Good evening. I’m British Chris.
Trump says Iran can have some ballistic missiles, as a treat. The Pentagon is admitting to using Elon Musk’s error-prone Grok AI to fire 2,000 missiles at Iran. Republicans got thrown into chaos after Trump torpedoed his own nominee, and a new poll finds a majority of Americans now believe Trump is a “dangerous dictator” who needs to be reined in before he destroys American democracy.
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Trump Says Iran Deserves to Have ‘Some’ Ballistic Missiles
After over 100 days of war in Iran with thousands of missiles fired, after a girls’ school in Minab got bombed killing 175 people — most of whom were children — Donald Trump stood up at the G7 summit in France this week and said Iran can keep “some” of its ballistic missiles. Sure! Why not?
That’s the Trump doctrine. You’ve got to have some.
Keep in mind, Trump’s own Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been claiming for months that Iran’s ballistic missile production capacity has been “functionally defeated” and that every Iranian company that builds missile components “has been destroyed.” But U.S. intelligence agencies disagree. They assessed in May that Iran held onto roughly 70 percent of its mobile missile launchers and about 70 percent of its pre-war missile stockpile.
Trump said as much at the G7, saying the U.S. “knocked out probably 84 to 85 percent” of Iran’s missiles, and that the rest can’t be retrieved. That math doesn’t quite add up to what Hegseth was saying, but consistency has never been this administration’s strong suit.
That’s where we are. The U.S. is negotiating a peace deal that leaves Iran with a significant chunk of the very missile arsenal this war was supposedly fought to eliminate. And Trump’s response when pressed on it? “Missiles aren’t the problem.” Tell that to the schoolgirls in Minab.
Trump’s Pentagon Admits to Using Elon Musk’s Faulty AI to Conduct Strikes
The Department of Defense has now admitted in a sworn court statement that it used Elon Musk’s Grok AI to fire 2,000 missiles at 2,000 separate targets during the Iran war.
The DOD’s chief digital and artificial intelligence officer, Cameron Stanley, made that admission while arguing that Grok’s continued existence is “a matter of paramount national security.” The statement came as part of the federal government’s effort to dismiss a lawsuit against xAI, which is Musk’s AI company. The NAACP is suing in Mississippi, alleging it ran at least 57 gas-burning turbines to power its Colossus 2 data center without the permits or pollution controls required under the Clean Air Act.
You heard right: In order to protect a trillionaire from being held accountable, the Pentagon revealed it’s been using his AI chatbot to make decisions that kill people.
Grok isn’t a battle-tested military system, but a chatbot that has gone on antisemitic rants, pushed debunked claims of white genocide in South Africa and even generated explicit images of women and children. Other government agencies have flagged it as a security risk.
But the Pentagon gave xAI a $200 million federal contract anyway, gave Grok access to its systems, and even apparently handed it a role in firing 2,000 missiles.
This is the first time the Trump regime has officially confirmed using Musk’s AI in the Iran war. And it follows earlier reporting that AI targeting may have played a role in the bombing of that girls’ school in Minab. Elon Musk’s deeply flawed, scandal-ridden chatbot being used to bomb a country is the kind of thing that would merit wall-to-wall coverage and congressional hearings in any other administration.
Trump ‘Throwing a Grenade’ Into Congress Over His Latest Appointment
Republicans on Capitol Hill just got a brutal reminder of what it’s like to try to work with this president.
Earlier this month, Trump nominated U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to serve as director of national intelligence, and the Senate Intelligence Committee had him scheduled for a confirmation hearing Wednesday morning. Clayton was reportedly popular on both sides of the aisle, in part because lawmakers were anxious about Trump loyalist Bill Pulte, who is acting DNI, leading America’s intelligence agencies.
Then, early Wednesday morning, Trump posted to Truth Social that Clayton shouldn’t show up for his hearing. Before Clayton was set to testify, Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas had to announce the whole thing was postponed.
