Good morning. I’m Thom Hartmann.
FIFA quietly edited Donald Trump out of World Cup victory photos after he refused to leave the stage during Spain’s celebration. Trump’s Pentagon has been caught hiding dozens of American casualties from the Iran war. A new national poll shows a plurality of American voters think it’s wrong for the federal government to be taking ownership stakes in private companies, and even MAGA is deeply split on the idea. And there are new concerns about the vulnerability of American elections to foreign meddling due to the Trump administration’s budget cuts to election security agencies.
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FIFA Edits Trump Out of Spain’s World Cup Victory Photo After He Tries to Photobomb It
Spain beat Argentina 1-0 in extra time on Sunday night to win the World Cup final. It should have been a moment of pure celebration for Spain’s national team. Instead, it turned into a diplomatic conundrum, because Donald Trump decided to make himself the center of the trophy ceremony.
Trump took the stage alongside FIFA president Gianni Infantino to greet the Spanish champions. Several players appeared visibly reluctant to shake his hand. That should have been the end of it. Instead, Trump planted himself front and center as the team’s captain, Rodrigo Hernández Cascante, or Rodri, prepared to lift the trophy.
Rodri tried to usher him off the stage, but Trump stayed put. Spanish radio commentator Dani Garrido described how Rodri held his position until Trump finally stepped offstage, calling it an act of real personality on Rodri’s part.
Eventually Infantino guided Trump to the side, and Rodri lifted the cup. But by then, FIFA’s official account on social media had already decided how to handle it. When FIFA posted the celebratory photo, Trump had been cropped out entirely. The Spanish Football Federation went even further, choosing to use a photo taken seconds after Trump had walked away, so there was no cropping required at all.
Spain may have been prepared for a Trump photobomb given how Trump did something similar last summer at the Club World Cup. After Chelsea won the tournament, Trump wedged himself into the middle of the trophy photo next to Chelsea’s captain. The Spaniards seemed a lot more comfortable letting King Felipe VI join their celebration.
It may seem small in the scheme of things, but Spain’s refusal to let Trump bask in their glory is still pretty significant. Even foreign institutions with no stake in American politics are now editing this president out of their own coverage rather than deal with his behavior.
They used to joke that Theodore Roosevelt wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral, and we laughed because it was harmless vanity in a man who otherwise respected the office. When a president needs to stand at the center of everyone else’s triumph, and neutral institutions around the world quietly crop him out rather than feed it, that vanity stops being a punchline and starts telling us something about the man we’ve handed the most powerful job on earth.
Trump’s Pentagon Caught Hiding American Casualties of Iran War
Iran recently carried out three separate strikes against American troops in Jordan which wounded dozens of U.S. service members and damaged multiple helicopters. The Pentagon never told the American public.
The Defense Department remained silent about the Jordan strikes until Friday, when a fourth Iranian attack killed two American soldiers and left another service member missing. But the three earlier attacks, and their resulting injuries still haven’t been fully accounted for.
U.S. Central Command framed its statements to the media about last week’s airstrikes as a response to Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM didn’t mention Iran’s strikes on American bases in the Middle East, and it has refused to announce how many sites it’s hitting inside Iran each day.
Military officials defending the media blackout say it’s necessary for operational security, arguing that disclosing casualties could help Iran perfect its missile and drone targeting. While that’s a valid concern, it’s also true that the last time we got a substantial briefing from the Pentagon on the Iran war was nearly three months ago.
Friday’s deaths bring the total number of American troops killed since the war began in late February to 16. There have also been more than 400 service members injured, though the Pentagon quietly stopped updating that running total in more recent weeks.
This is entirely unprecedented compared to previous administrations. During Joe Biden’s presidency, the Pentagon regularly reported casualties when Iran-backed militias attacked American bases in Iraq and Syria. But under Trump, basic information we used to get as a matter of routine now has to be dragged out through anonymous sourcing.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the deaths would harden American resolve. Trump said the soldiers died serving their country, and repeated his line about refusing to let Iran develop nuclear weapons. Noticeably, neither one explained why the earlier attacks were kept quiet in the first place.
We learned it the hard way with the Pentagon Papers, that when the Defense Department starts deciding which parts of a war the public is allowed to see, it’s almost never to protect the troops and almost always to protect the people who started the war. A government that can hide the wounded can hide anything, and a war whose human cost the public isn’t permitted to know is a war being waged without our consent.
Most Voters Disapprove of the Trump Administration Buying Equity Stakes in Private Companies
A new CNBC All-America Economic survey finds that a plurality of American voters, 49 percent, think it’s inappropriate for the federal government to take ownership stakes in private companies. Only 19 percent defended the practice. Roughly a third are undecided.
The Trump administration has already negotiated roughly 30 equity deals with private companies worth nearly $27 billion, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The administration is purportedy in talks to take on a stake in Sam Altman’s OpenAI if the company launches an initial public offering.
The biggest deal so far came last August, when the federal government took a 10 percent stake in chip manufacturer Intel in exchange for grant money that the Biden administration had already approved. That stake has shot up in value by 372 percent as of last week, and is now worth roughly $42 billion.
Even Republicans are wary of the implications of the U.S. government partially owning private companies. Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota said he understands the appeal for taxpayers but urged caution. Senator Jon Husted of Ohio said while partial government ownership may have some national security justification, it still shouldn’t be permanent. He’s now sponsoring legislation that would cap those investments at eight years.
The Pentagon’s backing of a rare earth mining company to reduce dependence on China may have some national security value. But that may not be the key reason, as ProPublica reported that the White House pushed the Pentagon to support the company as it was linked to the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., whose firm ultimately got a $620 million dollar loan from U.S. taxpayers. The White House called the report fake news. A spokesperson for the president’s son said he wasn’t personally involved.
