CNN Under Fire for Sketchy Syrian Prisoner Story

CNN announced Sunday that it has begun investigating the identity of a man who the network had claimed in a recent report was a prisoner of the ousted Syrian government, according to The Wrap.

In a story published last week, chief CNN international correspondent Clarissa Ward and her crew, escorted by Syrian rebels, discovered a man hiding under a blanket in what was the “only locked cell” in a “secret prison” at a Syrian air force intelligence base in Damascus.

The man identified himself as a civilian named Adel Gharbal from Homs, and claimed that he had been in solitary confinement for three months. He appeared surprised to learn that Bashar Al Assad’s regime had fallen.

“In nearly twenty years as a journalist, this was one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed,” Ward wrote in a post on X.

When asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper what is known “about this man and how he ended up in the prison,” Ward admitted that “we don’t know that much because you can see from the report, Anderson, that he’s in a deep state of shock.”

However, some concerns have surfaced about the veracity of the report.

A website called Verify-Sy, which states that it fact-checks stories about Syria, said that residents of a neighborhood called Al Bayyada had identified the man as Salama Mohammad Salama, or “Abu Hamza,” a first lieutenant in Syrian air force intelligence.

Verify-Sy also pointed out that the man’s behavior did not seem to match his reported conditions of confinement and torture, as he did not flinch when exposed to light and appeared well groomed and physically unharmed.

Now CNN is looking into the possibility that the man wasn’t a prisoner at all.

“We reported the scene as it unfolded, including what the prisoner told us, with clear attribution. We have subsequently been investigating his background and are aware that he may have given a false identity. We are continuing our reporting into this and the wider story,” CNN said in a statement to The Wrap.

“No one other than the CNN team was aware of our plans to visit the prison building featured in our report that day. The events transpired as they appear in our film,” CNN said in the statement. “The decision to release the prisoner featured in our report was taken by the guard—a Syrian rebel.”

CNN can’t seem to spot the difference between the assassination of a health insurance executive who made his money denying millions of Americans health care access and the death of innocent people at the hands of police.

On Sunday, CNN host Michael Smerconish lamented that the American public hadn’t rushed to memorialize the outside of the midtown Manhattan Hilton Hotel where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated earlier this month.

“I slowed my gait as I passed a side entrance to the Hilton Hotel, realizing that this was the same day in the same early morning hour in the precise location where, one week prior, a 50-year-old father of two was assassinated,” Smerconish monologued on air. “But something was missing. Any sign whatsoever of the tragedy that occurred right here, and which has captivated the nation.”

“We’ve all seen the crime scene that’s been shown many times in the media. But a week later, here’s what was left: a lone piece of NYPD crime tape affixed to a barrier. No memorial of the kind that often appears spontaneously after a similar tragedy.”

Smerconish then went on to compare Thompson’s death to some of the most tragic cultural touchstones in the nation’s recent history, including the murders of John Lennon, George Floyd, Heather Heyer, and Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

“But there was no sign of any makeshift memorial on 51st Street,” Smerconish added in a segment with the on-screen banner “a sad, new normalcy.”

What Smerconish seems to be missing, however, is the sad role that Thompson played in a system that increasingly prioritizes shareholder profits over successful medical outcomes for its clients. The public’s response to the executive’s death should be studied, not condemned, as an indictment on the sorry state and exploitative nature of America’s health care industry.

Federal data from 2022 compiled by the personal finance website ValuePenguin found that UnitedHealthcare far outpaced its competitors when it came to denying coverage, rejecting 32 percent, or roughly one in three claims. In 2024, the insurer’s parent group spent more than $5.8 million lobbying Congress on health care–related issues.

Meanwhile, Americans are paying more than ever for health insurance, with costs far outpacing the rate of inflation. A Kaiser Family Foundation report published earlier this year found that the vast majority of U.S. adults are worried about being able to afford a major medical expense, regardless of their financial position.

Lindsey Graham told Meet the Press that Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick, Pete Hegseth, plans on releasing the woman who accused him of sexual assault from her nondisclosure agreement, essentially forcing her to choose between saying nothing or going public with her story and subjecting herself to vile partisan attacks.

“He told me he would release her from that agreement,” Graham said. “I would want to know if anybody nominated for a high-level job in Washington legitimately assaulted somebody.

