with May 2024, while releases of illegals by Border Patrol dropped from more than 62,000 to zero for the month.

Trump also ordered the operation that captured Nicolás Maduro in Caracas on Jan. 3, 2026. U.S. forces apprehended Maduro and his wife, ending years in which an indicted Venezuelan strongman operated comfortably in America’s hemisphere while Washington mostly issued statements about him.

Iran’s nuclear infrastructure took another beating under Trump. U.S. strikes against Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan severely damaged key nuclear facilities, with intelligence assessments concluding that several would require years to rebuild.

Somehow, a president who delivered tax relief, shut down much of the border chaos, captured Maduro, and smashed critical Iranian nuclear infrastructure is supposed to quietly sit while Democrats define his presidency for him.

Why?

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Stars and Stripes, Perhaps Not Forever

In late 1861, Union soldiers in Bloomfield, Missouri, found the local newspaper’s office empty and decided to put it to good use. Stars and Stripes covered the activities of the three Illinois regiments. Their commander in chief, of course, was US president Abraham Lincoln.

Over time, the paper gained direct funding from the military, but with supposed “editorial independence,” and a mission “to provide first-hand reporting from bases around the world and unbiased, credible news to America’s military.” Those who worked in uniform abroad through two world wars and after, often not in a position to visit a newspaper stand or receive news via TV or radio, could read Stars and Stripes (I read it in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm).

On August 21, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth fired the paper’s publisher, editor-in-chief, and a top reporter after they publicly commented on Department of Defense “interference” with the newspaper’s “independence.”

Once again, Abraham Lincoln — or at least the aircraft carrier named for him — played a central role as Hegseth whined over the paper’s coverage of complaints from deployed sailors’ families concerning the material and mental health situation aboard that vessel.

The firings aren’t really as sudden as they might seem to those not following closely over time.

The first Trump administration floated a plan to shutter Stars and Stripes, but backed down after a “bipartisan” backlash. With Hegseth at the helm in Trump’s second time around, DoD rages frequently against “woke distractions” in its reportage, firing its ombudsman in May for noticing that attempts to change it into a “morale booster” instead of a news outlet are “contrary to the news organization’s mission.”

So, here’s the thing: Who pays the piper, calls the tune.

Stars and Stripes is largely funded by, and its operations and distribution are almost completely enabled by, the US government. “Editorial independence” may sound like a wonderful idea, but there’s always been a leash. We’re just watching the leash get shorter.

Thankfully, the collar at the end of that leash only strangles Stars and Stripes.

These days, even troops aboard ships at sea and at remote firebases in hostile territory have far greater contact with the outside world, most of the time, than even civilians at home enjoyed 50, let alone 150, years ago.

Cell phones. Email. Web access. Zoom. It’s not 100% there, 100% of the time, but neither was Stars and Stripes.

Pete Hegseth can cry if he wants to. He can throw himself on the floor and threaten to hold his breath until he turns blue. The troops will get still their news, whether he likes it or not. They’ll get the kind of coverage they want to get, not just the kind he wants them to get.

And because all that technology runs two-way, they can also REPORT the news they want covered without consulting him first as he obviously expects Stars and Stripes to.

The military news coverage, and consumption, of the future will look a lot more like WikiLeaks than like Stars and Stripes.

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PA Gov. Josh Shapiro and State Health Officials Caught Pushing Fake Measles Death Narrative in Lancaster County — Officials Refuse to Cooperate as County Coroner Confirms ZERO Deaths FROM Measles

The mainstream media and leftist government bureaucrats are at it again, pushing panic, fear, and unverified headlines to control the public narrative, only to get caught red-handed when local officials demand basic transparency.

During a high-profile press conference on Tuesay, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, alongside state health officials and Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health, announced that two “measles-associated deaths” occurred in Lancaster County.

The legacy media immediately ran with the headlines. Two people died FROM measles. Case closed. Get the shot. Blame the unvaccinated. Blame RFK Jr.

There’s just one major problem: Local authorities have ZERO record of these alleged deaths.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called out the massive discrepancies and the state’s sudden refusal to share basic factual data.

Kennedy said Shapiro accused him of promoting “conspiracy theories” after Kennedy noted that some Americans have religious objections to MMR because of fetal-cell substrate used in manufacturing.

