Hey everyone. Welcome back. As you can see in my (very short) video, I am stuck in the airport an unable to record the show today. But don’t worry, we have all the same great coverage in our newsletter portion below! Don’t worry, I’ll be back tomorrow.
Our top story today is one of the wildest things I’ve read in a long time. Back in July, facing a threat from Iran, the President was forced to sneak off Air Force One inside a catering truck, switched to a different plane, and flew home in disguise, while reporters and staff were left on the original jet as a decoy. We’ll get to all the juicy details momentarily.
Also today: Trump’s media company lost a quarter of a billion dollars; he signed an order to reduce the vaccines we give our kids, where he fell asleep while he did it; the White House is still quietly protecting an accused abuser to keep him on the ballot; and the DOJ released a memo that could protect Trump from congressional scrutiny.
Please do me a favor: like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, and subscribe so you never miss an episode.
Let’s get to it.
1. Trump Fled Iranian Assassination Threat Threat in a Catering Truck
You’ll remember back in July, we covered something really strange. Trump flew to the NATO summit in Turkey on his shiny new Qatari-gifted Air Force One, and then decided to fly home on the old one. At the time, he said it was just for old time’s sake and we called BS.
Well, The Washington Post and The New York Times just revealed what actually happened, and it’s wild. There was a credible Iranian assassination threat, so security officials cooked up a full deception operation. Here are the details on it.
Trump walked up the stairs of the old Air Force One in front of the cameras, waving, making it look like he was flying home on it. Then once he got on the plane he slipped out of the other side and climbed into an airport catering truck. That truck then drove him to a plain military jet parked nearby which he boarded. Take a look at the video from The Washington Post of that happening:
Then the old Air Force One took off as a decoy, with its transponder switched off, and still using the presidential call sign even though the President wasn’t on it. Who was actually on it? Reporters and White House staff. Most of them had no idea Trump wasn’t on the plane, and all they were told was to keep their window shades shut the whole flight.
And somehow, when Air Force One landed in Britain, Trump met it there and just hopped back on it, so that he could emerge from it and make it look as if he was inside the entire time.
So at the time, Trump stood on that plane, talked about the threat, and literally told the reporters, “I go, you go.” Almost like that scene from Titanic. But he had already made sure that if a missile found that plane, he wouldn’t be on it, but they would be. That’s not so much like Titanic.
Having to protect the president is legitimate. Every country does it. But slinking off and then turning your own journalists and staff into unwitting human shields, and then looking them in the eye and saying we’re in this together is not leadership. It’s total cowardice. Now that this story is out, expect real backlash. But you never know with this Republican Party.
2. Trump's Media Company Just Lost a Quarter of a Billion Dollars
Trump Media, the company behind Truth Social, reported that it lost more than 238 million dollars in just three months.
In those same three months, the entire company brought in about $1.7 million in actual revenue. This is a public company worth billions on paper, and it sells less than two million dollars of anything. Most of the loss came from a big bet on cryptocurrency that tanked when crypto prices fell. Truth Social’s traffic is also dropping sharply.
So how are they trying to make money now? They’ve launched something called Truth API. For up to $100,000 a month, it gives Wall Street trading firms lightning-fast access to posts on Truth Social. And who is the only poster that matters on that platform? The President of the United States, who can move entire markets or the price of oil with a single post.
So for the right price, high-speed traders get a head start on the words of the President. His own company literally confirmed most of the early customers are high-frequency trading firms.
This presidency has been turned into a subscription service. Trump makes policy on that platform, and his private company sells rich people early access to it. Like we’ve talked about before, every previous president put their business in a blind trust to avoid even the appearance of this. But Trump doesn’t even want to hide it. He knows he doesn’t have to. This is the stuff that doesn’t make the headlines as much as Iran, tariffs, and cleaning cart getaways, but it still matters. It’s blatant and unapologetic corruption.
3. Trump Signed an Order Gutting the Childhood Vaccine Schedule
Trump signed an executive order to dramatically scale back the vaccines recommended for American children. It cuts the number of diseases we routinely vaccinate kids against from 18 down to 11. Shots for things like hepatitis B, the flu, and COVID would no longer be recommended for all children. And the order wants to split the measles vaccine, the MMR, into three separate shots spread over many months.
And of course, doctors are alarmed over this. There is no sound medical evidence for any of these decisions. Spreading shots out over more visits just leaves kids unprotected longer, and it assumes every family can even make five separate trips to the doctor. And by the way, this is all happening while measles is at a 35-year high in this country.
