TV News LIES

JD Vance, the Ohio senator and Donald Trump’s running mate, promoted a baseless rightwing talking point in 2022 when he warned of George Soros-funded planes transporting Black women across state lines for abortions.

“I’m sympathetic to the view that like, okay, look here, here’s a situation – let’s say Roe v Wade is overruled,” Vance said in a recently resurfaced podcast interview. “Ohio bans abortion in 2022, or let’s say 2024. And then, you know, every day George Soros sends a 747 to Columbus to load up disproportionately Black women to get them to go have abortions in California. And of course, the left will celebrate this as a victory for diversity – uh, that’s kind of creepy.”

Former President Trump on Friday claimed there will be a major war in the Middle East and potentially a “third world war” if he does not win November’s election.

Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, one day after Netanyahu met at the White House with President Biden and Vice President Harris.

“If we win, it’ll be very simple. It’s all going to work out and very quickly,” Trump told reporters at the start of the meeting. “If we don’t, you’re going to end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a third world war. You are closer to a third world war right now than at any time since the second world war. You’ve never been so close, because we have incompetent people running our country.”

The former president has previously said the world is on the brink of another world war with the fighting in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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FBI Director Christopher Wray kicked a hornet’s nest with remarks this week casting doubt on former President Trump’s claims that he was hit by a bullet in his July 13 assassination attempt.

Speaking before the House Judiciary Committee, Wray said that “with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, that hit his ear.”

n another exchange, Wray told Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) either a bullet or a piece of shrapnel “is what grazed [Trump’s] ear.”

The Nebraska Supreme Court denied a challenge to the state’s abortion restrictions and gender-affirming care in a ruling released Friday morning.

This decision by the court comes over a year after the Nebraska Legislature passed a piece of legislation that rolled out a 12-week abortion ban and created restrictions on gender-affirming care for transgender minors in the state.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), challenged the law, arguing that it contains two subjects and violates the state Constitution’s single-subject rule. The Nebraska Constitution’s single-subject rule states that laws passed by the legislature must stick to one topic.

The U.S. Defense Department admitted it spread propaganda in the Philippines aimed at disparaging China’s Sinovac vaccine during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a June 25 document cited by a former top government official earlier this month.

The U.S. response to the Philippines was recounted in a podcast by Harry Roque, who served as spokesman for former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Reuters subsequently reviewed the document, which hasn’t been publicly released by either government. The news agency was able to verify its contents with a source familiar with the U.S. response.

“It is true that the (Department of Defense) did message Philippines audiences questioning the safety and efficacy of Sinovac,” according to the document, which references information sent from the U.S. Defense Department to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs and Department of National Defense. According to the document, the Pentagon also conceded it had “made some missteps in our COVID-related messaging” but assured the Philippines that the military “has vastly improved oversight and accountability of information operations” since 2022.

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The bodies of five Israeli hostages retrieved this week from the Gaza Strip had been held in a tunnel deep underground, Israel's military said on Thursday.

The retrieval operation was carried out using intelligence gathered and analyzed in recent weeks, said military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari. It took place "in the heart" of the city of Khan Younis, where Israeli forces returned to operate this week, he said.

The hostages' bodies were hidden "in a branched tunnel about 200 meters long and about 20 meters underground", Hagari said.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces recovered the bodies of five hostages killed in Hamas' Oct. 7 attack and then taken to Gaza where they were held since. They included a kindergarten teacher taken from her kibbutz in southern Israel and four reserve and conscript soldiers who had tried to repel the Hamas attack.

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• The Pentagon has found $2bn worth of additional errors in its calculations for ammunition, missiles and other equipment sent to Ukraine, increasing the improperly valued material to a total of $8.2bn, a US government report revealed on Thursday. In 2023, the Pentagon said staff used “replacement value” instead of “depreciated value” to tabulate the billions in materials sent to Ukraine. The $6.2bn error created a path for billions more to be sent to Kyiv.

• Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba has called on Hong Kong to prevent Russia and Russian businesses from using the region to circumvent sanctions. Kuleba met with Hong Kong leader John Lee as part of a visit to China. He called on the administration to prevent Russia from using Hong Kong to circumvent restrictions resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to a statement from the Ukrainian foreign affairs ministry. “These restrictive measures are necessary to weaken Russia’s potential to wage war and kill people in Ukraine,” the statement said.

A judge dismissed a bankruptcy case filed by the Gateway Pundit on Wednesday, saying the far-right outlet did not file the case in good faith.

The ruling from US bankruptcy judge Mindy Mora in the southern district of Florida comes as the outlet faces significant defamation cases from two Georgia election workers and a former Dominion Voting Systems employee who say the site spread false claims about them after the 2020 election.

Calling the site’s assets “eye-catching”, Mora noted that they were 22 times the size of its liabilities. The company reported nearly $3.1m in revenue in 2023.

“TGP remains both balance sheet and cash flow solvent. There is no present financial distress, no looming foreclosure sale, no prospect of a market crash. There is only the State Court Litigation in which TGP must defend itself. That’s not a basis for bankruptcy relief; it’s the justice system in operation,” Mora wrote.

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