CNBC’s poll shows that it isn’t just Democrats who are skeptical of the practice of government taking a stake in private companies. Self-identified MAGA Republicans are split almost evenly, with 31 percent calling it appropriate and 31 percent saying it’s inappropriate. Whatever else is happening, the administration clearly hasn’t effectively sold the public on this.
The men who wrote the Constitution had just finished a revolution against a crown that treated the public treasury like a family bank account, so they wrote a rule right into the founding document barring officeholders from cashing in on their positions. When federal money starts flowing toward companies tied to the president’s own son, we’re not watching clever industrial policy, we’re watching the precise thing that clause was written to prevent.
Trump’s Budget Cuts Leave American Elections Open to Foreign Meddling
The midterms are just months away, and the Trump administration has spent the last year systematically cutting staff and dismantling the government infrastructure built to detect and disrupt foreign disinformation campaigns aimed at U.S. elections.
This is happening all while the Trump regime has sounded the alarm about foreign disinformation around the Iran war. It’s a strange contradiction to warn about a threat while simultaneously eliminating the tools designed to counter it.
In 2024, both China and Russia launched disinformation campaigns targeting congressional races, though they refrained from getting involved in the presidential race. Most governments would have responded by strengtheniing the guardrails ahead of the 2026 midterms. Not this government.
Between January and August of last year alone, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence cut more than 500 staff members, amounting to roughly 30 percent of its total workforce. Then-Director Tulsi Gabbard announced further cuts to the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which is tasked with tracking these campaigns, including one Iran-backed effort that targeted Trump himself. Its duties have since been scattered across various other offices.
The FBI also quietly shuttered its foreign influence task force, which was created in response to Russia’s documented interference in the 2016 election. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has since lost roughly a third of its workforce, with hundreds more positions reassigned. Trump’s newest budget plan would impose even more cuts on the agency. More than a dozen CISA staffers who monitored foreign disinformation campaigns were reportedly among those fired. And Marco Rubio’s State Department completely shut down its Global Engagement Center.
It’s important to note that foreign governments have never successfully manipulated states’ vote counts or hacked American voting machines. But foreign disinformation campaigns — particularly those supercharged by generative AI capable of producing deepfakes at a massive scale — have become a regular and problematic feature of today’s elections. And the government’s ability to detect and respond to them has now been deliberately hollowed out right on the eve of a major election.
Almost 90 years ago, watching foreign propaganda seep into our politics, Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act to drag that influence out into the open where American voters could actually see it. It tells you everything that the offices built to do that work are being quietly dismantled in the months before an election, because the surest way to hand a foreign disinformation campaign a victory is to fire the people whose only job was to catch it.
Be Part of the 5 Percent
The administration is trying to lie to us every day. The fact that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are trying to conceal injuries to American troops during a war is a flashing red light showing just how important it is to have a Fourth Estate that refuses to let power operate in darkness.
But too many media outlets are being hollowed out from within by billionaire owners who want to censor journalism to curry favor with the administration. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. The LA Times is owned by a MAGA billionaire who has made it clear that he wants to steer the paper in a rightward direction. But Raw America remains courageous, and we’re committed to calling it like it is.
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I’m Thom Hartmann. Thanks for reading. And thanks for supporting independent media.
Here are a few stories you may have missed:
Pentagon Releases Names of Troops Killed in Iranian Airstrikes. The Department of Defense announced Monday that 25 year-old 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan of Ewa Beach, Hawaii and 19 year-old Pvt. Isabella Gonzales of Carrollton, Texas were killed by Iranian airstrikes in Jordan last week. Their deaths marked the first time since March that U.S. troops were killed in the war, which has been ongoing since February with a brief detente in June that ultimately fell apart.
U.S. Teeters on Brink of All-Out War After More Troops Die. One unnamed Pentagon official recently told the Washington Post that “the U.S. is planning for a wider war” with Iran after recent strikes killed American troops in Jordan. That official added, however, that the U.S. response to those troop deaths will be somewhat limited given that its air defense and long-range munitions have been significantly depleted since the war began this winter. Military experts are also cautioning against ground troops in Iran, saying the U.S. military isn’t prepared for the resources such an action would require.
Trump’s Budget Cuts to CDC Created ‘Perfect Storm’ That Led to Cyclospora Outbreak. Dr. Joel Barratt — who previously led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team tasked with monitoring parasitic outbreaks — recently described how the Trump administration reducing his staff from 11 to 3 and cutting his office’s budget by $30 million led to the cyclospora outbreak causing explosive diarrhea for thousands of Americans. He told CNN that he warned his superiors in multiple emails that the cuts would risk exposing the American public to an outbreak like the one currently sweeping the nation.
Sculptor Spent $100,000 on Charlie Kirk Statue That Nobody Wants to Buy. New York-based sculptor Sergio Furnari was hoping his statue of slain far-right activist Charlie Kirk would have led to millions of dollars in donations. Instead, he told the Guardian he’s been unable to find a buyer for the sculpture, and that he’s received numerous emails from people saying they intend to urinate on it. Furnari also noted that he broke his foot on the sculpture while tripping in his studio, suggesting that the statue may be “cursed.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Not Ruling Out 2028 Presidential Run. While campaigning for Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Detroit this weekend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) notably refused to rule out a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. The progressive 36 year-old congresswoman told Politico “I can’t say I’ve ruled it out” when asked about a White House run. The Bronx congresswoman, known by her initials AOC, urged the Democratic Party to take a big-tent approach and focus on issues important to working-class voters.
