TV News LIES

A JetBlue flight from the small Caribbean nation of Curaçao halted its ascent to avoid colliding with a US air force refueling tanker on Friday, and the pilot blamed the military plane for crossing his path.

“We almost had a midair collision up here,” the JetBlue pilot said, according to a recording of his conversation with air traffic control. “They passed directly in our flight path ... They don’t have their transponder turned on, it’s outrageous.”

The incident involved JetBlue flight 1112 from Curaçao, which is just off the coast of Venezuela, en route to New York City’s JFK airport. It comes as the US military has launched deadly airstrikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean and is also seeking to increase pressure on Venezuela’s government.

“We just had traffic pass directly in front of us within 5 miles of us – maybe 2 or 3 miles – but it was an air-to air-refueler from the United States air force and he was at our altitude,” the pilot said. “We had to stop our climb.” The pilot said the US air force plane then headed into Venezuelan airspace.

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U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed Saturday that two U.S. service members and one civilian were killed, and several others injured, after a gunman tied to ISIS launched an ambush.

“On Dec. 13, two U.S. service members and one U.S. civilian were killed, and three service members were injured, as a result of an ambush by a lone ISIS gunman in Syria,” CENTCOM wrote on social platform X. “The gunman was engaged and killed.”

“As a matter of respect for the families and in accordance with Department of War policy, the identities of the service members will be withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified,” the statement continues. “Updates will be provided as they become available.”

Troops were conducting a joint field patrol when they came under fire alongside Syrian security forces near the city of Palmyra, SANA, the government backed news agency, explained in a post on X.

“The savage who perpetrated this attack was killed by partner forces,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in a statement.

“Let it be known, if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you,” he added.

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The US’s sharpening ideological polarization is affecting a wider and much more junior cross-section of the country’s armed forces and challenging the military’s ability to remain above the political fray, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff has said.

Retired Adm Mike Mullen, who was the US’s top military commander under presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama, called the political environment facing currently serving officers “challenging” and “the most dangerous time” in his memory.

Speaking at a security forum organized by the Aspen Institute thinktank on Wednesday, he warned that it had become much harder to maintain the armed forces’ traditional apolitical stance than when he served as joint chiefs chair between 2007 and 2011.

“I didn’t really understand how hard [the civilian-military relationship] was until I was in the middle of it,” he said. “I talked about the military being apolitical a lot in those four year and it’s only gotten harder. We have gotten so much more divided.”

Mullen’s comments follow accusations that the Trump administration has consciously sought to politicize the military by purging senior commanders and by deploying national guard units on unaccustomed law and order missions in American cities, including Washington DC, to counteract supposed “crime waves”.

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The head of U.S. Northern Command on Thursday contradicted President Trump’s assertion that an “invasion [from] within” or an “enemy within” justifies the commander in chief’s National Guard deployments to American cities.

“I do not have any indications of an enemy within,” Gen. Gregory Guillot told Senate Armed Services Committee lawmakers when asked about Trump’s comments. “We maintain readiness to execute the orders to defend the homeland in many ways, but I have not been tasked in that way.”

Trump in late September declared that “an enemy within” was reason to deploy guard members in the United States. He also said the military “should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” referring to Democratic-run cities. 

“This is going to be a big thing for the people in this room, because it’s the enemy from within, and we have to handle it before it gets out of control,” Trump told generals gathered Sept. 30 at Quantico, Va. “It won’t get out of control once you’re involved at all.”

Guillot’s remarks, at the top of a hearing on Trump’s guard deployment to several U.S. cities, underlined a point of contention between Republican and Democratic lawmakers, with the former arguing that the guard was needed to fight lawlessness as local officials had not done their job in keeping the public safe. Democrats, however, said the deployments were an abuse of military power that violated state rights.

“In recent years, violent crime, rioting, drug trafficking, and heinous gang activity have steadily escalated,” said the panel’s chair, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).

He called the deployments to several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; Portland; and Memphis “not only appropriate, but essential.”

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The U.S. Navy has submitted its report on the potential punishments for Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) over a recent video where he and other Democratic lawmakers told U.S. service members to disobey “illegal orders.”

The report, which was ordered by the Defense Department and referred to the Navy, was sent to the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel, “where they are providing a legal review and input,” a department official told The Hill on Thursday.

“It defies belief that with all of the threats facing our country, Pete Hegseth initiated this ridiculous process to try to intimidate Senator Kelly for saying something Pete Hegseth himself has said repeatedly,” Kelly’s spokesperson told The Hill in a statement on Thursday.

Kelly was never contacted or notified about the report and “it sure as hell won’t stop him from doing his job representing Arizona, whether that is voting today to lower health care costs or making sure our service members have what they need to do a very difficult job,” the spokesperson said, adding that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump “could do themselves a big favor and learn about our country’s history, the Constitution and the rule of law.”

The Arizona senator retired from the Navy with the rank of captain and has deployed twice to the Persian Gulf. He has also worked as an instructor at the Naval Pilot School.

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Democratic lawmakers and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) expressed concern Wednesday that the seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker by the U.S. could further increase tensions between the two countries, while other GOP senators said they were awaiting more information.

“It sounds a lot like the beginning of a war,” Paul told NewsNation’s Hannah Brandt on Capitol Hill.

The libertarian senator, a frequent critic of the Trump administration’s posture towards Venezuela, added that it is not “the job of the American government to go looking for monsters around the world, looking for adversaries and beginning wars.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Conn.) echoed Paul’s worries, telling NewsNation that while he does not know the details of the incident, he is “gravely concerned that [Trump] is sleepwalking us into a war with Venezuela.”

Coons, the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, noted that he has not received a detailed briefing on the administration’s plans for a potential war with Venezuela, the path forward or how to manage risks.

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