Listen to how the President himself explained the science behind it:
He talked about a vaccine dose the size of a soda bottle being poured into a little child. That’s not how any of this works. And when a reporter asked him about his claim that the measles vaccine is, quote, quite lethal, watch this:
That’s the standard now. Somebody said it so it’s true. It was probably RFK. And we all know that if RFK says it, it’s true.
And this is supposed to be an important meeting, right? Soda cans being poured into children is terrible. Well here’s exactly how important the president deemed this meeting to be:
We’ve beaten these diseases. Measles was gone from this country. Real doctors spent an entire century figuring out this schedule to keep children alive, and it works. But Donald Trump showed up and had to mess it up. This will get kids hurt. Some will die of diseases we already defeated. This is a terrifying reality we’re in, where everything from science to authority just gets automatically rejected. It’s dangerous, and the person signing it all off couldn’t even stay awake for it.
4. The White House Stepped In to Keep an Accused Child Abuser on the Ballot
Yesterday was the deadline for Ohio Republican Max Miller to drop out of his congressional race, as he faces allegations of abuse against his ex-wife and their two-year-old daughter. A number of Republicans came out against him as the deadline approached, including his former father-in-law Bernie Moreno. But Miller refused to budge.
And now we know why. Politico reported yesterday that when Ohio Republicans tried to schedule a meeting to find a replacement and pressure Miller out of the race, the White House stepped in and told them to stand down. One said that “they basically told us to back off and let the voters decide.” Even Moreno, the grandfather of that little girl, is now saying he’s done talking about it.
So the party wasn’t helpless. They just fell in line, while the White House actively protected an alleged abuser. And if you listen to the way Trump talks about Miller, it’s easy to understand why:
Remember when Kevin McCarthy bragged on Fox News about how Republicans walk away from their bad candidates? Well, the Democrat he was gloating over, Graham Platner, has been out of his race for a month. Meanwhile, the President won’t even let his party walk away from a man accused of breaking his two year old’s collarbone. So much for family values.
5. Trump's New DOJ Just Handed Him a Way to Hide From Congress
Yesterday, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that executive privilege can cover communications with “anyone the President consults outside the Executive Branch.” Members of the public. State officials. Even people who work for Congress or the courts.
And the timing couldn’t be more convenient. If Democrats win the House in November, their investigators will ask for these exact conversations, the ones between Trump and his donors, his business partners, and the outside allies he actually listens to. Now, the White House can meet every one of those subpoenas with a privilege claim and this memo to back it up.
The DOJ released the opinion two days after the Senate narrowly confirmed Todd Blanche to lead the department. The deciding vote came from Bill Cassidy, who said this on the floor before casting it:
That was Cassidy’s pitch: the President’s former defense lawyer was precisely the man to confront him with hard truths. Just two days later, Blanche’s department decided to shield Trump’s conversations from investigators. Not exactly the pushback Cassidy promised, but this isn’t the first time he’s totally embarrassed himself.
Look, when I sat on the January 6th Committee, Trump and his allies threw privilege claims at everything they could. He fought us all the way to the Supreme Court to keep his White House records secret and lost, eight to one. Steve Bannon used the same excuse to defy our subpoena, before a jury sent him to federal prison. Now that theory is the official position of the Department of Justice, run by the man approved by Republican senators. And it just makes you wonder what exactly they’re trying to hide.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
President Trump nominated Dennis Kirk, a Project 2025 author and Trump loyalist, to run the Interior Department’s inspector general office on Friday. Kirk previously worked inside the intelligence community’s watchdog office while advising Tulsi Gabbard, then the Director of National Intelligence, as that office investigated the Signal chat scandal. He now takes over the watchdog assigned to review the botched Reflecting Pool renovation. Trump insists vandals did the damage, even after his $16 million refurbishment left the water green and the lining cracked. But his own U.S. attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, couldn’t make that case stick, and her review ended up faulting the construction itself.
The Trump administration has awarded a no-bid contract of up to $244 million to represent unaccompanied migrant children to Our Rescue, the anti-trafficking group that inspired the QAnon-linked film Sound of Freedom. The group’s founder, former ICE agent Tim Ballard, resigned in 2023 amid misconduct claims, and women later sued him alleging he sexually assaulted and trafficked them during the group’s sting operations. The contract comes after the administration let a contract with the Acacia Center for Justice expire because it refused new terms demanding confidential data about the children it serves, information those lawyers say is privileged. The network went unpaid starting in November, leaving about 26,000 kids in limbo, and a federal judge just ordered the government to hand over the $65 million it owed. Days earlier, a separate $150 million no-bid deal went to a small Texas law firm founded by a former Trump appointee, with just two immigration lawyers on staff.
