Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
A Republican senator admits he still has no idea about what’s going on with Mitch McConnell, and says his missing colleague’s absence is actively hurting Trump’s legislative agenda. The president’s most recent late-night eruption about leakers confirmed a report that he confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the weapons shortage from the Iran war. Trump’s lawyers have filed an eleventh-hour “emergency” motion to block a court order forcing him to reveal years of financial records in his lawsuit against the BBC. And Senate Republicans are now turning their sights on each other, with their own majority leader declaring a “train wreck” as they fight over various bills.
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GOP Senator Says Mitch McConnell’s Ongoing Absence Hurting Trump’s Agenda
Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama was recently asked whether he’s surprised there’s still no video of Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, nearly two months after the 84-year-old was hospitalized from an apparent fall and cardiac arrest back in June.
Tuberville told journalist Nick Ballasy that even though McConnell lives next door to him, he still has no idea what’s happening with his colleague, saying “I don’t know anything” as he got into an elevator. A sitting U.S. senator is admitting he’s just as clueless as the rest of us about the condition of one of the most powerful men in Congress.
But the Alabama Republican also let slip something particularly revealing. He told Ballasy McConnell’s absence is actively harming Trump’s agenda in the Senate. Without being able to count on McConnell’s vote, Republicans may not have the numbers to pass a third budget reconciliation bill, or confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general. Tuberville noted “you don’t put one up unless you got the votes.”
McConnell’s team continues to stonewall both reporters and senators alike. His chief of staff Terry Carmack, who’s expected to make more than $226,000 this year, continues to recycle the same weeks-old statement instead of giving actual updates.
The Kentucky senator’s office has, to date, only released two still photos and a few paragraphs of public statements. But we still don’t have video of him actually speaking, or even any audio of his voice. And his continued radio silence keeps fueling speculation about how whether he’s actually in any condition to serve out the rest of his term.
Tuberville has been calling on McConnell’s office to release a video to confirm he’s okay, and noted that Republicans got zero information about their colleague at a recent lunch meeting. Alabama’s senior U.S. senator added that McConnell would “need to come back” before the Senate leaves for the August recess tomorrow.
When Woodrow Wilson had his stroke in 1919, his wife and his doctor decided the country didn’t need to know how bad it was, and for a year and a half the government limped along while nobody outside that room understood who was really making the decisions. We didn’t find out the truth until long after the damage was done, and a republic can’t consent to being governed by people it isn’t allowed to see.
Trump Accidentally Confirms Embarrassing Leak in Late-Night Rant
President Donald Trump is furious about a recent Washington Post report that he confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during a meeting at Camp David over the U.S. military’s depleted munitions supply in the midst of the Iran war.
According to the paper, Trump thought the problem “had been fixed” and was livid when he learned that it wasn’t. Of course, the White House went on to call the story “100 percent fake news.” But Trump’s latest midnight rant on his Nazi-infested social media site ended up confirming it.
Trump insisted the U.S. has “massive amounts” of munitions and said defense contractors are building lots of factories. He also warned that the “leakers” behind these “treasonous statements” will be hunted down, promising “long term jail sentences” for anyone in his administration who talked to reporters.
So which is it? Was the story fake news, or was it something true that someone leaked, who is apparently going to be jailed for it?
The Post’s sources say Hegseth blamed his own deputy, Stephen Feinberg, for the munition shortages and for failing to keep the president fully briefed on the situation. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is running interference, arguing the confrontation “literally never happened,” while Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell called it “fictional.”
Whoever said what to whom, the Iran war is coming up on the six-month mark and multiple reports say the U.S. had burned through a huge share of our long-range missile stockpile, which could be a problem in the event of a future confrontation with a well-armed country like China.
Reuters reported this week that essentially all of the Army’s Tactical Missile Systems and Precision Strike Missiles — which cost more than a million dollars apiece — have been used. A July report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies found the Pentagon’s Patriot missile defense inventory has dropped from 2,330 systems before the war to around 800 now. THAAD systems have fallen from 452 to as few as 234. All of these systems are being drained fast with no end in sight.
This isn’t the first time Hegseth has tried to contain leakers. Last year he forced Pentagon employees to sign mandatory non-disclosure agreements and take lie detector tests. More than a dozen current and former Defense Department officials went on to tell CNN that move ended up creating a culture of paranoia and distrust that made decision-making even worse.
In 1971 the Nixon administration ran to the Supreme Court to stop newspapers from printing the Pentagon Papers, and in New York Times Company against the United States the Court told them no, because a free press doesn’t operate on the government’s permission. The case against the man who leaked those papers collapsed too, once the country learned what the White House had done to silence him, and presidents who call reporting treason are almost never protecting the country. They’re protecting themselves.
Trump Tries to Declare Last-Minute ‘Emergency’ to Get Out of Revealing Finances in Court
Donald Trump is now declaring an “emergency” to squirm out of a court order requiring him to hand over years of his own private financial records to the BBC as part of his lawsuit against the network, just one day before the deadline.
The records in question are for the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which oversees roughly 400 of his business holdings. The BBC is seeking them as part of the discovery process in Trump’s $10 billion over its coverage of the January 6th insurrection.
Miami-based Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett ordered on July 27 that Trump has to turn over all tax returns, ownership records and financial statements to the BBC dating back to January 2023, with the first batch due within ten days and more due each subsequent week.