“If people have an allegation to make, come forward and make it,” the South Carolina senator added. “We’ll decide whether or not it’s credible. Right now [Hegseth is] being tried by anonymous sources. That will not stand.”

Despite Graham’s objections to “anonymous” allegations, the woman in question filed a police report against Hegseth, accusing him of sexual assault in 2017. The police report noted that she had bruises on her thigh. The defense secretary nominee and former Fox & Friends host later paid the woman an undisclosed sum.

Trump and Senate Republicans have done a 180 on Hegseth, from calling his allegations “very disturbing” to now being “in a good place with Pete,” as Graham said. Hegseth has been accused of sexual harassment, financial mismanagement of two different veterans’ groups, and workplace misconduct including intoxication and sexist behavior. Now the GOP is rallying around him in the same way they rallied around Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his 2018 nomination hearings. And as with Kavanaugh, they seem very prepared to make his alleged victim’s life hell.

“All of these are anonymous allegations. He’s given me his side of the story. It makes sense to me, I believe him. Unless somebody’s willing to come forward I think he’s gonna get through,” Graham continued. “Remember Kavanaugh? … We’re not gonna let that happen to Pete.”

Even Donald Trump’s staunchest allies can’t be saved from MAGA’s wrath.

Senator Lindsey Graham is facing the heat after he contradicted Trump’s prior comments on January 6 investigators, plainly stating in a Sunday interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that the government should not prosecute the officials who looked into Trump’s involvement in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“President-elect Trump told me that he thinks the members of the January 6 Committee should go to jail. Do you agree with that statement?” asked host Kristen Welker.

After a brief pause, Graham offered a one-word response: “No.”

“OK, that was very clear and concise,” Welker said.

But that didn’t sit well with Trump’s frenetic base, who took to the internet to torch the South Carolinian for barely veering away from the president-elect’s philosophy.

“What is up with this guy? Who controls him? What dirt do they have on him? Other than him along with [NO NAME] involvement with Ukraine?” posted one popular MAGA account, PrayingMarine, on X. “Trump is right. This dude is dirty.”

Another pro-Trump influencer slammed Graham as a “snake.”

“He had no problem with innocent protestors and grandmas having their lives destroyed over Jan. 6,” posted @SirStevenKJ. “However, he believes the TREASONOUS Jan 6 Committee should not face prosecution or jail time. Nasty.”

Trump has made incredible overtures to the far-right followers who rioted through Congress, temporarily delaying the certification of the 2020 presidential election results. So far, he has promised to pardon convicted insurrectionists, but he’s also invited some to help shape his administration.

The president-elect has tapped one January 6 rioter—Pete Marocco—to help his transition into the White House on matters related to national security personnel.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested Saturday that the U.S. government is behind the scourge of drones reportedly descending on New Jersey.

“The government is in control of the drones and refuses to tell the American people what is going on,” Greene wrote in a post on X. “It really is that bad.”

Greene has a habit of amplifying conspiracy theories, often born on the far-right reaches of the internet.

This isn’t the first time the Georgia Republican has suggested that the government has summoned forces from the heavens. When Hurricane Helene struck the southeast United States in October, Greene suggested the government had its hands in weather manipulation.

“Yes they can control the weather,” Greene wrote in a post on X. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

While the ‘they’ wasn’t explicitly stated, it was understood to be the federal government. In another post, she seemed to suggest that the hurricane was meant to target Republicans. And somehow, that’s nowhere near the most preposterous thing Greene has ever suggested.

Two years before she took office, Greene posted on Facebook linking mysterious “lasers or blue beams of light” to the 2018 California wildfires, and then tied those sightings to the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family often evoked in blatantly antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Last week, Greene tried to stoke the fires of panic that get people such as Donald Trump elected by suggesting that the drone sightings were proof that the federal government could not keep Americans safe. Other Republicans have also jumped on the bandwagon. Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan claimed that he’d seen some floating lights above his state—only for a meteorologist to point out that they looked a lot like Orion’s Belt.

Parkland shooting survivor and gun control activist David Hogg is running for vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. 

Hogg, 24, is hoping to inject some of his youthful, progressive energy into a party still licking its wounds and pointing fingers after a devastating election night loss in November.  

