Good morning. Happy Saturday! I’m John Byrne. Before we get going, tap that ❤️ and restack this newsletter. The country had a national emergency on Friday and the president didn’t show up for it. Every share helps get the word out.
The FAA grounded every departure in the country for more than four hours, and Trump spent it posting about Hollywood. The FBI arrested the son of former CIA director John Brennan, just as Trump’s Justice Department closes in on his father. A psychologist says Trump’s Veterans Day speech may explain why the president keeps dodging the cameras. And Mary Peltola widened her lead in Alaska and is on track to hand Democrats a 56th Senate seat.
Before the news, an urgent ask. We’re halfway through November and well short of our paid subscriber goal for the month. I wouldn’t bring it up if it didn’t matter. Facebook has all but shut off our reach, and Elon Musk’s X is following suit. Your inbox is the one place they can’t get between us, and paid subscribers are the only reason this newsletter lands there every morning. We’re also raising money to take the White House to court and put our reporter back in the briefing room. A paid subscription costs about 22 cents a day, less than a single cup of coffee each week.
America Is Stranded. Trump Is Stuck on His Phone
On Friday, the FAA halted departures nationwide for more than four hours.
And where was President Donald Trump? Logging onto Truth Social to talk about the movies.
“I am working with Senator Tim Scott and, believe it or not, Senator Adam Schiff,” Trump wrote, touting a bill to bring film and television production back to America.
His second post of the crisis was about the Coast Guard.
Neither mentioned the grounded planes. He made no statement, address or appearance.
“Trump posts, not about the ground stop, but about reviving the entertainment industry,” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins noted.
Author Amy Siskind rolled her proverbial eyes. “Such leadership,” she wrote.
“There is mass outrage right now at Donald Trump — why? Because he’s nowhere to be found,” independent journalist Aaron Parnas said.
The only word from Trump came secondhand. Fox News’ Peter Doocy said the president told him by phone that the outage may have resulted from “old broken stuff.”
The presidential response to the worst aviation shutdown since 2023 was a phone call to a friendly reporter and a shrug.
Asked why Americans hadn’t heard from the president, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he doesn’t “run the president’s comms.”
Duffy blamed “an incredibly old air traffic control system,” saying outdated switches and routers were overloaded.
But the people who run the system aren’t convinced. Washington Examiner reporter Anna Giaritelli told CNN she’d spoken with 60 air traffic controllers and “none of them are buying what he said.”
Changes like that, she said, happen midweek in the middle of the night. Not on a Friday afternoon.
And “old broken stuff” is a strange excuse from a man who’s been running the place for nearly two years. The FAA’s budget hit $38.5 billion in fiscal 2025, up 53.5 percent in a year, including $12.5 billion for air traffic control upgrades from Trump’s own One Big Beautiful Bill.
Even Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t buying it. The former Georgia congresswoman said the administration is lying about the cause.
“Of course it was a cyber attack,” she posted.
MTG offered no evidence; Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin says officials have seen “zero evidence” of a cyberattack.
But Greene also noticed what everyone else did. While Americans sat stranded in airports and on planes, she wrote, the man who says only he can fix things chose to post about saving Hollywood.
“The utter incompetence of the Trump regime is on full display tonight,” progressive influencer Harry Sisson wrote.
A president who wants credit for everything was unavailable for the one thing that was actually his job.
FBI Arrests Son of Trump Critic John Brennan as DOJ Pursues His Father
Federal agents arrested the son of former CIA director John Brennan on Friday, The Washington Post reports.
Kyle Brennan, 40, of Warrenton, Virginia, is charged with one count of transportation of child pornography. It carries a five-year minimum sentence if he’s convicted.
He’s in federal custody ahead of a detention hearing Wednesday. His attorney didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The charge is serious, and the case reportedly didn’t begin with Trump’s Justice Department. Local police and the county sheriff started investigating in 2024, after a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They seized his phone that July.
Then, for more than two years, no charges were filed.
Last month, the sheriff’s office handed the case to the FBI. A spokesman said local authorities considered charges of their own but “felt it was better to bring in the FBI.”
Federal agents got a warrant for the phone and allegedly recovered more than 80 additional explicit images of underage girls.
Here’s what else was happening around then. The Justice Department was subpoenaing John Brennan to testify before a Florida grand jury, part of a sprawling inquiry targeting Trump’s perceived political foes. Prosecutors haven’t filed charges in that probe.
Trump has repeatedly demanded that the elder Brennan be charged, claiming he lied to Congress about the intelligence assessment that Russia tried to help Trump in 2016. Brennan denies any wrongdoing.
Nothing in the court filings connects the two cases. If the evidence holds up, Kyle Brennan should answer for it.
But a Justice Department that hunts the president’s enemies on command doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt on timing.
