Sunday Afternoon News Updates: Strait Lies From the Trump Regime — 7/19/26
Your midday update is here
Hi all, Ben here. It’s Sunday, and there is a lot to get through. Thanks so much for all the nice comments on my morning message earlier. And thanks again to all of you who’ve already preordered our new book, WTF America?!: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy. If you’ve preordered, be sure to let me know in the comments!
Here’s what we’re tracking today:
The Strait of Hormuz standoff and Chris Wright’s ABC interview
Trump’s “I couldn’t care less” reaction to the war’s escalation after U.S. soldiers are killed
The U.S. Embassy in Amman evacuating Aqaba’s airport and seaport over a “credible security threat”
Israeli forces entering Syria’s Quneitra province
James Comer admitting the House is basically done working before the midterms
Mike Johnson’s “Marxism begins with no God” speech at the Family Leadership Summit
The Mamdani “babysitting” panic on Fox
Tim Dillon torching the “Deep State” excuse
Obama’s dig at JD Vance
Hunter Biden’s remarks on the state of the country
New 2026 midterm forecasting from Pete Buttigieg and the Cook Political Report
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Now let’s get into it.
Trump Sends Out The Proxies
Donald Trump’s escalation of the war with Iran has backfired, and Iran has proven it can hit U.S. air bases across the Middle East hard. Trump himself barely surfaced today. Instead, he sent out his energy secretary, Chris Wright, to go on ABC’s “This Week” and insist the United States controls the Strait of Hormuz and is the one directing traffic through it.
Host Jonathan Karl pushed back, reminding Wright that back in March he’d promised this conflict would be over in a matter of weeks. We are now nearly five months in. Wright’s answer amounted to acknowledging the military phase went longer than planned, then claiming there was a “pivot” toward simply guaranteeing oil flow without Iran’s cooperation. Karl noted that ship traffic through the strait has visibly dropped, pointing out that only eight vessels moved through on Thursday. Wright disputed that, citing a seven-day trailing average he put at just under 7 million barrels a day.
Iran isn’t just surviving this war, it appears to be adapting to it in real time, and the number of U.S. military assets it has managed to destroy over just the last week alone is staggering. I’ll walk you through the geolocated footage and the base-by-base damage in a moment.
