Thursday Afternoon News Updates: Trump's Speech Tonight Is a Distraction — 7/16/26
Your Thursday updates are here.
Hi all, Ben here. It’s Thursday.
Before I get into it, I have to say thank you. The response to our book announcement has been incredible. WTF America?!: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy, which I wrote with my brothers Brett and Jordy, comes out October 20th, and the number of you who have already pre-ordered has genuinely blown us away. This book means a lot to us. It started as a family group text and turned into a movement, and now we’re taking a real swing at explaining how the country got here and how we get out. If you haven’t pre-ordered yet, you can do so here. It would mean the world to us.
Okay. Here’s what we’re tracking today:
Trump’s primetime speech tonight claiming China accessed 2020 election data, with the CIA allegedly covering it up
A Democratic senator revealing what Republicans really say about Trump behind closed doors
Trump’s teleprompter operator allegedly making six figures betting on his own boss’s speeches
Pakistan pulling out of US-Iran mediation as the region spirals toward a wider war
The Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandeb both facing potential shutdowns
A US tanker disabled by Hellfire missiles, a Patriot battery destroyed in Iraqi Kurdistan, and mystery medevac flights to Germany
Pete Hegseth’s new testosterone policy and his dangerous, low-altitude jet flyovers over beachgoers
Trump slapping 25% tariffs on Brazil to help install a Bolsonaro
Canadian wildfire smoke choking the Northeast right before the World Cup final
Todd Blanche’s brutal confirmation hearing over his handling of Epstein survivors
Ken Paxton’s secret $9 million real estate portfolio amid his divorce
JD Vance’s Secret Service detail reportedly exhausted by his travel demands
JD Vance somehow bringing up Joe Biden and ice cream in a sentence you cannot unhear
A Pillsbury recall over glass contamination and a diarrhea outbreak
There is a lot here, so let’s get into it. I’m making this post paywall free today as a thank you for your support. Please consider joining us as a paid subscriber if you can to keep this network growing.
Trump’s Speech Tonight, and Why Nobody Should Air It Live
Tonight, Trump is expected to deliver a primetime address claiming that China accessed US voter data during the 2020 election and that the CIA knew about it and sat on it during his first term. The setup here isn’t subtle. He’s laying groundwork to imply, or maybe say outright, that Democratic officials in states like Georgia weren’t legitimately elected. While he builds toward that speech, he has spent the last two days posting photo after photo of himself with Xi Jinping, the very man he’s accusing of orchestrating this supposed plot.
This is happening just months before the midterms. A president who is watching his approval collapse, who is watching his own party privately admit he’s sinking their chances this fall, decides now is the moment to manufacture a reason to question the legitimacy of Democratic wins. Senator Jon Ossoff has reportedly been discussed as a target of this exact narrative, and according to reporting from MSNBC’s Katy Tur, most elected Republicans privately believe the president has lost it and is dragging them toward a wipeout in November.
And that’s before you even get to what’s happening with his own staff.
The Teleprompter Guy Was Betting on the President’s Own Words
This story is almost too absurd to summarize, but here goes. Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator, identified as Gabriel Perez, is under federal investigation for allegedly making more than $100,000 betting on the prediction market Kalshi, wagering on which words Trump would say in his own speeches, including his February State of the Union. According to reporting from ABC News and CNBC, investigators found that Perez would reportedly back out of certain bets mid-speech if Trump skipped a word he’d wagered on. Kalshi has since frozen a chunk of the winnings after flagging the activity as suspicious.
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Now back to my report.
The World Is on Fire, Literally the Middle East Is
While Trump is consumed with rewriting 2020, the actual world is spiraling. Pakistan has halted its mediation efforts between the US and Iran, in part because of its defense ties to Saudi Arabia, which recently struck a Houthi air base in Yemen. The Houthi leader has now warned that any further Saudi aggression will be met with strikes deeper into Riyadh itself.
We flagged this days ago on the network, and I’ll say it again: Iran and the Houthis appear to be coordinating to threaten a shutdown of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea, working in tandem with al-Shabaab in Somalia on the opposite shore. According to reporting from the Telegraph, this would let Iran squeeze two of the world’s major shipping chokepoints simultaneously, that strait and the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has now formally declared a red line, warning that any US strikes on its power plants or bridges will trigger retaliation against critical infrastructure across the Gulf.
