Good evening, and welcome to Raw America. I’m British Chris.
Melania Trump just held a surprise press conference about Jeffrey Epstein. Donald Trump is melting down on Truth Social over criticism from his own base. Republicans in Congress are at each others’ throats. And Trump apparently left cadets stranded in the Persian Gulf. Let’s get into it.
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Melania Delivers Head-Scratching Epstein Press Conference
On Thursday, First Lady Melania Trump called a press conference and denied any relationship with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. She called the rumors “mean-spirited attempts to ruin my reputation,” and then called on Congress to hold a public hearing for Epstein’s victims. She also interestingly walked away when asked if she herself would meet with survivors.
The White House press corps was scrambling. Her appearance had been listed on her schedule the day before, but described in vague enough terms that reporters didn’t know what was coming.
Washington correspondent Jacqueline Alemany noted immediately after the presser that Melania’s message was “dramatically different” from what the rest of the White House has been putting out. Her husband has essentially been telling everyone around him to drop the Epstein issue and move on.
Meanwhile, former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was pushed out of her job last week, is now refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify about what happened to the administration’s promise to release the Epstein files. The full, unredacted files still haven’t been made public. The Epstein story isn’t going away, and now the First Lady has made it even more complicated for a White House that wants the whole thing buried.
Trump Goes Nuclear on His Own Base
Here’s where things get genuinely surreal.
Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been openly criticizing Trump’s war on Iran, despite being some of the loudest voices in the MAGA ecosystem. Trump just went on Truth Social and called them all “NUT JOBS” and “TROUBLEMAKERS” in his all-caps style.
Trump brought up the fact that Tucker Carlson didn’t finish college. He went after Megyn Kelly over a debate question from 2015. He called Candace Owens “crazy.” He dragged Alex Jones over Sandy Hook.
And the framing Trump uses is telling: he wrongly accused them of wanting Iran to have nuclear weapons. But what they’ve been saying is that they’re opposed to the war itself, arguing that it risks dragging the United States into a broader regional conflict.
What’s notable here is the coalition that’s forming in opposition to this war. It isn’t just Democrats. It’s libertarian-right figures, anti-interventionist conservatives, and now some of the biggest names in MAGA media. When Tucker Carlson and Bernie Sanders are on the same side of an issue, that’s not a fringe position.
Republican Infighting in Congress Hits Fever Pitch
The government shutdown is now 54 days old. That’s the longest in American history. And despite controlling the White House, the House, and the Senate, Republicans can’t agree on how to end it.
Here’s the problem: the Senate passed a bill to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security. The House won’t take it up because they want a standalone immigration enforcement funding bill first. But the House and Senate Republicans can’t even agree on the details of that bill.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon wants tens of billions in additional funding to cover the costs of the Iran war. Democrats say they won’t support that as long as Trump refuses to brief Congress. Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey put it bluntly: he can’t get basic information about an ongoing war, and now the Pentagon wants $200 billion. His answer is no.
There’s also the voter ID bill, known as the SAVE Act. Senate leaders have admitted they don’t have the votes to break a filibuster. They can either beat a Democratic filibuster or eliminate the filibuster altogether, which is unlikely.
TSA lines at airports have reportedly shortened. But DHS employees are still not getting paid through normal channels. Trump signed an executive order keeping paychecks coming using funds from last year’s tax cut law, but nobody’s sure how long that can last. Meanwhile, time ticks away before what may be a Democratic tsunami in November’s midterms.
Trump’s Attack on Iran Stranded American Cadets at Sea
This one should be a bigger story than it is.
When the United States and Israel launched their joint attack on Iran on February 28th, there were American merchant marine cadets on privately owned ships in the Persian Gulf. Five ships, flying U.S. flags, carrying students from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and the broader transportation industry.
Nobody warned them.
There was no advance notice, no evacuation order, no plan to move the vessels out of the Strait of Hormuz before the bombs started falling. These students were effectively trapped in an active war zone because the people who launched the war apparently didn’t think to check whether American civilians were in the immediate area first.
The students were eventually forced to find shelter in harbors around the Gulf, living on their ships for weeks. They were reportedly evacuated about a month after the war began. It’s still unclear whether all of them have made it back to U.S. soil.
To put this in context: embassy staff are typically given days, sometimes weeks, of advance notice before a military action in their region. The 24-hour evacuation deadlines that have come up in other contexts during this conflict have been described as shockingly short. These cadets got nothing.
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Thanks for watching. I’m British Chris, with Raw America. We’ll see you tomorrow.
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