“I think this role is a great way of, for one, bringing newer voices into the Democratic Party,” the Gen Zer told ABC News. “I just want to be one of several of those voices to help represent young people and also, more than anything, make sure that we’re standing up to the consulting class that increasingly the Democratic Party is representing instead of the working class.”

Hogg also took particular aim at what he sees as complacency and a lack of accountability from party leadership, many of whom were quick to defend the Harris campaign while blaming others for their loss. Black men, leftists, and trans people have all been scapegoated. Hogg called this out.

“What really bothers me is, we say to people all the time, ‘Who’s to blame for this election?’ It’s young people, it’s X minority group … but really, who’s to blame for this? It’s us. It’s us. Ultimately, we failed to communicate, and we failed to have a broader strategy within the party to make sure that we were telling the president what he needed to hear, rather than what he wanted to hear, which was that he needed to drop out.”

There are four elected vice chair slots up for grabs within the DNC, with three general vice chairperson roles and one vice chairperson for civic engagement and voter participation. Hogg is younger than anyone else who’s thrown their name in, and his victory would be a generational shift in the party.

“We need to realize that we are increasingly the party of sycophants,” Hogg said. “We are just surrounding ourselves with people who tell us what we want to hear instead of what we need to hear; we’re increasingly surrounding ourselves with paid political consultants that … are letting what donors say to them guide their talking points.”

Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is sounding the alarm over … stars?

A recent spate of drone sightings over New Jersey have sparked widespread confusion and some panic among lawmakers, now including Hogan, who took to X Friday to call on federal officials to do something about the lights he saw floating in the sky. 

“Last night, beginning at around 9:45 pm, I personally witnessed (and videoed) what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above my residence in Davidsonville, Maryland (25 miles from our nation’s capital). I observed the activity for approximately 45 minutes,” Hogan wrote in a post.

The former Republican governor included a two-minute video of the night sky, in which a few small lights can be seen, and it’s unclear whether the lights are static or in motion. 

“Like many who have observed these drones, I do not know if this increasing activity over our skies is a threat to public safety or national security. But the public is growing increasingly concerned and frustrated with the complete lack of transparency and the dismissive attitude of the federal government,” Hogan wrote.

“The government has the ability to track these from their point of origin but has mounted a negligent response. People are rightfully clamoring for answers, but aren’t getting any,” Hogan continued, and he expressed frustration at not knowing the origin of the lights or whether they were dangerous.  

“That response is entirely unacceptable. I join with the growing bipartisan chorus of leaders demanding that the federal government immediately address this issue,” Hogan wrote. “The American people deserve answers and action now.”

While Hogan may have been speaking to the legitimate concern of citizens of the Eastern seaboard, it’s not clear that what he was able to film were drones at all.

Matthew Cappucci, a meteorologist, replied to Hogan’s post with what feels like an important fact-check. 

“With immense respect, Mr. governor, this is the constellation ‘Orion,’” Cappucci wrote in a post on X. He included an image of the lights in the video labeled as the stars Bellatrix, Bettleguese, Mintaka, Alnilam, and Alnitak. 

“It’s made up of stars between 244 and 1,344 light years away. The stars will be in a similar place tomorrow,” Cappucci added.

Last week, right-wing fear hustler Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was quick to use the drones to suggest that the federal government was failing to keep Americans safe. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, clearly intent on taking the safety of his constituents seriously, used the drones to mock former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. 

Donald Trump hasn’t yet begun his second term, but his allies are already setting the stage for a third administrative run under the president-elect.

Speaking at the New York Young Republican Club on Sunday, War Room podcast host and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon suggested that conservatives should rally to keep the MAGA leader in power via a supposed loophole in the U.S. Constitution.

“Donald John Trump is going to raise his hand on the King James Bible and take the oath of office, his third victory and his second term,” Bannon said at the club’s annual gala.

“And the viceroy Mike Davis tells me, since it doesn’t actually say consecutive, that, I don’t know, maybe we do it again in ’28?” Bannon continued, referring to one of Trump’s former attorney general hopefuls. “Are you guys down for that? Trump ’28?”

It’s not even the first time this year that conservative figureheads have argued in favor of violating the Constitution to upgrade Trump’s authoritarian power.

