Watch: Antony Blinken Defends Ignoring Damning Reports on Israel

On Wednesday morning, Secretary of State Antony Blinken blew off a question about how he reportedly ignored two U.S. government assessments about Israel blocking aid to Gaza.

On CBS, Blinken was asked about recently leaked documents showing that he received two U.S. government reports that Israel deliberately blocked aid to Gaza but then told Congress the opposite. He claimed that his response was “actually pretty typical.”

“We had a report to put out on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and what Israel was doing to try to make sure that people got the assistance they needed, and I had different assessments from different parts of the State Department, from other agencies that were involved, like USAID,” Blinken told CBS’s Adriana Diaz.

“My job was to sort through them, which I did, draw some conclusions from that, and we put our report, and we found that Israel needed to do a better job on the humanitarian assistance. We’ve seen improvements since then; it’s still not sufficient,” Blinken added.

Blinken’s spin in the interview sounds quite different from his report to Congress in May, when he said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

Blinken’s own report contradicted two other reports he allegedly received from the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development. Both stated that Israel was deliberately blocking food and medicine from entering Gaza during its brutal assault on the territory.

For some reason, neither Diaz nor Tony Dokoupil nor Nate Burleson pressed Blinken on his nonanswer on CBS, or the fact that it seemed very different from his May assessment, which itself was at odds with the other agency reports. At the time, Blinken’s memo to Congress caused discontent within the State Department, with one official even resigning, saying, “That report and its flagrant untruths will haunt us.”

On Tuesday, the Council of American-Islamic Relations called on Blinken to resign for misleading Congress, calling his memo “a violation of U.S. law.” But the Biden administration has taken little, if any, action to stop Israel’s alleged war crimes in Gaza, which have claimed at least 41,467 Palestinian lives, including 16,500 children.

Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that the towns he smeared with anti-immigrant lies actually suffered “hostile takeovers” by immigrants, and insisted that immigrants have been “taking over” cities across America.

During a campaign stop in Mint Hill, North Carolina, Trump continued to escalate his violent rhetoric about immigrant populations in Springfield, Ohio, and Aurora, Colorado.

“Kamala should have closed the border years ago and we wouldn’t have hostile takeovers of Springfield, Ohio and Aurora, Colorado,” Trump said. “Where they’re actually going in with massive machine gun-type equipment—they’re going in with guns that are beyond even military scope.”

“And they’re taking over apartment buildings. They’re taking over real estate, they’re in the real estate development business. Congratulations!”

Trump has continued to completely ignore statements from local officials, including Aurora’s mayor, who said that the assertion that Venezuelan gangs had taken over the city was “simply not true.” Aurora’s police chief said there is no evidence to support Trump’s claim that a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment building, which was really left destitute by its management company, according to residents.

As for Trump’s claim about immigrants using weapons “beyond even military scope,” it’s unclear where this originates, except that it’s a shocking thing to say. Here, Trump’s penchant for hyperbole, divorce from reality, and anti-immigrant rhetoric coalesce into something almost novel: unabashed stupidity.

Later in Trump’s speech, the Republican nominee returned to the subject of his two favorite cities, to continue spreading lies about the people who live there.

“The 21 million illegals she let in are now creating havoc throughout the country. Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio, are just two examples,” Trump said. “What they’re going through in those places, it’s unbelievable.”

“And they’re literally… taking over those towns. Taking over hundreds, those are two yer—hundreds of towns and cities throughout our country,” Trump said. “Including the big ones. Look at New York! All of the people, what’s happened to the quality of life.”

The Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are in fact not an “example” of “havoc” created by undocumented immigrants, because there was absolutely no evidence found to support the Republicans’ cartoonishly racist pet-eating rumors. And crucially, the immigrants are there legally as they have temporary protected status.

More than 200,000 immigrants have arrived in New York City since 2022, The New York Times reported in August. While the city has struggled to adapt to the influx of new residents, the asylum-seeking population represents only a fraction of the estimated 8.3 million people who live there—not exactly a takeover.

To that point, Trump’s claim that undocumented immigrants have been “taking over” hundreds of cities is plainly unfounded.

Trump had made a similarly outlandish remark about the right-wing claims that a Venezuelan gang had taken over an apartment building in Aurora, during a rambling speech on Tuesday. He quipped again that they’d become “real estate developers” with “weapons that even our military hasn’t seen.” It seems these are his new lines to be repeated at every speaking event.

“They’re going to take over a lot more than Aurora, they’re going to go through Colorado, take over the whole damn state, unless… I become president,” Trump said, grinning.

Here, Trump gives away the game. The Republican nominee is more than happy to spread violent lies about immigrants, creating stories about the terror they could bring, but it’s all in service of one thing: getting him back to the White House.

Though the International Brotherhood of Teamsters refused to issue an endorsement for the 2024 presidential election, this week, local Teamsters unions coast-to-coast have challenged national leadership by issuing their own endorsements of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Altogether, regional councils representing a million Teamsters have thrown their support behind Harris for president. The most recent endorsements come from chapters in several key battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada.

