Friday Afternoon News Updates as Iran Hacks Trump FBI?! – 3/27/26

Hi all, Ben here. It’s Friday afternoon. First, thanks for the feedback on yesterday’s written midday update. I’m going to try that format again today. As a heads up, whenever I do video reports here, I always include a written report as well so you get the best of both worlds. I think that’s often unclear with the way Substack feeds you the video clips, so when I post videos in the future, simply try clicking on it to see the write-up! For those interested, the Substack app also has a feature that will read these reports to you, so you can get your information on the go.

Here are the latest updates.

First, let me highlight MeidasTouch Chief Washington Correspondent Scott MacFarlane’s morning report on some pretty stunning remarks made by Trump Deputy AG Todd Blanche at CPAC yesterday, and the reaction on Capitol Hill. You can watch his report here. Be sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel (it’s free) and his Substack for more.

This morning, Donald Trump spiraling in a web of his own lies, and the facts keep getting worse no matter how hard he tries to bluster through them. We are watching a reckless administration stumble through a widening war with Iran, burn through military resources, tank the economy, lose public support, and lurch from one humiliation to the next. And because this is Trump, the response is not competence, discipline, or even basic seriousness. It’s denial, boredom, chaos, and the usual pile of lies.

Let’s start with one of the most embarrassing, and potentially dangerous, developments yet. The Iranian state-linked Handala Hack Team is claiming it breached FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email. The group has already published what appears to be Patel’s resume, along with old photos and a mix of personal and work correspondence reportedly dating from 2010 to 2019. A U.S. official confirmed the hack, and a DOJ official said the material published appears authentic. In other words, this is a real breach involving the sitting FBI Director, and the hackers are openly taunting him, saying Patel now joins their list of successfully hacked victims.

This Trump regime cannot protect the country, and apparently it can’t even protect its own top officials. So while Trump and his loyalists run around pretending to be strongmen, the reality is that they look sloppy, exposed, and deeply unserious.

At the same time, Iran is trying to project resilience. Iranian President Pezeshkian appeared in public and visited stores. Iran’s parliament speaker, Ghalibaf, mocked the U.S. position and asked how America could protect anything inside Iran when it cannot even protect its own soldiers at regional bases, who he says are being stashed away in hotels and parks.

Iran also continues to show symbolic defiance. The Iranian national football team honored the Minab schoolgirls by holding small backpacks during the national anthem, underscoring the human toll of this war. Meanwhile, an Israeli security official says Iran can sustain its current rate of fire for weeks, with enough launchers and teams to keep attacks spread out over time. So when Trump brags that Iran has been crushed and is begging for a deal, that is contradicted by just about every serious data point available. I understand Trump doesn’t want you to know that, but that makes it even more important that we bring you the facts.

Reuters reports that U.S. officials can only determine with certainty that about one-third of Iran’s missile arsenal has been destroyed. Another third, buried in underground facilities that have been targeted, cannot be counted with certainty as destroyed. Add to that CNN’s reporting that the Pentagon has drawn up scenarios for deploying U.S. troops to seize targets within Iran, including possible targets connected to the Strait of Hormuz and enriched uranium, and the danger becomes even more obvious. These are scenarios that would risk heavy casualties. We are dealing with escalation plans that could become catastrophic, all while Trump reportedly drifts between wanting to intensify the war and simply losing interest in it.

Yes, according to reporting out of the White House, Trump is already getting bored with the Iran conflict. Bored. Troops are in danger. Regional war is expanding. Markets are reeling. Civilians are dead. Supply chains are being hit. And this malignant, deranged fool is getting bored.

The military picture is grim in other ways too. The U.S. has reportedly fired more than 850 Tomahawk missiles in four weeks against Iran, raising Pentagon concerns about rapidly depleting stockpiles. Before this war, estimates put the U.S. inventory somewhere around 4,000 to 4,500 Tomahawks, with only a few hundred produced per year, and some analysts thought the real number may have been closer to 3,000. That is a stunning burn rate. It is not sustainable, and Pentagon officials are clearly alarmed.

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz remains a live flashpoint. Iran says it struck a Thai container ship that tried to pass through without permission and warned that such attempts would be stopped immediately. Kuwait’s main port, Shuwaikh, was hit by what is being described as a likely Iranian drone attack. And after damage to a major gas facility in Qatar, Airgas is now cutting helium deliveries. That may sound like some niche industrial story until you remember helium is essential for hospital MRI machines and advanced chip manufacturing, including the kinds of chips companies like NVIDIA rely on. So now the war is squeezing healthcare and technology supply chains too.

Then there is the broader geopolitical fallout. Reuters reports that India and Russia have verbally agreed to resume direct sales of Russian LNG to India for the first time since the start of the Ukraine war, in violation of Western sanctions. Negotiations are expected to conclude in the coming weeks. This is another example of the international order fraying while Trump postures and fails. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has reportedly said the U.S. and Israel have no strategy on what they want. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid is warning that the government is sending the army into a multi-front war without the necessary means and with far too few soldiers, with regular forces in complete collapse. Even inside Israel, alarm bells are blaring.

And while this disaster unfolds overseas, the damage at home is mounting fast. Reuters/Ipsos has Trump’s approval at just 36 percent, with 62 percent disapproving. On foreign policy, his net approval has hit a new low. On the economy, another new low. On cost of living, even worse. Fox News polling shows Trump’s approval among Hispanics collapsing from 48 percent in December 2025 to 28 percent in March 2026, a staggering drop. Among white non-college men, a core part of Trump’s base, the trend has also turned negative. Americans are seeing the chaos. They are feeling it in their daily lives.

Consumer sentiment fell in March to 53.3, one of the lowest readings ever recorded. Gas prices are up a dollar a gallon since the Iran war began. Mortgage rates are nearing 6.5 percent, a seven-month high. All three major stock indexes are now below their lowest points of the year. The S&P 500 is down 7 percent this year, and the Nasdaq 100 is in correction territory. This is what happens when a deeply unstable man surrounds himself with sycophants and treats war like reality television.

And of course, because the Trump administration is rotten to its core, we are also seeing ugly reports out of the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly removed four Army officers from a one-star promotion list, including two Black officers and two women, overruling Army leaders who cited their strong records, per NYT. The reporting gets even worse. During a heated exchange last year, Hegseth’s chief of staff Ricky Buria reportedly told Army Secretary Dan Driscoll that Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events.

On Capitol Hill, the dysfunction continues. After the Senate passed a Department of Homeland Security funding deal around 2 a.m., House Republicans rejected it. Senators had already left town for recess. Mike Johnson is now reportedly pitching a clean 8-week continuing resolution to fund all of DHS, including additional funding for ICE, which would require sending the package back to the Senate. This is the Republican Congress in all its glory: manufacture chaos, reject your own off-ramp, then complain about the mess you created.

At CPAC, Matt Schlapp tried to hype the crowd by asking how many people wanted to see impeachment hearings of Trump. The crowd cheered. Schlapp then awkwardly told them that was the wrong answer. Whoops! Todd Blanche also reportedly revealed that Trump’s entire cabinet is terrified of being indicted if a Democrat wins in 2028. That says everything, doesn’t it?

And then there was Trump himself, yesterday during a cabinet meeting, rambling that he could not say what the U.S. was going to do in the war because they would probably invoke the 25th Amendment.

This is what happens when a fraud, a coward, and an attention addict is handed immense power—and when he has sycophants who go along with every word. He creates disasters, lies about them, gets tired of them, and leaves everyone else to deal with the consequences.

We’ll keep following all of it closely. Stay with us. Spread the word.