The Twenty-Second Amendment, which was ratified in 1951, states that “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.” Congress pushed for the term limit after President Franklin D. Roosevelt served three terms through World War II, fearing future abuses of power.

Only one clear exception exists for a person to serve more than two terms: a vice president who claims the Oval Office through succession after the death or resignation of a president could go on for another two terms, if and only if their initial time at the top of the executive branch lasted less than two years.

But in April, a feature story in The American Conservative flat-out advocated for the total repeal of the Twenty-Second Amendment, arguing that the country should override the shackles of the two-term limit on the basis that the authors of the amendment couldn’t have predicted the allure of a far-right candidate with a frenetic base.

“If, by 2028, voters feel Trump has done a poor job, they can pick another candidate; but if they feel he has delivered on his promises, why should they be denied the freedom to choose him once more?” American Conservative contributor Peter Tonguette wrote at the time.

Next up on Donald Trump’s lengthy Executive Office to-do list: Stop the clock.

“The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Friday. “Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.

His promise would make Standard Time, which we are currently in and which people overwhelmingly hate due to the increased darkness, permanent.

Proponents for Daylight Saving Time argue that the country uses less energy by extending the long summer sun an hour later into the evening. That was the reason behind Congress’s opt-in to Daylight Saving Time during World War I and World War II, according to Seize the Daylight author David Prerau.

That rationale hasn’t exactly held up—a 2008 study by the Department of Energy found that the clock switch saves a minuscule amount on the country’s annual energy usage—approximately 0.03 percent—while another study that same year out of the University of California-Santa Barbara suggested that Daylight Saving Time could actually cost the country more than not switching the clocks at all. Still, the majority of Americans want to make it permanent.

Trump’s sudden rejection of Daylight Saving Time is a near-total reversal of where he stood on the issue in 2019.

“Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!” Trump wrote at the time.

But you don’t have to search far to figure out why Trump might have changed his mind. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has spent a considerable amount of time at Trump’s side in recent months, has been a vocal opponent of the time change. Earlier this month, Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the other co-chair of Trump’s not-yet-real nongovernmental commission—the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE—voiced their support for abolishing Daylight Savings Time.

“Looks like the people want to abolish the annoying time changes!” Musk responded to an X poll indicating that the site’s users were no longer in favor of the back-and-forth.

“It’s inefficient & easy to change,” Ramaswamy responded.

Of course, any concrete change to the country’s official clock would have to pass through Congress—though the increasingly MAGA complicit Republican Party would be in for a rude awakening if it approved the “permanent” jump. America last tried this experiment in 1974, when officials discovered that the only thing less popular than permanent Daylight Saving Time was ending it, with support for the permanent switch falling from 79 percent to just 42 percent within three months, The New York Times reported that year.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the daytime television host Donald Trump has picked to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, may have a direct financial stake in three companies that would do business with the agency he intends to run.

A review of Oz’s 2022 tax disclosure by Accountable.US revealed that the Trump ally owned up to $26 million stake in Sharecare, a digital health company co-founded by Oz that operates CareLinx, the “exclusive in-home care supplemental benefit program” used by 1.5 million Medicare Advantage enrollees. The company went private in 2024, so it’s unknown whether Oz still owns a stake in the company.

Novo Nordisk, which produces Ozempic and Wegovy among other drugs, is also a client of Sharecare. As head of CMS, Oz has considerable impact on the pharmaceutical industry—but with business ties like these, it’s equally likely that these drug companies could have a profound impact on him.

Oz’s transition team spokesperson, Nick Clemens, told USA Today Friday that Oz had sold off his stake in Sharecare, but did not speak to the other stocks Oz owned with ties to the insurance industry.

In 2022, Oz also owned a stake valued at between $280,000 and $600,000 in UnitedHealth Group and between $50,000 and $100,000 in CVS Health, both of which provide insurance plans for roughly 41 percent of all Medicare Advantage enrollees as of 2024.

Oz also disclosed owning a stake valued at up to $25 million in Amazon and up to $5 million in Microsoft, which operate CMS’s “two primary cloud service providers,” according to its most recent budget.

Accountable.US did not find any indication that Oz had sold these stocks, and it was not confirmed by his spokesperson.