You won’t get the backstory from network TV. Raw America gives you the truth, but we depend on readers to do it. Upgrade your subscription today, and help us meet our November goals.
Psychologist Calls Trump’s Veterans Day Speech “The Strangest” He’s Given in a While
The president has been hard to find since the midterms. One psychologist thinks Wednesday’s Veterans Day speech shows why.
Dr. John Paul Garrison is a clinical and forensic psychologist who specializes in body language and breaks down the behavior of public figures on YouTube. In a video posted Friday evening, he said the speech exposed more signs of Trump’s “apparent neurological decline.”
The trouble started within seconds, Garrison said.
“Anytime he deviates from the teleprompter, he struggles tremendously.”
Describing one soldier’s service, Trump referred to the “jungles” of Afghanistan. Afghanistan has mountains and deserts. It doesn’t have jungles.
“He’s just saying whatever random fragments of words come to his mind,” Garrison said.
Trump called the Taliban an “evil group.” He offered the phrase “terrorists all.” Then he tried to say “eardrums” and couldn’t get the word out.
Garrison said that wasn’t an ordinary stumble. It looked to him like “some sort of event” was preventing Trump from speaking clearly.
He’s previously suggested the 80-year-old president’s decline may have been accelerated by a stroke.
Garrison hasn’t examined Trump, and a YouTube video isn’t a medical chart. But he’s noticed the same thing the stranded travelers did.
As far as he can tell, Trump has made fewer press appearances since the election, with a preference for “more pre-recorded interviews.”
One more detail caught his eye. The trademark orange makeup was missing, a change Garrison called “highly unusual.”
A president who can’t get through a Veterans Day speech has every reason to stay off camera. On Friday, with every plane in America on the ground, he did.
Mary Peltola Pulls Away in Alaska, With a 56th Senate Seat in Sight
The last uncalled Senate race in America is slipping away from Republicans.
Mary Peltola widened her lead over Sen. Dan S. Sullivan in Friday night’s count, The New York Times reports. She has 49.8 percent of the vote and leads by nearly four points.
A Times analysis says she’s on track to win.
If nobody clears 50 percent, the race goes to ranked-choice tabulation next week. Two minor candidates, Republican Gerald Heikes and the unaffiliated Dan J. Sullivan, have about 4 percent between them.
Democrats recruited both men onto the ballot to try to dilute the senator’s vote. (It seems to have worked: among Dan J.’s voters, more ranked Peltola second than the senator.)
“Alaskans have spoken,” Peltola’s campaign said late Friday.
Peltola would be the first Alaska Native elected to the Senate, and the first Democrat Alaska has sent there in nearly two decades.
Democrats already hold 55 seats. Peltola would make it 56, more than they’ve won in any election since 2008.
Last month, Trump’s Justice Department sued to block the results if Sullivan lost. Alaskans appear to have answered that, too.
Thanks for Powering Independent News
If this morning’s edition told you something the billionaire-owned outlets would rather keep quiet, that’s exactly the point. A president who went missing while every plane in America sat on the ground. A Justice Department whose timing keeps lining up with Trump’s enemies list. A Veterans Day speech that raised fresh questions about his health. And a Senate seat in Alaska nobody thought was winnable. November is half over and we’re well behind our paid subscriber goal, at the exact moment Facebook has essentially cut off our distribution and Elon Musk’s X is doing the same. The election is over, but the story isn’t. If 3 percent of the people reading this went paid, we could keep every reporter we have on it through the end of the year and beyond. Raw America has no owner, no billionaire and no network. Your inbox is the one place they can’t stop this reporting from reaching you.
One more thing before you go: hit the ❤️ and restack this edition. It’s what pushes these stories past the algorithm and into the feeds of people who’d never otherwise see them. Republicans lost. The president’s answer is to hide. We’re not going anywhere.
I’m John Byrne. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you tomorrow.
I wouldn’t doubt that this whole thing is a anscam, or a cyber attack that they never will own up to. This is the worse administration I have ever be lived through. I’m 70. I’ve lived through a lot. We need to vote people in that will lead this country in a way we can trust. Let’s see if Trump will let the blue owned congress and senate regain our trust in other countries and our own citizens. 🙏🙏❤️❤️
Of course he went missing. God forbiddy acts like a president. Maybe he was off trying to fix Hollywood; not that I know what's wrong with it. But apparently he doesn't like it right now. I know maybe if Amazon or Paramount would make a multi-billion dollar movie on him he might like them better. They'll suck at the box office but hey he'll be happy!
And then we have our social media star the department of transportation cabinet head but apparently knows nothing about these AI patches that his son-in-law's company has something to do with? What a mess this countries turned into with these idiot social media influencers talk show hosts in the idiot that used to host The apprentice in power.