Shapiro reportedly snapped that there is “no fetal tissue in the MMR.” Kennedy responded that Shapiro could not produce a single example of HHS “misinformation” when asked, yet repeated the smear on camera anyway, while ignoring the fact that Pennsylvania’s own drop in vaccination rates largely occurred during the Biden years, a fact Shapiro reportedly admitted in a private call with RFK Jr.

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Networks Were Ordered to Stop Filming Trump—and They Didn’t Protest the Illegal Censorship

“Cameras off the president right now.”

This direct command could be heard this weekend on the live broadcast of the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, an IndyCar street race orchestrated by President Donald Trump’s administration as part of its MAGA-branded commemoration of the nation’s historic anniversary. The entire three-hour debacle was live-broadcast on Fox, alongside footage of Trump and First Lady Melania Trump as they basked in the front-row presidential suite.

At one point, the presidential couple engaged in heated conversation—possibly regarding, some speculated (Mercury News, 8/24/26), the presence of Trump’s personal assistant Natalie Harp, with whom he has an unusually close relationship. As this discussion transpired, a terse command to the camera operator could be heard: “I need the cameras off the president right now. Cameras off the president right now. Turn the cameras.”

A camera operator replied, “We’re the pool with President Trump for the entire network—Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC.”

The response was unyielding: “I understand that. We’ve asked you to turn the cameras off of the presidential suite.”

The command—from a staffer wearing an IndyCar uniform—was an astonishing call for press censorship on behalf of Trump, not to mention a direct violation of the First Amendment freedom of press.

As Brendan Keefe, an award-winning investigative reporter for Atlanta News First, posted on X (8/23/26):

You can tell us where we can be. You cannot tell us what to film. “Cameras off” is an unlawful order from government, especially when recording an elected official…. The First Amendment allows the press to record in any place they’re allowed to be present.

Even more surprising, however, is that none of the major outlets—including the outlets for which the camera person was working—have acknowledged this blatant assault on the freedom of the press. Coverage of the Grand Prix from networks Fox, CBS and ABC operated as usual, highlighting race victories and logistics. CNN correspondent Brian Todd (8/23/26) reported that the race was “a real success.”

Only independent outlets, such as Atlanta Black Star, Raw Story and Crooks & Liars, or overseas-based publications like the British-based Mirror or Spanish sports outlet Diario AS, have published pieces highlighting the infringement. So why have establishment media stayed silent?

One explanation is a realistic fear of government retaliation. After the FCC’s failed efforts last year to cancel ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! for critical comments about Charlie Kirk—a move that was disparaged even by conservatives—the organization mounted a retaliatory campaign, slapping ABC with an unprecedented and mandatory years-early license renewal review. The ordeal has since snowballed into a full-blown lawsuit against the FCC from ABC’s parent company Disney.

But the media have an obligation to act as watchdogs, to report on those in power and keep the public informed on wrongdoing and corruption. Corporate media have billions of dollars at their disposal, and have more resources than any other media format to stand up to the administration. When corporate media are collectively silent about violations of their press freedoms, ordinary people can hardly rely on them to stand up for the rest of us.

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How the Media Sells Genocide

The Western media manufactures consent for genocide. It normalizes Israel’s decades-long military occupation and apartheid. It erases Israel’s flagrant violations of international law. It perpetuates the fallacy of Israeli victimhood. It betrays, discredits and demonizes the work of Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza, at least 220 of whom have been killed by Israel between Oct. 7, 2023, and August 2025. It supinely accepts draconian Israeli censorship. It acquiesces with tepid letters of protest at Israel’s refusal to allow foreign reporters in Gaza — an effort by Israel to mask its war crimes. It amplifies Israeli lies, from beheaded babies to widespread sexual assault of Israeli women on Oct. 7, to obfuscate the truth.

When writing about Gaza, verbs are in the passive tense. There is no subject. No one is accountable. Genocide, it seems, is an act of God. No different from an earthquake or tsunami. Clichés and opaque adjectives such as the “cycle of violence” or “clashes” distort and falsify reality.

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought,” George Orwell warned.

Terms such as “genocide,” “atrocity,” “ethnic cleansing” and “occupied territories” magically disappear from media reports on Palestinians, whose resistance is routinely described as “savage” and “barbaric.” New York Times reporters are instructed by editors to avoid terms such as “Palestine,” “genocide,” “carnage,” “refugee camp,” “slaughter” and “massacre,” when referencing Palestinians.