Trump did nothing for most of those ten days. Then on August 3rd, his lawyers asked the BBC to voluntarily agree to an extension. The BBC declined. So two days later, on the eve of the judge’s deadline, Trump filed an emergency motion asking a separate judge to freeze the order while the appeal process plays out.
Keep in mind that Trump’s initial lawsuit claimed the BBC’s edited version of his January 6th speech damaged “the value of his brand, properties and businesses.” That’s the same exact language Judge Lett pointed to when she ruled the president’s financial records were fair game.
But now that they have to deliver Trump’s lawyers are trying to rewrite the complaint. They filed a motion on Tuesday to drop the claims about financial and business harm entirely, and instead argue the only harm was reputational. The new language was filed under seal.
But Trump notably hasn’t stopped demanding $10 billion despite the revised complaint. And BBC attorney Chuck Tobin argued Trump’s public image and businesses can’t be separated, saying the president built his entire political career around being good at business.
If the court doesn’t step in before today’s deadline, Trump’s trust has to either hand over the records or risk being held in contempt. A trial is currently set for February of 2027. The BBC is hoping to put Trump under oath. Keep a close eye on this one.
The Founders wrote a clause into Article One of the Constitution barring federal officeholders from taking payments or gifts from foreign states, and they did it because they’d watched European courts get quietly purchased, one favor at a time. A rule like that only means something if somebody’s allowed to look at the books, which is why a president fighting this hard to keep his hidden is telling us something all by itself.
Senate GOP Leader Declares ‘Train Wreck’ as Republicans Consumed By Infighting
On the eve of the August recess, Senate Republicans are engulfed in chaos, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota is admitting his conference has become “kind of a train wreck.”
Republicans are currently at odds over a budget resolution. While Budget Committee Chair Ron Johnson of Wisconsin wants a vote on the package before the five-week recess, Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins of Maine — who is in the middle of a tough reelection fight — warned Republicans that a floor fight would be a politically reckless move.
Republicans are pursuing the reconciliation process in order to bypass a Democratic filibuster, but that would also open the floor to unlimited amendment votes from Democrats on issues like restricting ICE or permanently banning Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund for MAGA loyalists. Thune himself admitted his conference may not have the votes despite being in the majority.
Republicans are also at each others’ throats over hemp after the Trump White House quietly added language to a must-pass government funding bill, which delays a ban on hemp-derived THC products like Delta-8 until December. Some Republicans are accusing the White House of blindsiding them.
Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is demanding that delay, saying his state’s hemp industry is counting on it. He also heaped criticism on his colleagues, accusing them of having “Reefer Madness.” But Republican Ted Budd of North Carolina wants that hemp provision stripped out entirely, along with Senators Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Terry Moran of Kansas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
Thune is also trying to manage a fight over a college sports bill from Republican Ted Cruz of Texas, which Republican Josh Hawley of Missouri is blocking over fears it could undermine state bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports. Cruz insists his bill would do no such thing. When you combine all of that with a government funding deadline at the end of September along with a completely separate push to ban stock trading by members of Congress, it’s easy to see why Thune is at his wit’s end.
After the Second World War, Congress passed the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 to haul its own committee system out of the shadows and make lawmaking something ordinary people could follow. The idea was that a legislature answering to the country behaves differently than one answering to whoever’s cutting deals over lunch, and what we’re watching this week is what it looks like when nobody’s answering to anyone.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for watching, and thanks for supporting independent media.
Here are a few stories you may have missed:
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Two Georgia GOP Mayors Endorse Democrat Jon Ossoff Over Republican Mike Collins. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who is considered to be one of the most vulnerable Democratic U.S. senators in the 2026 election cycle, just won the support of two Republican mayors in his home state. Mayor Scott James Matheson of Valdosta, near the Florida-Georgia border, and Mayor Julie Smith of Tifton, which is just north of Valdosta, both threw their support behind Ossoff this week. They both lauded Ossoff’s responsiveness to constituents and his work steering federal tax dollars toward projects in South Georgia. Ossoff is currently leading Collins in polls by anywhere from five to 13 percentage points.
Left and Right Find Common Ground in Data Center Opposition. The movement against AI data center development has broad bipartisan appeal, according to journalist Gaby Del Valle of The Verge. Del Valle explained how both progressives and conservatives in Hernando County, Florida came together to oppose a proposed data center under the banner “Humans First.” In a recent report, Del Valle detailed how the threat of data center construction in rural communities has led to conservatives caring about issues once considered to be only liberal priorities, like groundwater contamination and toxic chemicals leaching into soil, which impacts food safety.
Republicans Hold Anthony Fauci in Contempt for Pleading the Fifth. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic during the first Trump administration, was just held in contempt by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on an 8-7 party-line vote. Fauci repeatedly responded to questions from Republicans by asserting his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, while also accusing committee chairman Rand Paul of having an “unhinged” obsession with him.
Progressive Challenger Defeats Incumbent Democratic Congressman in Michigan. Michigan Democratic state representative Donavan McKinney officially defeated incumbent Congressman Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) in a tight Democratic primary for Michigan’s 11th Congressional District, which is in the Detroit area. McKinney, who is 34, separated himself from Thanedar by referring to Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza as a “genocide,” and calling for an end to sending further military aid to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