“We decided we wanted to endorse the Harris-Walz campaign,” said Josh Zivalich, the president of the Teamsters Joint Council 75, which represents 45,000 members in Florida, Georgia, and southeastern Alabama. “We think the stakes are very high for working people, and certainly union people, and we thought it was important to make a stand.” 

Last week, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien announced the national union would not make a presidential endorsement. This comes after O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention in July and was subsequently snubbed for a chance to speak on the Democratic stage. In forgoing their endorsement for president, the Teamsters are one of the only major unions to not support Harris in November.

In its decision, the union cited division among its members nationwide. The Teamsters’ electronic member poll, which garnered over 35,000 votes, showed 59 percent of workers supporting Donald Trump and 34 percent supporting Harris. Similarly, after the Pennsylvania Conference of Teamsters endorsed
Harris on September 19, a limited informal survey showed 65 percent of its members supported endorsing Trump. But these numbers represent only a fraction of the union’s 1.3 million membership.

Another group of workers backing the Harris-Walz ticket is Teamsters Joint Council 32, which represents 85,000 members in Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. In their statement, they cited their appreciation for hometown hero Walz, writing, “He has stood beside us on our picket lines, listened to our concerns, and increased protections for Union workers.”

Also in the Midwest, Michigan Teamsters President Kevin Moore told local news in Detroit, “We’ve seen four years of Donald Trump. It’s the same old rhetoric and we’re not going back. Tim Walz and Kamala Harris give us a vision for all people.”

Even Fox News is coming down on Donald Trump for chickening out of a second debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.

During an interview Tuesday on Hugh Hewitt’s radio program, Fox News’s chief political anchor, Bret Baier, revealed that it’s the MAGA leader—not the Democrat—who’s holding up a potential policy showdown to be hosted by the conservative media behemoth.

“The latest is, I actually believe—this is me talking—that the Harris campaign would do a Fox debate, if the former president has come to the conclusion that there really shouldn’t be another debate,” Baier said.

“Now, his reasoning, I don’t know. I always thought that it would be like a bug zapper in the backyard for the former president in that he couldn’t get away from the light of 70 million viewers and that he would have to eventually, just knowing him, you know, do it if it was on Fox and something he could agree to,” Baier said.

“I’m getting the sense from his campaign that they are moving past it, and really that the holdup is not the Harris campaign and Fox, but it’s the former president,” he added, calling the whole debacle a “missed opportunity” for the former reality TV star.

In August, Trump said he would be open to going head-to-head against Harris three times before November, but his tune changed remarkably after the former prosecutor managed to thoroughly get under his skin during their first debate earlier this month.

Over the weekend, Harris accepted an invitation from CNN to debate Trump in October, though Trump said he would not be participating.

“Vice President Harris is ready for another opportunity to share a stage with Donald Trump, and she has accepted CNN’s invitation to a debate on October 23,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement released Saturday.

Hours after his first disastrous performance against Harris, Trump posted a lengthy rant on Truth Social, accusing Harris of being a “no-show” at a Fox debate he had reportedly agreed to. He also insisted that “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!”

North Carolina’s scandal-ridden Republican candidate for governor, Mark Robinson, once suggested that prominent civil rights leader the Reverend Al Sharpton should be shot.

The Bulwark reports that back in 2009, the North Carolina lieutenant governor commented on a NewsOne article about a protest against police brutality that Sharpton took part in, writing, “If the cops wanted to shoot an elderly black man they should have shot Al Sharpton. Closing his mouth would do this Nation good.”

The publication found several other unhinged comments that Robinson made on the same website, including “Obama IS a blackface step-in fectch-it [sic] for liberal white America” and “It’s Oprah the wicked witch, leading the way to sexing up the children!”

The comments were previously unreported and made on a now defunct system, and The Bulwark was only able to find them thanks to an archive of comments made on websites using the WordPress content management system. They used Robinson’s personal email address that was known to be used on other websites, and found a trove of comments.

Sharpton, as one might expect, took exception, drawing a connection between Robinson and Donald Trump.

“This is a long line in despicable, self-hating, antisemitic rhetoric from a man who enjoys the support of Donald Trump and the Republican party,”  the civil rights leader said in a statement “Now, his candidate in that state has suggested cops shoot me instead of some other victim. It’s clear that someone’s life is expendable to them, especially if you disagree on the issues.”

Last week, CNN broke a bombshell story that Robinson had left comments on a pornography website calling himself a “Black NAZI,” expressing his desire to own slaves, and talking about peeping in women’s locker rooms. The story came on the last day that a candidate could withdraw from North Carolina’s election, and Robinson defiantly said he would stay on.

Since then, Trump has refused to disavow Robinson, even as the gubernatorial candidate’s own staff has abruptly resigned. Senator Lindsey Graham has scrambled to try and distance Trump from Robinson, as the scandal could deal a decisive blow to the former president’s efforts to win the key swing state. It seems there are some scandals that are just too much for Trump’s GOP allies.