The media slavishly regurgitates what Israel feeds it. Saturation bombing becomes “surgical air strikes.” Israel’s weaponization of famine becomes a “food shortage.” The killing of unarmed civilians — including children — becomes “clashes.” The hilltop fortress-like compounds of Jewish colonists becomes “neighborhoods.” Extrajudicial assassination of a journalist or a doctor becomes “died.”

Genocide, referred to as the “Israel-Hamas war” is justified as “self-defense,” part of the mantra of Israel’s “right to defend itself.” When schools, hospitals, clinics, ambulances, mosques, churches and other civilian targets are obliterated, they are labeled “Hamas command centers” or targeted because Hamas is “using civilians as human shields” — something Israel does routinely, when the army binds detained Palestinians and forces them to enter potentially booby-trapped buildings and tunnels ahead of Israeli troops.

When Israelis are held by Hamas, they are “hostages,” even if they serve in the military. When Palestinians — including children — are held without charges or trial and disappeared into Israeli detention centers, where torture is “widespread” and “systematic,” they are “prisoners.”

Missile attacks on tent cities or hospitals are blamed on Palestinian armed groups firing errant rockets. If Israel acknowledges the attacks — which very rarely happens — they are described as a “tragic mistake.”

Civil institutions in Gaza are characterized as “Hamas-run” to cast doubt on the veracity of what they report. The New York Times routinely qualifies announcements from the Gaza Health Ministry by noting it “does not distinguish between civilians and combatants,” masking the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians.

The result is some of the most convoluted writing in the history of journalism, including the Nov. 5, 2023 New York Times headline that reads: “Explosions Gazans Say Was Airstrike Leaves Many Casualties in Dense Neighborhood.”

“When Middle East Eye journalists Mohamed Salama and Ahmed Abu Aziz, along with Reuters photojournalist Hussam al-Masri, and freelancers Moaz Abu Taha, and Mariam Dagga — who had worked with several media outlets, including the Associated Press — were killed in a “double tap” strike — designed to kill first responders arriving to treat casualties from initial strikes — at Nasser Medical Complex, how did Western news agencies respond?” I asked in my column The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists.

“Israeli military says strikes on Gaza hospital targeted what it says was a Hamas camera,” the Associated Press reported.

“IDF claims hospital strike was aimed at Hamas camera,” announced CNN.

The camera belonged to Reuters, which said Israel was “fully aware” the news agency was filming from the hospital.

“When Al Jazeera correspondent Anas Al Sharif and three other journalists were killed on Aug. 10 in their media tent near Al Shifa Hospital, how was it reported in the Western press?” I asked.

“Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” Reuters titled its story, despite the fact al-Sharif was part of a Reuters team that won a 2024 Pulitzer Prize.

The German newspaper Bild, published a front page story headlined: “Terrorist disguised as a journalist killed in Gaza.”

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China Publishes Furious Screed Against Japanese PM for Not Killing a Cockroach

China’s state-run Global Times on Monday published a bizarrely overheated editorial criticizing Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae for refusing to kill a cockroach.

Among other things, the Chinese communist paper accused Takaichi of hypocrisy for approving weapons exports after sparing the insect’s life.

The anecdote that bugged Chinese propagandists was disclosed by Takaichi in a social media post on Friday. In the course of answering questions about her life in the prime minister’s official residence, she mentioned that she was “shocked when, one day, a cockroach suddenly scurried past my feet.”

Takaichi said she cannot bring herself to kill anything, including insects, because she was inspired to consider reincarnation and the interconnectedness of life by her childhood love for the manga series Phoenix by Tezuka Osamu. Tezuka regarded the story of the mythical immortal bird as his life’s work, begun in 1954, but unfortunately he died in 1989 before completing it.

“For the cockroach that ran through the official residence, I thought things like, ‘Maybe this life is also part of that long cycle of reincarnation,’” Takaichi mused in her social media post, “and for a while, I endured it, hoping it would somehow leave on its own – but when I told my secretaries about it, they were appalled.”

Takaichi’s secretaries proved to be much less reluctant to kill cockroaches than the prime minister was. She concluded by saying she “felt relieved, but also a little lonely, or maybe sad” after the cockroaches were eliminated from her residence.

