TV News LIES

The U.S. has seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz after firing on its engine room, President Trump said in a post on social media.

Trump wrote that the U.S. Navy Guided Missile Destroyer USS Spruance intercepted the Touska in the Gulf of Oman.

The U.S. Navy "gave them fair warning to stop. The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom," Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

He said U.S. Marines have custody of the vessel and that it is "under U.S. Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity."

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US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth read a fake Bible verse from Quentin Tarantino's 1994 cult classic film Pulp Fiction on Wednesday, during a Christian prayer and worship service at the Pentagon. 

Addressing a large Christian congregation at the Pentagon's headquarters, Hegseth, who is facing multiple impeachment charges tabled by House Democrats, claimed the prayer was passed to him by a lead mission planner involved in the rescue operation for two US Air Force crew members who were recently shot down in Iran.

Before reciting the prayer, Hegseth said it was titled "CSAR 2517", alluding to the Biblical verse Ezekiel 25:17.

"The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men," Hegseth said.

"Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.

"And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee, and amen," he added.

The first few lines of the prayer were written by Tarantino and Roger Avary for the hit film Pulp Fiction. The second part of the verse is taken from the Bible, where the speaker condemns the Philistines and the Cherethims, who were alleged to be enemies of the Israelites.

In Pulp Fiction, the character played by Samuel L Jackson falsely claimed the entirety of the verse was Ezekiel 25:17. He utters the verse before executing a terrified young criminal.

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U.S. military survivors of an Iranian drone attack in Kuwait have accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of overstating how protected their unit was.

On March 1, six soldiers were killed and more than 20 wounded when an Iranian drone strike hit an operations center in the heart of a civilian port in Kuwait, miles away from the main Army base.

The Iranian attack was the deadliest suffered by the U.S. since the war began.

But one of the injured soldiers told CBS News that Hegseth's suggestion that the drone slipped through the defenses of a fortified position — an apparent "squirter" — was false.

They told the broadcaster the unit "was unprepared to provide any defense for itself. It was not a fortified position."

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The Pentagon has denied threatening the Vatican during a late January meeting with the Holy See’s then-envoy to the U.S., as Pope Leo XIV has warned against the growing use of military action in recent months.

The Pentagon’s policy office head, Elbridge Colby, met with Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s former diplomat to the U.S., on Jan. 22 at the Pentagon, during which he warned the then-envoy that the U.S. military has the “power to do whatever it wants — and that the Church had better take its side,” The Free Press reported Monday.

The outlet, citing unnamed sources, reported that a U.S. official raised the threat of the “Avignon Papacy,” referencing the period from 1309 to 1376, when France’s King Philip IV captured the Pope and subsequent popes resided in Avignon instead of Rome.

The Pentagon slammed the report as “grossly false and distorted,” saying that Colby had a “substantive, respectful and professional” meeting with Pierre and his team.

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The Pentagon is obstructing reporters and defying an earlier court order that required it to restore access to credentialed journalists covering the Department of Defense (DOD), a U.S. judge in Washington ruled Thursday — a blow to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempts to limit media access.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said Defense officials must comply with his order from March 20 that sided with The New York Times and found the Pentagon’s press policy from last year to be unconstitutional, ordering Pentagon officials to reinstate the press credentials of Times reporters and all others who cover the U.S. military from the building.

The Pentagon said it plans to appeal Thursday’s ruling.

“The Department disagrees with the Court’s ruling and intends to appeal,” Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said to The Hill’s partner NewsNation. “The Department has at all times complied with the Court’s Order — it reinstated the PFACs of every journalist identified in the Order and issued a materially revised policy that addressed every concern the Court identified in its March 20 Opinion. The Department remains committed to press access at the Pentagon while fulfilling its statutory obligation to ensure the safe and secure operation of the Pentagon Reservation.”

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Pete Hegseth and the Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has reached new heights with the Defense secretary’s purge of senior Army officials last week.

Tensions flared when Driscoll was picked last year by President Trump to negotiate with Ukrainian officials in hopes of ending the Russia-Ukraine war, according to two former U.S.  officials familiar with the dynamics. A current U.S. official said Hegseth’s “paranoia” has been heightened in recent weeks as the president has fired two Cabinet officials.

“He’s just really uncomfortable with anyone who could potentially be outshining him,” the current official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal dynamics, told The Hill about Hegseth.

The Pentagon pushed back, saying The Hill’s “sources are serving up fake news to anyone gullible enough to write about it.”

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