This is because Trump wants to use the reauthorization of FISA, which allows for foreign intelligence gathering, as a bargaining chip to force through his draconian voter ID bill. By the way, that bill doesn’t even have enough Republican support in the Senate to even get a majority vote, let alone the 60 votes needed for passage.
CNN reporter Lauren Fox observed that while Republicans felt they’d been working in good faith, Trump “threw a grenade” into the whole process at two in the morning.
So now, Republicans are back to square one on a nomination they thought was in the bag. And now the FISA reauthorization timeline is also in danger of failing. All because Trump decided to blow it up over a voter ID demand that never had the votes in the first place.
A Majority of Americans Now Believe Trump Is a ‘Dangerous Dictator’
A majority of Americans now believe Donald Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy. That’s according to a new poll by the Public Religion Research Institute poll of more than 5,400 adults across all 50 states.
59 percent of respondents agreed with that framing, up from 52 percent in March.
The rest of the poll is also pretty damning for Trump. A full two-thirds of Americans, 66 percent, disapprove of how Trump has handled the Iran war. 58 percent hold unfavorable views of his handling of immigration. That’s down across every party including Republicans, whose support on that issue dropped from 90 percent in March to 82 percent last month. Among independents, that figure fell from 48 percent to 31 percent.
This poll isn’t an outlier. An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll found 61 percent of Americans thought it was a mistake for Trump to start the war in Iran. And a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found only 34 percent approved of the attack on Iran.
The White House’s response is predictable, with a spokesperson celebrating the 2024 election and saying no president in history had accomplished more for the American people. A vast bulk of the American people see it differently.
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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris. We’ll see you tomorrow.
STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED:
Trump Settles $100M Lawsuit Against His Niece. President Donald Trump and attorneys representing his niece, Mary Trump, announced this week they reached a settlement in a $100 million lawsuit Trump filed against his niece in 2021. President Trump had accused Mary Trump of conspiring in an “insidious plot” with the New York Times to dig into his tax and financial records for a 2018 story. The settlement terms have not been disclosed, but the suit will be dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning the president can’t re-file the suit again in the future.
Trump Says He’ll Run Iran Deal by Congress for Final Approval. After details of his agreement to end the Iran war were released, President Trump said Wednesday he would ask Congress to hold a vote on whether to approve it. Under current federal law, the deal would have to come before Congress within five days of Trump signing it, whereupon Congress would have 30 days to vote on whether to approve it. The optics of approving a deal widely seen as a win for Tehran and a loss for Washington may be difficult for some Republicans in tough reelection races to stomach.
MAGA Enraged at Details of Trump’s Deal with Iran. Some MAGA Republicans aren’t so eager accept President Trump’s argument that his newly announced deal to end the Iran war is a victory for the United States. The deal allows for Iran to have access to a $300 billion “redevelopment” fund in exchange for reopening the Strait of Hormuz and a promise to not develop nuclear weapons. Iran, however, is not bound to any terms over its enriched uranium stockpile or its ballistic missile arsenal, and will also have all U.S. sanctions lifted. Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen called the agreement a “disaster,” and likened it to inking the Marshall Plan “while the Nazis were still in power.”
Trump’s Labor Secretary Threatens to Withhold Unemployment Funding to All 50 States. The Trump administration is now flirting with the idea of denying federal unemployment compensation funds from flowing to all 50 U.S. states as part of its campaign against alleged “fraud” in multiple states. Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said he would use “every available tool” to combat “waste, fraud and abuse” in state unemployment programs, though the administration has yet to back up any of its claims of fraud with any direct evidence.
DOJ Inspector General Nominee Refuses to Call January 6 an ‘Attack.’ Don Berthiaume — who is President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General — declined to refer to the January 6, 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol an “attack” during his Wednesday confirmation hearing. Berthiaume would only say there was “protest activity” and that “people went to the Capitol building” where there was “violence.” If confirmed, Berthiaume would lead the DOJ’s internal watchdog office, which is meant to be fully independent of the DOJ.