Takaichi’s critics in Japan used her cockroach anecdote to slam the prime minister for everything from supposedly valuing insects more than human life to being frivolous and unserious for basing so much of her personal philosophy on a childhood comic book.

The Global Times gleefully piled on, and then some, capitalizing on the online cockroach controversy to vent Beijing’s spleen at Takaichi.

The Chinese Communist Party has loathed Takaichi since the moment she became prime minister because she said Japan would regard a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as a threat to its own security. A Chinese diplomat working in Japan threatened to behead Takaichi for her remarks about Taiwan.

“The intense public backlash over Takaichi’s remarks is not about whether she is genuinely squeamish about killing cockroaches,” the Global Times wrote. “Rather, it stems from her attempt to curate a benevolent personal image online to build momentum ahead of the upcoming cabinet reshuffle and personnel adjustments in September.”

“While showing reluctance to kill a cockroach, Takaichi is actively opening the floodgates for lethal weapon exports,” the editorial hissed, referring to Takaichi’s April 2026 revisions to Japan’s guidelines for transferring military equipment.

“The Japanese government can argue that arms exports are subject to strict legal reviews and aimed at deterrence rather than provocation,” the Global Times said, “but if a national leader relies on a ‘reverence for life’ to shape her public image, she must explain why Japan’s prudent arms export controls were dismantled under her watch,”

The lengthy editorial screed also worked in some shots at Takaichi for worrying about cockroaches instead of Japan’s rising cost of living index, and even claimed the Japanese prime minister cared more about bugs than the victims of disasters like the Kumamoto earthquake, which left many local residents without air conditioning during a hot summer.

The editorial concluded:

The public relations backlash against Takaichi’s comments does not stem from a lack of humor among Japanese citizens. Rather, when a prime minister injects private morality into political communication, the public naturally applies that same ethical yardstick to judge the administration’s governance.

Behind the opportunistic hyperventilating of the Global Times lies the simple political reality that Takaichi came into office as prime minister in October 2025 with stratospheric approval ratings and considerable star power, thanks to her status as Japan’s first female PM and her appealing, offbeat personal style.

A year later, those approval ratings have come back down to earth, and anything Takaichi does to draw attention to herself – such as ruminating on the meaning of a cockroach’s life – is likely to open the door to criticism.

Fortune pointed out on Sunday that Takaichi’s astounding personal energy and hard-driving work ethic – which she says can leave her as little as three hours a night to sleep – has gone from being a source of admiration among her constituents to becoming another angle for criticism.

Some of Takaichi’s detractors accuse her of setting a poor example for Japanese professional women and young girls by maintaining such a brutal pace at the age of 65, while others accuse her of cloistering herself at the prime minister’s residence to avoid dealing with lawmakers and the press.

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SUCH A FRAUD: Margaret Brennan Says Biden Regime Did Not Mandate Vaccines for Children – Then This Previous Video of Margaret Brennan Surfaces

It must be difficult being a mainstream media mouthpiece these days. You have to sort through the all the lies from yesterday to promote the newest set of lies you promote to the American public.

Take for example, Margaret Brennan.

The silly CBS News anchor thinks we forgot about the BS she was shoving down our throats about COVID not so long ago.

On Sunday, Brennan lectured the brilliant Dr. Mehmut Oz, the current administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), that the COVID vaccines were NOT forced on American children.

This proves she has no respect for the American public to push such trash on her audience.

Here is Margaret Brennan with Dr. Oz on Sunday:

Dr. Mehmut Oz: “The question again, this comes back to a much more fundamental issue, Margaret. Do parents have the right to ask questions? We already experienced what happened during COVID when we took away that right from parents. They were forced to give their kids COVID vaccines.

Margaret Brennan: (interrupting) They were not forced to give their kids vaccines…

Dr. Mehmut Oz: Well, they were pushed hard and oftentimes hindered from doing what they wanted to do, like going out socially if their kids were not included in these programs…

Margaret Brennan: (interrupting) No, of course it’s not up to the state.