The escalation is already happening on both sides. US Central Command disabled an unladen Iranian-bound tanker near Kharg Island using Hellfire missiles, part of the reimposed naval blockade. Iran, in turn, claims to have struck US-linked sites in Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain, and shot down an American MQ-9 Reaper drone. Satellite imagery appears to confirm that an Iranian drone destroyed a Patriot missile battery at the airport in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, which also houses a US base. Iraq briefly suspended crude oil loading at its southern terminals after a drone strike on a tanker at the Basra terminal, a strike Iraqi officials initially claimed caused no damage. There’s also satellite evidence suggesting an Iranian drone strike on a hotel in Duqm, Oman, described as a targeted assassination attempt, and footage suggesting the UAE, not the US, carried out a drone strike on Iran’s Bandar Abbas port.
And then there’s this. A third US medevac mission in five days has now flown wounded personnel from the Middle East to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Officially, the administration says there have been no American casualties from this latest round of Iranian strikes. If that’s true, someone needs to explain what, exactly, requires three separate medical evacuation flights from three different locations in less than a week. Nobody in this regime seems eager to answer that question, and meanwhile Trump was up posting bragging videos about his TikTok follower count at 12:30 in the morning.
Layer onto all of this Israel’s continued strikes deep into Lebanon and ongoing home demolitions in the West Bank, and you have a regional conflict that is metastasizing on multiple fronts at once.
Hegseth Wants to Give the Troops Testosterone
Pete Hegseth has announced that the Department of Defense will now offer testosterone deficiency screenings to service members 30 and older, with treatment available for anyone who wants it. The Atlantic’s reporting makes the obvious point that this isn’t medically necessary and has nothing to do with military readiness. It’s about projecting a certain image.
That same obsession with machismo seems to be behind Hegseth’s defense of dangerous, low-altitude military flyovers over crowded civilian beaches, including one over Pensacola where witnesses say beach umbrellas and chairs went flying and people were hit. Hegseth’s response was a boast that the flyovers will continue until morale improves. Ron Filipkowski called it exactly what it is, reckless and performative.
Trump Slaps Brazil With Tariffs to Help a Bolsonaro
Late last night, Marco Rubio announced 25% tariffs on most Brazilian imports, punishing President Lula for supposedly negotiating in bad faith. Lula’s government fired back hard, calling it a lamentable milestone in US-Brazil relations and noting that the US actually runs a $424.5 billion surplus with Brazil over the past 15 years. Lula also directly named the Bolsonaro family as collaborators in building the case against his country. This is happening while Lula is in an active election battle against Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the imprisoned former president. The timing is not a coincidence. This is Trump and Rubio trying to tip an election in the Western Hemisphere toward the family of a convicted insurrectionist.
Everything Else You Need to Know
A few more things worth your attention. Wildfire smoke from more than 100 uncontrolled fires in Canada is blanketing the Northeast and Midwest with unhealthy air quality, right as New Jersey prepares to host the World Cup final outdoors this Sunday.
Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing turned brutal when Epstein survivor Dani Bensky testified that Blanche spent roughly nine hours meeting with Ghislaine Maxwell but wouldn’t give survivors nine minutes of his time.
Ken Paxton has reportedly built a $9 million real estate portfolio, including three Utah condos purchased in February, now tangled up in his divorce from State Senator Angela Paxton, who has accused him of adultery.
JD Vance’s own Secret Service detail is reportedly fed up with his last-minute travel demands, including a scrapped plan to use Marine Two to fly him and his son to a golf lesson. And in case you needed one more thing to make you say “WTF?!,”J D Vance somehow found a way while on the Joe Rogan podcast to say that Joe Biden eating ice cream made him think about sex.
Also, the FDA recalled more than 735,000 packages of Pillsbury bread rolls over glass contamination. And on top of all that, we’ve got a cyclosporiasis outbreak that’s climbed into the thousands of cases, with public health experts warning it could keep dragging on. Researchers point to gutted public health funding as one reason outbreaks like this aren’t getting caught early anymore, plus wider use of modern testing panels that are simply picking up more infections than we used to detect. So add “Trump diarrhea outbreak nobody’s tracking properly” to the pile of things this regime doesn’t seem too worried about.
Trump also bragged this week that his tax bill helped a friend buy a private jet he never even needed, while his own energy secretary claimed data centers, which use electricity rather than produce it, are somehow the solution to rising electricity prices. Trump made a post praising data centers yesterday as well.
Meanwhile a new Harvard Harris poll shows a majority of independents believe the economy was better under Biden than it is right now. Given everything above, that’s not exactly a surprise.
That’s Thursday so far. Let me know what you think, hit subscribe, and if you haven’t already, go pre-order WTF America. It’s dedicated to all of you, the Meidas Mighty. Thanks for watching, everybody.
What if trump gave a primetime speech and nobody came?
Everything this psychotic does is a distraction from something he has already done! As a French senator said the other day: "Every time the Epstein files are mentioned, bombs fall somewhere!"