Exposed: Putin Considered Staging Fake Assassination Attempt, Citing Trump

Ruby-red Idaho bucks Trump, Trump celebrates Mueller's death and Iran thinks its winning the war

Good evening. It’s John, and welcome to Raw America.

Tonight: Iran says it’s winning and wants to charge the world rent for its own oil. Russia proposed faking an assassination attempt on Viktor Orban to swing Hungary’s election. Trump is threatening to make ICE work as TSA. And Donald Trump celebrated the death of Robert Mueller. On a Saturday. On social media. Out loud.

Raw America is fighting for you, and if that matters to you, we need your support. The billionaires bought CBS. They gutted the Washington Post. They’re coming for CNN. We’re one of the last outlets covering this war honestly, keeping the Epstein story alive. We can only do it because readers like you fund it. Not a billionaire. Not an advertiser. You. If that matters to you — and I believe it does or you wouldn’t be here — please become a paid subscriber today.

Iran Thinks It’s Winning, and It Might Be Right

Let’s start with the war, because the Wall Street Journal published something today that should be front page news everywhere.

Three weeks into the conflict, Iran is not looking for an exit. It’s looking to dictate terms. Tehran is signaling, loudly, that it believes it is winning, and that it intends to use this war to cement its dominance over Middle Eastern energy for decades.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is calling this conflict another Vietnam for the United States. Iranian parliamentary officials say talks with Washington are off the table entirely while Tehran, in their words, “focuses on punishing the aggressors.” Iran is now planning to formally enshrine a “new status” for the Strait of Hormuz, turning the world’s most critical shipping lane into an Iranian toll booth. Charging every ship for the privilege of moving through international waters.

Here’s the brutal reality. Iran has retained the ability to fire dozens of ballistic missiles and many more drones every day. The rate of fire has actually increased in the past week. Iranian strikes inflicted serious damage on energy infrastructure in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE this week, while Iran’s own oil exports kept booming. It’s causing far more economic damage to the countries surrounding it than it is absorbing itself.

The question of whether this ends well for Iran is open. The United States has significant military advantages it hasn’t fully deployed. But what isn’t open is whether this war is going the way Trump promised. It isn’t. And every day the strait stays closed, Iran’s leverage grows.

Russia Wanted to Stage a Fake Assassination of Viktor Orban

Now for a story that sounds like a spy novel but is, apparently, just a Tuesday for the Kremlin.

The Washington Post obtained and authenticated an internal Russian intelligence document from last month showing that officers in Russia’s foreign intelligence service proposed staging a fake assassination attempt on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to swing the country’s upcoming election.

Their reasoning was straightforward and rather chilling. Orban is trailing in polls for the first time in his career, beaten by a conservative anti-corruption challenger. The Russian operatives wrote that a staged attack would shift the election “out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one” — where the key themes would become national security and stability rather than Hungary’s worsening economy.

They called it “the Gamechanger.” They cited, as a model, the July 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump, which resulted in iconic photos, a poll bump, and an outpouring of sympathy.

No attack has taken place. But the document was authenticated by a European intelligence service, and it tells you everything you need to know about what Russia considers a reasonable election strategy.

You heard it here first. It makes you wonder…

Trump Threatens to Make ICE Your TSA

Donald Trump, currently enjoying a taxpayer-funded weekend at his Florida golf resort, has announced his solution to the chaos gripping America’s airports: immigration agents. For over five weeks now, a partial government shutdown has left nearly 50,000 TSA employees working without pay, and the predictable result — security wait times exceeding three hours at major airports including Atlanta, Houston, and Philadelphia — has apparently caught the President completely off guard. His response, naturally, was to post on Truth Social.

In a series of Saturday afternoon dispatches from what one can only imagine was a very comfortable golf cart, Trump threatened to deploy ICE agents to airports as soon as Monday. He told them to “GET READY,” adding, “NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!” One is left to wonder whether the President understands that the games, as it were, began when his own government stopped paying the people currently doing the job. But nuance has never been the strong suit of a man who governs primarily through social media posts written in capital letters.

There is, however, a small wrinkle in this master plan. It’s unclear what function ICE agents would actually perform, given that they’re not trained in airport security screening. What they are trained in, Trump helpfully clarified, is arresting people — and he made sure to specify which people, directing ICE to place heavy emphasis on the arrest of Somali immigrants. So to summarize: the airports are in chaos because the government won’t pay its security workers, and the proposed fix is to replace those security workers with immigration enforcement officers whose primary assignment would be hunting Somali passengers. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Meanwhile, in a parallel act of billionaire theatre, Elon Musk offered to personally cover the salaries of TSA workers — a touching gesture from the world’s richest man, who one might note has spent the past several months enthusiastically helping dismantle the very government apparatus that employs them. The Senate remains in session this weekend, but whether further talks or a vote will actually take place remains deeply uncertain.

Which is, of course, Washington’s way of saying: don’t book a flight on Monday.

Ruby Red Idaho Just Said No to Trump

Here’s a story that deserves far more attention than it’s getting. Idaho, a state Trump won by one of the largest margins in the country in 2024, is refusing to hand over its voter data to the Trump DOJ.

Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane told the DOJ that he sees no legal reason to comply with its demand for sensitive voter information, including partial Social Security numbers and driver’s license data. He’s already provided the public-facing version of the rolls. The private data, he says, is protected under state law. And given the Trump administration’s track record with sensitive data, he can’t be sure the DOJ would keep it safe.

Three federal judges have thrown out similar DOJ lawsuits against other states, ruling that the administration has no legal basis for the demand. The Justice Department is appealing all three. It has threatened to sue Idaho too.

And what has the Idaho public made of McGrane’s stand? Of the more than 130 constituents who contacted his office, just one wanted him to comply. The rest were supportive. Just over half were Republicans and unaffiliated voters. McGrane drew no challenger in the Republican primary.

In the state that gave Trump one of his biggest margins, voters are telling Washington to keep its hands off their private information.

Trump Celebrated Robert Mueller’s Death. In Capital Letters.

And finally, because it would not be a Raw America broadcast without Donald Trump behaving in a way that would end any other political career, here we are.

Robert Mueller, the former FBI director who led the Russia investigation and a decorated Marine veteran, died Friday at the age of 81.

Trump’s response, posted to Truth Social on Saturday: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”

That’s the President of the United States. Celebrating the death of a man who served his country for decades. In capital letters. On a Saturday.

There are no innocent people in the Mueller investigation who were hurt. There are, however, several of Trump’s associates who were convicted of federal crimes. But that is presumably not what the president had in mind.

What You Can Do About It

The free press is dying. Not slowly. Right now. Billionaires are buying the newsrooms, installing their editors, and telling reporters what they can and cannot say. The people who are supposed to hold power accountable have been purchased.

Raw America refuses to be bought. We don’t have a billionaire backer. We don’t have advertisers. We have readers who believe that someone has to tell the truth even when the people in power are doing everything they can to stop it. That someone is us. But only as long as you’re with us.

This war is killing Americans. The Epstein cover-up is ongoing. The press that should be screaming about both is running cover instead. We’re not. We are showing up, asking the hard questions, and publishing the answers whether the powerful like it or not. That is what your subscription pays for.

If any of this matters to you, today is the day. Not someday. Become a paid subscriber right now.

We’re not backing down. Thanks for reading.

—John Byrne

Founder, Raw America and Raw Story

P.S. If you can’t afford to subscribe, please share this message to your family and friends. We salute you!