Dr. Mehmut Oz: It’s not up to the federal government. It’s up to the states. States do this. The request of the president is to make sure that states offer parents either eligibility because of religious beliefs or other reasons why they may not want to have their kids take all the vaccines in order. Let’s pick a specific example. Hepatitis B. Hepatitis B vaccine I happen to like. I got the hepatitis B vaccine, but it helps adults avoiding issues if they’re involved. For example, in my case as a doctor, if I were to hit myself with a needle with a patient, but it usually is for drug abusers and for people who are involved in — or infants who could be exposed by a caregiver, by someone in their house, by parent unwittingly, which is why it is provided extraordinarily.

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With Trump’s Ballroom Resuming Construction, Someone Decided to Spill This Secret to Stop It

This is borderline treason: to stop Trump’s ballroom, someone decided to spill that there’s a secret bunker in the White House. President Trump has claimed the new ballroom is necessary because venues like the Washington Hilton are nightmares for the Secret Service to protect adequately. He’s not wrong. Reagan was shot at the hotel, and the president and virtually the entire presidential line of succession could have been wiped out at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this spring. There’s another element as well, namely that the White House, as is, is too small to host state dinners and VIPs appropriately, and tents on the lawn and porta-johns being deployed are unseemly in the extreme (via WaPo):

President Donald Trump has claimed that the White House needs a massive new ballroom because it would provide him and future presidents with a secure, hardened facility. But former officials say the argument fails to acknowledge that the presidential complex already has one.

More than a decade ago, federal officials built a highly protected bunker, embedded deep underground, that can shelter the president and his top aides in a national security emergency, according to three former officials.

The facility, which was secretly completed during the Obama administration, can house dozens of people for up to multiple weeks, two former officials said. It’s buried more than 60 feet underneath the White House complex and built to withstand a nuclear blast, two of the officials said, ensuring the president and his team have a secure command center to run the country in times of extreme duress.

The bunker’s existence, the former officials said, undercuts the Trump administration’s emerging legal argument in the ongoing lawsuit over the $600 million ballroom complex’s construction: that the facility must be completed due to its significance for U.S. national security.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss elements of the secretive facility, some of which have not been previously reported.

The Washington Post is withholding some details of the bunker and its construction in order to not compromise sensitive White House security protocols.

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As Many MSM Outlets Speculate on Zelensky’s Departure, Former Minister Fedorov Becomes Ukrainian Opposition Leader, Says President Should Be Questioned About Rampant Corruption

Zelensky now has a direct political opponent, as the MSM is letting go of his hand.

Yesterday, as Ukraine celebrated its 35th Independence Day, a flurry of heads of state and government and other political leaders converged on Kyiv, making the usual protestations of support.

Today, the new British Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, made his first international trip to Kyiv, bringing the blueprints for Storm Shadow missiles.

But if you take a look at the world’s headlines, you will find an astonishing change in the wind direction, as several outlets speculate about the end of Volodymyr Zelensky’s power.

A cursory search reveals:

Unherd: Zelensky is running out of political cover;

BBC: The campaign to replace Zelensky;

WSJ: Zelensky’s Leadership Comes Under Biggest Threat Since War Began;

Tovima: How Long Can Zelensky Hold On?;

Berliner Zeitung: Zelensky’s time is up: Only a resignation will make him a war hero;

The Times: Is the tide at home turning against President Zelensky?;

The Telegraph: Is this the beginning of the end for Zelensky?

That level of questioning is unheard of – but, of course, it coincides with dozens of articles and op-eds guaranteeing that ‘Ukraine is actually winning the war’, and that ‘Zelensky is safe as houses’.

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Democrats and CNN Lose it After Pete Hegseth Utters This So-Called ‘Transphobic Slur’ at the Iowa State Fair

War Secretary Pete Hegseth drove the left insane earlier this week after using a politically incorrect term to describe transgender individuals.

As Iowa Public Radio reported, Hegseth appeared at the Iowa State Fair on Wednesday to defend the Department of War’s $1.5 trillion budget request and to support Rep. Zach Nunn, who is facing a difficult re-election fight.

Hegseth later tried to fire up fairgoers with some colorful language referencing the department’s return to fighting bad guys rather than pushing DEI garbage.

“We’re restoring the warrior ethos inside our department because that matters,” Hegseth told fairgoers.

“At the Department of War, we do training — not trannies,” he added.

Upon hearing this remark, CNN’s Jake Tapper was disgusted.

“Calling transgender people trannies, that’s obviously a slur,” Tapper fumed. “Treat people with dignity.”

U.S Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) also flipped out, with both calling for Hegseth’s termination.

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